Tupinamba

The Tupinamba are Tupi peoples who held nearly the whole Atlantic coast of Brazil before the Portuguese conquest, from the Sao Francisco mouth through Bahia and Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. Swidden farmers of manioc, fishers and warriors famed for ritual anthropophagy, they lived in great palisaded villages under rival chiefs, warring seasonally with ceremony and vengeance. Their language, Old Tupi, became the lingua geral of colonial Brazil and survives as Nheengatu in Amazonia. French allies at Rio, Portuguese enemies at Bahia, the Tupinamba were ground between empires: disease, slaving and aldeia missions emptied the coast within a century. Yet the name never died. In the 21st century Tupinamba of Olivença in Bahia and of Para reclaimed farms, opened their own schools with their own curriculum in 2006, and fight on for demarcation of the coast their ancestors named. Tupiniquim, Potiguara, Caete, Tabajara and Tamoio cousins shared the coast-wide Tupi world.