Tupinambá
Register of the speech of a Tupinambá chief in the 17th
Century:
“I simply say what I saw
with my eyes”
Chief Momboré-uaçu (Essauap village, Maranhão
- 1612):
I saw the arrival of the peró [Portuguese] in Pernambuco
and Potiú; and they started like you, French, are doing
now. At first, the peró only trafficked, they had no intention
of living here. At that time they slept freely with the girls,
which our comrades from Pernambuco reputed to be greatly honorable.
Later on, they said we should get used to them and that they needed
to build fortresses in order to defend themselves and build cities
to live with us.
And so it looked like they wished to constitute one single nation
with us. Then they started to say that they could not take the
girls just like that, that God only allowed them to have the girls
through marriage and that they could not marry if they were not
baptized. And, for that, paí [priests] were needed.
They ordered the paí to come; and they raised crosses and
began to preach for our people and to baptize them. Later they
said that neither them nor the paí could live without slaves
to serve them and to work in their place. And so our people were
forced to provide them. But they were not satisfied with the slaves
captured in war and they also wanted our people’s children,
and they ended up enslaving the whole nation; and with such tyranny
and cruelty they treated them that those that remained free, like
us, were forced to leave the region.
The same happened with the French. The first time you came here,
you did so just for trafficking. Like the peró, you did
not refuse to take our daughters and we thought we were happy
when they bore children. At that time you did not talk of staying.
You were content to visit us once a year, staying among us only
for four or five moons. You would then go back to your country,
taking our products to exchange them for what we lacked.
Now you already talk of establishing yourselves here, of building
fortresses in order to defend yourselves against your enemies.
In order to do that you brought a Morubixaba and several paí.
In truth, we are happy, but the peró did the same.
After the arrival of the paí, you planted crosses like
the peró. You now start to preach and baptize just like
they did; you say you cannot take our daughters but as wives,
and only after they have been baptized. The same used to say the
peró. Like them, you did not want slaves, at first; now
you ask for them, and in the end you want them just like they
do. I do not believe, however, that you have the same objective
as the peró; in fact, that does not frighten me, because,
old as I am, I fear nothing anymore. I simply say what I’ve
seen with my eyes.
The Tupinambá and Equinoctial France
By Beatriz Perrone-Moisés (antropologist, USP):
This speech was registered by the missionary Claude d'Abbeville,
in his História da Missão dos Padres Capuchinhos
na Ilha do Maranhão – History of the Mission
of the Capuchin Priests in the Island of Maranhão (1614;
here transcribed from the Brazilian translation by Sérgio
Milliet, São Paulo: Martins, 1945, pages 115-116). Addressed
to a group of Frenchmen who, in a diplomatic mission, tried to
establish an alliance with Indigenous peoples of the region, it
made great impact on those present. The response by the French
ambassador-interpreter, Des Vaux, made possible the alliance and
eventually the founding, in Maranhão, of Equinoctial France.
The French colony, however, was conquered by the Portuguese two
years later. Under the control of the peró (name given
to the Portuguese), the Tupi from the region had the same fate
of those from Pernambuco, as was described by Momboré-uaçu.
In a few years, no accounts mention the existence of Tupi free
villages on the coast of the colony of Brazil.
