UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Santa Barbara

Feathered Identities and Plumed Performances:

Tupinambá Interculture in Early Modern Brazil and Europe

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

in Art History

by

Amy J. Buono

Committee in charge:

Professor Jeanette F. Peterson, Chair

Professor Swati Chattopadhyay

Professor Francis A. Dutra

December 2007
 Feathered Identities and Plumed Performances:

Tupinambá Interculture in Early Modern Brazil and Europe

Copyright © 2007

by

Amy J. Buono

iii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation has been many years in the making. My advisor, Jeanette Favrot

Peterson, enthusiastically supported my interest in pursuing a Brazilian project

since my first days in graduate school. Her patience, good cheer, and scholarly

insight have been invaluable in seeing this project reach a successful conclusion. I

thank Swati Chattopadhyay for continuously pushing my conceptual framework of

the colonial world. To historian Francis A. Dutra I am indebted for his careful

guidance through the intricacies of the Portuguese Atlantic and for his helpful

advice concerning archival work in Portugal and beyond. Mark A. Meadow

deserves special thanks for getting me started on the path of early modern

mercantile history and always providing time for reading drafts. Friend and fellow

Lusophone scholar, James H. Sweet, has inspired me with his superb scholarship

and encouraging emails.

My field research in Brazil and Europe would not have been possible

without the generous support from the following agencies: Fulbright-Hays

Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education (2004-2005);

International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Sciences Research Council

(2004-2005); Andrew W. Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, Center for Advanced

Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (2005-2007).

For two years the Jesuit Curia in Rome was my scholarly home. I would

especially like to acknowledge the former director of the Archivum Romanum

Societatis Iesu, Padre R.P. Thomas Reddy, as well as Padre Brian Lobo and

Brother Marcus Michael, for introducing me to the heart of the living Jesuit

iv
community and to the delicacies of regional Indian cuisine. Grazie mille also to

Robert Danieluk, S.J. and archival assistants Stefanía, Angélica and Mauro; and

especially to Sig. Claudio in Flaminio.

My examinations of the surviving Tupi objects would not have been

possible without the kind hospitality of conservators, curators and scholars around

the world. I extend my gratitude to the following people and institutions: in Basel,

Alexander Brust and Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger, Museum der Kulturen; in

Bologna, Laura Laurencich-Minelli, Universidad de Bologna; in Belém, Denise

Pahl Schaan; in Brussels, Sergio Purini, Musées Royale d’Art et d’Histoire; in

Campinas, John M. Monteiro, UNICAMP; in Copenhagen, Anne Lisbeth Schmidt

and Rolf Gilberg, Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling; in Florence, Vito Stanco,

Museo di Storia Naturale, Universitá degli Studi di Firenze; in Frankfurt, Mona

Birgit Suhrbier, Museum der Weltkulturen; in Milan, Rev. Mons. Ravasi and Padre

Navonni, Museo Settala dell’Ambrosiana/ Bibliotheca Ambrosiana; in Paris,

André Delpuech and Fabienne de Pierrebourg, Musée du quai Branly; also in

Paris, Yann Sordet, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève; in Prague, Monika Bad’urová,

Náprstkovo Museum; in Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Fausto and Dante Martins Teixeira,

Museu Nacional; in Stuttgart, Doris Korella, Lindenmuseum; in Vienna, Christian

F. Feest, Museum für Volkerkunde; in Washington, D.C., Carla J. Dove, Marcy

Heacker-Skeans and Barbara Watanabe, National Museum of Natural History,

Smithsonian Institution. Furthermore, the library staff of the European Reading

v
Room at the Library of Congress (especially Predrag Pajic) provided a remarkably

conducive setting for putting words to the page.

Most importantly, I wish to thank my family and friends for supporting me

through the arduous process of a PhD and keeping me humbled with life’s many

adventures. Cindy, Jim and Sam Wilson; Mike, Maura, Brendan, and Kerry

Lewiecki; Kathy Lewiecki, and Zach, Jesse, and Calvino Peterson; Neli, António,

and Fabiano de Sá; Flávia de Sá and Emerson Vieira (+Enrico); Xico Teixeira;

Linda Ashmore, and Paul, Ryan and Drew Avolese. My love and thanks to

compadres from NM, Rome and CA: Emily Breault, Emilia Casella and Flavio

Fazzuoli; Markus Friedrich; Emily and Dan Engel; Katherine and James McAllen;

Elizabeth Mitchell; Lindsey Pederson; Emily J. Peters; Elena Shtromberg; John R.

Senseney; Amara Solari; Roberto de Souza; Maya Stanfield-Mazzi; Kelly Turner

and Geoffrey Ashley. My appreciation to CASVA colleagues who filled the last

year of writing with scholarly feedback and, most importantly, laughs: Elizabeth

Boone, Amy Freund, Bob Glass, Aden Kumler, Michelle Kuo, Melanie

Michailidis, Dan Sherman, Molly Warnock. And finally, I dedicate this

dissertation to Tapereba, whose generosity of spirit continues to inspire.

vi
 VITA OF AMY J. BUONO
December 2007

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies & Portuguese, University of New

Mexico, December 1996 (cum laude)
Master of Arts in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, March 2002
(with distinction)
Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara,
December 2007

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT

1999-2004: Slide Cataloguer, Department of History of Art & Architecture,

University of California, Santa Barbara
1999-2004: Research Assistant, Department of History of Art & Architecture,
University of California, Santa Barbara
2001-2003: Curatorial Research Assistant, Santa Barbara Museum of Art
2000-2003: Teaching Assistant, Department of History of Art & Architecture,
University of California, Santa Barbara

PUBLICATIONS

“Natural History and the Space of Empire in Jean-Baptiste Debret’s

Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil,” Unpublished thesis submitted in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in Art History,
University of California, Santa Barbara, 2002.

“Gunther Gerzso: Chronology; Bibliography; Exhibitions; Filmography and

Scenography,” in Risking the Abstract: Mexican Modernism and the Art of
Gunther Gerzso, D. du Pont, ed., Mexico City & Madrid, 2003, 296-307; 308-323.

“Jean-Baptiste Debret’s Return of the Negro Hunters, the Brazilian Roça, and the
Interstices of Empire,” XXVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte:
Orientes-ocidentes. El arte y la Mirada del otro, Mexico City, 2004.

“Antônio Francisco Lisboa [O Aleijandinho],” in Encyclopedia of African-

American Culture and History: The Black Experience in the Americas, Colin
Palmer, ed., Farmington Hill, 2005, 1293-1295.

vii
AWARDS

Humanities/ Social Sciences Research Grant, University of California, Santa

Barbara, 2001

Humanities Research Assistantship, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2003-

2004

International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Sciences Research Council,

2004-2005

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, U.S. Dept. of Education, 2004-

2005

Andrew W. Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the

Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, 2005-2007

Post-doctoral Fellowship, Centro Incontri Umani, 2007-2008

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Colonial Latin American Art

Minor Field: Pre-Columbian Art

viii
 ABSTRACT

Feathered Identities and Plumed Performances:

Tupinambá Interculture in Early Modern Brazil and Europe

by

Amy J. Buono

The material and ritual culture of the Tupinambá peoples of early modern Brazil

centered upon elaborate featherwork capes, of which only eleven survive today.

Within Tupi villages, colonial missions and European courts, these ritual

vestments played a key role in the creation of a pan-Atlantic colonial interculture.

Produced from feathers of the scarlet ibis, these capes played an important role in

Tupi corporeality and community. My dissertation attends to the physical qualities

of the extant capes and examines the discourses that early modern chroniclers and

modern anthropologists constructed around them.

Letters by Jesuit missionaries in Brazil surprisingly reveal the continued

manufacture and use of Tupi feathered capes within the aldeia (mission) system in

both indigenous and Christian rituals. Jesuit missionaries also shipped the capes to

Europe, where with other artifacts they extended the conceptual space of

ix
colonialism to the Old World. They traveled along social, mercantile and political

networks, and entered scholarly and princely collections, where they were studied

for their technical mastery and redeployed within court pageantry.

“Brazil” and the “Tupinambá” were concepts mediated by missionaries,

merchants, slaves and indigenes in the spatial realms of ports, plantations,

missions, marketplaces and courts. The financial incentives of the brazilwood and

sugar industries drove European involvement with Brazilian peoples and coastal

forests. The Tupi and their plumed artifacts traveled alongside these exported

commodities, tangible indices of European economic interests in the New World.

By constructing a socio-cultural “biography” of the Tupi feathered capes, I

trace their changing functions and value as they move from place to place. As

ritual vestments, they contributed to the social coding within and among Tupi

kinship groups and colonial intermediaries, including early modern merchants,

scholars and princes. A reification of the process of social construction, the capes

were instrumental in the performance of identity and agency in the colonial nexus.

By examining the intersection of these objects with a series of early modern

places, people, and institutions I contribute to our knowledge of colonial

indigenous traditions within Brazil and of the institutional and economic basis of

European engagement with the New World.

x
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Dancing at the Market: The Peripatetic Life of Tupi Featherwork 6

Chapter 1: Tupinambá Brazil: Landscapes, Cultures, Ethnographies 24

Part I: Brazilian modernists and the ingestion of the Tupi as icon 36

Part II: Terms, populations, expansions 45

Part III: European perceptions of Tupi societal structure: malocas, villages 51

Part IV: Anthropophagy: concerns and debates 58

Part V: Dressing for warfare and celebration 64

Chapter 2: “Their Treasures Are the Feathers of Birds”: Tupinambá Featherwork85

Part I: Trade: feathers, birds, stones 91

Part II: The birds of Brazil 95

Part III: Feather modification: tapirage and brazilwood dye baths 112

Part IV: Textile-matrix support and the question of gender 122

Appendix A: Catalogue of Objects 128

Appendix B: Tupi featherwork: format and the visual record 134

Appendix C: Featherwork classification systems 140

Chapter 3: The Jesuits in Brazil: Aldeias and Accommodation of Feathers 146

Part I: Founding and circulation of Jesuit culture and practices 150

Part II: Jesuit aldeias and “ways” of colonizing in Brazil 181

Part III: Navigating feathered capes to Rome 212

xi
Chapter 4: Performing Brazil European Collections, Courts and Networks as Sites

of Colonialism 219

Part I: Florence, Bologna, Milan: the (Re-) naissance of Natural History…230

Part II: Dyeing for wealth in Paris and Rouen 267

Part III: The Dutch connection and the “Tupinambization” of Europe 285

Coda: Contemporary Constructions: The Afterlife of Tupi Featherwork in

Brazilian Art 304

Figures 314

References……………………………………………………………………….370

xii
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, 1669, oil on panel

Figure 2. Frontispiece to Manfredo Settala’s museum, 1666, engraving

Figure 3. Tupi feathered cape with bonnet, Copenhagen, EH391

Figure 4. André Thevet, Funerary Procession, 1558, woodcut

Figure 5. Tupi bone flute, Copenhagen, EHb28

Figure 6. Hans Staden, Tupi Village, 1557, woodcut

Figure 7. Theodore de Bry and Sons, Pajés dancing, 1590-1634, hand-colored

engraving

Figure 8. Tupi maracá, Frankfurt, N.S. 25818

Figure 9. Theodore de Bry and Sons, Cannibal Scene, 1590-1634, hand-colored

engraving

Figure 10. Hans Staden, Tupi Lip and Cheek Plugs, 1557, woodcut

Figure 11. Hans Staden, Palisaded Village, 1557, woodcut

Figures 12 and 13. Hans Staden, Tupi War-club and Consecration of War-club,

1557, woodcut

Figure 14. Hans Staden, Cauim Drinking, 1557, woodcut

Figure 15. Hans Staden, Execution, 1557, woodcut

Figure 16. Hans Staden, Tupi “Couple”, 1557, woodcut

Figure 17. Tupi feathered bonnet, Copenhagen, EH5932

Figure 18. Hans Staden, Enduap, 1557, woodcut

xiii
Figure 19. Jean de Léry, Tupi Man Wearing an Enduap, 1580, woodcut

Figure 20. Anon (possibly Albert Eckhout), Gúara, in Schloss Hoflössnitz near

Dresden, c1650s, oil on canvas

Figure 21. Tupi feathered diadem, Copenhagen, EHc56

Figure 22. Tupi feathered trapezoidal cape with bonnet, Milanz

Figure 23. Jacob van Campen, Triumphal Procession with Treasures from East

and West, c1650-51, oil on canvas

Figure 24. Identifying Milan cape feather as “red & green macaw,” Smithsonian

Division of Birds

Figure 25. Sample scarlet ibis from Brazil, Smithsonian Division of Birds

Figure 26. Identifying Milan cape “yellow” feather as a tapirage feather,

Smithsonian Division of Birds

Figure 27. Two modern feather boxes from Amazonia

Figure 28. Tupi feathered cape, Copenhagen, EHc52

Figure 29. Tupi feathered half-cape, Copenhagen, EH5933

Figure 30. Tupi feathered half-cape, Copenhagen, EH5934

Figure 31. Tupi feathered half-cape, Copenhagen, EH5935

Figure 32. Tupi feathered trapezoidal cape, Basel, N. IVc657

Figure 33. Tupi feathered modular cape, Brussels, AAM 578

Figure 34. Tupi feathered rectangular cape, Florence, n. 281

Figure 35. Tupi feathered trapezoidal cape, Florence, n. 288

Figure 36. Tupi feathered trapezoidal cape, Paris, #17.3.83

xiv
Figure 37. Anon German artist. Queen of America Procession, Stuttgart, c1598-

1599, watercolor

Figure 38. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Homo sylvestris plumario Indutus, 1599, drawing

with watercolor

Figure 39. Unknown North Italian artist, Manfredo Settala Codex, Tupi Feathered

Cape with Bonnet, 1640-1660, gouache

Figure 40. Pedro and Jorge Reinal, Lope Homen, and António de Holanda, Atlas

Miller, 1519

Figure 41. Theodore de Bry & sons, Cauim Drinking, 1590-1634, hand-colored

engraving

Figure 42. Hans Weigel, Woman in a Brazilian cape, 1577, woodcut

Figure 43. Adriaen Hanneman, Posthumous Portrait of Mary I Stuart with a

Servant, 1664, oil on canvas

Figure 44. Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz, Portrait of Sophie von der Pfalz,

1646, oil on panel

Figure 45. Technical drawing of feather binding technique

Figure 46. Heinrich Scherer, Societas Iesu per universum mundum diffusa

praedicat Christi evangelium, Atlas Novus, c1700

Figure 47. Zacharias Wagner, Aldea, 1631- c1641, watercolor

Figure 48. Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, DET: Market, 1669

Figure 49. Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, DET: Capes, 1669

xv
Figure 50. Louis de Merval, Joyous Entry of Henry II into Rouen, c1551, hand-

colored engraving

Figure 51. Anon German artist, Tupi Men and Women, c1505, woodcut

Figure 52. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Regina insulae Floridae, 1599, drawing with

watercolor

Figure 53. Ulisse Aldrovandi, German edition of Ornithologia, 1610-1621

Figure 54. Unknown Italian artist, Manfredo Settala Codex, Tupi Headdress, 1640-

1660, gouache

Figure 55. Carved oak panels from Rouen showing brazilwood extraction, c1503-

1549

Figure 56. Bernardus Paludanus, Album amicorum inscription, 1592

Figure 57. Lygia Pape, Tupinambá Cloak, 2000, mixed media

xvi
 ABBREVIATIONS: ARCHIVES CONSULTED

AGI Archivo General de las Indias, Sevilla

AHU Arquivo Histórico Ultamarino, Lisboa
Ambr. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milano
ANTT Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Lisboa
ARSI Archivum Roman Societatis Iesu, Roma
BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Roma
BCC Biblioteca Centrale Cappuccini, Roma
BEU Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena
BUB Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna
BNL Biblioteca Nacional, Lisboa
BNRJ Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro
BNC Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Roma
FSL Folger-Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
LC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
HstS Hauptstaatsarchiv, Stuttgart
KB Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Hague
StdA Stadsarchief, Antwerpen
StdF Stadtarchiv, Frankfurt
WLS Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart

ABBREVIATIONS: FREQUENTLY CITED PUBLISHED WORKS

Abbeville #1 Abbeville, Claude d'. Histoire de la mission de peres capucins en

l'isle de margagnan et terres circonvoisins (1614). Edited by Alfred
Métraux and Jacques Lafaye. Facsimiliar ed. Graz: Akademische
Druck-u Velagsanstalt, 1963.

Abbeville #2 Abbeville, Claude d'. História da missão dos padres capuchinhos

na ilha do maranhão e terras circunvizinhas. Translated by Mário
Guimarães Ferri. Belo Horizonte: Livraria Itatiaia, 1975.

Alden Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in

Portugal, Its Empire and Beyond, 1540-1750. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1996.

Caminha Caminha, Pedro Vaz de. "Letter of Pedro Vaz de Caminha, Written
in Porto-Seguro of Vera Cruz on the First Day of May in the Year
1500." In Portuguese Voyages, 1498-1663, edited by Charles David
Ley, 41-59. London: Phoenix Press, 2000.

xvii
Cardim Cardim, Fernão. Tratados da terra e gente do brasil. Edited by Ana
Maria de Azevedo. Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para os
Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1997.

Chiapelli Chiappelli, Fredi, Michael J. B. Allen, and Robert Louis Benson,

eds. First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the
Old. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Copenhagen Dam-Mikkelsen, Bente, and Torben Lundbæk, eds. Etnografiske

Genstande I Det Kongelige Danske Kunstkammer 1650-1800,
Nationalmuseets Skrifter. Etnografisk Række Vol. 17. København:
Nationalmuseet, 1980.

Evreux Evreux, Yves d', and Hélène Clastres, ed. Voyage au nord du bresil
fait en 1613 et 1614. Paris: Payot, 1985.

Findlen Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and

Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley & Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1994.

Gândavo Gândavo, Pero Magalhães de. The Histories of Brazil. Translated by

John Batterson Stetson. Boston: Longwood Press, 1978.

Impey Impey, Oliver, and Arthur MacGregor, eds. The Origins of

Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985.

Leite Leite, S.J., Serafim. Historia da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, I-X.

Lisbon; Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Portugalia; Instituto Nacional do
Livros, 1938-1950.

Léry Léry, Jean de. History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise
Called America. Translated by Janet Whatley. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1990.

MB Leite, S.J., Serafim, ed. Monumenta Brasiliae, I-V (1538-1565).

Rome: MHSI, 1956-1968.

Métraux #1 Métraux, Alfred. La civilisation matérielle des tribus tupí-guarani.

Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1928.

xviii
Métraux #2 Métraux, Alfred. La religion des tupinamba et ses rapports avec
celle des autres tribus tupi-guarani. Paris: E. Leroux, 1928.

Métraux #3 Métraux, Alfred. "The Tupinamba." In Handbook of South

American Indians, Vol. 3, edited by Julian Haynes Steward, 95-133.
Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1948.

Monteiro Monteiro, John M. "The Crisis and Transformations of Invaded

Societies: Coastal Brazil in the Sixteenth Century." In The
Cambridge History of Native Peoples of the Americas, edited by
Frank and Stuart B. Schwartz Salomon, Vol. III, Part I, 973-1024.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Moraes Moraes, Rubens Borba de. Bibliografia Brasiliana. 2 vols. Vol. I &
II. Amsterdam; Rio de Janeiro: Colibris Ed., 1958.

O’Malley #1 O'Malley S.J., John, Gauvin A. Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T.

Frank Kennedy S.J., eds. The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the
Arts, 1540-1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

O’Malley #2 O'Malley S.J., John, Gauvin A. Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T.

Frank Kennedy S.J., eds. The Jesuits II: Culture, Science and the
Arts: 1540-1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Reina Reina, Ruben E., and Kanneth M. Kensinger. The Gift of Birds:
Featherwork of Native South American Peoples. Philadelphia: The
University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University
of Pennsylvania, 1991.

Staden Staden, Hans. Hans Staden, The True History of His Captivity,
1557. Translated by Malcolm Henry Ikin Letts. London: G.
Routledge, 1928.

Sousa #1 Sousa, Gabriel Soares de, and Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, ed.
Tratado descritivo do Brasil em 1587. 9. ed, Série Descobrimentos.
Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 2000.

Sousa #2 Sousa, Gabriel Soares de, and Francisco Adolfo de Varnahagen, ed.
"Tratado descriptivo do Brazil em 1587." Revista do Instituto
historico e geografico brasileiro XIV (1851).

Thevet #1 Thevet, Andre. Singularitez de la France Antarctique, autrement

nomme Amerique, & de plusieurs terres & isles decouuertes de

xix
 nostre temps. A Anvers: De l'imprimerie de Christophle Plantin a la
licorne d' or, 1558.

Thevet #2 Thevet, André. The New Found Worlde, or Antarctike Wherin Is

Contained Wonderful and Strange Things, as Well of Humaine
Creatures, as Beastes, Fishes, Foules, and Serpents, Trées, Plants,
Mines of Golde and Siluer: Garnished with Many Learned
Aucthorities, Trauailed and Written in the French Tong, by That
Excellent Learned Man, Master Andrevve Theuet. And Now Newly
Translated into Englishe, Wherein is Reformed the Errours of the
Auncient Cosmographers. Translated by Thomas Hacket. Imprinted
at London: By Henrie Bynneman for Thomas Hacket. And are to be
sold at his shop in Poules Church-yard at the signe of the Key,
1568.

Thevet #3 Thevet, André, and Suzanne Lussagnet, ed. Le Brésil et les

brésiliens. [1] ed, Les Français en Amérique Pendant la Deuxième
Moitié du XVI e siècle. Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1953.

Tibiriçá Tibiriçá, Luiz Caldas, ed. Dicionário Tupi-Português: com esboço

de gramática de Tupi Antigo. São Paulo: Traço Editora, 1984.

xx
 TUPI CAPE NUMBERS: #1-11

The following list provides the numbers by which I refer to the individual capes in
this dissertation. More data is available on the capes in Chapter 2, appendix A.

Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling

1. EH5931
2. EHc52
3. EH5933
4. EH5934
5. EH5935

Basel, Museum der Kulturen

6. N. IVc657

Brussels, Musées Royale d’Art et d’Histoire

7. AAM 5783

Florence, Museo di Storia Naturale, Universitá degli Studi di Firenze

8. N. 281
9. N. 288

Paris, Musée du quai Branly

10. N. 17.3.83

Milan, “Museum Septalianum,” Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano

11. [no inventory #]

xxi
 Introduction:

Dancing at the Market: The Peripatetic Life of Tupi Featherwork

Understanding things-in-motion, and the ways in which people try to deal with
this mobility, requires in any case that we take into account people’s views
(whether factually correct, or distorted, or entirely mythical) as to how these
things are produced in the first place, and who or what produced them.
––Wim van Binsbergen, Commodification:
Things, Agency and Identities, 20051

The object of study of aesthetics and art history should not be the art work itself,
but rather the process or social circulation in which meanings arise and vary.
–– Nestor García Canclini, La producción simbólica, 19792

Frans Post’s (1612-1680) Indians in the Forest, painted in 1669, is set in the

territory of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil, the region captured and briefly

controlled by the Dutch for the twenty years between 1630 and 1654 (Fig. 1).3

Comparable to many of the other scenes of Brazil that Post produced, the painting

is formulaic. The right foreground is filled with a triangular patch of nature,

showing native plants and animals. Brazilian inhabitants, dressed in characteristic

clothing and going about their daily lives, occupy the rest of the foreground. In this

1
Wim M. J. van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere, eds., Commodification: Things, Agency, and
Identities: (the Social Life of Things Revisited) (Münster: LIT, 2005), 24.
2
Néstor García Canclini, La producción simbólica: teoría y método en sociología del arte, 1. ed.,
(Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1979), 13.
3
Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, 1669, oil on panel, 50.8 x 66 cm., owned by The Catholic
University of America, Washington, D.C. This painting is on permanent loan to the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and hangs in the “Collector’s Cabinet,” a room within the Dutch
Cabinet Galleries with an alternate title: Brazilian Landscape, Probably Pernambuco. This painting
has recently been given a more precise provenance history in the new catalogue raisonné of Post.
See Pedro and Bia Corrêa do Lago, Frans Post [1612-1680]: Catalogue Raissoné (Milan: Capivara
Editora; 5 Continents Editions, 2007), 290. For more discussion of Post see León Krempel, Frans
Post 1612-1680: Catalogue Raisonné (Peterberg: Imhof, 2005).

1
case, they are buying and selling at a market, with baskets of local produce and

other wares offered for sale. One group of figures turns their backs to us as they

look out upon a scene of indigenous Brazilians engaged in a lively dance. The

background dissolves into the vast natural expanses of Pernambuco.

What is striking about this painting is that Post’s landscape, despite its

formulaic qualities, leads the viewer through a series of colonial Brazilian spaces:

the coastal forests, the Jesuit missions called aldeias, and the marketplaces of

Brazil. Moving beyond the frame of the painting, other spaces are implicit to its

production, especially the European courts and collections in which a painting like

this and the objects depicted within it might be displayed. This study argues that

these various cultural and conceptual spaces are crucial for understanding the

cultural topography of colonial Brazil, its indigenous Tupiguarani inhabitants and

Europe’s response to both.

Post guides his viewers through the painting by the dirt roadway that

emerges from the bottom left, leading us from the material realm of the rural

market in the foreground to Brazil’s vast natural expanses in the far distance. The

natural world frames the human activity seen along the roadway. If the viewer

strays away from the path in any direction he or she quickly encounters a more

troubling terrain. For all the beauty of the landscape, it is a dangerous realm. In the

thick forest in the lower right corner –– for instance –– a large snake is poised to

strike at a tropical bird.

2
 The immediate foreground shows us a marketplace, well supplied with

foodstuffs, baskets of vegetables and tropical fruits, and indigenous ceramic

vessels and utensils. Post’s market is a busy site of commerce and social activity,

with people shown sitting and standing, some alone, others holding children or in

conversation, as we can see through the gestures of raised arms and slightly bent

heads. One man faces us holding a dead bird or animal, perhaps just purchased for

the day’s lunch. The white cotton garments worn by the market participants are

made of European cloth, which was distributed to the indigenous residents of

missions and sugar plantations.4 The figures standing in the center of the painting,

with their backs to us, are clothed in more fully Europeanized garments, wearing

trousers, blouses, vests, belts, and hats. 5 They are watching another group of

people placed farther into the landscape, who are performing a ceremonial dance.

Post depicts a clear spatial and social distinction between the market and the ritual

taking place beyond it.

The middle ground where the dance takes place is the second distinct social

zone of Post’s landscape, the site of native ritual and performance, located midway

between the market and the natural landscape. Observed by the most fully

Europeanized figures, who are seen in the culturally familiar market and may be

residents of a mission settlement, the dancers represent for the European viewer of

4
The Jesuits instituted the introduction of white cotton clothing within Brazilian missions in the
1550s, circa one hundred years before this painting. For the official edict see MB, Vol. II, 54.
5
The entry on this painting in Lago, Frans Post, 290, suggests that this small family may in fact be
Dutch. This is a possibility, though the absence of shoes and stockings, the dark skin of their legs
and the fact that the man wears trousers of the same white cotton the other figures wear may be
evidence to the contrary.

3
the painting a starker embodiment of cultural difference. This contrast is made

sharper by Post’s clever juxtaposition of the fully dressed family, the loincloth clad

slaves beside them and the fully nude dancers who they watch. The entire group

of men and women in the dance circle appear mostly naked, with the exception of

a few colonial vestiges of indigenous Tupi material culture. Engaged in a Tupi

ritual dance, their proximity to the market suggests that they reside in or near a

mission settlement or plantation. Three of these men wear feathered “half-capes” –

– scarlet-plumed and bonneted vestments that extend to the end of the lower back

–– and wield war-clubs. It is these capes that specifically identify their wearers as

Tupi and their activity as a ritual.

Post’s landscape is, like all depictions and accounts of the Tupi, a

construct, painted about twenty years after Post had returned to Holland. It

visually encapsulates the complexities of the colonial Brazilian world, alluding to

Brazil’s bountiful produce, indigenous artifacts, and local rituals. These are indices

of Europe’s prime motivation for engagement with Brazil: the profits to be made

from its rich natural resources. The painting, with its structured socio-spatial

divisions, visually maps an idealized colonial process along an axis extending from

the distant, untamed natural realm, leading to a group of indigenous Tupi

characteristically dressed for the ritual they perform, and a closer crowd of

transculturated local inhabitants who have taken up European costume, economic

activities and (presumably) Christianity. The axis extends beyond the painting,

however, to include its European viewers and their surroundings, whether a Dutch

4
middle-class household, a scholarly or a princely collection, and even, as is the

case today, contemporary viewers in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Frans Post’s Indians in the Forest offered to its seventeenth-century

viewers a ready-made context for the vast amount of new information and new

materials entering the ports of Europe. We should not forget that the painting itself

was a luxury commodity produced for collectors eager for imagery of Holland’s

far-flung colony, just as they avidly sought the very objects and garments we can

see in the ritual dance.

In this dissertation, I want to follow the road in reverse, as it moves out of

Post’s painting, starting in the coastal forests and the colonial Tupi communities

within them, moving to the missions and markets of Brazil, and then to the

European cities and courts that collected all of today’s surviving Tupi feathered

objects. I shall examine colonial Tupinambá culture in detail; using the extant Tupi

feathered capes, early modern written and pictorial sources, and modern

anthropology and archaeology. Only eleven Tupi feathered cloaks survive, and

these are the main subjects of my research. These capes, and Tupi featherwork

overall, exist today only in European collections, in all but one instance as

remnants of sixteenth- and seventeenth century princely, scholarly and mercantile

collections.

I use the term “Tupi” throughout this study with the understanding that all

available sources concerning the coastal people of Brazil are post-contact and thus

not unmediated accounts of pre-European native culture and practices. Any sense

5
of a pure and “authentic” Tupi culture remains part of a European imaginary.

Everyday life among the Tupi and their elaborate rituals fired the imagination of

scholars, merchants, missionaries and princes in Renaissance Europe, providing

the seeds for centuries of vivid and tenacious stereotypes concerning New World

forest cultures. This dissertation focuses especially on the role of birds, feathers

and adornments within the context of colonial Tupi-European encounters during

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on both sides of the Atlantic. I provide a

material framework –– an armature –– for understanding the historical sources and

pictorial representations of the Tupi that I discuss in subsequent chapters, detailing

the surviving Tupi material artifacts in colonial travel narratives, on Jesuit

missions and within European collections.

I place particular emphasis on a thorough account and technical analysis of

the most splendid of the extant objects –– the eleven remaining scarlet-feathered

cloaks –– all, to a greater or lesser extent, similar to the ones we see worn in Post’s

painting. The materials and construction of these objects, I argue, help us to more

fully comprehend the complexity and richness of colonial Tupi culture, as well

Europe’s historical relationship to Brazil’s “nature.” European engagement with

the Tupi –– from the first moments of contact in 1500 –– was fundamentally

linked to the exploitation of Brazil’s natural resources, specifically the brazilwood

trade.6 Birds and feathers became intercultural commodities, to be bartered and

sold, building cross-cultural relationships. In Brazil, these exchanges took place

6
For a history of the brazilwood trade see: Eduardo Bueno and Ana Roquero, Pau-Brasil (São
Paulo: Axis Mundi, 2002).

6
among Tupiguarani communities, between the Tupiguarani and non-Tupi cultures,

and also between the Tupi and European colonizers.

In Europe, social, economic and political relationships were enacted as raw

plumes, birds and the feathered capes were exchanged between and among

explorers, sovereigns, clergy, and scholars. All of these colonial transfers and

exchanges took place within an institutional framework. European mercantile

endeavors, discourses of natural history, and patterns of institutional collecting

shaped the very process of colonialism in Brazil, which took a highly particular

form, determined by local physical, social and material conditions, all of which

intersect with the eleven Tupi feathered capes and the uses and meanings assigned

to them as they traveled through sites in Brazil and Europe.

It is important to reiterate that all written sources concerning the Tupi are

products of the colonial encounter. They were written exclusively by Europeans

and are every bit as much constructions of Brazil and of the Tupi as is the Frans

Post painting. These period sources are of various kinds — letters, travel and

captivity narratives, even a philological treatise — and were written by an equally

varied array of authors — bureaucrats, missionaries, scholars, geographers,

cosmographers, sailors, and soldiers. Just as Post’s formulaic landscape

demonstrates for images, each written genre had its own conventions and each

author his own rhetorical agenda, all of which color the reports we have. These

period sources collectively provide a rich and detailed (if inevitably distorted)

ethnographic, natural historical and social account of the interests and anxieties of

7
the various participants in the colonial cultures of Brazil. They also speak to the

international and multi-lingual dimensions of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century

Portuguese America.

As an example of how rich, as well as problematic, European chroniclers

are for understanding colonial Tupi life, we can consider one of the most intriguing

sixteenth-century European informants. Hans Staden (1525-c.1579) was an un-

educated gunner from Hesse, Germany, who had traveled to Lisbon to seek

employment within the city’s large German mercantile colony. Though details

about his early biography are scarce, we know that he was able to find a job aboard

a Portuguese ship filled with convicts heading to the New World. Apparently,

Staden first landed in Pernambuco in 1548, returning shortly thereafter to Portugal.

He then returned to Brazil aboard a Spanish vessel, part of an expedition to the Rio

de la Plata. The ship was beset by bad weather and landed in São Vicente (present-

day Santos, São Paulo). Staden resided in the Portuguese captaincy for two years.

Then, while on duty guarding the fort of Brikioka, he was captured by the

Tupinambá.

For nine months Staden was held as a prisoner of the Tupi in the Uwattibi

(Ubatúba) community. Staden was fortunate to have learned the Tupi language

while working at the fort, which allowed him to play a complicated game of

survival, now immortalized in Brazilian history and cinema.7 In order to win his

7
The resurrection of Staden’s narrative within Brazilian modernist culture is explored in: Sergio
Luiz Prado Bellei, "Brazilian Anthropophagy Revisited," in Cannibalism and the Colonial World,
eds. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iverson, 87-109 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

8
freedom, and avoid being executed and ritually eaten, the German Staden tried to

convince his captors that he was not Portuguese (their reviled enemies to the north)

as the Tupi suspected, but actually French (allied to the Tupinambá at this time).

This conflict between Portugal and France, and the Tupi role in it as allies of the

French, will come up again in Chapter 4. In the end, Staden managed to escape,

living, as it were, to tell the tale. He successfully subverted his role as captive, for

instance, by making prophecies that came true or by interpreting Tupi dreams to

his advantage, which provided enough doubt that his captors kept postponing his

execution.

Upon his return to Europe, Staden gained fame by publishing an illustrated

book of his travails in 1557, the Warhaftige historia und beschreibung eyner

landtschafft der wilden, nacketen, grimmigen menschfresser leuthen in der

Newenwelt America gelege [True History and Description of a Land Belonging to

the Wild, Naked, Savage, Man-munching people, Situated in the New World,

America] in Marburg, Germany.8 The woodcuts from this book, along with the

Frenchman Jean de Léry’s (1536-1613) illustrations in his later narrative, are the

earliest corpus of images we have of the Tupi and their accounts are among the

Press, 1998); and Luís Madureira, "Lapses in Taste: 'Cannibal-Tropicalist' Cinema and the
Brazilian Aesthetic of Underdevelopment," in Cannibalism and the Colonial World, eds. Francis
Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iverson, 110-25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
8
The original 1557 Marburg edition of Staden’s text is the only one to include his woodcuts: 165
folios and 56 woodcuts. For a facsimile edition see Hans Staden and Richard N. Wegner, ed.,
Warhaftige Historia und Beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen Grimmigen
Menschfresser Leuthen in der Newenwelt America Gelegen. Faksimile-wiedergabe nach der
erstausgabe "Marpurg uff fastnacht 1557" mit einer begleitschrift ed. (Frankfurt: Wüsten & co.,
1925). For this dissertation I use the English translation: Staden.

9
earliest sources of ethnographic information. The book is divided into two

sections, one the stirring tale of Staden’s capture, captivity and escape, and the

other a so-called “proto-ethnographic” description of the Tupi and their society.

The story of his capture, his fears of being killed at any moment and his

cleverness in avoiding death each time are sensationalist in tone and explain why

Staden’s book was an early modern best-seller, with dozens of editions following

the initial 1557 publication in Marburg. The book proved popular in the Low

Countries, with the Antwerp publisher Christopher Plantin issuing a Dutch edition

as early as 1558.9 Equally fascinating though, are his detailed descriptions of his

captivity. He has been most frequently used as a source concerning anthropophagy,

his account providing details that correspond more closely to the findings of

modern ethnography than other period sources such as Léry and Thevet.10 Yet

Annerose Menninger, among others, has recently cast doubt on the veracity of

Staden’s account, showing how closely it corresponds to prior tales of cannibalism,

including those of Vespucci.11 These arguments are not radical, but speak to

Staden’s central place in the on-going debates of the cultural and scholarly politics

of cannibalism, colonial eyewitness accounts, and the European “ethnographic

eye.”

9
Moraes, Vol. II, 280-281.
10
Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier. Cannibal Conquerer: Hans Staden and the
Spectacle of Anthropophagy in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, in press). Special thanks to
Neil Whitehead for an advanced copy of his text.
11
Annerose Menninger, Die Macht der Augenzeugen: Neue Welt und Kannibalen-Mythos, 1492-
1600 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995).

10
 Staden’s account is fascinating not only as a colonial chronicle that details

aspects of life in “captivity,” but also as one that had a foundational impact on the

history of anthropology and the construction of modern Brazilian anthropology. It

is through texts such as Staden’s that scholars have constructed the Tupi and the

trope of the “primitive” and the “cannibal.”12 It is also through texts such as

Staden’s that Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908- ) and others have formulated histories of

Amerindian Brazilian societies meant to elucidate the very nature of humanity.

As an art historian, I have a particular interest in Staden’s illustrations of

Tupi material culture. These rather crudely rendered woodcuts are vastly under-

attended within the Staden literature, likely because of their seemingly simplistic

execution and relative non-association with the accompanying text. Without

question, these images served to augment the sales appeal of the book, enlivening

the pages of the text. They also function as a simulacrum of evidence for the

readers/viewers, allowing them to “witness” the very things that Staden describes,

corroborating by association his larger narrative. When compared with the

surviving artifacts, however, the woodcuts reveal a level of correspondence in

detail that strongly suggests that they were based upon direct observation of the

actual objects. Staden’s depictions of Tupi hammocks, rattles, war-clubs, and most

importantly, various feathered adornments, are among the very earliest pictorial

illustrations of these objects. Given the popularity and wide dissemination of

12
See Christopher Burghard Steiner, "Travel Engravings and the Construction of the Primitive," in
Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, eds. Elazar
Barkan and Ronald Bush, 202-419 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

11
Staden’s book, the images would likely have provided a ready-made point of

reference for those encountering either the actual objects, or depictions of them,

such as the capes and war-clubs in Post’s Indians in the Forest.

The Tupi had no written language and were semi-nomadic, inhabiting the

coastal forests of Brazil’s Atlantic seaboard, retaining extremely few of their

material possessions as they moved from settlement to settlement. Beyond the few

artifacts held in European museums that are the subject of this dissertation, the

scant material archaeological record consists almost exclusively of ceramic vessels

and shards. My project examines the Tupi and the feathered objects, today found

only in European museums, that they produced within a colonial context, from the

moment of contact with Europeans, to the period following the exit of the Dutch

from Brazil, roughly 1500-1670.

Scholars have generally analyzed Tupi cloaks in two distinct ways: either

as anthropological evidence of an originary pre-Conquest past that can be

reconstituted, or as examples of “exotica” in the history of European collecting.

The cape, still extant in Milan, (Fig. 2), is illustrated in the frontispiece to

Manfreddo Settala’s seventeenth-century catalogue.13 Using the social and spatial

terms with which we began, we can see that these characterizations are mutually

contradictory. The capes have been seen either as uncontaminated traces of Tupi

13
For an example of this anthropological approach see Peter T. Furst, "Crowns of Power: Bird and
Feather Symbolism in Amazonian Shamanism," in Reina, 92-109. For an example of the treatment
of New World materials as information-less “exotica” see Anthony Alan Shelton, "Cabinets of
Transgression: Renaissance Collections and the Incorporation of the New World," in The Cultures
of Collecting, eds. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, 177-203 (Oxford: Reaktion Books, 1994).

12
life in the undisturbed Brazilian forest or as hegemonic spoils violently severed

from their proper cultural contexts and arbitrarily housed in the studioli or

Wunderkammern of Renaissance and Baroque Europe. In fact, neither of these

characterizations is useful, or particularly accurate.

Not only were these objects all produced and collected within a colonial

context, but so was all the documentation we have concerning them; we have no

direct evidence of the production of feathered capes or use prior to 1500. We can,

nonetheless, reasonably posit their existence and use in pre-Cabralian Brazil and

the continuation of their use after the conquest. And on the other hand, to treat

these feathered vestments as anonymous, contextually devoid exotica ignores the

highly specific cultural information concerning the colonial Tupi and their ritual

garments recorded and transmitted by Staden, Jesuit missionaries and other

residents of and travelers to sixteenth and seventeenth-century Brazil, and

trivializes the complex afterlives of these objects and knowledge concerning them

within early modern Europe. Rather than consider them as artifacts ripped from

their “true” context, as deprived of some imaginary authenticity of experience, I

perceive the various sites in Europe where these were owned and used after they

left Brazil, simply to be the contexts of a different phase of their lives.

I will show that these objects had extraordinarily rich histories and

encompassed many physical and conceptual way stations from Brazil to Europe.

The people, places and institutions to which and through which they passed each

had different uses for and understandings of the objects, and each to some degree

13
contributed to the lore surrounding them. The Tupi capes continued to be used as

components in rituals, ceremonies and festivities over the course of their lives, thus

serving as a means by which cultural performance could be enacted on both sides

of the Atlantic, which helps shed light on the economic and political dimensions

that fueled the colonial enterprise. These featherwork objects were constituent

elements in the creation of a “colonial” Europe.

Brazil’s history is uniquely pan-European compared with other early

modern enterprises in South America. Sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Portugal,

Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, and France all had a hand in shaping Brazil’s

identity. Conversely, we should also think of Amerindian Brazil as having had an

effect on the shaping of an overall European epistemology and identity, although

taking particular forms in Italy, France and Northern Europe. For all that I use the

metaphor of biography in talking of these objects, these capes did not move by

themselves, but needed many agents and intermediaries to transport them from

Brazil to Europe, and then within Europe to their final homes. Networks of

explorers, missionaries, merchants, humanists and princes intersected in complex

ways to produce meaning for these capes.

Let me digress briefly to explain my use of certain important terms. I use

the term “cape,” to describe a sleeveless garment of variable length, fastened at the

neck and falling over the body in a variety of ways, both with and without bonnets.

In the course of this dissertation, I refer to these objects interchangeably as

“capes,” “cloaks,” and “mantles.” I also use the word “vestments” for the same

14
garments, which quite specifically evokes the functional relationship of the capes

to religiously charged ritual, a connection made by early modern European

observers themselves. The smaller Tupi capes have historically been described or

classified as “headdresses,” since in some cases they extend only to the

shoulders.14 I instead categorize these smaller objects as “half-capes” because of

their structural and functional similarities to the longer mantles.

Moreover, it is essential to elaborate on the fundamental way I use of the

term “adornment” within this dissertation. Though art historians often treat

“adornment” as a pejorative term, evoking the so-called “minor” or “decorative”

arts, within both colonial Tupi culture and European ecclesiastical and courtly

culture, the embellishment of the body was a central component in the creation of

the larger social and cultural community. Feathers and feathered garments were

thus not mere decorative elements, but methods of cultural coding, signs of status

and wealth, and crucial links to larger natural, material and spiritual worlds.

Furthermore, we should not lose sight of the fact that luxury fabrics ––

cloth of gold, silk brocades, velvets, tapestries and embroidery –– and the garments

made out of them served very similar functions within early modern Europe.

Sumptuary laws restricted the wearing of certain kinds of cloth and clothing to

particular classes, while the production of cloth involved complex exchanges

14
This was likely a result of Métraux’s classification of these as “bonnets” in Métraux’s #1, 130-
139. This classification was utilized in the Copenhagen catalogue and also by Laura Laurencich
Minelli and Sara Ciruzzi, "Antichi oggetti americani nelle collezioni del Museo Nazionale di
Antropologia e Etnologia di Firenze: due mantelli di penne dei Tupinamba (Nota I)," Estratto
dall'Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia CXI (1981): 121-42.

15
among the countries of Europe. Feathers, moreover, were quite familiar to

Europeans as part of chivalric, military and other forms of ceremonial clothing.

The donning of priestly vestments, which were among the most lavish made in

Renaissance Europe and to which Jesuit missionaries compared Tupi featherwork,

was every bit as much a transformative act for a Christian priest as it was for a

Tupi pajé. Chasubles, copes, humeral veils and other priestly garb were integral to

the person of the priest and the performance of sacred ritual.

The paired chapters of this dissertation roughly follow the axis we followed

in Post’s painting. The first two chapters discuss what we can surmise about the

Tupinambá through the available anthropological and historical literature. I focus

especially on the historiographic framing of the Tupi and the circumstances and

material dimensions of sixteenth-century indigenous Brazil. This first half of the

dissertation draws more heavily upon modern anthropological and ethnographic

materials than does the second. Chapters 3 and 4 are concerned with the colonial

situation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the former with the Jesuits

and their missions in Brazil and the latter within particular sites in Europe.

Chapter 1 examines the social landscapes of Tupinambá Brazil, discussing

the cultures, languages, migration patterns and cultural attributes that have led

anthropologists to define the “Tupi” as a distinct and unified cultural group. This

chapter includes a review of the literature concerning the Tupi as a foundation for

understanding some of the problems and pitfalls of cultural designations,

especially the persistent cultural stereotypes of Tropical Forest Culture

16
civilizations. I also outline those material circumstances of the colonial Tupi

culture that underlie the physical production and the social context of the eleven-

feathered capes in colonial Brazil.

Chapter 2 looks more closely at the Tupi culture of feathers. In Part I of

this chapter, I examine the symbolic and exchange value of feathers and birds

within sixteenth and seventeenth-century Brazil. According to both the early

modern European chroniclers of Brazil, and modern anthropologists (who drew

upon the accounts of Staden and the like), bird feathers and plumed vestments

were adornments of the highest religious and societal significance for the

Tupinambá; their value underscored by that the fact that they were among the only

material objects that were stored and transported during their frequent

resettlements. This chapter also charts the specific bird species favored in the

creation of feathered objects, the highly elaborate process of modifying the shape

and color of feathers, and the motivations for the preferences of particular colors.

An appendix to Chapter 2 includes a technical survey of the eleven remaining

plumed cloaks in Europe, with data concerning their forms, lengths, and materials.

The Tupi-Jesuit mission in colonial Brazil and the interculture that was

created in and around them is the subject of Chapter 3. I begin by examining the

goals of the Society of Jesus, their particular personality as a religious order, and

the uniqueness of their mission program in Brazil, which stressed music, dance and

oration as appropriate methods of conversion. I argue that the feathered capes were

far from cultural products of a distant and distanced Tupi past but were in fact

17
made and actively used within the colonial aldeia environments, produced and

worn for both Christian and non-Christian rituals on the Jesuit missions by both

men and women. As we will see in Chapter 3, we have at least one Jesuit account

that describes the sale of these feathered vestments at a market analogous to the

one Post depicted. Moreover, because of the Jesuit’s theological philosophy of

accommodatio (accommodation), which predicated successful evangelization upon

the adaptation of various aspects of local cultures, the continued fabrication and

use of Tupi feathered capes within a Christian context could be tolerated and even

supported. The last part of the chapter provides evidence of the shipment of Tupi

capes to Europe by Jesuits, whose prolific descriptive letters and official reports

have not previously been considered as evidentiary documentation for these

objects.

In the fourth and final chapter, I shift my focus to Europe and the reception

and uses to which the Tupi feathered capes were put once they reached Italy,

France, Germany and the Low Countries. One of the most remarkable findings to

emerge in the course of my research is the extraordinary consistency with which

Tupi feathered capes, bonnets and weapons were redeployed within European

performative contexts, albeit ones of a very different nature than the religious

performances in Tupi settlements and on Jesuit missions. What this demonstrates

is that the Tupi and their featherwork had a strong impact not just in defining the

Americas, but also in redefining what it was to be “European.” In other words, the

colonial Brazilian interculture was not restricted to the Brazilian colonies

18
themselves, but extended into what I call a “colonialized” Europe. This final

chapter examines what we know of the trajectories of the capes to show how they

were accessioned into the materials, costume and weapon collections of mercantile

and princely studioli and Kunst und- Wunderkammern, incorporated into the

formation of early natural history collections, and performed within courtly

European pageants for economic and political motives.

For example, in a single royal entry, the French city of Rouen used the

capes and the Tupi to make a series of statements. The capes were worn in a

tableau that portrayed the Tupi to Henri II as a model of both society and kingship.

A different scene in this same drama expressed the city’s economic concerns about

access to the brazilwood so essential to their local cloth dyeing industry. At the

same time, the Tupi were shown as loyal military allies, in order to make a plea to

the King for France’s continued military and territorial involvement in Brazil in an

effort to wrest the dye trade away from Portugal.

The similarity of the feathered mantles to familiar European vestments was

noted in the period, whether to the capes and robes worn by kings and high

nobility, or to the lavishly decorated chasubles of priests and bishops. This

equivalence allowed them to still be used as ritual vestments worn in royal

ceremonies and aristocratic festivals, or to be used by the Jesuits in Brazil in

performing the Eucharist. For scholars, the capes provided vivid evidence of a new

and alien culture, whose cannibalistic habits could be mapped against received

Classical knowledge about anthropophagites, thus providing an opportunity for the

19
performance of knowledge and learning. The striking effect of the brilliant scarlet

feathers out of which they were constructed made them showpieces of the exotic,

nature and a novel craft technology, thus giving the capes a high value in the lively

market for rare collectibles.

Many of the issues that surrounded Tupinambá capes historically continue

to play out in the present. The cultural and political issues that recently arose in

regard to the best known of the Copenhagen mantles: the tapered full-length

trapezoidal cape with attached bonnet (#1) serve as good examples (Fig. 3). The

tapered, triangular Copenhagen Tupi cape graces the pages of anthropology

textbooks, indigenous art catalogues and other publications, perhaps because of its

carefully conserved structure and recently restored vibrancy, often as the single

object representing the Tupi culture.

A hotly disputed controversy arose when this cape was loaned to São

Paulo, Brazil in 2000 for the Brasil+500 Mostra do redescobrimeto [Brazil 500

Years Rediscovery], an exhibition commemorating Cabral’s arrival on Brazilian

shores in 1500.15 The Copenhagen cape –– beautifully restored to its original

scarlet splendor in the late 1970s by Danish conservators –– was the first and only

one of the capes ever to have traveled back to its country of origin. Local Brazilian

indigenous groups from around São Paulo staged protests to demand that Brazil

retain this Tupinambá object as an “original” manifestation of their “cultural

15
For an examination of this cape and its controversies within the exhibition see José António B.
Fernandes-Dias, "Arte, arte índia, artes indígenas," in Mostra do redescobrimento, ed. Nelson
Aguilar, (São Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo; Brasil 500 Anos Artes Visuais, 2000).

20
origins,” writing articles in major Brazilian newspapers to garner national

support.16 The efforts of the local indigenous groups were to no avail, as the cape

returned to Copenhagen after the exhibition. It will likely never be lent to Brazil

again for fears of forced repatriation, another index of the long and troubling

legacy of the colonial enterprise, and a by-product of the policies of art and

ethnographic institutions around the world.

In another controversy the following year, this same cape was originally

planned to be one of the signature objects in the Brazil: Body and Soul exhibition

at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2001. Shortly before the

exhibition opened, Denmark refused to send it to the United States, citing a Danish

law forbidding the loaning of any cultural artifact to a nation at war, in response to

the post-9/11 climate in the U.S.17

In the coda to my dissertation, I show how the surviving Tupi cloaks are

being performed yet again — this time intricately and intimately tied to modern

concepts of Brazilian national identity — assuming an almost mythic role in the

formation of a contemporary Brazilian visual culture. The highly organic feathered

installation piece by Lygia Pape (1929-2004) entitled Tupinambá Cloak (2000),

which directly quotes the plumed vestments of this dissertation, serves as my case

16
This incident was very similar to the one James Clifford chronicles in his Chapter 10 “On
Collecting Art and Culture,” concerning the Native North American fur coats from Buffalo Bill’s
trip to Paris that the Musée de l’Homme exhibited. Clifford highlighted the complexity of meaning
between viewers and objects with regards to ownership over cultural patrimony. See James
Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 246-250.
17
The Copenhagen cape was nonetheless pictured within the catalogue’s pages. See Edward J.
Sullivan, ed., Brazil: Body & Soul (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2001), 77.

21
study. This piece was shown at the Brazil: Body and Soul exhibition at the

Guggenheim, engaging viewers with invented aspects of Tupi ritual and material

culture. This artwork would have resonated with the Tupi cloak that were meant to

be on view from the Copenhagen collections, but in the end served as a surrogate

for it when Denmark cancelled the loan following 9/11. My brief discussion of the

Pape installation for the Guggenheim exhibition within the context of this study of

the Tupi featherwork capes shows how institutional art history has fashioned a

corpus of “Brazilian art” that is inextricably bound to questions of nationhood and

cultural identity.

This study is the first to survey all of the extant Tupi featherwork capes as a

corpus, and to trace their longer histories within the early modern period. I have

conceived of these histories as biographies of the objects, borrowing the notion

from Appadurai’s Social Life of Things.18 I am well aware, however, of the

dangers in ascribing agency to the objects and diminishing what we might call the

owner’s share in constructing meaning for the capes and even in constructing the

Tupi themselves.19 I therefore center my discussions of the capes around the

particular personalities with whose lives they intersected and the specific

circumstances in which the capes are participating, whether within the pages of an

early modern chronicle, a Jesuit aldeia or a European court. I argue that by

understanding the early modern construction of the Tupi and circulation of their

18
Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).
19
Binsbergen and Geschiere, Commodification.

22
feathered artifacts, we can better understand how they became the Native

American culture par excellence in the colonial period, disseminated through

letters and texts, representations, objects, and even via lived experiences in Europe.

For early modern Europeans, the Tupi were “stand-ins” for the great diversity of

individual American indigenous cultures. This is important to understand.

Although there is a plethora of scholarship speaking to the mythic importance of

the Tupi in modern Brazil, the processes by which this came about –– the

biographies of these objects –– are all but ignored.

23
 Chapter 1:

Tupinambá Brazil: Landscapes, Cultures, Ethnographies

Day to day, the main preoccupation for the men was warfare, not only against their
Tupí-Guaraní neighbours but also against tribes of different tongues. There existed
a real passion for it, with the aim being to capture prisoners rather than to occupy
land or win loot. They traveled stealthily in canoes, with bows and arrows their
principal weapons, and of all the tribes of the area, the Tupí-Guaranís were
notoriously one of the most aggressive. Perhaps this is why the pineapple appealed
to them so much: it too is rather aggressive in appearance, with its leaves like
swords and rind like armour.
––– Fran Beauman, The Pineapple: King of Fruits, 200520

Only anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically. The

world’s only law. The disguised expression of all individualisms, of all
collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties. Tupy or not Tupy, that is the
question.
–– Oswald de Andrade, Anthropophagite Manifesto, May 192821

Introduction: Peculiarities of France Antarctique (1558)

In a sixteenth-century woodcut of Amerindian Brazil, from André Thevet’s 1558

Les singularitez de la France Antarctique [Peculiarities of France Antarctique], a

group of Tupinambá men process slowly away from a large vessel in the

immediate left foreground, where they have been drinking the warm, fermented

manioc beer called cauim.22 The young, longhaired women who prepare and serve

20
Fran Beauman, Pineapple: King of Fruits (London: Chatto & Windus, 2005).
21
Oswald de Andrade, "Anthropophagite Manifesto [Revista de Antropofagia, No. 1., São Paulo,
May 1928]" in Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980, ed. and trans. Dawn Ades, 312-
13 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
22
Though the first edition was printed in Paris in 1558, I use the second edition produced in
Antwerp the same year. See Thevet #1, 83. [Library of Congress, E141.T395 Special Coll.] Plantin
likely hired a woodcutter to copy the images from the Parisian, de la Porte edition, as all images in

24
the ritual drink from calabash-shells or ceramic bowls help us to identify the

beverages. As Thevet and other early modern European witness tell us, caium was

prepared and dispensed only by women (Fig. 4).23 Cauim, like the wines of

Europe, was produced in red and white varieties, and was apparently consumed

during all major social and religious occasions within the Tupi world. Europeans

described it as “cloudy” and tasting like “sour milk.”24 The figures, except for the

intoxicated individual vomiting near the cauim urn, move ceremonially in a

solemn and purposeful procession up the hill towards the right background of the

image. They pass through the first communal house, or maloca, of the Tupi

village, shown as a rectangular structure with a thatched roof. Moving on, they file

into a second maloca, where their route ends. The men play musical instruments,

including a perforated conch shell and a flute probably made from human bone

the Antwerp edition are in reverse. I use the English edition for in text quotations. See Thevet #2.
[Library of Congress rare books, E141.T41 English Print.]
23
See Métraux #2, 95-133. For a more recent technical and scientific study of the preparation of
fermented liquors by the Tupinambá and Guarani of South America, especially in light of recent
testing of archaeological vessels, see Francisco Silva Noelli and José Proenza Brochado, "O cauim
e as beberagens dos Guarani e Tupinambá: Equipamentos, técnicas de preparação e consumo,"
Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia 8 (1998): 117-128.
Cauim was translated in the first dictionary of the Brasilica language as “vinho qualquer”
in Portuguese, or “wine of whatever kind” –– which Métraux claims accounted for “one reason for
the polygamy of chiefs” and only single women served the drink. The Tupi produced a variety of
different beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic): made from sweet manioc, maize, sweet
potatoes, mangabeira, cashews, Jaboticaba, pineapples, bananas, and honey. The favorite drink,
however, was manioc beer, produced by cutting manioc roots into thin slices. The slices were
subsequently boiled, squeezed, and masticated into a mush substance. The mush, when mixed with
saliva, was then diluted with water and heated over a fire. The liquid was poured into huge jars, half
buried in the ground, covered with leaves and left to ferment for several days. A fire would be
made before it was served, to heat the beverage. Each extended family produced their own liquor
and the women served the drink in giant calabashes. According to early accounts, drinking was
always an occasion for celebration.
24
Léry, 74. I use Whatley’s translation for all in-text citations. Whatley’s edition based upon the
second edition (1580), Jean de Léry. Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil autrement dite
Amerique/ le tout recueilli sur les lieux par Jean de Léry (A Genève: Pour Antoine Chuppin, 1580).

25
(Fig. 5), as well as hold maracás or rattles.25 Further paraphernalia includes Tupi

weaponry, notably the famous Tupi hardwood war-club, identifiable by the

flattened, oval shape of its head, unique in South America at the time, with cotton

fabric wrapped around its long base.26 Three figures in the middle, and another

group in the far distance, wield large bows and arrows.27

The extraordinary costumes of the Tupi celebrants are the objects of study

for this dissertation. The man at the far right of the image wears a magnificent

plumed half-cape and tight-fitting bonnet, which the artist depicts in great detail,

highlighting the individual feathers that dangle off the bottom edge of the mantle.

This cape clearly marks this man as an individual of high status, differentiating

him from others who are more sparsely adorned. As I will discuss, the feathered

cape is a ceremonial garment that confirms the ritual nature of this scene, and was

explicitly perceived as such by European colonial witnesses. From surviving

examples of Tupi capes we can deduce the brilliant color scheme of the cloak: the
25
A Tupi human bone flute of 18 cm. is preserved in Copenhagen at the Nationalmuseet
Etnografisk Samling, [#EHb28]. The 1617 Paludanus inventory describes two flutes: “Two flutes
of human arms made by ‘Tocionbinambontys’.” There is only one that survives today. See
Copenhagen, 20-21. To my knowledge there is no extant conch shell trumpet in museum
collections that can be specifically ascribed to the Tupi.
26
Tupi war-clubs are now housed in: Berlin, Museum für Volkerkünde; Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling; Dresden, Staatlichen Museum für Völkerkunde; Florence,
Museo di Storia Naturale, Universitá degli Studi di Firenzefr; Paris, Musée du quai Branly; Vienna,
Museum für Volkerkünde. For Tupinambá war clubs in European collections see: Christian F.
Feest, "Mexico and South America in the European Wunderkammer," in Impey, 237-44; Adolf
Bernhard Meyer and Max Uhle, Seltene Waffen aus Afrika, Asien und Amerika, (Leipzig: A.
Naumann & Schroeder, 1885).
27
A secure count of Tupi bows and arrows is difficult, as they resemble those of later Tupi-Guarani
groups. The most extensive collection is in Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling. For
a clever article concerning a Tupi weapons, both with regard to the artifact and depictions of the
artifact, see J. Peter Whitehead, "Pictorial Record of a 17th Century Tupinambá Bow and Arrows,"
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 110, no. 2 (1985): 111-25. See also E. G. Heath and Vilma Chiara,
Brazilian Indian Archery: A Preliminary Ethno-Toxological Study of the Archery of the Brazilian
Indians (Manchester: Simon Archery Foundation, 1977).

26
main body of the cape would be a rich crimson, perhaps with some black-tipped

feathers interspersed and the long border feathers an iridescent yellow. Other

figures wear feathered headdresses, skull caps, ankle bracelets made from the pods

of the fruit tree Thevetia ahovay, the taxonomy of which honors André Thevet

(1502-1590), the Franciscan friar and traveler to Brazil who authored the book

from which this procession illustration comes. 28 One of the men in the center

foreground wears an enduap, a rose-shaped adornment made of ostrich-like rhea

feathers that covers his buttocks.

Featherwork, such as what we see in the woodcut, was the premier artistic

craft of the Tupi and, according to the early modern European chroniclers, was

vital to Tupi myth making and all aspects of ritual activity. Our knowledge of this

craft, however, is deeply impoverished due to the tiny survival rate and the broad

dispersal of the surviving artifacts and documentary evidence about them

throughout Europe. In this dissertation, I bring together a wide range of source

materials to provide a better understanding of the functions of Tupi featherwork

within the colonial intercultural spaces of both Brazil and early modern Europe.

The eleven surviving Tupi capes are all housed in either ethnographic or

natural history collections, that inherited the capes from known sixteenth and

seventeenth century collections in all cases but two. The provenance of the capes

will be provided in Appendix A of Chapter 2, and in Chapter 4 I discuss the early

28
For a period description of Brazil see Léry, 61. For a history of this curious Thevetia ahovay
pods, see: Joseph Ewan, "Who Conquered the New World? Or Four Centuries of Explorations in an
Indehiscent Capsule," Annals of the Missouri Botanical Gardens 78, no. 1 (1991): 57-64.

27
modern owners of the capes. In alphabetical order of current location the capes

are: one in Basel, Museum der Kulturen (#6); one in Brussels, Musées Royale

d’Art et d’Histoire (#7); five in Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling

(#1-5); two in Florence, Museo di Storia Naturale, Universitá degli Studi di

Firenze (#8-9); one in Milan, Museum Septalianum, Biblioteca Ambrosiana (#11);

and one in Paris, Musée du quai Branly (#10). Throughout this dissertation I will

also discuss a few Tupi headpieces as objects that have comparable physical

features to the Tupi capes.

Eleven specimens is a tiny corpus to represent the artistic achievements of

an entire culture. There is no way to begin to calculate the number of capes

produced in Brazil, even in the period after colonization. In early modern Europe

alone, there were many more, perhaps vastly more, Tupi feathered cloaks in

circulation than survive today. In fact, feathered clothing from the West “Indies”

or “America,” was among the most sought-after material for princely and scientific

collectors in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe and likely numbered in the

thousands.29 These artifacts were procured, exchanged and given as gifts through

and by Jesuits, travelers, princes, dukes, merchants, humanists, and doctors whose

networks and European histories I investigate in Chapter 4.

29
This estimate includes feathered garments of one form or another brought to sixteenth-century
Europe from the circa-Caribbean region, Mexico, and Peru, in addition to Brazil. Most of these
featherworks were Aztec and Tupi. My estimate is based on archival records of Americana from
early modern European inventories. For an interesting study of images of plumed clothing within
engraved books in Europe see Nicole Pelligrin, "Vêtements de peau(x) et de plumes: la nudité des
indiens," in Voyager à la Renaissance: actes du colloque de Tours 30 Juin - 13 Juillet 1983, ed.
Jean Ceard and Jean-Claude Margolin, 509-30 (Paris: Maisonneuvre & Larose, 1987).

28
 The ritual procession shown in Thevet’s woodcut is staged within a coastal-

forest settlement of early colonial Brazil, likely meant to represent the Rio de

Janeiro region that he visited in 1556. It is included in Chapter 43 of his book,

entitled Des ceremonies, sepulture, & funerailles [Of ceremonies, burials and

funerals].30 Thevet’s French readers knew of the Tupinambá as the native

inhabitants of the much sought-after colony of Brazil, the land from which great

fortunes in France were made in the brazilwood dye trade, a mercantile interest I

will explore throughout this project.31 Thevet’s book was a compelling account of

a strange land that played an important role in spreading the renown of the Tupi

throughout early modern Europe.32

In the text that corresponds thematically to this illustration, Thevet

describes in great detail the mourning ceremonies that followed upon a relative’s

death in Tupi communities, ceremonies that would last not just days but up to six

months.

The chyldren of the deceassed, a moneth after there mournyngs, wyll desire
their friendes to make some feast or solemnitie for hys honoure, and there
they will come together paynted with divers colours, decked wyth fethers,
and otherwise after their manner, makying a thousande ceremonies and
passetymes, wyth daunces, playes, tabour playing with flutes made of the
armes and legges of theyr enimies, and other instrumentes after the maner of

30
I use the image in the Antwerp edition, Thevet #1, Cap. 43.
31
“Brazilwood” (Caesalpinia echinata), or ibirapitanga in Tupi-Guarani, was a common name for
a group of dense, tropical hardwoods from Leguminosae family, which includes East Indian species
also used for producing dye. When the wood is pulped and soaked, it yields a “red” pigment in
shades from crimson to purple. Its name was first coined in the Middle Ages, long predating Pedro
Álvares Cabral’s encounter in 1500. For a history of the dye see Marcio Werneck da Cunha and
Haroldo Calvalcanti da Lima, Viagem à terra do pau-brasil/ Travels to the Land of Brazilwood,
trans. Dorothy Sue Dunn Araújo (Rio de Janeiro: Agência Brasileira da Cultura, 1992).
32
For a discussion of the contribution of Thevet to the “vogue” of the Brazilian Indian in Europe at
this time, see Janet Whatley’s introduction in Léry, xv-xxxviii.

29
 their countrey. The others as the auncient sorte, all the day long, will not
ceasse to drinke, without eating of anything, and they are served by the
women and kinrede of the deceased: the which their doings is as I am
advised, to stirre up the heartes of yong children, and to move and provoke
them to warre, making them bolde against their enemies. 33

According to Thevet, the deceased were usually buried quickly, the bodies painted

and wrapped in a hammock or with cords and completely covered, and then placed

into large urns for burial in the earth.34 Mourning periods often lasted up to six

months and were observed mostly by close kin. Once family mourning ended,

normal life would only resume after the public performance of the proper

mourning festivities, which consisted of a great feast, including the drinking of

cauim, singing, playing musical instruments and dancing.35 While the woodcut

from Thevet indeed shows us drink and music, it seems less raucous than what he

describes, even solemn. No one is dancing, which is made clear by the fact that the

feet of all the men are firmly on the ground.36 Is the woodcut showing us aspects of

another ritual activity altogether?

Much of what we see in this image matches narrative descriptions by

Thevet and other early modern travelers to Brazil –– of Tupi warfare and post-

33
Thevet #2, 43.
34
Jesuits describe this burial process. See the letter Jácome Monteiro, "[Relação da Provincia do
Brasil, 1610]" in Leite, 416. Sousa also notes that Tupi men and women would be wrapped in their
sleeping hammocks for burials and then placed in sitting position. He also adds that important
individuals would have more elaborate grieving ceremonies. See Sousa, Cap. CLXXV. And for the
French impressions see Evreux, Cap. XXXI.
35
Métraux #3, 127.
36
There are excellent descriptions of Tupi dances from Jesuit missionaries. One such description
comes from a 1610 letter of Jácome Monteiro. Trans. mine. “There are no changes in the [Tupi]
dance. All of their being continues to beat their feet on the ground to the sound of a calabash filled
with small and hard fruit seeds, to which they recite very gallant songs; and never dance without
singing.” [“Não têm mudanças algumas no bailar. Todo o seu está em continuo bater de pés no
chão ao som de um cabaço cheio de umas fruitas pequenas e mui duras, de que eles fazem remais
de contas mui galantes; e nunca bailam sem cantar.”] Monteiro, [“Relação”], 415.

30
battle rituals –– which included some activities similar to those of mourning

ceremonies. These bellicose practices, as I will demonstrate in this chapter, tend to

be the focus of the majority of early modern European depictions and descriptions,

as well as modern scholarship regarding Tupi culture. In fact, Tupinambá warfare

has been the primary cultural meeting point between European-subject and Tupi-

object for over five hundred years. An exploration of the development of this trend

in the literature is valuable in understanding how we have constructed our

knowledge of Tupi ritual and material culture.

To illustrate this point, we can turn to another period account of Tupi life,

this one written on the occasion of the first French Protestant mission to the New

World (1556-1558). Accompanying the expedition was the Huguenot Jean de Léry

(1534-1613), who produced an impressive narrative of Tupi life –– the Histoire

d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil [History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil] –

– during his residence among the Tupi.37 Albeit from a French missionary

perspective, his book provides us with some of the richest descriptions of Tupi life

we have, including the cauim drinking represented in figure 4 that would precede

the execution of a prisoner of war:

The first thing that the women do is make a little fire around the earthen
vessels, where [the cauim] will be heated lukewarm. That done, they begin
by uncovering the first vessel at one end, and stir up the beverage; they dip
it out with big gourd-halves, each holding about three pints. The men dance
past the women, one after the other, and the women, serving as cupbearers,
present to each man one of these big cupfuls – not forgetting to quaff it

37
The first edition was published as: Jean de Léry, Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil
avtrement dite Amerique (La Rochelle: Pour Antoine Chuppin, 1578).

31
 themselves […] Until the vessels –– even if there were a hundred –– are all
empty, and there is not a single drop of caouin [sic] remaining.38

Thevet’s woodcut thus contains iconography that closely matches what Thevet,

Léry and others described as the ritual preparations for warfare. A close analysis of

the range of Tupi-made goods found along the processional path, the combination

of cauim, weaponry, costumes and musical instruments, reveals that Thevet

condenses and conflates various activities involved during Tupi warfare

preparations, described in numerous sixteenth-century accounts.39

For all the rich ethnographic description that Thevet’s and Léry’s texts

provide, much of it corresponding closely to other European accounts and

surviving archeological remains, they are subjective narratives from the

perspective of a colonizer, as are all colonial texts and images. Thevet’s book —

and the same may be said of Léry — speaks every bit as much to Thevet’s

personality and history, to his background as a scholar and to his official position

within the French royal court, as it does to the post-contact experiences he had in

Brazil. Thevet’s book, a travel narrative written from his position as royal

cosmographer, but intended for a general readership, follows the conventions of

similar literature at the time, attending to certain kinds of details and ignoring

others. The same may be said of the woodcut illustrations, designed to accompany

the text, but adhering to defined pictorial conventions.

38
Léry, 74. Spellings of Tupi words, like cauim, were infrequently standardized in the period. I will
resort to today’s standardization of Old Tupi. See Tibiriçá.
39
Sousa, 280.

32
 Compiling the accounts provided by European witnesses and writers, we

can construct an image, not of the “authentic” Tupi military ceremonies, but of

what Europeans understood about Tupi warfare rituals and how these stories

contextualized and animated the feathered capes of this study. Thevet indicated

that when Tupi armies marched to battle, a musical ensemble playing a variety of

instruments usually accompanied them. Scarlet-plumed capes were a crucial aspect

of Tupi military and post-battle rituals. These military rituals were specifically

described and depicted as multi-sensory events, with drink, movement, sound and

plumage all functioning in tandem. 40

André Thevet included this woodcut in his 1558 Singularitez de la France

Antarctique [Peculiarites of France Antarctique], an illustrated travel narrative

documenting the events surrounding France’s attempted colonization of Guanabara

Bay, near present-day Rio de Janeiro. Thevet was the royal cosmographer and

historiographer for four French Kings –– Henri II, Francis II, Charles IX, and

Henri III –– and an almoner to Catherine de’ Medici. He spent ten weeks in Brazil

as chaplain for the expedition of Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon (1510-1571),

publishing the first French New World account upon his return. In his book,

Thevet discussed the goals, prospects and actions of the Villegagnon expedition

and along the way provided one of the first comprehensive, proto-ethnographic

accounts of the Tupinambá peoples and their customs, as well as detailed

descriptions of the indigenous flora and fauna.

40
For a detailed discussion of Tupi warfare see Métraux #3, 119-126.

33
 Thevet’s book relied heavily upon second hand accounts by French sailors

and prior travel narratives of the New World, but some scholars, such as historian

Frank Lestringant, finds Thevet a more nuanced ethnographer.41 In fact, Thevet’s

book, including both text and image, is a palimpsest of material derived from other

authors as well as his own observations and commentary; in this, he was

completely consistent with much sixteenth-century scholarship.42 Despite

derogations, both by modern scholars and his contemporaries, of the quality of

Thevet’s reportage, his detailed attention to natural history — for example, his are

among the earliest descriptions of the toucan, three-toed sloth and the dye the Tupi

made from the genipap tree — confirm his abilities as a keen observer, if not an

unbiased one. 43 Alfred Métraux, the leading twentieth-century anthropologist of

41
Frank Lestringant, "L'insulaire de Rabelais, ou la fiction en archipel," Etudes Rabelaisiennes,
Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance 21, no. 225 (1984): 253.
42
For an excellent analysis of the tensions in early modern scholarship between reliance on
authoritative sources and new empirical or critical thought, see David Quint, Origins and
Originality: Versions of the Source (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1983. See also G.W.
Pigman III, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980), 1–32.
43
The literature on Thevet is extensive and follows the problematic nature of Thevet’s relationship
with many of his contemporaries, especially the Calvinist clergyman Jean de Léry (1534-1613?),
who ridiculed him in the preface to his own Brazil book and other places, as a liar, imposter,
plagiarist, a mixer of fact with fantasy. See Frank Lestringant, "The Myth of the Indian Monarchy:
An Aspect of the Controversy between Thevet and Léry (1575-1585)," in Indians and Europe: An
Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, ed. Christian F. Feest, 37-60 (Aachen: Edition Herodot,
1987). Details of Thevet’s Tupi cosmogony from Cosmographie universelle (Paris, 1575) were
reproduced in Alfred Métraux’s highly important study of Tupi religion: Métraux #2.
The French historian Lestringant is the most notable scholar of Thevet and has published
on almost every aspect of the Cosmographer’s involvement with Brazil. See especially, André
Thevet, Jean-Claude Laborie, and Frank Lestringant, eds., Histoire d'André Thevet Angoumoisin,
cosmographe du roy, de deux voyages par luy faits aux Indes Australes, et occidentales, Travaux
d'humanisme et renaissance; No 416 (Genève: Droz, 2006); Frank Lestringant, Cannibals: The
Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne, trans. Rosemary
Morris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); André Thevet, Portraits from the Age of
Exploration: Selections from André Thevet's Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres, trans.
and ed. Roger Schlesinger (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Tom Conley, "Thevet Visits
Guanabara," Hispanic American Historical Review 80, no. 4 (2000): 753-81.

34
the Tupi who will figure prominently in this study, saw Thevet as an indispensable

and reliable primary source for his studies of Tupi cosmogony and natural history,

despite Thevet’s reputation as a problematic primary source. The interplay and

blurred boundaries between early modern and modern anthropological texts are

thus fascinating and give voice to how distant cultures are performed within the

bindings of scholarly studies.

The processional woodcut in Thevet’s book, was one of a series of

representations of France’s overseas territory of France Antarctique, the short

lived French colony near Rio de Janeiro which survived during the years 1555-

1565. The French were very eager to establish themselves in Brazil for economic

reasons, specifically the brazilwood trade.44 This particular image simultaneously

shows us the centrality and fascination that all ritual performances held for

observers of Tupi culture –– in which adornment, dance and music functioned

together. By extension, it also speaks to many of the methodological complexities

and constraints of understanding Tupi culture, recorded through the lens of myriad

surviving European ethnographic texts and images, but without the alternate and

altern voices of indigenously produced accounts. The subject position of the Tupi,

of the indigenous Brazilian, is absent.

By the twentieth century, in the wake of post-colonial nationalist sentiment,

Brazilian intellectuals and artists stake a claim to their own “indigenous” subject

44
For a classic study of the brazilwood trade see Alexander Marchant, From Barter to Slavery: The
Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500-1580 (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1942).

35
positions as Brazilians, by appropriating the Tupi, their featherwork and the

cannibal rituals with which both are associated. The “Tupi” that they appropriate,

paradoxically, is that which Thevet, Léry and other early modern chroniclers

constructed and which has proven to be remarkably resilient. The most provocative

way to begin an exploration of Tupi historiography, then, is through the lens of the

Brazilian modernists.

Part I. Brazilian modernists and the ingestion of the Tupi as icon

When beginning the story of the Tupi, one could choose any number of significant

events from the last 500-year period of European contact with the Tupi or even,

from the approximately 12,000 years of Amazonian settlement, taking the

narrative back to the distant ancestors of the people I will discuss. I choose to start

with an episode from the not-so-distant past, from the first decades of the twentieth

century, to highlight the significance of Tupi culture for modern and contemporary

Brazilian society and, equally important, to contextualize historiographically the

discussion of Tupi ethnography within a very dynamic and still evolving Brazilian

anthropology.

Brazilian poet and polemicist Oswald de Andrade’s famous line from his

Anthropophagite Manifesto (1928), “Tupy of nor Tupy: that is the question,”

highlights one of the most important modernist movements in Brazil, born out of

the 1922 São Paulo Semana de Arte Moderna [Modern Art Week] in which

Brazilian artists (many of them women) held exhibitions, lectures, concerts and

36
poetry readings. This public manifestation signaled a moment of articulated

rupture with the intellectual and aesthetic movements of avant-garde Europe.

Brazil’s modernistas sought new possibilities in regionalism, folklore, and

traditions of various parts of marginalized Brazilian culture, including Afro-

Brazilian and indigenous cultural traditions.

Andrade’s manifesto of Brazilian nationalism proclaimed a movement to

devour the colonizer in order to appropriate his virtues and powers and “transform

the taboo into totem,” embracing the oppositions of modern Brazil and exploring

the nature of colonization.45 Oswald asserted that Brazil’s history of cultural

cannibalism (associated with the Tupi) was its biggest strength and a route

whereby Brazil could symbolically ingest the cannibal motif (meta-cannibalism)

and thereby produce something new: a defense against European colonial

domination. Andrade plays on the most famous attribute of Tupi tribal warfare, its

anthropophagy. The manifesto provides a starting point for thinking about how

Brazil’s own version of the avant-garde sought its roots within a national context,

employing the native Tupi rites as a metaphorical and conceptual foundation for

the future. The manifesto is simultaneously a celebration of the Tupi (notoriously

stereotyped as cannibals in so many early modern European travel accounts) and a

subversion of the legend of cannibalism, an instance of cannibalistic consumption

of Shakespearian or Elizabethan (i.e., European) culture.

45
Oswald de Andrade’s original Anthropophagite Manifesto was published in the first issue of the
Revista de Antropofagia, (São Paulo), 1, May 1928 and published with a drawing by Tarsila do
Amaral. The manifesto is translated and published in English, Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America:
The Modern Era, 1820-1980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 312-313.

37
 The Brazilian modernist artist would consume everything: the dichotomies

of the modern and primitive, America and Europe, center and periphery. Brazil’s

modernistas brought the Tupi, as the indigenous “mother culture,” into the

forefront of cultural thought, providing a literary and artistic trope for Brazil, and a

new source for creativity that lay outside the confines of European art academies

founded in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.46 Though the modernistas were a

privileged, urban elite, traveling widely and freely throughout Brazil and Europe,

the next decade marked a period of broader Brazilian interest in cultural, economic

and social policies of regionalism and the emergence of modern anthropological

understandings of race. One of the most visible figures was Brazilian sociologist

and writer Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) who created his “Program of the

Regionalist Center” in 1926 to promote regional popular arts in Brazil.47

It is perhaps no coincidence that Andrade’s Anthropophagite Manifesto

coincided with a resurgence of European interest in the Tupi during the late 1920s.

46
The best study of this period remains Aracy A. Amaral, Artes plásticas na semana de 22:
subsídios para uma história da renovação das artes no Brasil (São Paulo: Editôra Perspectiva,
1979). For summations of the movement in English see Sergio Luiz Prado Bellei, "Brazilian
Anthropophagy Revisited," in Cannibalism and the Colonial World, ed. Francis Barker, Peter
Hulme and Margaret Iverson, 87-109 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Ivo
Barbieri, "The Journey of the Brazilian Avant-Garde of the 1920s," Stanford Humanities Review,
no. 1 (1999); and Icleia Maria Borsa Cattani, "Places of Modernism in Brazil," in Brazil: Body and
Soul, edited by Edward J. Sullivan, 380-87 (New York: Guggenheim, 2001).
47
Gilberto Freyre, Manifesto regionalista de 1926, (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e
Cultura, 1955). Freyre studied Cultural Anthropology at Columbia University under Franz Boas,
receiving his Master’s and then returning to Brazil to teach. His foundational books discuss the
concept of a “Brazilian racial democracy,” an idea that Brazil’s racial mixing was not destroying,
but enriching national cultural. Freyre firmly believed that Brazil’s social inequalities were based
on poverty, not race. Freyre’s epithet has received sophisticated and organized scholarly opposition,
beginning in the 1950s. For a review of the literature see: Jeffrey D. Needell, A Tropical Belle
Epoque: Elite Culture and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987); and Hal Langfur, "Could This Be Heaven or Could This Be Hell?
Reconsidering the Myth of Racial Democacy in Brazil," Ethnohistory 53, no. 3 (2006): 603-13.

38
The first major anthropological study of Tupi culture, the two groundbreaking

dissertations on the Tupi by Swiss social anthropologist Alfred Métraux (1902-

1963), were published in 1928, the very same year that Andrade’s tract was

published.48 After a long period of dormancy, Europeans were again writing

ethnographies of the Tupi, now in the form of “reconstructions” of a lost society,

again appropriating or “consuming” what Andrade was advancing as Brazil’s most

valuable cultural patrimony. In a bizarre echo of the anthropological model of

reciprocal warfare, of which anthropophagy is a part, Andrade in turn “consumed”

early modern and modern European conceptions of the Tupi to constitute a model

for a national Brazilian artistic culture.

Métraux’s dissertations were the first major anthropological studies to

make a comparative study of a broad range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century

sources and to examine directly the remains of Tupi material culture. For this

project Métraux’s research is foundational, as it remains the only cultural study of

the Tupi to date that includes a physical examination of several of the Tupi

48
Beginning his Parisian studies in ethnology under the French sociologist Marcel Mauss (1872-
1950), he then moved to Göteborg for his doctoral studies. Métraux continued his work under the
tutelage of the famed Swedish ethnologist and archaeologist, Nils Erland Herbert Nordeskiöld
(1877-1932), a pioneer of South American ethnologic research. The French sociologist Marcel
Mauss, nephew of Emile Durkeim, as made famous by his 1925 book, The Gift, which examines
the religious, legal, economic, mythological aspects of giving, receiving and repaying gifts in a
variety of cultures. The Gift has become the foundation for anthropological studies of reciprocity.
For a recent edition see Marcel Mauss and W. D. Halls, The Gift: The Form and Reason for
Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
For a look at Métraux’s biography, especially his intellectual formation, see Edgardo
Krebs, "Alfred Métraux and the Handbook of South American Indians: A View from Within," The
History of Anthropology Newsletter 32, no. 1 (2005): 3-11. Though Swiss by birth, he grew up in
Argentina, was schooled in France and Scandinavia, became an American citizen during WWII,
and spent the majority of his career working on the origins of colonialism in South America, myth
and shamanism. Additionally, he did foundational work for the creation of UNESCO’s social
science projects.

39
feathered capes that are my focus. 49 Today his “diffusionist” method (looking at

the origins of cultural traits) is considered by some to represent a “German” strand

of anthropology, inspired by the late eighteenth-century German separation

between the physical sciences (physicalist/biological) and the historical sciences

(cosmographical/cultural).50 Other anthropologists see Métraux’s

“cosmographical” approach to Native American culture as outdated in light of the

findings of recent fieldwork among living indigenous groups.51

Métraux’s work stands as the first anthropological attempt to compare early

modern ethnographic sources of Brazil in a rigorous fashion. He opens his 1928 La

civilisation matérielle with an explanation of why he embarked on a study of the

Tupi culture specifically:

49
Métraux presented two dissertations to receive his doctorate and they were both published in
1928: Métraux #1 and Métraux #2. A third book inaugurated his deep interest in migration history:
Alfred Métraux, Migrations historiques des Tupi-Guaraní (Paris; Maisonneuve frères, 1927).
Métraux published dozens of articles on the Tupi in subsequent years, spent many years
with Latin American academe and was hired by Julian Steward at the Smithsonian to help produce
the first Handbook of South American Indians in the 1940s, with the intellectual guidance of
colleague and friend Claude Levi-Strauss during its inceptions and writing. See Julian Haynes
Steward, ed., Handbook of South American Indians 7 vols. (Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1946-1959).
Métraux’s work was widely published in French and English in the early twentieth
century, but his full texts on the Tupi (outside of the Handbook essays) was only translated to
Portuguese in 1950. See Alfred Métraux, A religião dos Tupinambás e suas relações com a das
demais tribos Tupi-Guaranis. 2a. ed, Brasiliana; V. 267, trans. Estêvão Pinto (São Paulo:
Companhia Editora Nacional; Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1979).
50
In Germany this meant the late eighteenth-century intellectual legacy of Naturwissenschaften and
Geisteswissenschaften shaped by Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, often featuring a
Romanticist view of “primitive” society. German anthropologists were producing the vast majority
of ethnography on South American Amerindians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, described by scholars as “moderate positivism.” See the Andre Gingrich’s contributions
in: Fredrik Barth, One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American
Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); and George W. Stocking Jr., ed.,
Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological
Tradition Vol. 8, History of Anthropology. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
51
Kennet Pederson, "European Indians and Indian Europeans: Aspects of Reciprocal Cultural and
Social Classification on the Brazilians East Coast in the Early Period of Contact," in Natives and
Neighbors in South America: Anthropological Essays, eds. Harald O. Skar and Frank Salomon,
382-416 (Göteborg: Göteborg Etnografiska Museum, 1987).

40
 I have in the first place chosen as [the] object for this detailed analysis the
Tupinambá civilization, which in fact can be considered the most
representative of the primitive and original culture of the Tupians. These
Indians have been known to us from a very early date, and we are much
better informed about them than about most of the other tribes that belong
to the same family. 52

Métraux clearly knew many of the large number of primary sources available

concerning European contact with the Tupi. What is also clear from this passage is

that he intended to use these as a form of concrete evidence to reconstruct

(“cannibalize,” in Andrade’s terms) what he calls a “primitive and original culture”

Tupi society.

Métraux’s work on the Tupi had an equivalent impact on the field of

modern cultural anthropology as Thevet’s, Staden’s or Léry’s accounts did on

early modern perceptions of the New World. His Tupi-Guarani contributions to

Julian Steward’s Smithsonian Handbook of South American Indians produced

what is arguably the standard framework by which most twentieth-century scholars

have understood the Tupi and other Tropical Forest Cultures (TFC) of South

America. Following Métraux, these scholars have based their study of TFC

societies on the presumption that they were small, isolated and autonomous

communities with decentralized political structures, and that the TFC groups

“reacted” to European colonization in an attempt to restore “pre-contact tribal

integrity.”53

52
Trans. Kennet Pederson. See Pederson, “European Indians,” 383. Pederson quotes this Métraux
passage from his French dissertation: Métraux #1, 303-304.
53
Eduardo Góes Neves, "Twenty Years of Amazonian Archaeology in Brazil (1977-1997),"
Antiquity 72 (1998): 625-632.

41
 This account of the Tupi, like all accounts, is still shifting and under

revision by anthropologists based on recent archaeological data and extensive

studies of modern and contemporary Amazonian indigenous peoples.54 As

Eduardo Neves discusses, for example, the conceptual foundations for the

designation of “TFC cultures” was laid out in the Lowie and Steward’s work in the

Handbook of South American Indians. It was used as a designation to compare

cultural traits (or lack thereof) of forest cultures to the politically centralized

societies of the Central Andes, an entirely artificial dichotomy.

Other lines of Tupi scholarship have also recently been critiqued on

methodological grounds. Scholars tended to posit an ecological causality that many

current Brazilian anthropologists now consider deterministic, possibilistic or

monocausal, and therefore methodologically obsolete.55 Florestan Fernandes

(1920-1995), a Brazilian anthropologist, began to augment Métraux’s work in the

1940s, adding an important sociological dimension to the study of Tupi warfare

and thereby launching a new age of Brazilian anthropology, written by Brazilians

54
The best new comprehensive and non-specialist book on Amazonian anthropology is Colin
McEwan, Cristiana Barreto and Eduardo Neves beautifully illustrated and researched exhibition
catalogue, Colin McEwan, ed., Unknown Amazon: Culture in Nature in Ancient Brazil (London:
British Museum Press, 2001).
55
“Monocausal environmental possibilism” suggests that although environmental conditions do
have an influence on human and cultural development, people have varied possibilities in how they
decide to live within a given environment. “Diffusionism” refers to all cultural traits as
manifestations of influences from other cultures. For a recent discussion of the various schools of
thought in regards to Amazonian archaeology see Neves, “Twenty Years.” For a current discussion
of the archaeological record of the Tupi versus previous writings see Carlos Fausto, "Fragmentos
de história e cultura Tupinambá: da cronologia como instrumento crítico de conhecimento etno-
histórico," in História dos índios no Brasil, ed. Manuela Carneira da Cunha, 381-96 (São Paulo:
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo; Companhia das Letras et al., 1992).

42
and in Portuguese.56 Fernandes’ work provides a militant defense of functionalism

as a lens of inquiry, suggesting hypothetically that the Tupi could have survived

the impact of European conquest only through migration.57 Both Métraux’s and

Fernandes’ contributions were, and to a large degree remain, foundational to

modern scholarly constructions of Tupinambá religion, social structure, material

culture and warfare. They are now being complemented with, rather than

supplanted by, new regional and multiethnic approaches.58

The use of the manifold sixteenth-and seventeenth-century European

sources by Métraux, Fernandes and others as sources of objective “facts” in

relating details of Tupi life is problematic, especially when applied to the goal of

reconstructing an undisturbed, pre-Cabralian Tupi culture. Nonetheless, these

European chronicles are invaluable sources for understanding the colonial period

itself, particularly in terms of a nominal Tupi culture construed by Europeans

56
Major works of the Tupi were written by Florestan Fernandes in the late 1940s and 50s and
published several decades later see: Florestan Fernandes, Organização social dos Tupinambá, 2.
ed., Corpo e alma do brasil, 11 (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1963); Florestan Fernandes,
"Antecedentes indígenas: organição social dos tribos tupis," in História geral da civilização
brasileira, ed. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1963); and
Florestan Fernandes, A função social da guerra na sociedade Tupinambá, 2. ed. (São Paulo:
Pioneira, 1970).
57
I thank John M. Monteiro for sharing his unpublished paper with me: "Indigenous Histories in
Colonial Brazil: Between Ethnocide and Ethnogenesis," 1-24 (Campinas, Brazil: IFCH-UNICAMP,
2004). He proposes the term “ethnogenesis” (an idea taken from Jonathan Hill and Guillaume
Boccara) as a way to discuss the patterns of colonial transformation in Lowland South America.
58
Fausto, “Fragmentos,” 381-396. For extensions and reaction to Métraux’s and Fernandes’ work
see Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity
in an Amazonian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Cunha, História, 1992;
Isabelle Combès, La tragédie cannibale chez les anciens tupi-guarani (Paris: Presses universitaires
de France, 1992). For the most recent works see Michael Heckenberger, The Ecology of Power:
Culture, Place, and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, A.D. 1000-2000, Critical Perspectives in
Identity, Memory, and the Built Environment (New York: Routledge, 2005); Michael
Heckenberger, "History, Ecology, and Alterity: Visualizing Polity in Ancient Amazonia," in Time
and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands, ed. William Balée and
Clark L. Erikson, 311-40 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

43
relative to their own social, political and economic needs. They represent a variety

of divergent religious, cultural and political perspectives and reveal a range of

motivations for European engagement with the Tupi. Equally important, they are

intricate testaments to the textures, perceptions, observations and conceptions that

informed particular moments of Brazil’s colonial history. These early sources

emphasize the place of Brazil within a pan-European, early modern, economic

Atlantic enterprise.

Though nominally under the dominion of the Portuguese crown, Brazil's

early colonial history was marked by the concurrent participation of many

European nations, including Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, and the Dutch

Republic. Even though it never directly colonized Brazil, Italy also had a critical

relationship with the Lusophone Americas.59 The Jesuit Curia in Rome

administered the Brazilian missionary enterprise, which in turn sent back to

Europe an enormous amount of documentary information and, to a lesser degree,

material artifacts. Any study of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Brazil must take

into consideration the idea of the Atlantic as a physical and conceptual space

59
Although Africa also played a part in shaping colonial Brazil, primarily through the importation
of slaves, this complex relationship lies outside the parameters of my dissertation. On Afro-
Brazilian history see: John Kelly Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic
World, 1400-1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); James H.
Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-
1770 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Laura de Mello e Souza, The
Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular Religion in Colonial
Brazil, trans. Diane Grosklaus Whiitty (Austin: University of Texas Press; Teresa Lozano Long
Institute of Latin American Studies, 2003). For the history of slavery in Brazil see: A.J.R. Russell-
Wood, Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002); and David Brion Davis,
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006).

44
between cultures. 60 “Brazil” was an early modern concept created and mediated by

missionaries, merchants, slaves and indigenes, a concept formed and disseminated

through ships and ports, missionary settlements and European courts, plantations

and marketplaces. Brazilian objects and ideas about Brazil moved throughout not

just the regions, peoples and various spaces of Brazil, but also the length and

breadth of Europe.

Part II: Terms, populations, expansions

Any discussion of the Tupi peoples as a distinct cultural entity is problematic.

Much historical research has treated them as a monolithic and homogenous culture

in the colonial period. In fact, to whom (and what) do the terms “Tupinambá” and

“Tupi” refer? Who were the various peoples living in coastal Brazil during these

initial years of contact? Early chroniclers sought to simplify the intricate mosaic of

languages and societies they encountered. While the Portuguese and French

colonists of Brazil gave specific names to the various Brazilian indigenous

cultures, the term “Tupinambá” was applied generically in the sixteenth century to

peoples of disparate geographic environments, ranging over 4000 kilometers of the

Brazilian coastline, from the Amazon River to the Río de la Plata. Now all extinct,

these contact period indigenous Brazilian groups were part of what modern

linguists call the Tupi-Guarani language family, or Tupiguarani peoples. The Tupi-

Guarani language family was very diverse in pre-Cabralian Brazil; in it are

60
Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2005).

45
included forty-one separate tongues spread several millennia ago throughout

Eastern South America.61 The terms Tupinambá and Guarani date back to early

modern ethnographic accounts, where they are two of the most frequently

mentioned languages.62 Tupi, also termed in Portuguese the lingua geral da costa

(common language of the coast), was the shared idiom among the various tribes.

From the mid-sixteenth century onward, the language Brasílica, a standardized

Tupi, became a colonial inter-language that was regularized by the Jesuits and used

to communicate among the various indigenous peoples, Europeans and Africans

arriving in Brazil, a fascinating and complicated micro-history of the colonial

Brazilian world.63

Recent archaeological and linguistic studies have demonstrated that spatial

mobility was one of the defining characteristics of the Tupi cultures, making it

difficult to attribute distinct geographical parameters to particular Tupi-Guarani

61
For a new study of the genetic and linguistic make-up (past and present) of Brazilian Amazonia
see Sidney E.B. Santos, Ândrea K.C. Ribeiro dos Santos, Eduardo J.M. Santos, and João F.
Guerreiro, "The Amazonian Microcosm," Ciência e cultura: Journal of the Brazilian Association
for the Advancement of Science 51, no. 3/4 (1999): 181-90.
62
Noelli, “The Tupi,” 648-63.
63
For an impressive new linguistic study of the lingua franca of Portuguese America see M. Kittya
Lee, "Conversing in Colony: The Brasilica and the Vulgar in Portuguese America, 1500-1759"
(PhD diss. Johns Hopkins University, 2005).
To give some sense of importance the Jesuits gave to the learning of native languages, in
1556 a course in the Tupi language was inaugurated at the College of Bahia. As Métraux tells us,
“So great was the importance attached to the knowledge of native languages by the Company that
its students in Brazil who were weak in Latin could redeem themselves at the examination if they
had a good command of Tupi. A missionary had to learn the vernacular and write a glossary, and if
possible a grammar, as a preliminary step toward the evangelization of a new group of Indians.
Although their grammars were patterned of course after the rules of Latin speech, the Jesuits took
great interest in these barbaric tongues and were the first to realize their intricacies and difficult
phonetics.” Alfred Métraux, "The Contribution of the Jesuits to the Exploration and Anthropology
of South America," Mid-America: An Historical Review 26, no. 3 (1944): 183-91.

46
tribes.64 From south to north, and with modern geographic names, the tribal

divisions of sixteenth century Brazil can be approximately distinguished as: the

Carijó (Guarani) between Lagoa dos Patos and Cananéia; the Tupiniquins through

Bertioga, including the São Paulo plateaus; the Tupinambá (also referred to as the

Tamoio in this region) from northern São Paulo to Cabo Frio, including the

Paraíba Valley; the Temomino around Guanabara Bay (Rio de Janeiro); a second

group of Tupiniquins between Espírito Santo and southern Bahia; a second group

of Tupinambá from the fertile region along the coast of Bahia to the mouth of the

São Francisco river; the Kaeté northwards to Paraíba; and the numerous Potiguar

tribes stretched along the northeast coast to the state of modern Ceará.65

Contemporary anthropologists, basing much of their research on early

modern sources, and on Métraux, have suggested that Tupi-Guarani speaking

tribes shared not only a language family, but were also all semi-nomadic,

horticulturalist and highly bellicose societies sharing patterns of migration and

expansionism.66 Historical ecologists now put forward that these patterns may have

arisen from a need to control vital coastal food sources in an ecological and

culturally shifting environment, an issue I will explore later in this chapter when

64
Fausto, "Fragmentos,” 381-96; Monteiro, 976-978.
65
These systematized tribal divisions divisions are taken from Fausto, “Fragamentos,” 383. Fausto
utilized Métraux, #1 and #2; Fernandes, Organização social, 1963; Curt Nimuendaju, Mapa etno-
histórico de Curt Nimuendaju (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, FNPM et al., 1981); John Hemming, Red
Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, (London: Macmillan, 1987). For sixteenth-century
accounts of the various coastal Brazilian populations see: Sousa, 292-300; Gândavo, 109-112.
66
Monteiro, 973-974.

47
examining Tupi warfare.67 Monteiro and other historians argue that these groups

shared cultural affinities, but lacked political unity and were primarily aggressive,

engaging in constant warfare with competing regional neighbors. These various

tribes were often referred to as “nations,” “bands,” “castes,” and “generations” in

the period literature. In a Portuguese treatise of 1587, the sugar plantation owner

and explorer Gabriel Soares de Sousa, encapsulates the paradox quite well:

And even though the Tupinikin and Tupinambá are enemies, between them
there is no greater difference in language and customs than that between
the residents of Lisbon and those of Beira.68

Sousa’s sixteenth-century assertion is one with which modern anthropologists

generally agree. Today, the name “Tupinambá” –– like “Tupi” –– is used as a

collective term to discuss the Amerindian coastal tribes of Brazil and their

language, unless discussing highly specific cultural traits, where the more

specialized tribal designation is utilized.69

The names “Tapuia” or nheengaíbas (those who speak badly), on the other

hand, were generic designations that the Tupi themselves used when discussing

their enemies. These therefore became oppositional terms in colonial Brazil to

67
William L. Balée, "The Ecology of Ancient Tupi Warfare," in Warfare, Culture and
Environment, ed. Brian Ferguson, 241-65 (New York: Academic Press, 1984). See also David
Cleary, "Towards an Environmental History of the Amazon: From Prehistory to the Nineteenth
Century," Latin American Research Review 36, no. 2 (2001): 64-96.
68
This Sousa passage is translated and quoted in Monteiro, 974. For a recent examination of
Sousa’s writing see John M. Monteiro, "The Heathen Castes of Sixteenth-Century Portuguese
America: Unity, Diversity, and the Invention of the Brazilian Indians," Hispanic American
Historical Review 80, no. 4 (2000): 697-719.
69
Métraux was of the first to suggest using the generic designation of “Tupinambá” to discuss the
range of people along the coast in this period, a term which modern anthropologists still use today.
See Métraux #3, 1948, 95-97.

48
describe all non-Tupi peoples: societies of unrelated language groups inhabiting

large tracts of the vast forested interior of Brazil.70

The estimated population of indigenous Brazil in 1500 is still widely

disputed by historical demographers and historians, but it is generally agreed that

Brazil had one of the lowest indigenous populations of the Americas in the

sixteenth century. Attempts at census records in colonial Brazil were done only in

the late colonial period, after the extinction of the Tupi, usually employing

missionary baptismal records and the surveys made by the Dutch in the early

seventeenth century of their northeastern territorial possessions.71 The population

estimates varied widely among the early chroniclers and these have been amended

by modern demographers, using such methods as assumed land-use estimates. One

current calculation is that the population occupying the entire, vast area of

contemporary Brazil was between two to four million peoples at the time of

contact. 72 Many demographers place the figure at the low end of the range ––

around 2,431,000 inhabitants –– with the Tupi representing about 625,000 of that

70
Often “Tapuia” came to describe any culture about which little was known and created some
sense of confusion for the colonial authorities. As Sousa claims: “Since the Tapuias are so many
and so divided in bands, customs and languages, in order to say much about them it would be
necessary to collect meticulously much information about their divisions, life and customs; but at
present this is not possible.” See Sousa, 88. Again, this is quoted in Monteiro, 974. This lack of
information about non-Tupi peoples is likely what Métraux was referring to in his dissertation
preamble, when asserting his decision to study the Tupi and not another (i.e., interior) Brazilian
indigenous group. From the sparse information the chronicles gathered from Tupi peoples, it seems
that the Tapuia inhabited the coasts of Brazil before the Tupi and were expelled by the time of
European arrival. The Tapuia came to signify the generic enemy tribe in the colonial period, made
quite evident in both textual accounts and pictorial representations of sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Brazil and in alliances woven between competing European powers for particular regions.
71
Monteiro, 979; Hemming, Red Gold, 487-501.
72
William M. Denevan, "Native American Population in 1492: Recent Research and Revised
Hemispheric Estimate," in The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, edited by William M.
Denevan, xvii-xxxviii (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).

49
total figure.73 The majority of indigenous Brazilians lived along the banks and

bluffs of the mainstream Amazon and its principal tributaries. The water system

thus offers us models for the dispersal and expansion of the Tupi at the time of

European contact.

The Tupinambá were extinct by the eighteenth century, through a

combination of disease, slavery and exodus to the Amazonian interior to evade

capture by European colonial authorities. Though there are no direct descendents

of the Tupi living today, there are approximately 33,000 Tupi-Guarani speakers of

twenty-one different languages in Brazil. These modern indigenous groups have

some linguistic affinity to those speakers of the sixteenth-century language now

called “Old Tupi.”74 In distant regions of the Amazon today, as well in regions

bordering urban centers — the Parakanã, Araweté, Asurini, Suruí, Tenetehara,

Guajá, Urubu-Kaapor, Tapirapé, Kayabi, Kamayurá, Guarani, Waiãpi, Parintintins,

Tupi do Cunimapanema –– resist the persistently encroaching modernization in

their lives and have rich cultural heritages that give partial voice to the socio-

cultural practices of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Tupi past.75

73
Monteiro, 979.
74
Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro, Araweté: Os deuses canibais (Rio de Janeiro: J. Zahar
Editor; Associação Nacional de Pós Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais, 1986). An English
translation appeared shortly thereafter: Castro, From the Enemy's, 1992. His study brings new
theoretical perspectives on the study of Tupiguarani religion and migration.
75
The best introduction to Brazil’s indigenous history, past and present, remains Cunha, História,
1992.

50
Part III. European perceptions of Tupi societal structure: malocas, villages

How do period sources describe Tupinambá life and culture at the time of

European contact? A principal interest was Tupi social and political structures,

which served as the basis for comparisons with European societies, many of which

cast the Tupi in a positive light. The composition and political structure of villages

was, and remains, the basis for such an analysis.

Thevet, in his image of the funereal/warfare ritual, shows thatched malocas

in elevated locations. As archeological excavations have confirmed, Tupi villages

were commonly located on hilltops. This was presumably for strategic purposes,

providing both fresh air and more visibility against enemy attacks, and one

assumes, possible relief from mosquitoes and other insects, which tend to

congregate in areas of denser forestation. Villages were not considered permanent

settlements, but were rather mutable networks. The transitory character of Tupi

settlements becomes most evident by the frequent reference to taperas, or

abandoned settlements, in period documents. Léry tells us:

It is a curious fact worth noting that the Brazilians, who usually stay only
five or six months in a place, carry with them the big pieces of wood and
tall pindo plants, with which their houses are made and covered; thus they
often move their villages from place to place [...] and no one of the
Tupinamba nation ever begins a dwelling or any other building that he will
not see built and rebuilt twenty times in his life, if he lives to the age of
manhood.76

As we will see in Chapter 2, despite the migratory nature of Tupi communities,

which abandoned houses and settlements and left behind most material possessions

76
Léry, 159.

51
when they moved, feathers and featherwork were carefully stored and sealed,

which provides some indication of a high social value accorded these artifacts.

The European chroniclers suggest that within villages, four to eight

multifamily residential lodges – malocas – were built around a community

square.77 These were the social and religious centers of the village and were

estimated to have housed from a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants. These

estimates varied greatly, due perhaps to the accuracy with which different the

colonial observers reported, and/or to differences in community populations and

population densities. Staden, in an illustration of his captivity among the

Tupinambá, shows us his layout of Tupi villages (Fig. 6). From a Jesuit description

of the 1580s we can appreciate the size of a single maloca:

These Indians doe use certaine Cottages or houses of timber, covered with
Palm tree leaves, and are in length, some of two hundred and three hundred
spans, and they have two or three doors verie little and low…. There be
houses that have fiftie, sixtie or seventie roomes of twentie or five and
twentie quarters long, and as many as breadth. In this house dwelleth one
principall man or more, whom all the rest doe obey, and ordinarily they are
kinsmen…. And to enter in one of these houses is to enter into a laberinth,
for every roome hath his fire, and their nets hanging, and their stuffe, so
that coming in, all that they have is in sight, and some house hath two
hundred person and more.78

This gives us a sense of the vast scale of a single dwelling as recorded by a Jesuit,

as well as the physical layout and social structure within. According to Métraux,

the average Tupi malocas, traces of which have been found in excavations today,

77
Monteiro, 982.
78
Cardim, 423.

52
were 250 to 300 feet in length and were constructed on a rectangular ground plan,

with an roof arched or vaulted roof that could descend all the way to the ground.79

John Monteiro has argued that the original configuration of a Tupi village

was based upon its founding leader or “headman.”80 Each maloca, the large

communal houses that we saw in the Thevet woodcut that began this chapter (Fig.

4), was said to have had one headman and each village two or three “chiefs.”81

According to Monteiro, the community’s particular historical and political identity

was tied to the charisma and potential success of its chiefs.

Chroniclers paid particular attention to the manner in which leaders

emerged in Tupi communities. From a 1570 Portuguese source we are told:

These people do not have a King among them, or any other sort of justice,
except for a principal in each village, who is like a captain, whom they
obey by choice and not by force.82

This notion of a contract by choice between a ruler and his subjects must have had

particular resonance for European readers in the sixteenth century, a period when

the nature and legitimacy of hereditary ruler-ship were being challenged on many

fronts. From the mid-sixteenth century, royal entries, staged at the investiture of a

new ruler, were construed as mutual agreements between subjects and ruler.83

79
Métraux #3, 98.
80
Monteiro, 973-1024.
81
Métraux #3, 114.
82
See Gândavo. Gândavo was a Portuguese grammarian who lived in Brazil between 1558-1572
gathering information for the Portuguese Crown. He published his “history” of Brazil in 1576, upon
his return to Portugal. Beyond Abreu’s edited book, see also Constance G. Janiga-Perkins, "Pero de
Magalhães Gândavo's História da Província Santa Cruz: Paradise, Providence and How Best to
Turn Profit," South Atlantic Review 57, no. 2 (1992): 29-44.
83
See Mark A. Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity in Philip II’s 1549 Blijde Incompst,” Hof-,
Staats- end Stadsceremonies, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 49 (1998): 37-68.

53
 Hans Staden (1525- c.1579), the sixteenth-century German chronicler, also

states that the Tupi obey their chiefs not from fear, but from a sense of goodwill.84

According to the Portuguese chronicler Sousa, there was no single way to become

a Tupi leader, but a requisite was honor, based upon one’s personal reputation,

tactical skills as warrior and/or orator, but also reinforced through sexual potency,

pragmatic marriages and success at polygamy.85 Jesuit missionaries in the period

inform us that the ability to effectively communicate and perform “beautiful

chants” was deemed an especially important aspect of Tupi leadership. European

perceptions and stress on Tupi oratory are almost certainly informed by their own

emphasis on rhetoric and oration. As I will discuss in Chapter 3, the Jesuits used

persuasion, music and ritual in “accommodating” Tupi culture in their evangelical

program.86

In the early seventeenth century, the French Capuchin Claude d’Abbeville

wrote that headmen, under chiefs, were in charge of the political organization of

the Tupi village –– some villages had two or three chiefs and extended their power

over whole districts.87 The position of the chief was either hereditary or based on a

number of factors, such as war prowess, supernatural powers, oratorical gifts

and/or wealth. Wealth came in the form of agricultural productivity and Sousa tell

us:
84
See Staden. The newest edited English translation of Staden’s text is currently in press,
Whitehead and and Harbsmeier, Cannibal Conquerer.
85
Sousa, Tít. 17.
86
Marc Fumaroli, L'âge de l'éloquence: rhétorique et "Res Literaria" de la renaissance au seuil de
l'époque classique (Geneva: Droz, 2002); Giuseppina Ledda, "Predicar a Los Ojos," Edad de Oro 8
(1989): 129-42.
87
Abbeville #1, Cap. XLIX.

54
 The chief must be a man of courage. He has to belong to a large family and
to be well liked by its members so that they are willing to help cultivate his
plantations, but even when he opens a clearing with the assistance of
relatives, he is the first to put his hand to the task.88

According to French sources, two persons in each village would share the power:

the chief (mburubicha) and the great shaman (pajé-ouassou), alluding to the idea

that there was both a secular and a sacred leader.89 Other sources give some

indication that different systems of leadership operated in times of peace than in

times of war. The Tupi cloaks that are the subject of this dissertation were seen as

a mark of status for the village leaders and shamans during rituals, such as the one

depicted in Thevet’s woodcut. According to anthropologist Hélène Clastres,

regarded with both honor and fear, these individuals likely controlled the sacred

realm, and thus, to a certain degree, the political formations of the community.90

The Capuchin friar Yves d’Evreux tells us that pajés were “the mediators between

the spirits and the rest of the people.”91 According to Evreux, the shamanistic gifts

of the pajés were visually and audibly demonstrated by their “chants,” which

indicated the presence of auxiliary spirits and bestowed the ability to lead

collective dances in sacred rituals and ceremonies, often aided by these spirits. The

combined music, chanting, dance, scented smoke and ceremonial consumption of

88
Sousa, Tít. 17.
89
Evreux, XIII.
90
In the twentieth century Tupi-Guarani Apapocuva-Guaraní culture, for example, anthropologist
Nimuendajú found that this inherent contradiction between political and ritual powers bestowed
upon an individual would usually only open up when shamans wanted to become chiefs. See
Clastres, The Land-without-Evil, ix.
91
Quoted in Clastres, The Land-without-Evil, 35.

55
Tupi ritual, bore significant similarities to both sacred and secular rituals in

Europe.

To give a visual dimension to these descriptions, we can turn to an

engraving by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) of a Tupi ceremony (Fig. 7).92 Three

pajés bedecked in feathered capes occupy the center of the engraving, with

feathers glued to their torsos and legs. Two are blowing smoke from long tubular

pipes, while shaking maracas. The third pajé, between the men, has his face to the

viewer and also holds a plumed rattle. The men of the community dance in a circle

around the shamans, indicated by their feet half-raised in the air and their heads

lowered. As Léry describes Tupi dances:

They stood close to each other, without holding hands or stirring from their
place, but arranged in a circle, bending forward, keeping their bodies
slightly stiff, moving only the right leg and foot, with the right hand placed
on the buttocks, and the left hand and arm hanging: in that posture they
sang and danced.93

These men all wear the large rhea-plume enduap on their buttocks, worn for

ceremonial occasions and war.94 From the chronicles we know that the pajés’

breath was imbued with magical powers and the smoke emanating from his

92
This engraving was first produced in-folio form in Theodor de Bry’s Grandes Voyage (Frankfurt,
1590). This first volume was produced in a Latin edition with thirteen parts and a German edition
with fourteen parts. Later French and English editions were made as it became so popular. De Bry’s
sons, Johan Theodor and Johan Israel continued the publication and expansion of the volumes after
their father’s death. De Bry’s book project contained the voyages of Hans Staden, Jean de Léry and
letters by Nicolás Barré. See Bernadette J. Bucher, "De Bry's Grand Voyages (1590-1634): The
First Grand-Scale European Reportage on America," in America Bride of the Sun: 500 Years Latin
America and the Low Countries, ed. Paul Vandenbroeck, 129-40 (Antwerp: Royal Museum of Fine
Arts, 1992).
93
Léry, 142.
94
The rhea actually resembles an ostrich and thus the enduap is often described as made of
“ostrich” plumes. However, the ostrich comes from the genus Struthio and is an Old-World bird
and the New World Rhea is one of the genus and has three toes, not two.

56
tobacco pipe only reinforced his spiritual authority, echoing the Catholic use of

incense during mass. He or she (women could also perform these roles) would

breathe smoke over another’s body, as a way to transfer spirits and induce a trance

state. In the de Bry engraving we can in fact see the pajés’ breath enveloping the

heads of two of the dancers, on both sides of the images, covering their tonsured

heads with wafts of smoke.95 These ceremonies, as Léry informs us, would last

several hours, and sometimes include five or six hundred men.96

The Jesuit fathers in Brazil noted that calabashes and maracás, considered

sacred and supernatural vessels, were placed in dark dwellings for veneration.97

Calabashes, described in Staden’s and Léry’s narratives, were said to be decorated

with human features and were used in agricultural ceremonies such as the growing

of maize.98 The maracás, so often featured in early modern prints of the Tupi, were

richly decorated with painting and feathers, and when consecrated by a pajé,

described as serving as key objects in ceremonies, such as we have seen in the de

Bry engraving. According to the vast majority of the early modern chroniclers in

Brazil, maracás were among the most sacred of Tupi artifacts and were said to

95
Tupi men and women could not tolerate hair on their bodies. Men would shave their foreheads
back to their ears with bamboo splinter or quartz knife. See Métraux #3, 108. Staden remarks on the
hairstyle of the men and compares it to monks of Europe: “I asked them frequently from what they
took this fashion, and they told me that their forefathers had seen it on a man called Meire Humane,
who had worked many miracles among them, and this man is supposed to have been a prophet or
one of the Apostles.” Staden, 142-43.
96
Léry, 142.
97
Jesuit Father José de Anchieta writes: “Escondiam-nos em uma casa escura, para que aí vão os
índios levar suas ofertas. Todâs estas invenções, por um vocábulo geral, chamam Caraíba, que
quere dizer coisa santa ou sobrenatural…” For a transcription of the letter see: José de Anchieta and
Afranio Peixoto, ed., Cartas, informações, fragmentos históricos e sermões do Padre José de
Anchieta (1554-1594) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização brasileira, 1933).
98
Staden, 148-149; Léry, 142.

57
house the spirits, while their rattling sounds were the emanation the voice of

spirits.99 Hans Staden tells us about the Tupi “cult” of the maraca as well:

They [the Tupi] put their faith in a thing shaped like a pumpkin, the size of
a pine pot. It is hollow within, and they put a stick through it and cut a hole
in it like a mouth, filling it with small stones so that it rattles.100

Léry notes that these rattles were planted in the earth, with the gourd-head visible

to the village and arranged through the malocas. He further relates that the rattles

were given food, such as meat and fish, and cauim to drink. For two or three weeks

these would be left planted in the earth.101 The maracá now housed in Frankfurt,

which resembles many of the early woodcuts and engravings, is one of the few

surviving Tupi rattles in the world (Fig. 8).102

Part IV. Anthropophagy: concerns and debates

Both early modern writers and modern historians alike have tended to focus on

Tupi warfare and cannibalism as the prime characteristics of Tupi civilization.103

99
The cult of the máraca seen through early modern sources is well laid out in: Otto Zerries,
"Kürbisrassel und Kopfgeister in Südamerika," Paideuma, Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde V, no. 6
(1953): 323-38.
100
Staden, 148.
101
Léry, 145.
102
For a detailed study of the Frankfurt rattle, see Zerries, "Kürbisrassel.” There are also two Tupi
rattles in Copenhagen at the Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling, 20-21, [#EHc30, #EHc31].
103
For period descriptions of Tupi cannibalism see: Abbeville #2, Cap. XLIX; Cardim, 182-189;
Evreux, Cap. XII; Gândavo, Ch. XII; Anthonie Knivet, The Admirable Adventures and Strange
Fortunes of Master Antoine Knivet, Which Went with Master Thomas Candish in His Second
Voyage to the South Sea, 1591 [Reprint of 1625 Edition], Vol. 16. (Glasgow: Purchas His Pilgrims,
1906); Staden, Part I: Ch. 45, Part II: Ch. 25; and Thevet #2, Ch. 40. Métraux’s analysis of Tupi
cannibalism is based upon these sources.
The etymology of the word “cannibal” is very interesting, especially when tracing its
origins from the Caribbean, southwards, towards Brazil. As Lestrigant has described: “The noun
‘cannibal’ derives from the Arawak caniba, apparently a corruption of cariba, the name (meaning
‘bold,’ it is said) which the Caribbean Indians of the Lesser Antilles gave to themselves. To their
enemies, however, the peace-loving Arawaks of Cuba, the name had a distinctly pejorative

58
Clearly these were powerful narrative devices, employed to justify acts of

enslavement and genocide, an issue that has been raised by many historians and

postcolonial scholars in their examinations of the construction of the “primitive” in

the Western imagination, as a bestial label of “otherness.”104 It was from the first

moments of contact that a binary opposition between the barbaric cannibal and the

noble savage was established; the heyday of this binary was in the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, but it has continued to inform conceptual models within

anthropology to the present day. 105 Thus, both colonial discourses and

contemporary scholarship have treated cannibalism as a negative mark of

difference, as a symbolic construct that highlights the contrast between

cannibalistic natives and civilized Europeans, albeit treating the topic in quite

different ways. While early modern writers believed in the existence of

cannibalism, contemporary scholarship has tried to overcome the negative

connotation of extreme ferocity and barbarity. It was from the latter that Christopher Columbus first
used the word during his epoch-making voyage of 1492.” See Lestringant, Cannibals, 15.
104
To give an administrative example of the Catholic Church’s first large-scale articulations of
New World colonial policy: In 1510 Pope Julius II declared cannibalism to be a sin and deserving
punishment by Christians through force of arms. See Beth A. Conklin, "Cannibalism in Europe," in
Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, 8-13 (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2001).
Recent anthropological examinations of cannibalism are far too extensive to do justice
here. For a few key works see: Peter Hulme and Neil L. Whitehead, Wild Majesty: Encounters
with Caribs from Columbus to the Present Day: An Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Oxford
University Press, 1992); Robert B. Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive
Harmony (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992); Lawrence H. Keeley, War before
Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Laurence Goldman, The Anthropology of
Cannibalism (Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 1999); Christy G. Turner and Jacqueline A.
Turner, Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest (Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press, 1999).
105
Carlos Fausto and David Rodgers, "Of Enemies and Pets: Warfare and Shamanism in
Amazonia," American Ethnologist 26, no. 4 (1999): 950.

59
distinction by simply denying its existence. 106 Such revisionist approaches to the

literature, however, cannot adequately account for the myriad ethnographic

depictions of Tupi warfare and their so-called “acts of revenge” against other

tribes, a dimension of life that Tupi-Guarani speaking peoples shared in their

common social and cultural complex, just as it does not account for much

cannibalism within Europe’s own history.107

The Tupi became –– after Columbus’ initial encounters with the Taino

cultures of Hispaniola (today’s Greater and Lesser Antilles) –– the Amerindian

culture par excellence to be visually and textually narrated for Renaissance

Europe. Amerindian warfare, including rites of cannibalism, fascinated Europeans,

106
By “revisionist” approaches I refer specifically to William Arens’ “reverse exaggeration” in
William Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979) and his later William Arens, "Rethinking Anthropophagy: Cannibalism and
the Colonial World" in Cannibalism in the Colonial World, eds., Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and
Margaret Iverson, 39-62 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Arens’ work has
garnered much international attention for calling attention to the ethnographic biases of the
European sources, an issue with which most anthropologists and historians are quite familiar.
Without “satisfactory first hand accounts,” Arens proceeds to declare that cannibalism was largely
a myth perpetuated by the colonizer for political ends and suggests that cannibalism may never
have existed anywhere in the world as an institutionalized, socially accepted practice. Few
anthropologists of Lowland South America refute the need to handle the sources with the utmost
scrutiny –– but they do take issue with his faulty research and his broad assertions claiming that
cannibalism did not exist as a cultural practice among Amazonian societies. He uses both Hans
Staden’s text and the highly sensationalized American engravings of Theodor de Bry (1561-1623)
to illustrate his point.
For an overview of cannibalistic practices in Europe, from Roman times through the early
modern period see Conklin, Consuming Grief, 8-13.
107
The earliest published accounts of Brazil come from Pero Vaz de Caminha’s letter, as well as
Amerigo Vespucci’s letters to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici and Soderini (1500-1505/6)
concerning his voyages along the South American coast in service of the King of Portugal. There is
no shortage of controversy concerning the authenticity of some of the letters. For a good
bibliographic discussion see the entries for “Vespucci” in Moraes, Vol. II, 345-357. Scholars have
concluded that Vespucci likely only made one voyage to Brazil. See Francis A. Dutra, "Brazil:
Discovery and Immediate Aftermath," in Portugal, the Pathfinder: Journeys from the Medieval
toward the Modern World, 1300-Ca. 1600, eds. George D. Winius and Arthur Lee-Francis Askins,
145-68. (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995).
For a discussion of the first images of the New World, albeit a bit dated, see William C.
Sturtevant, "First Visual Images of Native America," in Chiapelli, 417-54.

60
no doubt in part given the historical moment Europe was facing, notably the

extreme violence of the Religious Wars and its own cannibalistic acts, including

the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the siege and famine at Sancerre, which

Léry witnessed and wrote about. Moreover, cannibalism was used as yet another

polemical tool to fight the battle over the Eucharist in Europe.108

Historians today have become embroiled in heated disputes about the

veracity of Amerindian cannibalism, indeed the very notion of cannibalism

altogether, which debates may have their roots in the Western treatment of

anthropophagy as a profoundly transgressive act.109 Amazonian anthropologists

tend to discuss warfare from a series of theoretical approaches: eco-functionalist,

108
When Léry returned to Europe he faced a fractured world where Protestants and Catholics were
waging wars against one another. In August of 1572, while at the church at Nevres, Léry
encountered the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, where Frenchmen were seen roasting and eating
other Frenchman’s hearts. Twenty-two Huguenots were killed before his eyes. Léry escaped to
Sancerre, but just before Catholic forces besieged it. Most of the population of the village starved
and Léry wrote his Histoire memorable de la ville de Sancerre in 1574, just four years after the
publication of his Brazilian Histoire and as a meditation on the horrors of the Religious Wars. Upon
Léry’s return to France he often used these experiences of European devastation and barbarity
when thinking about his voyages among the Tupi. See Whatley’s introduction, Léry, xvi-xviii. The
differences, of course, between European cannibalism and Tupi cannibalism were that these
episodes were seen as aberrant events and condemned by society at large in Europe, unlike the
structured rites of warfare in Brazil. For a discussion of European cannibalism see Frank
Lestringant, "Catholiques et cannibales: la thème du cannibalisme dans le discours protestant au
temps des guerres de religion," in Pratiques et discours alimentaires à la renaissance: actes du
colloque de tours de mars 1979, Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance, eds. Jean Claude
Margolin and Robert Sauzet, 233-45 (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1982).
Authors have explored the important issues of the Christian Eucharist and the
Catholic/Protestant liturgy with regards to perceptions of Tupi cannibalism. See Lestringant,
Cannibals; Neil L. Whitehead, "Hans Staden and the Cultural Politics of Cannibalism," Hispanic
American Historical Review 80, no. 4 (2000): 721-52; Janet Whatley’s introduction to Léry, xv-
xliii; Andrea Frisch, The Invention of the Eyewitness: Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern
France, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina, Department of Romance Languages, 2004).
109
For a far more interesting and nuanced perspective on the larger anthropological debate and how
the two sides of the “cannibal debate” help re-inscribe the age-old savage noble-savage dialectic
see F.M. Sicoli and A. Tartabini, "Amerindian Cannibalism: Practice and Discursive Strategy,"
Human Evolution 9, no. 3 (1994): 249-55.

61
sociobiological, structuralist or neo-historicist. The majority of Brazilian

specialists understand ritualized anthropophagic acts among the Tupi as post-battle

rituals that had little to do with the extraordinary sensationalism of many European

commentators, such as in the de Bry “grill” scene, and had nothing to do with the

consumption of human flesh as a food source (Fig. 9). In fact, from Léry’s

eyewitness account it is clear that an entire community would gather for the

consumption of one prisoner of war. Thus nutrition was not the point of such a

ritual and even some Europeans, like Léry, were well aware of this fact. And some

anthropologists have recently calculated that:

The flesh of an adult weighing 60 kg could supply 60 adults with their

essential dietary protein for about 1 week, the anthropophagus rite in
Tupian society satisfied the lesser parties needs for only about 3 hours and
20 minutes.110

According to anthropologists Garn and Block, as well as Balée, these rituals

certainly had nothing to do with dietary needs, as the Tupi kept their prisoners

alive and in good health for five months to twenty years after capture.111 The

caloric expenditure of feeding the prisoners during captivity certainly outweighed

whatever nutrition they provided.

Today, debates surrounding Tupi cannibalism have been revived by current

studies of ceramic designs on Tupi funerary and cauim vessels, as well as

110
Stanley Garn and Walter Block, "The Limited Nutritional Value of Cannibalism," American
Anthropologist 72, no. 1 (1970): 106.
111
See Garn and Block, “The Limited Nutritional,” and Balée, “The Ecology,” 248.

62
contemporary Amazonian ethnology. 112 Most cultural anthropologists who study

native Lowland South America contend that it is reasonable to assume that

cannibalism did occur among the Tupi, and that there is ethnographic and

ethnohistorical evidence to suggest that it in fact continued into the twentieth

century in a number of lowland South American communities. Recent approaches

have tended to examine cannibalism from a model of social reproduction that

subsumes warfare and shamanism within the generalized economy.113 We will

never know the full nature and dimensions of Tupi anthropophagy. Rather than

simply debate the cultural politics of cannibalism at any further length, therefore,

my interest with respect to this issue is to discuss Tupi ritual ceremonies ––

including post-warfare rites –– within the larger context of the colonial

performance of religion. I especially emphasize the material paraphernalia and

bodily adornments that activated and animated these and other multi-sensory

ceremonial events in the Tupi-European landscape.

112
For a discussion of the elaborate designs on Tupi vessels and their ritual meanings within the
captive-cannibal complex see Silvia Maria Schmuzinger de Carvalho, "A cerámica e os rituais
antropofágicos," Revista de Antropologia 26 (1983): 39-52;
For discussions of cannibalism among the Tupi and Carib specifically, see D.W. Forsyth,
"The Beginnings of Brazilian Anthropology: Jesuits and Tupinamba Cannibalism," Journal of
Anthropological Research 39, no. 2 (1983): 147-78; Neil L. Whitehead, "Carib Cannibalism: The
Historical Evidence," Journal de la Société des Américanistes 70 (1984): 69-88; Fausto,
"Fragmentos”; Castro, From the enemy’s; and Monteiro.
For a discussion of modern ritual mortuary cannibalism among the Wari’ of Western
Brazil, see Conklin, Consuming Grief.
113
Fausto and Rodgers, "Of Enemies.”

63
Part V. Dressing for warfare and celebration

Understanding the motivations for Tupi warfare has long been central to scholarly

studies, beginning with Métraux’s work in the 1920s and Fernandes’ in the 1950s,

and continuing throughout the twentieth century with numerous investigations of

the nature of “violence” among Lowland South American forest cultures.114

Métraux postulated that the Tupi waged perpetual warfare as an integral

aspect of the political, religious and social structure of their culture. Prestige and

power were derived from the ritual slaughter of prisoners. Cannibalism –– Métraux

argued –– perpetuated the state of warfare among different tribes and even local

communities since the mutual hatred of one other was “born from a desire to

avenge the insult of cannibalism,” and based upon the interpretation of dreams of

conflict, in which certain victory was always promised.115 The Brazilian

sociologist Fernandes agrees with Métraux and writes that, “one can conclude, in

fact, that revenge was the principle factor of war in Tupinambá society,” and that

114
Studies of violence in indigenous South America have proliferated since Napoleon Chagnon’s
highly controversial fieldwork of the 1970s. See Napoleon A. Chagnon, Yanomamö, the Fierce
People, 2d ed,, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1977). For more recent anthropological studies on the nature of violence see: Janet Wall Hendricks,
To Drink of Death: The Narrative of a Shuar Warrior (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993);
Kenneth M. George, Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century
Headhunting Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Jules de Raedt and Janet
Hoskins, Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1996); R. Brian Ferguson and Neil L. Whitehead, War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States
and Indigenous Warfare, 2nd ed., School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series (Sante
Fe: School of American Research Press, 1999).
115
Métraux #3, 119.

64
“scientific research” supports the theories advanced by early modern writers that

the Tupi fought for reasons of revenge.116

The early chroniclers, such as Staden, were indeed the first to make these

claims:

This they do, not from hunger, but from great hate and jealousy, and when
they are fighting with each other one, filled with hate, will call out to his
opponent: Dete Immeraya, Schermiuramme, heiwoe: –– “Cursed be you my
meat”: De kange Jueve eypota kurine: –– “Today will I cut off your head”:
Sche Innamme pepicke Reseagu: –– “Now I am come to take vengeance on
you for the death of my friends”: Yande soo, sche mocken Sera Quora
Ossorime Rire etc: –– “This day before sunset your flesh shall be roast
meat.” All this they do from great hatred.117

But it is equally as likely that the “scientific research” Fernandes references, and

the social theories that he and Métraux developed from it, were motivated by and

therefore ultimately derived from accounts such as Staden’s.

More recent scholarship suggests that the Tupi waged war not to avenge

their dead, as the standard model would claim, but to ensure the wellbeing of the

living. Anthropologist William Balée has proposed, along with other scholars, that

the ecological inequalities among coastal and hinterland groups in Brazil were the

fundamental causes of human conflict in early colonial times.118 In essence, those

groups living nearer to the coastline had the advantage of more fertile soils, as well

as the abundant sea-life that rivers and ocean could provide, as opposed to those

116
Fernandes, A função, 52. Quoted in Balée, "The Ecology,” 246. Fernandes saw the execution of
the prisoner as a religious act, intended to appease the soul of a slain kinsman. In eating the flesh of
the slain victim, one would, in Fernandes’ mind, consume the substance of the enemy.
117
Staden, 152.
118
Balée, "The Ecology.” Balée bases many of his foundational arguments on the materialist
anthropological approach of such authors as: Alexander Moore, Cultural Anthropology: The Field
Study of Human Beings (San Diego, Calif.: Collegiate Press, 1992) and Andrew Vayda, "Expansion
and Warfare among Swidden Agriculturalists," American Anthropologist 63 (1961): 346-58.

65
groups living in the interior hinterlands. Balée’s discussions begin with much

needed distinctions of the ecological zones of Brazil at the time of European

arrival. This examination may be useful in as much as it highlights the remarkable

ecological diversity of spatial zones that both the Tupi and the colonial authorities

faced in their mutual negotiations, one that shaped the conquest of Brazil in

relation to both the Tupi peoples and their ecological world. In the sixteenth

century, the tropical forest that bordered Brazil formed a band that ranged in width

from a few to 120 kilometers.119 Neither the width of the rainforest nor the rainfall

within it was consistent along the vast coast. On average, the rainfall was heavier

in areas along the seacoast than in the western frontier of the forest.120 The

indigenous groups who occupied the forested zone near the seacoast dominated

access to faunal sources of food from the sea and in fluvial and interfluvial zones.

From the early accounts we know that the most sought-after foodstuffs from the

sea included turtles, turtle eggs, manatees and many varieties of fish. In addition,

the soils are more amenable to agricultural intensification along the coastal regions

of Brazil.

119
It bears mentioning here that the coastal forests that the Tupi occupied are not technically part of
the “Amazon” within the physical geography of Brazil. Complications arise as scholars refer to the
“Amazon” as an illusory physical geography, one that places the Amazon as a synonym for the
Amazon basin and one that can somehow stretch from southern Caribbean coast or the Orinoco to
Paraguay. The “Amazon” is technically a river system that applies only from the estuary to the
junction with Rio Negro. As a scholar has recently pointed out, virtually no one actually means the
“Amazon” when discussing it, as the areas are vaguely and inconsistently defined. See Cleary,
"Towards an Environmental,” 64-96.
120
D. Andrade-Lima, "Preservation of the Flora of Northeastern Brazil," in Extinction Is Forever:
Threatened and Endangered Species of Plants in the Americas and Their Significance in
Ecosystems Today and in the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the New York Botanical
Garden, May 11-13, 1976, in Commemoration of the Bicentennial of the United States of America,
eds. Ghillean T. Prance and Thomas S. Elias, 234-39 (Bronx: New York Botanical Garden, 1977).

66
 Balée argues that the diversity of ecologies may have been one of the

reasons that the indigenous peoples of the mountainous regions of the southeastern

Brazil (Serra do Mar), the southern savannas (campo limpo), the semi-arid

grasslands of the Central Brazilian Shield (cerrado) and the northeastern deserts

(sertão), waged war against the inhabitants of the seacoast. In essence, he states:

The ecotone between the humid tropical forest and these more arid habitats
constituted a military frontier, just as did the isohet of about 2000 mm in
the Colombian highlands.121

Already in the sixteenth century such an “ecological approach” towards human

geography of Brazil can be detected. The shipwrecked Englishman Anthony

Knivet was quite conscious about the different qualities of available habitats.

Dwelling by the sea would be better, where we should have plenty of all
things, than where we did, where we had nothing to live upon but roots.122

This ecological addendum suggests that the faunal resources of the ocean and

coastal forests were the spoils and stakes of warfare. In pre-Cabralian time, these

battles for the seacoast took place between non-Tupi speaking peoples (Tapuyas)

and Tupi speaking tribes. Such warfare continued into the colonial period, though

it then often included warfare between Tupi-speaking tribes, because of the

displacement caused by European colonization, as Gabriel Soares de Sousa noted

in 1587.123

121
Balée, "The Ecology,” 245.
122
Knivet was shipwrecked off the southern Brazilian coast in 1592 and claims to have traveled
with 30,000 Tupi-speaking Tamoios. See Knivet, The Admirable Adventures, 224. See also
Constance Janiga-Perkins, ""What Does It Matter Who Is Speaking?" Possessions of Self and Other
in Knivet's Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes," South Atlantic Review 60, no. 2 (1995):
47-67.
123
See note [30] above

67
 Warfare was not the only form of interaction between these peoples.

European writers suggest that whenever peace was established they traded with

one another for material goods. From the written accounts we know that the Tupi

provided the inland Tapuya with toucan feathers, iron axes and knives (from

European colonists), while the Tapuya provided the Tupi with precious

greenstones to insert in their cheeks, ear lobes and noses.124 Staden shows us a

portrait of a Tupi man with these precious stones in both his cheeks, and reports

that these greenstones were also an index of wealth, just as were feathers, giving us

further indications about the value of raw materials used to construct large

adornments (Fig. 10).125 Balée proposes, though no concrete evidence exists, that

the Tupi likely also provided the Tapuya with oysters and fish when there was a

seasonal surplus, since they made these same kinds of exchanges with French

colonists, as described by the Friar Claude d’Abbeville.126

Though many early chroniclers, like Thevet, Staden and Léry, self aware of

the sensationalist impact of these practices, both they and other commentators,

especially Jesuit missionaries, also devoted attention to the cultural milieu of

cannibalism within sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Brazil, which was that of

124
Métraux #3, 227. Trades between the Tapuya and Tupi are discussed at length in: Claude Lévi-
Strauss, "Guerra e comércio entre os índios da América do Sul," Revista da Arquivo Municipal 87
(1942): 131-46.
125
Staden, 143.
126
Balée,"The Ecology,” 258.

68
warfare itself.127 And in the rituals associated with war, Tupi featherwork was

recognized as an integral component.

How was warfare enacted within the political realm of Tupinambá

communities? Staden reports that Tupi warriors heeded the orders of a council of

chiefs from several villages before taking up arms:

When they desire to make war in an enemy’s country the chiefs gather
together and take counsel how best to achieve their purpose, all of which
they make known in the huts, so that the men may arm themselves. They
name the time of the ripening of a certain fruit as the date for their
departure.128

The sources give us some indication that acts of war were seen as well-

choreographed raids. Tupi warriors fought with bows, arrows, war-clubs, and

animal hide shields, much of which we have in well-preserved specimens in

Europe and which is depicted in many early modern woodcuts and prints. Indeed,

it is Tupi weapons that are the best-represented genre of extant Tupi objects, likely

because of their durability during transatlantic travel and through time, as well as

their easy conceptual assimilation into collections of weaponry in various kinds of

European collections. War-clubs were called tacapes, and according to Léry, each

was made of either red or black wood and would measure five or six feet long:

The end is round or oval-shaped, about two hands wide and more than an
inch thick through the middle; the edges are so finely sharpened that the
weapon, being made of a wood as dense as boxwood, is almost as keen as
an axe.129

127
The Jesuit writers were keen on understanding the ritual life of the Tupi. For a list of the most
important Jesuit “ethnographers” with their respective biographies see Leite, Vol. VIII, IX.
128
Staden, 152. This deliberation before war was also expressed in Léry, Ch. XIV.
129
Léry, 113. From Sousa we know that the Tupi usually made their weapons from ubiraúna wood,
which was a large hardwood with a mixed color. Sousa, 179.

69
Tupi bows, continues Léry, which were called orapats and were made of the same

red or blackwood:

[These bows] are so much longer and stronger than ours that one of our
men could not begin to bend it, let alone shoot with it; on the contrary, he
would have all he could manage with one used by the boys of nine or ten.
The strings of these bows made of an herb that the savages call tocon, are
very slender, but so strong that they would resist the pull of a horse. Their
arrows are about five feet long, and made of three pieces: that is, the
middle is made out of reed, and the two other parts of black wood. These
pieces are so precisely fitted together and bound with little peelings of bark
that they could not be better joined. Their arrows have only two feathers,
each one a foot long, which (since they use no glue) are also very neatly
bound with cotton thread. At the tip they put pointed bones on some, on
other a half-foot of dried and hardened cane, fashioned like a lancet and
just as sharp; and sometimes the end of a tail of the rayfish, which is
extremely venomous. Since the arrival of the French and Portuguese, the
savages in imitation of them have begin to use an arrowhead of iron, or
failing that, a nail’s point.130

Léry’s passage gives his readers an indication of the high level of Tupi

craftsmanship in the manufacture of these bows, describing the labor and resources

involved in the creation of such objects. His detailed account is indicative of the

nature of European interest in collecting such artifacts, was propelled by technical,

material, and cultural curiosity.

As Staden and Léry describe, villages that were subject to attack often

maintained palisades of wood, palm or earth to protect the malocas, which we can

see in one of Staden’s woodcuts, just as they made human traps with pits and

twisted vines, or fires from which lethal pepper fumes would emanate (Fig. 11).131

Thus according the European sources, when on the offensive, warriors from many

130
Léry, 114.
131
Balée,"The Ecology,” 253-254.

70
villages banded together to go on these raids; Balée has estimated the average size

of a military expedition at around 4,442 men, an extraordinary display of might.132

Léry describes the targets of these military journeys as lying some distance away

from their own villages, usually some seventy-five to 105 miles.133 He paints a

vivid picture of the battle itself, when amid shrieking howls, the sounds of the

trumpet called the inubia and flutes made of human armbones and thighbones, the

men would raid a particular village and use their war-clubs, bows and arrows to

capture prisoners.134

Léry further narrates how the victorious captors displayed their prisoners

along the route home, while the captive expressed her/his contempt at the captor

and exhibited bravery in face of their doom. These were just the first stages of the

established performative roles that the captive acted out along his journey towards

death. Before entering the village, the captors dressed the prisoner as a local,

shaved him, gave him elaborate feathered ornaments, and glued feathers to his

body with tree sap. Staden’s is the earliest account to describe this last process:

They stick them also to their bodies with a substance taken from the trees.
They smear themselves with this substance when they wish to feather
themselves, and the feathers adhere to it. 135

The women of the village celebrated the occasion by singing and dancing and

foretelling the day of execution. They asked the prisoners to perform many tasks,

including cleaning the graves and weapons of the deceased in order to “renew”

132
Balée,"The Ecology,” 254.
133
One league = three miles. Léry actually gives the figure as “25 to 35 leagues.” Léry, 116.
134
Léry, 113. These flutes are described in Léry’s text as “fifes and flutes.”
135
Staden, 144.

71
them for the heirs. Touching objects associated with the dead was dangerous,

unless first renewed by a captive. The prisoner could be kept by the captor, or

given to the captor’s closest male relative as a gift. Whichever man had the

privilege of slaying the prisoner would gain a new name in the process.136

As Thevet describes, the captor or his relatives could also trade the captive

for feathers, which, given the enormous prestige associated with rituals of capture

and execution, gives further indication of the symbolic importance and material

value of these items.137 To visually mark his status, the captive would be given a

string of beads to wear around the neck, enumerating the time period before his/her

execution. The village council selected this date and sent invitations to friendly

communities.

From the perspective of Staden and Léry, in the performance of this

execution ritual, the captive was not supposed to fear his impending death, since a

brave warrior who had been captured should long for this release.138 Although at

various points during his captivity the prisoner was allowed theatrically to protest

his situation, these complaints, this was not acceptable behavior during the actual

execution. Should the captive escape, he would not be welcomed back to his

community; instead, his home village would have killed him upon return, pointing

out the larger cultural acceptance of this captive-captor relationship. Yves

136
Acquiring new names was one of the most important cultural practices of the Tupi. Staden tells
us: “They [the Tupi] call themselves by the names of wild animals and have indeed many names,
with this distinction, however. This they retain until they are fit to bare arms and able to slay their
enemies, and as many as they kill so many names they have.” See Staden, 144.
137
Thevet #2, Ch. 47.
138
Staden, Ch. XV; Léry, Ch. XV.

72
d’Evreux, a French Capuchin friar who accompanied Claude d’Abbeville to the

northeastern region of Maranhão in the first decade of the seventeenth century,

records an interesting story of a Tupi prisoner the Europeans rescued from his

captors. The captive man was asked if he was thankful to be alive, and he

responded:

I would be sorry to die in my bed, and not die in the manner of the great
ones, in the midst of the dances and drinking, and avenge myself before
dying on those who would have eaten me. For whenever I consider that I
am the son of a great one of my country, and that my father was feared, and
that everyone surrounded him to listen when he went to the carbet
[assembly], and seeing myself now a slave, without painting, without
plumes attached to my head, arms and wrists, as the sons of the great ones
of our region are adorned, I wish I were dead.139

This suggests that the effects of European intervention into Tupiguarani warfare

and rituals led to profound disruptions of social and cultural practices and had

direct bearing on the lived experience of those caught in the middle.

Léry relates that during the period of a prisoner’s captivity within a Tupi

village the detainee was treated kindly, given ample food, allowed to hunt and fish,

and to participate in the feasts of the community. His first day of a prisoner’s

captivity was marked by painting the prisoner black, adorning him with eggshells

on his face, and with red feathers on his body. Léry also tells us how varied the

length of captivity could be:

They will keep these captives for greater or lesser periods of time, without
any predetermined limit, according to whether they find the men good

139
This passage is quoted in Janet Whatley’s endnotes to Léry, 244.

73
 hunters, or good fisherman, and the women adept at gardening or gathering
oysters.140

According to Léry, a captive could even marry the widow of a warrior who had

been killed before his capture. His relationship to his new wife would be the same

as anyone else’s within the community and sometimes he would even have

children during this period.141 The only indication of his status as a captive was

that he was ultimately subservient to his master, who would also be his executioner

(and who was given some restrictions in behavior from the rest of the village).

Women could also be taken as prisoners and wedded as secondary wives or

concubines by their future executioners. The European fascination with the

gendering of warfare rituals is significant, as it is mentioned across most early

modern sources, giving some indication of the perceived strangeness of such

practices.

Moreover, according to Léry, Thevet and Staden, the execution process

took place over a series of days. The cord used to bind him was bleached and

ritually knotted. The executioners also painted and adorned themselves with

feathers. For subsequent days and night there were prescribed rituals staged with

the prisoner, which including singing to the captive about his fate, dancing with

instruments, and even mocking the captive’s escape. The prisoner spent his last

140
Léry, 122. Thevet reports that younger men were sometimes kept as prisoners for fifteen or
twenty years before being killed. See Thevet #1, Cap. XL.
141
Any (unborn) child of a prisoner would be killed after birth. It is suggested that the Tupi
believed that the male parent alone was the maker of the child and therefore the child of a male
captive was an enemy by blood. Gândavo has a vivid description of the event. See Gândavo, 107-
108.

74
night in a maloca with women only, who sang songs to him to proclaim his pride

as a warrior and the ruin of his enemies. He was given a special nut to eat to

prevent his bleeding too much on the following day. I mention these details to aid

in how European observers understood the accoutrements of war, and gave

meaning to the material things they saw.

The ceremonial club that was used to kill the captive was apparaently

consecrated the night before in a maloca, as we can see in a woodcut by Staden

(Figs. 12 & 13). Sousa gives a detailed description of the executioner’s weapon.

The war-club, like the prisoner, was decorated, with green eggshells glued to the

wood base and handle and a tassel of feathers attached to the end.142 This tasseled-

feathered base in fact, describes almost exactly the surviving war-clubs in

collections today. The war-club was then suspended from the roof of a maloca

while women danced and sang around it the entire night.

In another episode of his visual narration of the execution, Staden shows us

what happens after the consecration of the war-club, which is yet another occasion

for drinking cauim, and for wearing feathered mantles (Fig. 14). In this picture,

gender roles are also clearly delineated, as seen previously in Thevet’s picture

(Fig. 4), the men and women interacting in a prescribed fashion. The women are

shown serving the beverage to the men around them –– distributing the liquid to

the men in ceramic bowls. One case a squatting man sips the manioc beer from a

straw. If we look to the row of dancing men in the background of the image, they

142
The warrior’s special adornments are discussed in Sousa, 286-287.

75
are all holding maracas, while the leader of the groups, in the process of moving

outside the image, wears a Tupi “half-cloak,” which I will describe in detail in the

next chapter. This is important, for it indicates that feathered cloaks were worn not

only in funerary rites, as we saw with Thevet, but also for cauim festivities after an

execution. Indeed another squatting man in Staden’s woodcut also wears a plumed

mantle. Staden visually demarcates this cauim drinking in a sequence of images

describing the ritual execution –– the scene falling between the consecration of the

war-club and the actual execution.

The staged event continues in the morning, when the older women in the

community dragged the prisoner to the village square. The fabric mussurana that

was put around his neck to count down the days towards execution was now

placed around his waist for the ritual ceremony, as both Sousa describes and

Staden illustrates in his woodcut of this part of the execution process (Fig. 15).143

Léry describes how a Tupi prisoner was allowed to give voice to his anger at the

execution and to throw things, such as potshards and fruit, at the crowd encircling

him. This part of the ceremony was often rowdy and lasted for quite a long period

of time. After lighting a fire, the ceremonial club was passed around to every man

present at the ceremony to grant each warrior the power to catch a prisoner in the

future. The executioner would then appear, painted and donning a long feathered

cloak. Léry tells us that:

143
Sousa spells this muçurana and describes them like “cabos de cabrestos” in Africa, but made
from “thick cotton.” See Sousa, 284.

76
 He who is to strike the blow, who has not shown himself all day, comes out
of a house gripping one of those great wooden swords [sic], richly
decorated with beautiful feathers of the finest quality, as are also his
headdresses and his other adornments.144

Léry relates that the relative’s of the victor followed closely behind him, singing

and beating drums; their bodies, like that of the executioner, were smeared with

white ashes. At this juncture the plumed executioner mocked the captive about his

death and the captive retaliated with boastful comments upon his deeds in life, as

well as the vengeance that his relatives would seek.

The executioner then struck the prisoner over the head with the ritual war-

club, the victim often dodging many blows before the fatal one struck. When he

fell down and his skull was shattered, the crowd whistled and shouted. The

position in which the body fell was considered an omen for the executioner. The

prisoner’s wife, if he had one, would shed tears or “perform some slight mourning

beside the body.”145 Once the executioner had killed the victim, Léry continues, he

ran inside his maloca, escaping from his victim’s ghost. The executioner’s sisters

and cousins paraded around the village, announcing the executioner’s new name.

All the male and female relatives of the executioner also took new names.

According to the sources, the feast of the victim’s flesh would begin shortly

thereafter, with certain parts of the body considered more sacred than others and

therefore given to special guests. From Léry we can learn what would then happen

to the body of the dead captive.

144
Léry, 123.
145
Léry, 125.

77
 After that, the one who owned the prisoner, with as many neighbors of his
choosing as he pleases, will take this poor body, cleave it and immediately
cut it into pieces; no butcher in this country could more quickly dismember
a sheep.146

The French chronicles of Thevet, Léry, and later the Capuchins Abbeville

and Evreux, all make reference to human flesh being cooked on a moquem, a form

of grill that the Tupi used to roast and cure much of their fish and game from

hunts.147 Elaborate vocabulary is mapped for words relating to the grill throughout

French sources, giving an indication to the utter fascination with this practice in

travel narratives. The textual descriptions of such a cooking device no doubt led to

the highly charged engravings of the Brazilian cannibals on maps and in prints,

which show a degree of propagandistic “barbarism.” Léry himself took issue with

these depictions, on what seems to be primarily a technical level – e.g. human flesh

is grilled on a grate, not a spit:

However, I shall here refute the error of those who, in their maps of the
world, have represented and painted the Brazilian savages roasting human
flesh on a spit, as we cook mutton legs and other meat; furthermore, they
have also falsely shown them cutting it with great iron knives on benches,
and hanging up the meat for display, as our beef butchers do over here.
Since these things are no truer than the tales of Rabelais about Panurge
escaping from the spit larded and half-cooked, it is easy to see that those
who make such maps are ignorant, and have never had knowledge of the
things they set forth.148

146
Léry, 126.
147
The Tupi grill (moquem) was translated by sixteenth-century French travelers in a variety of
ways, including ajoupa, boucon, paletuvier, tiburon. For an elaborate history of the term see Plínio
Ayrosa, Têrmos Tupís no Português do Brasil (São Paulo: Emprêsa gráfica da "Revista dos
tribunais", 1937), 169-173
148
Léry, 127.

78
The care with which Léry corrects the misapprehension that the Tupi carve human

flesh and hang it “for display” indicates that he was at some level concerned about

questions of what would today be called cultural relativism. It also indicates that

he was almost certainly aware of the widely circulated German woodcut that

accompanied many of Vespucci’s published letters, which I will explore in

Chapter 4. The images matched to Vespucci often served as a basis for early

cartographic images of the New World.

To continue with Léry’s dramatic exegesis of the execution, after the post-

battle rite a ceremony took place in which incisions were made into the

executioner’s body with an agouti tooth, creating a patterning on the body, into

which a black powder was placed in the incisions.

He [the executioner] eats nothing, but on the other hand orders himself
scarified over the whole body, because they consider it certain that he
would soon die if he did not spill some of his own blood as soon as he had
performed his duty.149

According to European accounts, the more profuse the scarification, the greater the

prestige the warriors gained in the community.

This highly charged description of Tupi warfare and the subsequent

execution of a prisoner is a palimpsest of European accounts of “observed” events.

For this project it is useful not so much as an accurate and objective description of

a cultural rite, but as a fabricated colonial context that purported to explicate the

function of Tupi material objects. Feathers and feathered capes, as with war-clubs,

body adornment and so forth, were framed by the vivid and visceral textual
149
Gândavo, 106.

79
narratives of Thevet, Léry, Staden and others. These accounts formed the primary

source of information concerning the Tupi and their featherwork, and colonial

Brazil overall, for early modern Europeans. According to Thevet, feathered

mantles were worn for funerary rites. Léry suggests that plumes adorned Tupi

bodies as signs of power or prestige during local assemblies, as signs of captivity

when feathers were pasted to the body with tree-sap during captive-captor rite, and

as markers of the shifting identity of the executioners who wore the capes at the

culmination of the captivity narrative. Staden links the scarlet mantles to other

communal events, such as the celebrations involving cauim drinking. Within the

Tupi-European interculture, along Brazil’s coast and in Europe, feathered cloaks

were signifiers of the strangeness, “gruesomeness,” and alterity of the Tupi whom

made and wore them.

Acoiave, or a “cloak of feathers”

Many early chroniclers make clear that feathered capes were worn for a variety of

ceremonial occasions within sixteenth-century Tupinambá culture. Their accounts

of Tupi social structures, settlements, ritual life and warfare constructed for their

readers a foundation and context for understanding the feathered vestments then

entering European collections. Tupi feathered capes were worn for funeral

processions and for warfare, as in the Thevet image with which we began, perhaps

demarcating a powerful individual (Fig. 4); in ceremonial rites by the pajés, as we

saw in the de Bry engraving with the three shamans, as evidence of their

80
supernatural powers (Fig. 7). From the textual descriptions of warfare it is clear

that sixteenth-century Europeans in Brazil documented the executioner as an

individual adorned in a feathered cape before he bludgeoned his captive. Staden’s

woodcut of caped men, in turn, indicates that these vestments were also worn as

part of cauim drinking celebrations.

In 1614, the French Capuchin Friar Claude d’Abbeville chronicled his time

living in the northern Brazilian region of Maranhão in his Histoire de la mission

des peres capucins en l'isle de maragnan et terres circonvoisins [History of the

Capuchin Fathers on the Island of Maranhão and Nearby Lands]. In Chapter

XLVI of his chronicle, he describes not only the nudity of the Tupinambá, as did

so many of our previous writers, but also their feathered adornments, giving his

readers both a sense of an overall Tupi aesthetic and the special occasions for

usage of such elaborate attire. For instance, Abbeville first addresses the broader

use of feathers as dress. He tells us that the Tupi wear feathers and feathered

adornments made from red, blue, green, yellow and other “diverse colors” and

worn on a broad range of occasions: days of cauim drinking; those of ritual

sacrifice; those of the puncturing of their children’s lips; on days of departure for

warfare and other “solemn assemblies.”150 In Abbeville’s words:

All of these [other feathered adornments] are admirable, but this is nothing
compared to the mantles they call assoyäue; they are fabrics with various
of the most beautiful and diverse feathers which descend to the middle of
the thigh and sometimes unto the knees. They use these not everyday, but
once-in-a-while, not for shame to see themselves nude, but for pleasure; not

150
Abbeville #1, 274: “affemblées solennelles.”

81
 to hide their nudity, but as an adornment, and to make themselves more
brave during their feasts and solemn assemblies.151

This vibrant passage illustrates the multiplicity of functions (and therefore

significations) inherent in feathered adornments that may at first seem fragmented

and confusing. He simultaneously shows us the range of ceremonial life within the

indigenous Brazilian landscape, and gives us specific examples of the kinds of

cloaks.

It is worth noting that Abbeville’s commentary describes cultural practices

from the northern region of Maranhão, and that it was written over one hundred

years after the conquest. These two facts demonstrate that though these objects

were part of a large corpus of feather adornments, for European observers, they

still stood apart as superbly crafted indigenous objects well into the colonial

period. The capes that Abbeville saw were produced in an area far from the

southern regions of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where Léry, Thevet and Staden

described their impressions of Tupi adornments. This helps confirm that these

particular forms of featherworking were widespread along the length of the

Brazilian coast and that they continued to be made and used during the colonial

period.

151
Trans. mine, with the kind assistance of Amy Freund. “Tout cela est admirable, mais ce n’est
encore rien au regard de leurs manteux qu’ils appellent assoyäue tissus de divers plumages les plus
beaux quise puissent dire, qui leur batiusques à my cuisses ou iusquesaux genoüils don’t ils se
seruent: non tousiours, mais quelquesois: non poui vergongne defe voir nuds, mais par plaisir: non
pour cacher seulement leur nudité, mais pour se parer & estre plus braves à leurs sestins &
affemblées solennelles, où il fait beau les voir si bravement reuestus.” Abbeville #1, 274.

82
 Abbeville’s comments also give us a further indication of their intended

function. These cloaks were worn on celebratory occasions, as well as those of

mourning. In other words, they could be worn for important feasts, and victorious

warfare rituals, and also for funerals, as Thevet noted. Significantly, these cloaks

were not donned often, but “once-in-a-while,” confirming that these were reserved

for events of particular ritual importance. The author provides us with linguistic

insight into how the cloaks were understood by the Tupi themselves. The term that

he assigns to them –– acoiave –– contains the root pre-fix “açoi,” which means “to

cover” or “spread,” and the suffix “aba,” that expresses the mode of covering,

“the mantle” [of feathers] as a noun. 152 The word thus means “a covering (or

mantle) of feathers.” Abbeville’s passage describes two lengths of feathered

cloaks, one that reaches the knee and the other that extends to the middle of the

thigh, giving us evidence of a variation of craft production and mirroring the kinds

of capes that we have surviving in European collections today. The Tupi words

assojaba, assoyäu, and guaraabucu also circulated in the colonial period to

indicate a “cloak of feathers.”153 My next chapter will focus upon the feathered

capes themselves, considering their materials and manufacture, as well as a fuller

range of their early modern associations. This will include the comparisons

152
The suffix “-aoba” can be both a noun and a verb. As a noun it can indicate cloth or clothing,
and as a verb it means to dress, to envelope, to wrap. For the roots of Tupi words see dictionary
Tibiriçá, 60.
153
French sources use assoyäue and açoiaba and describe them as “turbans” made of plumes, used
in solemnities, possibly an analogy to traditional Moslem headdresses. The German naturalist
Georg Marcgraf uses the term aracoya in his Historia Naturalis (1648) as analogous to ornatum in
Latin. In the Old Tupi dictionary we find assojaba (“cloak or garland of feathers”) and guaraabucu
(“long cloak of feathers”). See Tibiriçá, 69, 103.

83
Europeans made between the Tupi acoiave, assojaba, and assoyäu and Christian

liturgical vestments, but also notions of mimicry, deception and mockery implicit

in these comparative strategies.

84
 Chapter 2:

“Their Treasures Are the Feathers of Birds”: Tupinambá Featherwork

There is no community of goods among them and they know nothing of money.
Their treasures are the feathers of birds. He that has many feathers is rich, and he
that has a stone in his lip is also counted among the rich.
–– Hans Staden, The True History of His Captivity, 1557154

Our Tupinamba are astonished to see the French and others from distant countries
go to so much trouble to get their araboutan, or brazilwood. On one occasion one
of their old men questioned me about it: “What does it mean that you Mairs and
Peros (that is, French and Portuguese) come from so far for wood to warm
yourselves? Is there none in your own country?” I answered him yes, and in great
quantity, but none of the same kinds as theirs; nor any brazilwood, which we did
not burn as he thought, but rather carried away to make dye, just as they
themselves did to redden their cotton cords, feathers, and other articles.
–– Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, 1580155

Introduction: Warhaftige Historia (1557)

At the beginning of the first Marburg edition of Hans Staden’s Warhaftige

Historia, we find a woodcut frontispiece that illustrates two key issues of great

interest to himself and other observers: the cultural coding of the Tupi social body

and the cultural value of bird feathers (Fig. 16). 156 Staden’s woodcut depicts two

Tupi men in feathered regalia, facing one another as they stand in elegant

154
Staden, 147. This quotation comes out of Chapter XX, “Of their possessions.” I use Lett’s
translation for all Staden citations in the dissertation, unless corrected by Whitehead’s new edited
edition, in press.
155
Léry, 102.
156
This particular woodcut does not appear in all editions. Problems arise because two 1557
editions of Staden’s text were printed in Marburg and two printed in Frankfurt. One Marburg
edition is still considered the “true” first edition, as it preceded the other by a matter of months ––
printed during “Carnival of 1557.” This woodcut featuring two Tupi plumed men was only
included in the Marburg edition, on the second page title page. See the bibliographic entry for
“Staden” in Moraes, Vol. II., 280-286.

85
European contrapposto poses. These men have feathers pasted onto their bodies

and foreheads. The figure at left carries a war club with its plumed attachment

covering his groin, while the figure on the right wears a blossoming featherpiece

on his buttocks and dons a plumed headdress. The absence of breasts and long

hair, and the presence of weapons, indicates that Staden’s figures are both men.157

The skin of the two men is pasted with feather down, the appearance of which is

created by a series of small dashes on the otherwise unblemished skin of the naked

torsos, arms and foreheads of the figures. Additionally, Staden shows both men’s

heads as shaven, with the forehead of the figure on the right covered. It is likely

glued with toucan skin covered with yellow feathers, an alternative head

adornment to the down bonnet.158

From the moment of the first Tupi-European encounter, the Tupi have been

inextricably linked in both text and image to the feathers and featherwork they

wore. Staden’s frontispiece raises a series of questions. What would Staden’s

readers have understood about the plumes and down that so often decorated the

bodies of Tupi persons? As I will discuss in Chapters 3 and 4, European

chroniclers of the Tupi and their rituals likened their featherwork to the ceremonial

157
In Borba de Moraes’ discussion of this frontispiece he calls them an “Amerindian man and
woman.” This is perhaps an error engendered by the expectations that the pendant portrait format
and the European poses raise. See Morães, Vol. II, 281.
158
Thevet discusses the method of procuring toucans and preparing the skin in Ch. 47 of his
Singularitez, in his discussion on the Tupi feather trade. Incidentally, Thevet was the first European
writer to give the name “Toucan” to this bird, even including a full image in his book. See also
Léry’s description, History, 89-90. Métraux tells us this adornment method was used, in particular,
for covering the shaved or plucked forehead. Métraux #3, 107.

86
vestments of both religion and kingship. What was it about the form and function

of these plumed garments that created this effect?

As I will show, the Tupi employed a sophisticated repertoire of

construction and feather modification techniques, including a variety of complex

knots that controlled how the attached feathers lay and moved when worn.

Intimately familiar with the materials they used, they chose particular types of

feathers (contour, flight, semi-down and down) for different purposes. Feather

modification was also an important part of the process, with feathers trimmed or

their colors modified, either by dyeing or by manipulating how they grew on the

bird itself. What ends did these serve? Were they mimetic? Did they emulate for

the viewer aspects of the appearance and behavioral characteristics of a particular

bird species? What was the larger function and symbolic value behind donning

feathered paraphernalia and dressing, as it were, like a bird? The colonial sources

provide us with rich descriptions of the place birds held in colonial Tupi culture, of

the objects they made from the feathers and of the birds themselves. Relying on

both these sources and a close examination of the featherwork itself, I examine

what was recorded about how the Tupi treated, stored and worked these precious

materials.

Jean de Léry is particularly informative about the practice of coating the

body with down and feathers to imitate the soft fluffy appearance of a young bird

prior to the growth of its contour feathers, including a description of the process of

87
preparing the plumes. His account makes clear how the European importation to

Brazil of animals and tools had a material impact on this process:

Our Americans have a great many ordinary hens, which the Portuguese
introduced among them and for which they have a use that I will now
describe. They pluck the white ones, and after they have boiled the feathers
and the down and dyed them red with brazilwood, they cut them up finer
than mincemeat (with iron tools since they have acquired them – before
they used sharpened stones). Having first rubbed themselves with a certain
gum that they keep for this purpose, they cover themselves with these, so
that they are feathered all over: their bodies arms and legs all bedecked; in
this condition they seem to be all downy, like pigeons or other birds newly
hatched.159

Léry’s description of the use of white chicken feathers and the process of

modifying their color is significant for a number of reasons. In a colonial

environment, the Tupi adapted the materials and tools available, which suggests

restricted access to their traditional sources of feathers, especially the scarlet ibis.

Only one of the eleven Tupi capes now in Europe makes use of chicken feathers,

albeit in a very different manner. The Copenhagen cape with tassels (#2) has a

small patch of chicken skin with remnants of feathers tied to the interior matrix.

Invisible when worn, its function is unknown.

Léry’s passage informs us about one of their feather modification

techniques, but it also resonates with the prime motivation of Europeans,

especially the French, to fight so concertedly over control of the brazilwood coast:

159
Léry, 59. Some chroniclers used this visual image of the feathered Tupi man to denounce
Americans as “hairy men,” resembling the Wild Men of Medieval Legends. Léry in fact –– in the
paragraph following the feather description –– claims that his European countrymen erroneously
viewed the feathering of the body as hirsutism. For a classic study on the Medieval legend see
Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: a Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology
(New York: Octagon Books, 1970).

88
the wood providing an inexpensive source of red dye that was used in the

production of luxury cloth and garments in Europe. Thus the evocation of

brazilwood in this context shows how, from an early date, Tupi cultural practices

could be seen as synecdochal representations of important New World natural

commodities. Brazilwood and the Tupi themselves as laborers of these goods,

serviced European mercantile interests, an issue I discuss throughout this study.

Portugal’s earliest written account of the Tupi indigenes describes them in terms of

their plumed appearance: the feathered ornaments and feathered bodies stand in for

Brazilian-ness, New World-ness, and Native American-ness.

The Frenchman’s comparison of the men and women pasted with down and

chopped feathers to “newly hatched birds” may help clarify aspects of the

surviving Tupi material. No object, in fact, does a better job of providing the

“look” of a newly hatched bird than the yellow and green-hued, feathered,

Copenhagen bonnet (Fig. 17).160 Fitted closely to the head like a skull-cap and

produced entirely from down, the bonnet’s appearance has the look of a just-born

fowl, as very young birds lack the firm outer feathers. Clearly a very distinct

aesthetic choice was made in deciding to use these feathers over the more easily

acquired exterior plumes, creating an extraordinarily delicate textural effect that

mimics baby chicks. A similar effect is found on the attached bonnet of the Milan

cape (#11).

160
This bonnet comes from the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, object # EH5932. Unlike the other
feathered Tupi objects from their collection, this headpiece has never been cleaned due to the
fragility of the down feathers. Though it appears to us today as a dark, army green, it was likely a
brilliant yellow-green when first produced.

89
 The Tupi had a rich vocabulary relating to birds, feathers and feathered

objects. Linguistically, the range of meaning attached to their basic word for “bird”

provides at least a hint of the Tupi semantic field of feathers and feathered things.

The word ará (which is now the genus of the macaws and the Portuguese name for

the same) means several things in Old Tupi, including “sun” and “light,” “day,”

“time,” as well as a word used to refer to “anything alive.”161 The Brazilian

anthropologist Curt Nimuendaju has discussed a myth among the Sipaia –– a

group culturally related to the Tupi –– who believed that the Sun god’s crown was

made of red feathers of the ará.162 The root ara is also used in words for

featherwork. Araroye, for example, is an alternative term for the rhea plume

enduap seen in Staden’s frontispiece.

Staden tells us in this chapter’s epigraph that the Tupi’s “treasures are the

feathers of birds.” Staden and other commentators noted that the accumulation of

feathers and featherwork was an indicator of personal status as a hunter/provider,

of material wealth and, by extension, of leadership. Feathers and greenstones, also

seen in Staden’s frontispiece (Fig. 16), were the main items of Tupiguarani

exchange, and thus served as a marker of those individuals with larger extra-

communal networks. The Tupi traded toucan feathers for rhea feathers “from their

neighbors,” the Tapuya, during interludes in their supposedly perpetual state of

war. Rhea feathers were then used to construct the enduaps that so prominently

adorned Tupi buttocks during ceremonial occasions. In fact, Thevet devotes an

161
Tibiriçá, 63.
162
Métraux #2, 14.

90
entire chapter of his Singularitez to Tupi trade from which we can glean much

about the importance of a wide variety of feathers, including those used for the

enduap:

Their greatest trade is with Osstridge [i.e., rhea] fethers, garnishings of

swords made of fethers, and other fethers muche let by and esteemed, the
which are brought from the higher country to the sea side, above a
hundreth…leagues, also great quantitie of colours white and black, also of
the greene stones that they beare hanging in their lips, as we have
shewed.163

Thevet’s reference to the “Osstridge” (ostrich), an African bird, instead denotes the

rhea, another ratite of the order Struthioniformes that closely resembles the former

in shape and feather type. Sousa also refers to “ostriches,” (nhandu-guaca in Tupi)

noting that they were raised domestically.164 What is particularly interesting, as

well, is Thevet’s reference to trade between the distinct spatial and ecological

zones of the highlands and the seacoast, important geographic distinctions in the

ethnographic terrain of colonial Brazil. Natural resources were disseminated from

their points of origin, sometimes to great distances.

Part I. Trade: feathers, birds, stones

That the coastal Tupiguarani peoples traded with non-Tupi peoples from inland

geographic zones of Brazil, including areas of higher altitude, is well established.

What we know less about, however, is just how far inland their trade networks

extended for the procurement of feathers from particular bird species that lived in

163
This is from Ch. 47 of the original English translation: Thevet #2, 73.
164
See Sousa, Cap. LXXVIII. See also Gândavo, Ch. VII.

91
other climatic zones. The emphasis that Thevet places on “fethers” in his chapter

on trade is an index of the circulation and exchange value of these items within

Tupi society.

Other precious items are in view in Staden’s picture (Fig. 16) as well. The

men in the image also wear greenstone (jadeite or actinolite) or whitestone (beryl,

amazonite, chrysophase, chalcedony, quartz, or crystal) labrets in their chins and

cheeks, which Léry and other authors describe as a sign of social status, since these

stones were usually only worn in this way by chiefs or pajés, and were also highly

valued items for trade. 165 The man on the left wears a necklace that is likely a

composite of two different types of chokers: one the rounded shell beads of the

Strombus pugilis, a neck adornment also only worn by chiefs or important Tupi

men; the other a crescent-shaped pendant called a y-aci, meaning “moon,” made

from what Léry’s describes as “an even-textured bone, white as alabaster.”166 The

man on the right is more richly adorned with feathers, for he wears not only a

plumed diadem on his head, but also an enormous enduap on his buttocks. The

form of the headpiece, which mimics in miniature the enduap, differs from the

surviving examples today. Perhaps Staden is showing us a yempenambi, which

Léry describes as follows:

165
Métraux #3, 108. For a firsthand description see Léry, 58. On the importance of greenstone to
Amazonian societies see Arie Boomart, "Gifts of the Amazons: ‘Green Stone’ Pendants and Beads
as Items of Ceremonial Exchange in Amazonia and the Caribbean," Antropologica 67 (1987): 33-
54.
166
Métraux tells us that these beaded necklaces could be as long as 30 ft. in length and would
require coiling many times around the neck. Métraux #3, 107. For a description of the y-aci see
Léry, 59.

92
 As for the head ornaments of our Tupinikin, aside from the tonsure in the
front and the hair hanging down the back, which I have mentioned, they
bind and arrange wing feathers of rosy or red hues, or other colors, to make
adornments for their foreheads somewhat resembling the real or false hair,
called “rackets,” or “batwings,” with which the ladies and young girls of
France and other countries over here have been decorating their heads; you
would say that they have acquired this invention from our savages, who
call this device yempenambi.167

This gives some further explication for the many manifestations of headpieces,

headdresses and laurel-like crowns of feathers that often appear in depictions of

the Tupi, as well as an indication of the binding techniques and the “rosy” color of

the headgear, absent from the woodblock image. The enduap that the man wears

on his buttocks, made of rhea plumes, is shown at a different angle from most

depictions, such as that shown from the back in Thevet’s funerary procession (Fig.

4). From Staden’s text we have a description of the enduap’s use, as well as an

illustration of an enduap showing the string that would hold the ornament in place

around the body (Fig. 18):

They also make an adornment of ostrich plumes, which take the form of a
large round ball to which feathers are attached. They tie this to their
buttocks when they set out to war or make merry. It is called enduap.168

Once again, featherwork is marked out in Staden’s text as an accoutrement of Tupi

ritual, an exceptional adornment used to mark a special event. Characteristically,

these figures are staged, shown wearing the most elaborate and typical

appurtenances, as they pose in elegant contrapposto. Staden’s attention, in either

text or image, to technical detail is often minimal. There is no evidence in his

167
Léry, 60.
168
Staden, 144.

93
woodcut, for example, of the mentioned string that is used to attach the ball of

feathers. A woodcut by Léry, on the other hand, also shows a Tupi man wearing an

enduap (which he names araroye in his text), but this time with the string that is

used to attach it visible across his body (Fig. 19).

In similar manner, Staden’s sparse commentary on the enduap does not

compare to the more fulsome version of Léry, who gives us greater detail

concerning its physical construction.

To finish off their outfitting: they procure from their neighbors great grey-
hued ostrich feathers (which shows that there are some of these huge,
heavy birds in certain parts of those lands, where, however, not to
misrepresent anything, I myself have not seen any). Binding all the quill
ends together, with the other ends of the feathers spread out like a little
tent, or like a rose, they make a great cluster of plumes that they call
araroye. They tie this around their hips with a cotton string, the narrow part
next to the flesh, and the spread-out feathers facing outward. When they are
rigged out in this you would say (as it has no other purpose) that they are
carrying a chicken coop attached to their buttocks.169

In at least cursory fashion, Léry notes the color of the plumes, their grey hue

further confirming that these are from a South American rhea. He further, albeit

vaguely, mentions the binding process and the careful arrangement of the plumes,

as well as the means of attaching the object to the body. Closer attention to such

169
Léry, 61. There seem to be several names circulating for these adornments; enduap, as well as
araroye, iandu-ave, and yandou-äue in the French sources. Enduap was first coined by Karl
Friedrich Philip von Martius in the nineteenth century and is now the most commonly used term.
As I discussed earlier, these were not “ostriches” but the flightless bird called the greater rhea
(Rhea americana). There are two species of New World rheas. The larger, Rhea americana, is the
presumed bird of the Tupi plumes, while the other is the smaller Rhea darwini of Patagonia. The
greater rhea are native to the pampas, ranging from Southern Brazil and Paraguay southward
through Uruguay and into Patagonia in Argentina, reaching as far south as the Rio Negro. This
gives us some indication of the breadth of the Tupi trading networks. The Rhea feathers are rough
in texture, looking almost hairlike in appearance and mostly grey and dull-brown in color. For a
brief study of its habitat range see Samuel Adams, "Notes on the Rhea or South American Ostrich,"
The Condor 10, no. 2 (1908): 69-71.

94
detail is an appropriate part of the rhetoric that distinguishes the texts of the

scholar Léry from those of the German soldier Staden.

Since it bears upon the technical aspects of constructing featherwork, a

consideration of the birds that supplied feathers for the Tupi, their habits and

habitats, and the difficulties they presented in terms of harvesting the feathers, is

necessary. In addition, I will address what the written sources tell us about the

presence of certain bird species within Tupi communities, kept as pets as well as a

source at hand of feathers.

Part II. The birds of Brazil

According to early modern chroniclers, birds provided the Tupi with many things

beyond feathers, including companionship, an access to some form of spiritual

experience (through song, color, movement), amusement for children, and

wealth/prestige via exchange and accumulation.170

To give some example of the rich variety of tropical birds in the Amazon,

any given region of the rainforest could have up to 500 avian species resident at

any point of the year. Nonetheless, studies have estimated that most Amerindian

groups in South America have used only about 4% of these species for their

featherwork.171 The almost exclusive use of feathers from a very limited group of

170
A wonderful example of the potency of birds comes from Gândavo. In his sixteenth-century
discussion of Tupi warfare he explains when Tupi warriors departed for war, if they encounter an
evil spirit in the guise of a bird they will desist from their mission entirely. Furthermore, a besieged
village will surrender if their domesticated parrots utter certain ominous words. Gândavo, 96.
171
Mark Robbins, "The Sources of Feathers," in Reina, 117-26.

95
bird species — the scarlet ibis, macaws, the oropendola — in the surviving

artifacts would seem to confirm that the Tupi were similarly selective. Period

sources stress that the Tupi use of birds and feathers was guided by strict cultural

principles, alluding to the deep connections between the human and animal worlds.

Métraux tells us that birds were abundant in Tupi villages and suggests that ducks,

turkeys, and pigeons were all domesticated, and that the Tupi eagerly received

European fowls as trade items, perhaps aiding in the dispersal of domestic

chickens in Eastern South America.172

The eating of birds was highly restricted within Tupi communities

according to European observers in the period, although eggs were widely

collected for food. In a Jesuit letter from 1610 –– one hundred and ten years after

European arrival in Brazil –– Father Jácome Monteiro describes a sacred bird that

could not be eaten by the Tupi:

The bird guaricuja, father and creator of fire, is privileged among the
Indians and has so much esteem that they would rather die of pure hunger
rather than eat or kill him.173

The sacrality of such birds certainly prohibited the eating of their flesh even if it

didn’t prevent them from being captured or hunted for their feathers. Despite the

late date of Monteiro’s letter, the cultural practice of shunning the flesh of birds

172
Métraux #3, 102. Beyond Léry, the best sources for Tupi birds include: Evreux, Ch. XVIII;
Gândavo, Ch. VII; Monteiro, [“Relação,”], 423-425; Thevet #1, Cap. XLVII, XLVIII, LI; Thevet
#3, 839, 938-940; Sousa, Tít. 10.
173
Trans. mine. “O pássaro guaricuja, senhor e autor do fogo, é entre os índios priviligiado e tem-
no em tanta estima, que antes morrerão de pura fome que comer que comer ou matar um deles.”
See Monteiro [“Relação,”] 408-409; 424. According to Monteiro, this multi-colored and highly
musical bird is also known as the guiranheenguetá in Tupi: “bird that speaks all of the bird
languages,” and is often kept in cages by the Amerindians.

96
was inevitably changed by European contact. We know that by the second half of

the seventeenth century birds had become a common food source.

The scarlet ibis or guará

The wading bird known today as the scarlet ibis (Eudocimus ruber) –– in Old Tupi

(and in modern Portuguese) the guará –– was not only a bird of great value for the

Tupi but also the source of the plumes out of which most of their featherwork was

made, and therefore of central importance for my dissertation (Fig. 20). A species

native to the Atlantic coast of tropical South America, related to storks and

spoonbills, these medium-to-large wading birds resemble short and intensely

colored flamingos. In the colonial period the guará was found along in

marshlands, tidal lagoons and mangrove areas along coastal Brazil, with

documented populations from the Island of Santa Catarina in the south to the north

coast of the State of Paraná. This coastal expanse was precisely where Europeans

first docked their caravels in South America. The Franciscan friar Cristóvão de

Lisboa (1583-1638) illustrates the scarlet ibis in his natural history text of

Maranhão from the 1620s, specifying its curved beak, its black-tipped flight wings,

its size (like “a chicken”), its habitat, and information concerning the wide

distribution of this bird.174 Since the eighteenth-century, the scarlet ibis population

174
Cristóvão de Lisboa and Jaime Walter, ed., História dos animaes e árvores do Maranhão
(Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses; Instituto de
Investigação Científica Tropical, 2000). The original text from Fol. 187 reads: “Guoara he pasoro
tamanho como hua gualinha vermelho como gram por todo o corpo os peis uermelhos como sangue
e o biquo cor de carne e as pomtas das penas e as azas pretas eles fazem seus filhos como as garsas

97
has been in decline. Today, the guará is most commonly found along the northern

coast of Brazil, in the states of Pará and Maranhão, extending still farther north

into Venezuela and beyond.

Unlike the hauntingly voiced bird that Léry describes, the scarlet ibis is

best known not for its song but for its vibrant appearance. Scarlet ibises vary in

color from white, brown, and grey when young, to a range from pale pink to a deep

scarlet or orange as adults. All adult scarlet ibises have wing tips marked black on

four of their outer primary feathers. The coloration change from adolescent to adult

results from feeding on crabs, shrimp, and other crustaceans that they find in soft

mud or under plants. The pink, orange or scarlet coloration of the adults is derived

from pigments that they ingest from these small creatures and from certain algae.

Ibises have long, thin, curved bills that aid them in their food gathering. The beaks

of the male of the species are thicker, turning a brilliant black during mating

season, while the female’s beaks always of consistent size and are much thinner.

Their long legs and toes make them adept at wading and at terrestrial living, but

they are excellent flyers and tend to nest in trees. Ibises usually lay two to four

eggs each. Guarás live in large “bands” of up to several hundred birds, roosting

together in trees to avoid predation.175

e fazem quoatro e simquo filhos e os ouos sam bramquos pimtados de pardo e o seu natural he
serem pretos de primeiro e depois pardos e uermelhos e branquos e depois de sererem [sic] de
quatorze ou quinze mezes se tornão todos vermelhos cor de gram e tem muito gramde camtidade
nesta tera do maranham e he guosto ue los coamdo fazem os filhos que se atirão hua arquabuzada
que se aleuamtão parese que todo o seu [sic] esta uermelho e he muito bom comer.”
175
Helmut Sick, Jürgen Haffer, Herculano F. Alvarenga, José Fernando Pacheco, and Paul Barruel,
eds.. Ornitologia brasileira, ed. rev. e ampliada por José Fernando Pacheco (Rio de Janeiro:
Editora Nova Fronteira, 1997), 214.

98
 Hans Staden noted this important bird during his capture among the Tupi,

and provided a more localized Tupi name –– Uwara Pirange (meaning “red” or

“half-red” in Old Tupi) –– for the scarlet creature.176

The Uwawe Pirange, [which] seeks its food by the sea and nests in rocks
close to the shore. This bird is about the size of a hen, with a long beak and
legs like a heron, but not so long. The feathers on the young birds are light
grey. Later, when they are fledged, the feathers become dark grey. They fly
about thus for a year, after which the plumage changes again and the whole
bird becomes red, as red as paint, and so it remains. The savages set great
store by these feathers.177

Though Staden had a less-than-scientific understanding of the process of

maturation of the scarlet ibis, his passage speaks to his skills as an observer, trying

to explain its varied coloration and noting the importance of the plumes for the

Tupi.

The Jesuit missionaries in Brazil also wrote valuable accounts of the guará

in the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which they described their

appearance, habitat and value. For example, one of the first Jesuits to arrival in

Brazil, Father José de Anchieta (1534-1597), speaks of the Tupi regard for the

guará:

There is also another form of maritime sparrow, going by the name of

guarâ, similar to the mergo [generic word for sea-bird], but with longer
shinbones, also with a prolonged neck and a lengthened and curved beak; it
feeds on crabs and is highly ravenous. It experiences a constant
metamorphosis: in young age it is covered with white feathers, that later
turn to ash-color, later they whiten again, however to a lesser whiteness
than before, ultimately they are decorated by a purple and most beautiful

176
For piranga see Tibiriçá, 158. Though one assumes that the word uwawe is an indicator of the
kind of red bird, it is not found in any Old Tupi dictionaries. For more period discussions of the
scarlet ibis see: Evreux, Cap. XL; Gândavo, Ch. VII.
177
Staden, 167.

99
 color; these [birds] are highly valued by the Brazilians since they use them
to ornate their hair and arms in their festivities.178

Anchieta’s discussion of the scarlet ibis touches on some important issues. His

letter indicates that the Jesuits were using the Tupi name for this bird by the year

1560. Like Staden, Anchieta’s letter also touches on the nature of the ibis’ color

change, the “metamorphosis, ” as he calls it. Anchieta goes further in his analysis

by making comparisons to known birds. Furthermore, he explains at least one of

the reasons why the Tupi held them in such, when he writes specifically of the

guará as the source of the feathers they use to “ornate their hair and arms in

festivities.”

Another Jesuit, the Portuguese Father Fernão Cardim, discusses the guará

in his famous Brazilian treatise of the 1580s, this time remarking not just on the

physical features of the bird, but on the more detailed function of the scarlet ibis

plumes within Tupi culture:

The feathers of this [bird] are highly esteemed by the Indians, and they
make diadems, fringes, with which they cover the weapons they use for
killing; and they make bracelets that they wear on their arms, and they put
them [the feathers] in their hair like rosebuds, and these are their jewels and
fabrics for which they adorn themselves in their feasts, and are so esteemed
that with many of their friends that eat human flesh, they give the contrary
parts of the body in exchange for these plumes.179

178
Trans. Markus Friedrich. “Est et alius passer marinus, guara nomine, mergo aequalis, sed tibiis
longioribus, collo itidem producto, protento et adunco rostro; cancris pascitur, voracissimus est. Hic
perpetuam quandam in se metamorphosim experitur: in prima enim aetate pinnis albis induitur,
quae deinde in cinericium colorem mutantur, post aliquod tempus albescunt iterum, minore tamen,
quam in prima aetate, candore, purpureo demum ac pulcherrimo colore decorantur; quae apud
Brasilles in magno sunt pretio, illis enim ad capillos ornandos et brachia in suis utuntur
solennitatibus.” José de Anchieta, "[Do Ir. José de Anchieta ao P. Diego Laynes, Roma]" in MB,
Vol. III, 230.
179
Trans. mine. “…A pena destes é muito estimada dos Índios, e delas fazem diademas, franjas,
com que cobrem as espadas com que matam; e fazem bracelets que trazem nos braços e poem-nas

100
Cardim spent most of his time in or near the missions of Salvador da Bahia, along

the northern coast of Brazil, again, testifying to the wide habitat of these birds.

Cardim’s passage provides further evidence of the use of these plumes to adorn

weapons, as we have already discussed with Staden, and to clothe and adorn

themselves for feasts. Once again, the issues of value and exchange are brought to

the fore, making it clear that scarlet ibis feathers were objects of high societal

worth.

In the 1610 letter discussed above, the Jesuit Jácome Monteiro provides a

description of the scarlet ibis:

This [the scarlet ibis] is the most marvelous bird of the Province…. They
are infinite. They live along the ocean where one can see the beaches full of
red. I saw the trees dressed in the same color. I have not seen anything in
Brazil more than these to note or to want to see with all curiosity…. These
people make many things from the feathers of these birds, because they
serve for diadems for the head and for embellishing swords and other
similar [things].180

This letter reveals both the extraordinary abundance of these birds along the

coastline and nesting in the trees, as well as highlights the Jesuit’s keen

observations of featherwork production well into the seventeenth century. Finally,

nos cabelos como botões de rosas, e estas suas jóias e cadeias de ouro com que se ornam em suas
festas, e estimam-nas tanto que, com serem muito amigos de comerem carne humana, dão muitas
vezes os contraries que têm para comer em troco das ditas penas…” Cardim, Tratado, 151.
Azevedo’s commentary to this 1997 Cardim volume notes that the Tupi term guará was first put to
paper in Latin in a 1560 letter by the Jesuit José de Anchieta. In 1576 it was first used in Portuguese
in Pero de Magalhães de Gândavo’s História da Província de Santa Cruz. See note [251] on same
page.
180
Trans. mine. “Este é o mais maravilhoso pássaro desta Província…. São infinitos. Vivem ao
longo do mar aonde é pera ver as praias alcatifadas de vermelho. Vi as árvores vestidas da mesma
cor. Não vi neste Brasil cousa mais pera notar nem para desejar de se ver com todo a curiosidade….
Pelas penas destas aves faz muito este gentio, porque lhe servem para diademas de cabeça e pera
galantearam as espadas e outros ministérios semelhantes.” Monteiro, [“Relação,”], 425.

101
the text of Marcgraf and Piso, written on commission in the seventeenth-century

Dutch controlled region of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil, notes that the Tupi

went on distant hunting treks to capture ibis birds for their adornments.181 In the

next chapter we will delve more fully into the Jesuit relationship to Tupi feathered

objects.

“Of the Variety of Birds of America”

Jean de Léry, in Chapter XI of his History of Voyage to the Land of Brazil, entitled

“Of the Variety of Birds of America,” writes about the presence of birds within

Tupi villages, and analyzes what he understands of their relationship to the Tupi.182

For example, domestic ducks –– upec –– could not be consumed because doing so

would result in lethargy, like the sluggish movement of this animal; this same

argument kept them from eating any animal, including fish that moved slowly.183

Léry further describes the wild birds that are caught (one assumes for food), “as

big as capons,” including the jacoutin, jacoupen and jacou-ouassou, all of which

have grey plumage. The mouton (curassow, Crax alector), “as big as a peacock,”

was extraordinarily rare and bore grey plumage, while the ynamboumiri was the

181
Georg Marggraf and Afonso de E. Taunay, ed., História Natural do Brasil, trans. José Procopio
de Magalhães (São Paulo: Imprensa oficial do estado, 1942).
182
Ornithologists consider Léry’s book the single best early modern source on sixteenth-century
Brazilian birds. The standard reference book of modern Brazilian ornithology remains, Sick et al.
Sick includes a discussion of the value of the early sources and pictorial representations in an
ornithological tour de force.
183
Léry, 86-87. An interesting discussion of the Tupi distaste for eating animals that move slowly
can also be found in Jesuits letters. According to the Jesuit chroniclers it was considered “bad
meat.” See José de Anchieta, "[Do Ir. José de Anchieta ao P. Diego Laynes, Roma, 1560]." In MB,
Vol. III, 202-36; and Monteiro, [“Relação”], 423-425.

102
size of a European partridge. Léry describes the mocacoüa and the ynambou-

oussou as two varieties of partridge, as “big as our geese,” and tasting the same.184

Léry pays particular attention to the game birds, those of the woods and

seashores, marshes and freshwater rivers, again, speaking to the great diversity in

the ecological niches and animal-life, as well as to the spectacular coloration of

many of these birds. These latter creatures, in distinction to the others, were not

commonly eaten and awed the arriving Europeans, giving insight into why objects

made of their feathers became such valued market commodities in Europe. Was

coloration, then, part of the distinction between a bird meant for consumption and

a bird destined for domestication and/or adornment?

Among others, there are two of almost the same size (that is, bigger than a
raven), which, like almost all the birds of America, have hooked feet and
beaks like parrots, with which they could be classed. But as for the
plumage (as you will judge yourselves after hearing about it), you could
hardly believe that there exist in the whole world birds of more marvelous
beauty; in contemplating them, one is moved not to glorify nature, as do the
profane, but rather their great and wonderful Creator. 185

Léry then goes on to describe many varieties of these winged creatures, including

the arat, the beautiful scarlet macaw (Ara macao) that provided feathers for Tupi

headdresses. Léry verifies the importance of these feathers, which may still be seen

in the Copenhagen diadem, whose long tail plumes are still as brilliantly iridescent

as when first constructed (Fig. 21):186

184
Sick et al., Ornitologia, 46, have identified Léry’s macuco as part of the Tinamus solitarius
family.
185
Léry, 87. These were likely birds of the Tinamidae family.
186
The Tupi macaw diadem is housed at the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen (object #EHc56). It is
made from the long retrices (tail feathers) of the scarlet macaw and measures circa 65 cm in length.

103
 [The arat] has wing and tail feathers about a foot and a half long, one half
of each feather as red as fine scarlet, and the other half a sparkling sky-blue
(the colors divided from each other along the quill), with all the rest of the
body the color of lapis lazuli; when the bird is in sunlight, where it is
ordinarily to be seen, no eye can weary of gazing on it.187

The headdress of macaw feathers now in Copenhagen is the sole surviving Tupi

object of this type, once so numerous and emblematic of the “Americas.”188 The

scarlet macaw is the largest of the South American parrots with plumes with a

wide range of colors in its plumage, including red, yellow, blue and green. It

formerly ranged in habitat from southeastern Mexico as far south as Brazil, though

its population and range have diminished as a result of loss of habitat through

deforestation. Macaws are among the most easily domesticated of the Amazonian

birds, perhaps an indication of why the Tupi chose them as village companions.

One of the most thorough descriptions of the scarlet macaw can be found in

the first European account of Brazil, from Pêro Vaz de Caminha’s (1450-1500)

1500 letter to the Portuguese King.189 Along with describing two types of

headdresses, Caminha notes the Tupi’s nakedness, “dark brown” skin color and

their bows and arrows as items of exchange in this first non-verbal encounter on

the shores of the coastline. One of the “hats” was made of “large” feathers, likely

similar to the macaw headdress in Copenhagen, while the other was “a small

To give some reference for the length of the retrice feathers, the average body length of the scarlet
macaw ranges from 81 to 96 cm. For the Copenhagen museum entry see Copenhagen, 30.
187
Léry, 87.
188
This is no indication that all headdresses looked like that the of the surviving scarlet macaw
headdress in Copenhagen. For example, Sousa tells us that the Tupi wore headdresses of “yellow
feathers” and “red feathers.” “Usam também entre si uma carapuças de penas amarelas e
vermelhas, que poem na cabeça, que lhe cobre até as orelhas.” Sousa, 267.
189
Caminha, 41-59.

104
crown of red and grey feathers, like a parrot’s,” perhaps also similar to the green

laurel-like Tupi crowns in the Danish Kunstkammer, but this one clearly produced

from red and grey birds.190 In later descriptions Caminha mentions “headdresses of

yellow feathers, or of red, or of green.” Beyond these descriptions, Caminha’s

letter provides far more interesting narrative accounts of a more peculiar feathered

headpiece. For example, we learn that:

One of them [the Tupi] had on a kind of wig covered with yellow feathers
which ran round from behind the cavity of the skull, from temple to temple,
and so to the back of the head; it must have been about a hand’s breadth
wide, was very close-set and thick, and covered his occiput and his ears. It
was fastened, feather-by-feather, to his hair with white paste like wax (but
it was not wax), so that the wig was very round and full and regular, and
did not need to be specially cleaned when the head was washed, only lifted
up.191

This provides the earliest account of a particularized form of featherwork, together

with a description of the physical construction of a kind of feathered bonnet that no

longer exists.192 Caminha’s description also provides European written evidence of

Tupi feathered garments produced from yellow feathers, which again have not

survived. This stands as a reminder that the extremely small number of extant Tupi

artifacts cannot in itself constitute a fully representative sample of the range of

featherwork produced.

190
Caminha, 47. Interestingly enough, such red crowns exist among modern Amazonian groups,
especially seen in the Hixkaryana culture. The University Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has such splendid feathered
crowns/diadems made of the channel-billed toucan and crimson fruit crow, all from the Karape
River, c. 1913-1916.
191
Caminha, 44.
192
Caminha’s description does not match the only single yellow-green Tupi bonnet (#EH59323)
found in Copenhagen today. Thus his letter provides evidence of a different kind of Tupi
featherwork.

105
 In a later passage, Caminha describes a second exchange of material goods

with these Native Americans, justifying his voyage by providing rare and

wonderful evidence of the “new” lands for the King of Portugal. The Portuguese

fleet gave the Tupi “some varvels [trinkets]” in exchange for:

Some very large and beautiful red parrots and two small green ones, some
capes of green feathers, and a cloth of many colours, also of feathers, a
rather beautiful kind of material, as Your Majesty will see when you
receive all these things, for the admiral says he is sending them to you.193

This feathered “cloth” of “many colours” might be associated with only one of the

surviving capes, the Milan cape formerly owned by Manfredo Settala (Fig. 22),

though it may also refer to still another form of Tupi featherwork for which no

example survives today. As the letter mentions, though, there were examples

shipped back to Lisbon in 1501 on one of the fleet’s returning supply ships.194

Caminha’s 1500 report also establishes the earliest date for which we can confirm

that Tupi feathered artifacts were shipped to Europe intended in part to stand as

physical evidence confirming the existence of this strange, new land.

The yellow feathers of Caminha’s feathered bonnet may have come from

what Léry calls a “yellow-bellied parrot,” the canidé. Now known as the blue-and-

yellow macaw (Ara ararauna), this bird lived in swampy forests, with a

distribution from Panama to as far as southern Brazil. This bird is considered a

193
Caminha, 54.
194
For a discussion of the paucity of surviving detailed information regarding Portugal’s first
journeys to Brazil see Dutra, "Brazil,” 145-68. It is difficult to ascertain the form of the textile that
Caminha describes as a feathered “cloth of many colours.” Though it seems likely that Caminha’s
cloth is a type of artifact that no longer exists, it is also possible that it may have been related to the
rectangular “blankets” made of various feathers, such as that in Copenhagen (#EHc52) and
Florence (#281).

106
particularly trainable parrot because of its gentle and playful character, as well as

its need for pair bonding, a perfect conduit for human-bird relations.195 Dorsally a

rich blue, and ventrally a golden yellow –– the Tupi plucked the canidé several

times a year. Both Sousa and Léry describe this bird, though Léry, curiously

enough, indicates that it was not domesticated, but was instead caught, plucked and

released.196

The savages often mention this latter bird in their songs, repeating canidé-
jouve, canidé-jouve heuraouech: that is, “A yellow bird, a yellow bird,”
and so forth; for jouve, or joup, means “yellow” in their language.
Although these birds are not domestic, they are more often to be found in
the tall trees in the middle of the villages than in the woods, and our
Tupinamba pluck them carefully three or four times a year, as I have said,
and use their beautiful feathers to make fine robes, headdresses, bracelets,
ornaments for their wooden swords, and other adornments for their bodies.
I had brought many of these plumes back to France, and especially some of
the big tail feathers, which are multi-colored in red and sky-blue; but upon
my return, when I was passing through Paris, a certain person representing
the king, to whom I showed them, importuned me until he got them from
me.197

Léry’s discussion of this yellow bird once again brings to the fore the issue

of the material basis of the Tupi-produced mantles. Were there also capes

produced of canidé feathers, and not just from the plumes of the scarlet ibis? Léry

says that these feathers were transported to Europe, and also specifically mentions

“robes” produced from these yellow feathers. The eleven surviving mantles are all

scarlet in coloration, with only the Milan and Paris capes having an additional

195
The Ara ararauna is now one of the most popular pet parrots in North America, because of its
large size and its ability to talk, a single bird costing as much as $1,000-$2,000.
196
For Sousa’s discussion of the canindé see Cap. LXXX.
197
Léry, 88. The Ara ararauna species of parrot is of the Psittacidae family and was described by
Thevet, Gândavo, and Sousa, usually under the name “canindé.”

107
lower fringe of yellow feathers along the bottom from the oropendola (species

Psarocolius).198 There is, however, a painted representation of a brilliant yellow

feathered cape, which I will discuss in the fourth chapter, the 1650-51 painting

titled Triumphal Procession with Treasures from the East and West by the Dutch

artist Jacob von Campen, which displays objects from Prince Maurits of Nassau’s

(1604-1679) exotica. In the upper section of the painting we see two Tupi robes,

one scarlet and the other bright yellow (Fig. 23).199 I will return to this painting

more fully in the last chapter when I discuss the career and importance of Maurits’

governorship in seventeenth-century Brazil, but it merits mentioning here not for

its pictorial construction (or some would say the painter’s pictorial imagination),

but for the visual evidence it provides for the production of yellow-feathered Tupi

“robes,” or “fabrics,” which Léry and Caminha both describe. The original range

of featherwork object types and materials was almost certainly much broader than

the extant objects represent.

Domesticating and capturing birds

As Léry’s discussion of the canidé makes clear, the Tupi harvested feathers from

some birds by plucking them while still alive rather than killing them. Indeed most

198
The attribution of these feathers to the oropendola, a type of tropical blackbird with brilliant
yellow tail feathers was made by ornithologist Dr. Dove, of the Smithsonian Natural History
Museum on the basis of the detailed photographs I provided of the capes. Her assessment was made
primarily based on the size and color of the feather, as few yellow feathers from other South
American birds can reach that size.
199
Jacob von Campen, Triumphal Procession with Treasures from East and West, c. 1650-51, oil
on canvas, 380 x 205 cm., The Hague, Huis ten Bosch Royal Palace, Oranjezaal, reproduced after
restoration in the exhibition catalogue: Quentin Buvelot, ed., Albert Eckhout: A Dutch Artist in
Brazil (The Hague: Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis; Waanders, 2004).

108
primary sources indicate that many birds within Tupi villages were plucked and

released, or plucked while kept as domestic pets, showing us that there were many

ways in which the Tupi (just as contemporary indigenous Brazilian communities)

procured the feathers for their featherworking. Birds were domesticated to live in

villages in the company of humans, their feathers being harvested, almost like a

crop, with special attention paid to avoid over-plucking.200 We know from almost

all the early modern sources that domesticated parrots were features of most

villages.201 Feathers and bird claws were even placed in the cradles of newborn

Tupi boys, highlighting the potency of the avian world for Tupi male initiation.202

Within the Tupi world, domesticated parrots were taught to speak,

eventually becoming valuable items of trade with the colonial Europeans. Parrots,

like other birds, were plucked annually, the feathers being used for adorning ritual

clothing, weapons, rattles and many other items. Léry describes many kinds of

these creatures, detailing the intelligence of the bird and its fine language skills,

noting that they were capable of acquiring not just the Tupi language but French as

well, a further allure for the European collector.

Another bird of note within the Tupi world was the toucan, according to

Léry, which was the size of a “woodpigeon,” whose plumage was black and breast

200
For an excellent discussion of this process see Ruben E. Reina and Jon F. Pressman, "Harvesting
Feathers" in Reina, 110-15.
201
Métraux #3, 101-102.
202
Alfred Métraux, "Une rarite ethnographique du Musée du Bâle: le manteau Tupinambá,"
Bulletin der Schweizerische Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie und Ethnologie Bulletin de la Societe
Suisse d'Antropologie et d'Ethnologie (1928): 30-31.

109
coloring “yellower than saffron, and edged with red below.”203 Léry was most

likely describing the smaller of two toucans native to the New World, now known

as the araçari (genus Pteroglossus), which has dark greenish/blackish wing and

back feathers and bands of red or black on yellow breast feathers. These smaller

toucans lived on the edges of the forest. The toucan was clearly of significance for

the Tupi, since, as I mentioned earlier, the Tupi pasted its skin on the forehead as

an adornment, as Léry describes:

The savages skin [the breast patch] off, and besides using it to cover and
adorn their cheeks and other parts of the body, they customarily carry it
when they dance; for that reason they call it “toucan-tabourace,” that is
“dancing feather,” and they prize it highly. Still, since they have them in
great numbers, they are not reluctant to barter them for the merchandise
brought by the French and Portuguese who trade over there.204

Toucans probably served other uses for the Tupi beyond their feathered belly

patches; today toucan beaks are used as children’s implements for digging, which

might have been the case during Tupi times as well.205 Like macaws, toucans are

still frequently domesticated in many contemporary Amerindian communities in

Brazil.206

Europeans observed the Tupi relationship to birds as highly complex with

many bird songs were connected to Tupi spirits and ghosts. Léry describes, for

example, a small, grey bird that the Tupi hold in their “highest regard” because

203
Léry, 89-90.
204
Léry, 90.
205
Elizabeth Netto Calil Zarur, "Art and Symbolism in Central Brazil: The Bororo Indians of South
America" (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1989), discusses the great range of objects associated
with different Bororo clans, with children’s toys being one feature.
206
Robbins, "The Sources of Feathers," 117.

110
they were communicators with the supernatural realm.207 Thus within Léry’s

framework, the wearing of feathered garments and bodily adornments may have

been a way of ritually identifying with the characteristics of the appearance or

behavior of certain birds. In certain cases, pajés would identify particular animals

with their ancient ancestors, incorporating these beings into their present

mythologies. Léry describes the effect that the birdsong of this small, grey bird had

on the Tupi:

This bird is no bigger than a pigeon, and of an ash-grey plumage. But the
mystery that I want to mention is this: his voice is so penetrating –– even
more pitiful than that of a screech owl –– that our poor Tupinamba, who
hear him cry more often in the night than in the daytime, have the fantasy
imprinted in their brain that their deceased relatives and friends are sending
them these birds as a sign of good luck, and especially to encourage them
to bear themselves valiantly in war against their enemies. They believe
firmly that if they observe what is signified to them by these augurs, not
only will they vanquish their enemies in this world, but what is more, when
they die their souls will not fail to rejoin their ancestors behind the
mountains and dance with them.208

Léry asserts that there was a significance of particular birdsongs to the Tupi,

suggesting the birds both provided voices for the deceased in the afterlife and an

assurance of a safe passage to the realms of the dead.

Birds were a ubiquitous part of Tupi life, and we have seen fine

discriminations in how different species were treated. A few of those that were

easily domesticated, for example certain macaws, parrots and the toucan, lived in

Tupi communities as pets and producers of feathers and/or eggs. Others were

207
For a discussion of “birds that sing” see Sousa, Cap. LXXXXVIII.
208
Léry, 91. This idea is also discussed in Thevet #3, 939. No scholars have been able to identify
this bird with accuracy. Some possibilities are discussed in, Thevet #3, Le Brésil, 105, no. 2.

111
hunted or trapped, some to have their feathers harvested and then released, the rest

presumably killed. Once collected by whatever means, the plumes of many of

these birds, especially the scarlet ibis, were used to produce capes, bonnets,

headdresses and other vestments, as well as to ornament ritual weapons. Feathers

were not necessarily used in their original form, however. To create particular

visual and textural effects, the Tupi sometimes changed their lengths and shapes by

trimming the feathers. One of the most intriguing practices of feather modification,

though, is the alteration of the color of the feathers. As we will see in the next

section, the techniques used to change a feather from red to yellow speak to an

intimate knowledge of the properties of local flora and fauna and an adaptation to

new colonial conditions. For Europeans, these techniques raised disturbing

questions of intention. Was this a form of deception meant to cheat market

customers? Was this mimicry a form of mockery?

Part III. Feather modification: tapirage and brazilwood dye baths

One of the most interesting aspects of Tupi featherworking, one that gives us some

insight into the appreciation and conception of color, as well as the masterful

techniques involved in the crafting of these pieces, is feather modification. We

have already seen, in the introduction to this chapter, that the Tupi used baths of

brazilwood dye to turn white chicken feathers a deep red. Léry tells that the

Portuguese, who were there to bring brazilwood back to Europe, introduced

chickens into Brazil.

112
 The Tupi used another technique now referred to as tapirage, a term taken

from French Guiana, where the French colonists described this process as the

action of changing the color of a living bird’s plumage by painting a plucked bird

with toad’s blood.209 Modern indigenous Brazilian groups now use the term

“contrafeitos” (to produce an imitation) to describe the same thing. The sixteenth-

century Portuguese chronicler Sousa documented this practice among the

Tupiguarani, who he observed changing green parrot feathers to yellow. 210

Gândavo’s History of the Province of Santa Cruz corroborates Sousa when he

describes tapirage practiced upon one of the most common Brazilian parrots, the

dark green corícos, as there “are more in that country than of crows or sterlings

here.”211

And that is why the Indians of the land are accustomed to pluck the
feathers [of the corícos parrot] while young, and to dye the birds with the
blood of a certain toad to which they add certain other ingredients: and
when the feathers grow out once more they are exactly the color of the real
ones [of another species]. Thus it happens that the Indians deceive people
by selling them for the true species.212

209
Métraux first discussed tapirage in his 1928 writings. His study of this unique process was part
of an attempt at compiling discussions of Amazonian feather modification throughout the last four
hundred plus years. His examination suggests that tapirage was pan-South American in nature,
occurring in almost all Native American areas from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries, most
heavily in the forested areas north the Amazon River, but still extending as far south as the
latitudinal border of the Tropic of Capricorn. See Alfred Métraux, "La décoloration artificielle des
plumes sur les oiseaux vivants," Journal de la Société des américanistes de Paris T. XX (1928):
181-192. This article was amplified and published in English as Alfred Métraux, "Tapirage: A
Biological Discovery of South American Indians," Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences
34, no. 8 (1944): 252-55.
210
“E tambem, contrafazem as pennas dos papagaios com sangue de rãs arrancando-lhe as verdes, e
fazem-lhe nascer outras amarelas.” Sousa #2, 320. Note Sousa’s use of the term “contrafazer,” the
same term used by modern Brazilian indigenous groups.
211
Gândavo, 68.
212
Gândavo, 69.

113
Gândavo couches his discussion of the tapirage process on the wide availability of

this parrot and thus of the poor value of it within the Tupi community. The parrot’s

abundance necessitates its transformation into a more “rare” looking bird, perhaps

giving us some indication of the function of this practice within the colonial world.

The motivation for tapirage that Gândavo ascribes to the Tupi is financial

deception; apparently in selling the living modified green parrots as a rare yellow

species. To whom are these false parrots being sold? Gândavo is not specific, but it

is likely that the deceived customers were Europeans, who lacked the knowledge

that would have revealed the trick to the local inhabitants. If so, it would a very

early instance of fleecing the tourist trade with counterfeit goods.

As unlikely as the tapirage process sounds, it has been documented both by

early modern writers such as Sousa and Gândavo, and by archeological,

ornithological and anthropological sources from the eighteenth, nineteenth and

twentieth centuries across the continent of South America. 213 Some of the more

213
In chronological order by century: Charles Marie de la Condamine, Relation abrégée d'un
voyage fait dans l'interieur de l'amérique méridionale. depuis la côte de la mer du sud, jusqu'aux
côtes du brésil & de la guiane, en descendant la riviere des amazons (Paris: Veuve Pissot, 1745);
Ferencz Xaver Eder and Pál Makó de Kerek Gede, Descriptio provinciæ moxitarum in regno
peruano, quam e scriptis posthumis Franc. Xav. Eder e Soc. Jesu ... Digessit, Expolivit &
Adnotatiunculis Illustravit Abb. & Consil. Reg. Mako (Budæ: Typis universitatis, 1791), 152.
Alexander von Humboldt and G. A. Wimmer, Des Freiherrn Alexander von Humboldt
und Aimé Bonpland Reise in die Aequinoctial-Gegenden des neuen Continents (Wien: C. Gerold,
1830); Alfred Russell Wallace, A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an
Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of
the Amazon Valley (London: Reeve and co., 1853); Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, Beiträge
zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's, Zumal Brasiliens (Leipzig: F. Fleischer, 1867);
Juan Rivero and Ramón Guerra Azuola, Historia de las misiones de los llanos de casanare y los
rios orinoco y meta (Bogota: Impr. de Silvestre y compañia, 1883); Karl von den Steinen, Unter
den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens. Reiseschilderung und Ergebnisse der Zweiten Schingú-
Expedition, 1887-1888 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1894, 425, 491.

114
famous examples of ancient tapirage can be found in artifacts of a pre-Inka culture

in Peru –– the Chimor Kingdom –– that produced feathered textiles along the

Moche Valley of Peru’s north coast, some of which are now housed in the

repositories of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History.214 A scientific

examination of feather samples conducted at my request has now corroborated

Sousa’s assertion that the Tupi practiced tapirage, a topic I will discuss below.

In tapirage, the feathers are plucked from young parrots and the open

follicles that remain are pasted with a concoction made from the blood of the

“dyeing poison frog” ––Dendrobates tinctorius –– mixed with “other substances.”

The feathers that grow back are yellow. Wallace makes an interesting statement

about the tapirage process in his narrative account of his fieldwork in the Amazon

basin:

The Indians pluck the birds of which they wish to paint, and in the fresh
wound inoculate the milky secretion from the skin of a small frog or toad.
When the feathers grow again they are of brilliant yellow or orange color,
without any mixture of blue or green, as in the natural state of the bird; and

Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Otto Zerries, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern. Reisen in
Nordwest-Brasilien 1903/1905, Klassiker der Ethnographie Südamerikas (Graz: Akademische
Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1967); José Sánchez Labrador and Samuel Alexander Lafone y Quevedo,
El Paraguay católico (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Coni hermanos, 1910), 215-216, Tit. II, 258;
Walter Edmund Roth, An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana
Indians, Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1916-1917), 305.
214
Rowe, Costumes and Featherwork, 168. Though this is clearly a pan-South American
phenomenon, I am not aware if it extended north to Mesoamerica, nor if color alteration is evident
in the few remaining pieces of Aztec featherworks. An interesting quotation from Friar Bartolomé
de las Casas, for example, suggests Aztec featherworkers did not alter plumes: “They used to make
different things of feathers, including animals, birds, men, cloaks or mantles, apparel for the
priests…shields and flyswatters, and a thousand other things. The feathers they used were green,
red, golden, purple, crimson, yellow, blue or pale green, black and white, and all other colors,
mixed and pure. None was tinted by human industry, but all were natural, taken from different
birds.” Quoted in Marina Belozerskaya, The Medici Giraffe (New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 2006), 148-149.

115
 on the new plumage being again plucked out, it is said always to come of
the same color, without any fresh operation. The feathers are renewed but
slowly, and it requires a great number of them to make a coronet.215

Wallace, writing in 1853, shows the survival of this tradition in the Amazon region

over three hundred years after Sousa and Gândavo first mention the same tapirage

process. He also confirms the specific colors that result from tapirage: the plumes

slowly grow back a solid yellow or orange when altered in this manner, with

nothing left of the original coloration. Wallace provides further details of the

process, explaining in detail how the tree frog is caught and pricked repeatedly

with thorns to release blood. The frog is then placed in a pot with ground red

pepper, which results in the frog exuding enzymes. These enzymes, when mixed

with urucu powder (Bixa orellana) produced a paste that was smeared on the

parrot’s follicles.216 Métraux states that tapirage was practiced by “mestiços” of

São Paulo and Pará at the time of the English-language version of his article, in the

1940s.217 In all documented cases of this phenomenon, tapirage produces a yellow

feather color.

From the earliest documents, through the nineteenth-century sources

dedicated to explaining tapirage, time and again the ultimate purpose cited is to

enhance the commercial value of the feathered product. While Soares de Sousa and

Magalhães de Gândavo’s colonial comments suggest that feather color alteration is

done “to deceive” traders into believing that certain birds are more exotic,

215
Wallace, A Narrative, 202. Métraux quotes this Wallace passage in his article, “Tapirage,” 252.
216
Rivero, Historia, 9.
217
Métraux, “Tapirage,” 253.

116
nineteenth-century scientists and missionaries also display something of a similar

attitude, explaining that this process was employed to imitate more valuable

feathers, either for trade or for indigenous celebrations.218 This last point suggests

that the value of feathers for indigenous communities could also be based on

coloration.

Physical examinations of three feathers from the Milan Tupi cloak tells us

more about the bird species used and the modifications of their feathers. For

example, at my request Dr. Carla Dove, an ornithologist at the Smithsonian’s

Museum of Natural History, Division of Birds, examined samples of a yellow, a

green/blue and a red feather, all detritus from the poorly conserved Milan cape.

She concluded that the green/blue feather came from the red and green macaw

(Ara chloroptera) (Fig. 24), while the red feather conclusively came from the

scarlet ibis (Fig. 25).219 What was harder to determine, however, was the avian

origin of the yellow feather sample. At first glance, the Smithsonian ornithologists

suggested that the yellow feather looked most like a white stork, swan, egret, or

chicken feather, because of the fineness of the barbs and the consistently white

rachis (unique to these birds). Closer examination, however, showed that the color

of the feather had in fact been altered, most likely through tapirage, and that it

most closely resembled the scarlet ibis plume in physical terms, as visually

218
Gândavo, 69; Rivero, Historia, 9; Sousa, 320; Wallace, A Narrative, 202.
219
I would like to thank Dr. Carla J. Dove and assistant Marcy Heacker-Skeans of the
Smithsonian’s Division of Birds, for examining the Milan samples on October 23, 2006 and for
taking these photographs of the visit. I would also like to extend my thanks to Dr. Barbara
Wattanabe, Museum Specialist of South American Ethnology at the Smithsonian for showing me
the pre-Columbian feathered holdings of the Smithsonian’s off-site repository.

117
demonstrated in this photographic comparison of the altered feather juxtaposed

with the bird (Fig. 26). Métraux writes that tapirage was practiced on species of

birds other than parrots in twentieth-century Brazilian indigenous cultures (though

he does not name the species), which would support the idea that the Tupi had

practiced tapirage on another non-parrot species, the scarlet ibis.220

There were various methods by which the Tupi, like contemporary

Brazilian indigenous peoples, modified the appearance of plumes to achieve

certain color effects. Tapirage was utilized to produce a yellow hue, perhaps

intended, as in contemporary Amazonian cultures, to make symbolic reference to

the powers of the sun. Other methods, such as the use of a brazilwood bath, dyed

white feathers red, perhaps thereby channeling shamanic authority. What effect did

the colonial process and its pragmatics have on feather crafts, in terms of both

materials employed and the spiritual dimensions that must shift to accommodate

such change? For example, with the increasing scarcity of the scarlet ibis, was

brazilwood used more often to alter the color of feathers? Or were these merely

two contemporaneous methods for achieving different effects? For example, if we

return to the Léry epigraph with which I began this chapter, we can see that the

Tupi used brazilwood dye baths by the 1570s, in the Rio de Janeiro region. From

other passages in Léry we know that this was mostly done with chickens.

220
Métraux, “Tapirage,” 253. The only way scientifically to confirm this preliminary assessment of
a tapirage ibis feather would be to observe a similar feather with a white fluff at the base of the ibis
rachis, which has long since disappeared in this sample, if it were ever present; all scarlet ibis
feathers have a small portion of white fluff at their rachis.

118
 Our Tupinamba are astonished to see the French and others from distant
countries go to so much trouble to get their araboutan, or brazilwood. On
one occasion one of their old men questioned me about it: “What does it
mean that you Mairs and Peros (that is, French and Portuguese) come from
so far for wood to warm yourselves? Is there none in your own country?” I
answered him yes, and in great quantity, but none of the same kinds as
theirs; nor any brazilwood, which we did not burn as he thought, but rather
carried away to make dye, just as they themselves did to redden their cotton
cords, feathers, and other articles.221

Given that French traders at this moment were so eagerly pursuing the log trade in

Brazil, it is intriguing to note that they equated their own use of brazilwood with

those of the indigenous people.

The increasing availability of chickens after the arrival of Europeans, and

the diminishing availability of the scarlet ibis along the coast of Brazil, likely

shaped the plumists’ work and the aesthetics of their objects. As we have noted,

Léry mentions that chickens were widely plucked and their feathers dyed.222

Moreover, it was recently discovered during the cleaning process of one of the

Copenhagen capes, that chicken skin was tied to the interior matrix of the cloak,

invisible to observers when the cape is worn.223 This gives us some sense of the

object’s age and provenance: post-contact and possibly from a Portuguese Jesuit

aldeia, where chickens were raised as a food source. There is still debate

concerning the diffusion of the European domestic chicken (Gallus gallus

domesticus) in post-Conquest Brazil. When Cabral landed in Bahia on April 22,

221
Léry, 102.
222
Léry, 59.
223
This unusual feature of a Tupi cape was found in Copenhagen (#EHc52 tassled-cape), during a
scientific examination of the feathers and fibers utilized in its construction. See Beret Due, "A
Shaman's Cloak," FOLK 21-22 (1979/80): 257-61.

119
1500, he brought with him domestic chickens from Portugal, a species first

originating in Sumatra.224 Specialists agree, however, that there was a domestic

chicken in the New World prior to European contact, now referred to as the “pre-

Hispanic chicken” or the araucana chicken. It lived primarily in Chile in pre-

Conquest times, and is now known by geneticists to have an Asian ancestry.225 It is

uncertain which chickens the Tupi were domesticating in their communities,

though clearly chickens were widely available twenty to forty years after the

arrival of Europeans, as Léry had noted.

The production of featherwork required an extraordinary expenditure of

labor: the capture of the birds, the harvesting of its plumes, possible modifications

of the feathers, the construction of a netted matrix and finally the attachment of the

feathers themselves. The end result was a highly crafted object. Contemporary

indigenous groups engage in intricate processes for selecting and acquiring the

kinds of bird feathers needed, often involving the dissection of the animal itself,

and the drying and preparation of its skin. From the surviving artifacts, this last

process appears not have been used by the Tupi in cape production. Certainly,

though, it was used to produce the patch of yellow-feathered toucan skin used for

the adornment of the forehead.

224
Sick et al., Ornitologia, 284-285.
225
J. Congora, J. et al., "Mitochondrial DNA Sequences Reveal a Putative East Asian Ancestry for
Old Chilean Chickens" Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International Conference on
Animal Genetics Porto Sêguro, Bahia, Brazil 2006. The “Angolan chicken” (Numida cristata) also
became available in Brazil from the first moments of Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth
century.

120
 Feathers and featherwork materials are extraordinarily fragile and their

conservation difficult, especially given that that there was often a long period of

time between the collection of these feathers or skins and their production into

usable objects. Feathers were so important to the Tupi, that they were carefully

collected, cleaned and stored in bamboo tubes sealed with wax, an indication of the

exceptional value of these precious natural items for a semi-nomadic society.226

This method of storing the feathers speaks to the difficulties that the Tupi faced in

preserving these objects for “ephemeral” ceremonies in a tropical forest. Léry

describes in detail the origins and preparations of the wax that is used for sealing

these tubes:

As for the bees of America, they are not like ours over here, but rather
resemble those little black flies that we have in the summer, especially in
the grape season; they make their honey and their wax in the woods in the
hollow of trees, where the savages know how to collect them. When the
two are [still] mixed together, they call it yra-yetic, for yra is honey, and
yetic is wax. After they have separated them, they eat the honey as we do
over here; as for the wax, which is almost as black as pitch, they squeeze it
into rolls as big as an arm. However, they don’t make torches or candles of
it; at night they use no other light but that of certain woods that burn with a
clear flame. They mainly use this wax for caulking the big wooden tubes
where they keep their featherwork, to preserve them against a certain kind
of moth which otherwise would spoil them.227

The Tupi thus had some skill in apiculture, knowing how to extract and

process the wax; Léry also describes the extraction of beeswax from honeycombs

and the fact that the wax of the brood comb of the hive tends to be darker in

226
Métraux #3, 107.
227
Léry, 92.

121
color.228 This passage makes clear the effort the Tupi took in the care and

preservation of their ritual feathered objects, and thus the social value attached to

them. The need to protect featherwork from insects was not, of course, just a

problem in the sixteenth century. Insect damage remains the primary threat to

these objects in modern collections.229 And as one might expect, Amazonian

cultures today, such as the small Tapirapé tribe (Tupi-Guarani language family)

still produce containers to store and transport feather artifacts. These vessels are

not sealed bamboo ‘tubes’ such as those described in the sixteenth century, but are

similar, including bamboo baskets (called “telescoping” baskets) for larger plumes

or small gourds perfectly sealed with corks for the small down feathers (Fig.

27).230

Part IV: Textile-matrix support and the question of gender

They fabricate cloaks out of thick threads of gossypinis in the form of a knotted
net, and into each knot a feather is tied, so that the cloak is totally feathered, and
[aligned] in the same way and in an ordered fashion the feathers cover each other,
like the scales of fish. They use this cloak as an ornament and a necessity: as an
ornament, since it is made of the most elegant red feathers of the bird called
Guara, sometimes also by mixing in some other black feathers or green or yellow

228
Léry, 92.
229
Today the ethnographic museums that hold these feathered capes must fumigate them regularly
with insecticide or else place them periodically in a “deep freeze” to kill the insects. See
contemporary preservation and conservation techniques for these objects in: Karen Stemann
Peterson and Anne Sommer-Larsen, "Cleaning of Early Feather Garments from South America and
Hawaii" Paper presented at the ICOM Committee for Conservation, 7th Triennial Meeting
Copenhagen, 1984.
230
We have no surviving examples of the bamboo tubes the Tupi used to store feathers.
Interestingly, contemporary Tapirapá women are the sole owners of baskets, hammocks, and clay
pots. For images of the baskets see the exhibition catalogue Daphne Lane Beneke, Adam Mekler,
and Dirk van Tuerenhout, eds. Vanishing Worlds: Art and Ritual in Amazonia (Houston: Houston
Museum of Natural Science, 2005), 44-45.

122
 ones from the birds called Aracucaru, Carinde, Arara and others. As a necessity
however, since the rain doesn't penetrate the feathers but is repelled by them. They
call this cloak Guara abucu.
–– Georg Marcgraf, Historia naturalis brasiliae, 1648231

Beyond the labor involved in hunting, capturing and/or domesticating of birds and

the plucking, dyeing, searing, and bundling of feathers, creating the textile support

of these plumed adornments also required a substantial amount of specialized

crafts. This included the cultivation or procurement of the cotton fibers (amaniju),

as well as the buriti (Brazilian palm, Mauritia flexuosa), caroá (Neoglazovia

varigata), and tucum (Brazilian palm, Bactris glaucescens) fibers that are

described by Léry and also used in modern featherwork.232 Wood, taquaruas

(small bamboo), straw and many other materials are also used today in

featherworking as well as in the production of basketry, fishing nets and hammock

weaving.233 During the 1979 Copenhagen cleaning of these capes, the materials

were analyzed:

Most of the larger pieces of clothing have a net-base made in the same way
as fishing nets. The strings used for the net base and for tying on the

231
Trans. Markus Friedrich. Gossipinus is the genus of the cotton plant. “Pallia quoque conficiunt
e filis crassis gossypinis instar retis nexis, & cuilibet nodo innexa est penna, ita ut pallium totum
pennatum sit, & eodem pene modo & concinno ordine pennae sibi invicem incumbunt, uti squamae
piscium. Hoc pallio utuntur ornatus & necessitatis causa: ornatus quidem, quia
elegantissimis pennis rubris avis Guara contextum est, vel etiam admixtis pennis nigris, viridibus,
flavis, variis, avium Aracucaru, Carinde, Arara, &c. Necessitatis autem quia pluvia non pertransit
illud pallium, sed aqua cum is defluit. Apellant haec pallia Guara abucu.” Georg Margraf and
Willem Piso, Historia naturalis Brasiliae: Auspicio et Beneficio Illustriss. I. Mauriti Com. Nassau
Illius Provinciae Et Maris Summi Praefecti Adornata: In Qua Non Tantum Plantae Et Animalia,
Sed Et Indigenarum Morbi, Ingenia Et Mores Describuntur Et Iconibus Supra Quingentas
Illustrantur (Lugdun, Batavorum: Apud Franciscum Hackium, et Amstelodami, apud Lud.
Elzevirium, 1648), 270-71. [LC Rare Books, QH117 .P67].
232
Léry, 106-109.
233
Ribeiro, Arte indígena, 44.

123
 feathers were spun with fibres from the pineapple species; others were of
cotton.234

Because of the fiber and textile work that produces the underlying matrix of the

capes, questions arise concerning the gendering of the production process. The

analogy of these mantles to fishing nets is not merely a modern notion, but was

also made by Abbeville in his own description of these objects in the early

seventeenth century:

The ties for the largest end with cotton thread laced together in a netlike
fashion, such that on the inside they resemble fishing nets or rather laces
with rather small links. But on the outside, all these beautiful and rare
feathers are so mixed together and arranged one on top of the others so
skillfully that one cannot regard them without admiration.235

As this passage shows, the comparison of the textile support to fishing nets, the

acknowledgement of the preciousness of the feathers and the skill put into the

production of these capes, were all noted in the early modern period.

By and large, indigenous Brazilian featherworking has traditionally been a

craft production dominated by men; correspondingly, in many Amazonian

societies, larger scale feathered adornments are primarily, though not always

exclusively, worn by men.236 Men were the predominant bird catchers within Tupi

communities, as is true for other groups today. What is interesting to ponder,

234
Peterson and Sommer-Larsen, “Cleaning of Early,” 13.
235
Trans. Molly Warnock. “Les lians per le plus gros bout avec du fil de cotton entrelassé a façon
des rets, de sorte qu’au dedans ils ressemblent aux filets à pescher ou plutost aux lascys ayat les
mailles assez petites. Mais en dehors toutes ces belles et rares plumes sont tellement entremeslées
et arrangées les unes sur les autres avec tant d’artifice qu’on ne les peut voir ny considerer sans
admiration.” Abbeville #1, 213.
236
Berta G. Ribeiro, Arte Indígena, Linguagem Visual, Coleção Reconquista do Brasil; 3a Sér.
Especial, Vol. 9. (Belo Horizonte; São Paulo: Editora Itatiaia; Editora da Universidade de São
Paulo, 1989), 52-53; Lucia Hussak van Velthem, "Arte Plumaria Indigena," Revista del Cidap
Artesanias de America, no. No. 46-47 (1995): 109.

124
though, is the gender divide in the production of these capes raised by the fabric

matrix.

The colonial chroniclers suggest that Tupi women were the predominant

agriculturalists in Tupi communities, cultivating and gathering cotton, collecting

other fibers, and weaving the hammocks using spindle whorls. Women also

produced all the basketry for a community. Thus the production of the underlying

textile matrix of the capes, probably involving the use of a spindle whorl, was

similar to that of Tupi hammocks and fishnets, and was often described as such in

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since women had the craft training and

experience to produce technically similar products, it seems a viable possibility

that women participated in the crafting of traditionally “male” vestments. Were

these objects produced in distinct stages, becoming bi-gendered in the very nature

of the fabrication process? Might this in turn suggest that these vestments were

viewed as embodying complementary male and female attributes? Or could it be

that these artifacts were neutral during production and only became gendered in

the context of particular rituals? This last possibility can be seen among two

Timbíre cultures today, where a woven shoulder-sling is feminine when used by

women to carry babies, but become masculine when ritualistically used by men

playing the role of “singer” in the wú’tú ceremony?237 Though we as yet have no

definitive answers to these questions, they certainly merit consideration in future

studies.

237
This is discussed in Ribeiro, Arte indígena, 54.

125
 Archival materials that I found in the course of my research further

demonstrate that women’s roles in relation to Tupi capes was not restricted to their

manufacture, and that the performative use of them cannot be relegated exclusively

to males, as Métraux suggests.238 As I will show in Chapter 3, there is evidence

that spiritually endowed women also wore these capes within the Jesuit missions.

A further understanding of the role of gender within the colonial Tupi world, both

in terms of craft production and religious life, thus needs far more historical

exploration.

Conclusion

This chapter has explored the various bird species used in the Tupi construction of

feathered artifacts. I have also examined the ways in which the Tupi altered or

“faked” the color of plumes through both the tapirage and brazilwood dye-bath

processes in order to achieve certain color effects. The intricate methods used to

produce these hues, as well as the importance of preserving the plumed objects in

specialized receptacles for future use, speaks to the value of these items within the

Tupi intercultural space.

As I will show in the following two chapters, the European participants in

this interculture, who described Tupi featherwork and its cultural context, collected

238
In Métraux’s discussion of the Paris cape he asserts that these were vestments whose fabrication
was strictly the domain of men. “Les capes de plumes, don’t la fabrication étaient strictement
réservée aux hommes.” See Alfred Métraux, "A Propos du deux objects Tupinamba du Musée
d'ethnographie du Trocadero," Bulletin du Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadero 3 (1932): 9. This
comes directly from Sousa #2, 24. As far as I know, there are no other early modern accounts that
address the issues of the gendered production of Tupi feathered capes.

126
specimens and shipped them to Europe, shared this value. Once in Europe, Tupi

feathered capes and other objects became highly desirable commodities, eagerly

sought and bought by collectors, given as prestige gifts between monarchs and

even used in courtly ceremonies. Featherwork was appreciated for more than its

exotic allure; it was also valued for its technical sophistication and innovative use

of natural materials. Further, featherwork served as an index of the economic

potential of Brazil’s vast natural resources.

By understanding how these cloaks were crafted, and from what materials,

we gain insight into their uses and value for all the participants in the colonial

Brazilian interculture: the Tupi, merchants, missionaries, scholars and princes. The

next chapter will discuss the role of feathers and Tupi capes within the Jesuit

mission system in Brazil, giving further evidence of the continued production and

multivalent roles of these objects within the colonial missionary landscape.

127
Chapter 2: Appendices

Appendix A: Catalogue of objects

The following list includes the notes I compiled concerning provenance and

technical details of Tupi capes during museum visits from 2004-2007.239

Copenhagen (#1-5) 240

• Provenance: Now housed at the Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling,
Copenhagen. Entered the Royal Danish Kunstkammer of Frederik III
(reigned 1648-1670) before 1674, possibly either through the Dutch
collections of Bernardus Paludanus (1550-1633) in Enkhuizen (via German
intermediaries) or via Prince Maurits of Nassau (1604-1679), former
Governor-General of the Dutch colonies in Brazil.

1. Inventory #EH5931: tapered with attached bonnet (Fig. 3)

• 120 cm. in length (c. 3.9 feet), bonnet 22 cm. (c. 0.72 feet)
• Produced in two separate modules. The attached bonnet hangs over the
inner cape, giving the visual effect of being constructed as a single module.
• The bonnet falls loosely over the head, almost in the manner of a rain-
jacket with bonnet that would cover the head, leaving space between the
vestment and the face and ears.
• Would have covered the body of a ca. 5-foot tall man fully, reaching the
ankles.
• The cape is constructed of the contour feathers of the ibis, including flight
feathers. Like all Tupi capes, even with the use of contour ibis feathers, a
soft, velvet-like appearance is still retained on the over-all cape.
• While made almost entirely of the feathers of the scarlet ibis, the bonnet of
this cape is crowned with yellow oropendola feathers and there are sparse
additions of what appear to be the red and green macaw (Ara chloroptera).

2. Inventory #EHc52: rectangular blanket with six tassels, possibly funerary (Fig.
28)
• 110 cm. in length (c. 3.6 feet), 115 cm. width across (3.8 feet), 152 width
across bottom (c. 5.0 feet)

239
Due to variations in institutional access and records, it was not possible to acquire matching data
for each cape. I hope to remedy this situation before publishing this dissertation in book form.
240
I examined the Copenhagen capes on two different occasions, the first time Summer 2004, the
second time Summer 2006. I would like to especially thank Conservator Lisbeth Schmidt and
Curator Rolf Gilberg for facilitating the visits.

128
 • Blanket very colorful, red, brown, black, yellow, including flight feathers
to form border of the cape on three sides (except top border)
• Tassels are made from a variety of different down feathers, plus yellow
oropendola tail feathers that trail off of each tassel.
• Possibly tar was used to help bind the feathers to the matrix.
• Brazilian ornithologist Dante Martins Teixeira estimates that 150 birds
were used to produce this feathered blanket.
• Pineapple fibers used for the textile matrix.
• Questions concerning dimensions: The garment’s dimensions are awkward
and suggest several possible things. First, this cape could be part of a 2-
module cape, such of that of Brussels. The large width suggests it could
have functioned as a funerary wrap to envelope the body. Tupi bodies were
often wrapped in hammocks and feathers for burials within ceramic urns. It
is possible that these “blankets,” as the rectangular capes are often called in
early modern inventories, may have been burial shrouds.

3. Inventory #EH5933: red and black half-cape, 60 cm. (c. 2.0 feet) (Fig. 29)
• Simple design, uses only contour feathers of the scarlet ibis, many flight
feathers with black-tips.

4. Inventory #EH5934: bonneted half-cape, 52 cm. (c. 1.7 feet) (Fig. 30)
• Fits the head closely, similar to a skull-cap.
• Utilizes smaller feathers of the scarlet ibis with an addition of a few
green/blue feathers.

5. Inventory #EH5935: half-cape with collar, 60 cm. (c. 2.0 feet) (Fig. 31)
• Collar made of small, regular contour feathers of the scarlet ibis, collected
into bundles and clipped like knotting a rug. Groups of coils and tied as
bundle.
• Top of bonnet: once had a tuft at very top, probably of yellow oropendola
feathers. Yellow and blue feathers extend over the forehead. Top of bonnet
uses down.

Basel (#6)241
• Inventory # IVc657/ Cat. NC 1657, trapezoidal, without bonnet, 116 cm.
(c. 3.8 feet) (Fig. 32)

241
I wish to thank Alexander Brust of the Museum der Kulturen for facilitating access to the Basel
cape on January 24, 2006. Furthermore, he kindly helped arrange for the assistance of an
ornithologist from Basel’s Museum of Natural History in the verification of the bird feathers.

129
 • Provenance: Now housed at the Museum der Kulturen, Basel. Entered the
collection in 1918 through a sale/donation from a local geographic society,
the Mittelschweizerischen Georgraphisch-Commerzielle Gesellschaft,
Aarau, Switzerland (est. 1890s).
• Produced as a single piece.
• Width at neck: 61 cm. (c. 2.0 feet)
• Width at base when fully spread: 275 cm. (c. 9.0 feet)
• Average quill length: 18 cm, longest of all extant capes.
• Produced solely of the contour feathers of the scarlet ibis. Contains many
of the black-tipped flight feathers.
• Has what appears to be an armhole cut into the matrix (16.5 cm.). The cape
was produced with the armhole.
• Another small hole evident on the back of the textile matrix (20.5 cm.).
Unclear what its purpose would be, but structurally intact.
• Feathers radically different in this cape: feathers are bent in a different
location on the quill, larger plumes, thus creating different aesthetic effect.
Quill bent right after feather ends. Net webbing of the matrix is very thin
when compared to the Copenhagen and Brussels capes.

Brussels (#7)242
• Inventory # AAM 5783, three-part-modular cape, 188 cm. (c. 6.0 feet) (Fig.
33)
• Provenance: Now housed at the Musées Royale d’Art et d’Histoire/ Parc du
Cinquantenaire, Brussels. Entered collection through Brussels Royal
Arsenal, first inventory 1781, possibly via a Jesuit College library.
• Produced in 3 modules: collar, upper body, lower body
• Collar fastens around neck
• Collar: 7 cm in height.
• Top module: 88 cm. (2.9 feet)
• Bottom module: 100 cm. (3.3 feet)
• Width across bottom: 250 cm. (8. 2 feet)
• Green feathers with iridescent blue tip interspersed in top module.
• Black-tipped ibis flight feathers used only on bottom module.
• Indications from old quills that there were once green feathers interspersed
in bottom module.

242
Curator Sergio Purini and assistant Jean-Paul provided extensive access to this cape and
museum documentation on the object, December 12, 2005.

130
 • Evidence of tufts and tar indicate that there were probably tassels attached
to bottom module.
• Cloth backing was placed on cape in nineteenth century, prohibits
examination of textile matrix.

Florence (#8, #9)243

• Provenance: Now housed at the Museo di Storia Naturale, Universitá degli
Studi di Firenze. Entered via Medici collection, Florence. First mentioned
in Ferdinando II de Medici’s inventory 1631, but likely part of Medici
studiolo since the inventory of 1539. Possibly gifts from Portuguese King
João III (1502-1557) and/or Italian navigator Antonio Pigafetta (1491-
1534).

8. Inventory # 281: rectangular blanket, possibly funerary, 110 cm. (c. 3.6 feet)
(Fig. 34)
• Composed of scarlet ibis contour feathers and black-tipped flight feathers.
• No indication of armholes.
• Unable to see textile matrix, cape enclosed in case.
9. Inventory # 288: trapezoidal, no bonnet, 110 cm. (c. 3.6 feet) (Fig. 35)
• Ties around shoulders.
• Uniform scarlet color.
• No use of black-tipped scarlet ibis feathers.
• Uses a few macaw feathers.
• Structurally segmented with fabric along sides to provide armature.
• Exhibits a “clump” on upper-left-hand portion that could be a patch of skin
with down.
• Unable to see textile matrix, cape enclosed in case.

243
Conservator Vito Stanco facilitated my access to the two Florence capes. Both of these objects
are housed in glass cases and, because of their fragile condition, are not taken out of their sealed
environments. It was therefore impossible to see the textile matrix of handle the feathers in any
meaningful way. Special thanks also to James McAllen for use of his camera equipment and
Markus Friedrich for the Florence photographs.

131
Paris (#10)244
• Inventory # 17.3.83, trapezoidal with attached bonnet with beadwork, 121
cm. (c. 4.0 feet) (Fig. 36)
• Provenance: Now housed at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Likely a gift
from Royal Cosmographer André Thevet (1502-1590), to the Royal
Cabinet des Curiosités, Palace of Fontainebleau sometime after 1555.
• Bonnet length: 26.5 cm. (c. 0.9 feet)
• Cape without bonnet: 94.5 cm. (c. 3.1 feet)
• Textile matrix suggests that this was composed in four pieces; bonnet,
rectangular central panel and two triangular panels added to the sides using
black string.
• 6 separate fabric ties around neck for securing, almost like a necklace.
Originally may have been joined into single pair of ties.
• Bonnet decoration: turquoise and white beadwork along front band of
bonnet. Possibly added at a later date. No evidence of such decoration on
other capes.
• Rows of fabric weaving on feathered side: 54.
• Average length of scarlet ibis quills: 12-13 cm.
• Predominantly feathers of the scarlet ibis.
• Additional scattered feathers of green and blue macaw.
• Not geometrically patterned.
• Bottom edge: lined with ibis flight feathers.
Milan (#11)245
• Inventory # not available, trapezoidal with attached bonnet, 155 cm. (c. 5.1
feet) (Fig. 22)
• Provenance: Now housed in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Museo Settala
dell’Ambrosiana di Milano. Entered collection as donation in 1600s from
Italian Prince Landi of Valditaro to Milanese cleric Manfredo Settala
(1600-1680).
• Difficult to discern if produced in one or two modules.

244
I wish to thank Curators André Delpuech and Fabienne de Pierrebourg of the MQB for not only
providing access to the Paris cape in March of 2006, but discussing the various technical features of
the object and providing the museum’s documentation and scientific studies. Special thanks also to
Geoffrey Ashley for photographs, digital imaging and technical assistance during the MQB Paris
trip.
245
I sincerely thank Dr. Laura Laurencich Minelli of the University of Bologna for facilitating
access to examine the Milan Tupi cape for me on February 17, 2006 under the auspices of the
Director of the Ambrosiana, Rev. Mon. Ravasi, and the Prefect, Padre Navoni.

132
• Cape length without bonnet: 140 cm. (4.6 feet)
• Bonnet: 15 cm., though feathers mostly destroyed. Appears to have been
made with down bundles, tied to stand up like Copenhagen green-yellow
bonnet.
• Tassels on top of bonnet composed of yellow feathers, 13 cm.
• Diameter of border at widest point: 128 cm. (c. 4.2 feet)
• Diameter of border along thread-line: 122.5 cm. (c. 4 feet)
• Eight or nine layers of feathers going down cape.
• Predominantly constructed of scarlet ibis feathers, appear non-serrated.
• Cape exhibits geometric “step-design” pattern in blue, green, yellow
feathers.
• Very few black-tipped scarlet ibis flight feathers utilized.
• Yellow oropendola feathers attached to the bottom border (c. 9.5 cm
feathers).
• Three visible string ties to secure cape around wearers (spaced 35 cm. apart
down length of cape).
• One visible armhole that appears cut through textile, not original (16.5 c

133
Appendix B

Tupi featherwork: format and the visual record

Only eleven Tupi feathered capes survive. Although this is a tiny number of

objects from which to construct a corpus, a comparison reveals patterns in format,

length, materials and construction techniques. As an important means of analyzing

the capes, I focus on two structural aspects, format (e.g., bonneted vs. non-

bonneted) and length (e.g., half-cape or full-length). In each case, I correlate the

physical characteristics of each type of cape to the early modern visual record.

Two interesting facts emerge from this correlation. The first is that the

extant capes and the early modern images of them correspond very closely indeed.

Only in the case of the Brussels cape, which is so long that it would trail on the

ground behind any person wearing it, do we have no evidence from the visual

record. The second is the more surprising. I have found no image of a Tupi cape

that does not closely match at least one of the surviving examples. Given that the

set of extant capes is a random sampling (as could be said of the pictorial record),

and further that there are substantially more images of capes than capes that

survive, one would expect to find images of featherwork significantly different

than the eleven capes remaining today.

Additionally, a few words should be said in relation to feather structure.

Understanding feather structure is essential when analyzing these garments from a

physical standpoint and understanding the choices featherworkers made in the

types of plumes, as well as in the appropriate alteration to a plume for their

134
purposes. One of the best explanations of feather structures was produced during

the cleaning of the Copenhagen featherwork in 1979:

All parts of a feather consist, just like hair, wool and horn, of the protein
keratin. While the feather grows, the protein-producing cells in the bottom
of the calamus receive nourishment and pigments through the hole in the
calamus. When the feather has reached its full size, the cells die and the
keratin hardens. The protein forms a network of cell walls that form layers
of varying density and contain thousands of small air pockets. This porous
structure with the presence of pigments produces many reflecting and
refracting surfaces in the keratin. This results in iridescence, which is an
important quality in the feather…. A feather consists of quill, barbs, and
barbules. Contour feathers have a stiff central quill and parallel barbs with
interlocking hooklets or barbicels. Down feathers have a reduced quill and
the barbules have no hooks, making the barbs fluffy without connection
with one another.246

The physical nature of the feather structure determines how these capes are

cleaned and conserved and how they can be saved from the ravages of time,

namely moths, dirt, fading and wear along the edges.

All eleven feathered cloaks are unique artifacts, differing, sometimes very

distinctly, in aspects of format, length, pattern, adornments and the particular

choice of feather type used. What they do share with one another, however, are

such basic elements as being composed primarily of scarlet ibis feathers, being

products of the coastal Tupinambá during the early colonial period of Brazil, and,

however much they vary in details, falling within the parameters of what can be

defined as a “cape.” Another commonality of Tupi featherwork is an apparent

interest in reproducing the visual appearance of the natural plumage of birds, for

246
Karen Stemann Peterson and Anne Sommer-Larsen "Cleaning of Early Feather Garments from
South America and Hawaii," Paper presented at the ICOM Committee for Conservation, 7th
Triennial Meeting, Copenhagen 1984, 13.

135
instance the down outline of a hatchling or the smooth outline of a mature bird,

through a careful selection of feathers and down and the use of specialized binding

techniques. 247 I am cognizant of the dangers involved in dividing such a small

sample of objects into sub-groups, but argue that this typology helps to reveal a

rich diversity in craftsmanship, aiding in our understanding of colonial Tupi

artistic practices.

My analyses of the capes are based upon personal examination of all eleven

objects in Europe, as well as study of the relatively few prior technical studies of

Tupi capes.248 Further, in the case of the Berlin Tupi cloak that was destroyed

during WWII, I make use of the single surviving photograph that shows it. It bears

mentioning that though there seem to be no surviving examples, other Eastern

South American and Caribbean indigenes also produced feathered capes in the

early modern period; these include the Guarani, Yuruna, Kamayurá, Mundurukú,

and, according to some sources, the Carib of Guiana and the Arawak of the

Caribbean islands.249 Given the technical variations among the capes (#1-11),

especially the anomalies of the Basel cape, we must remain open to the possibility

that one or more of these artifacts came from a closely related culture.

247
Peterson and Sommer-Larson, “Techniques applied,” 264.
248
Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger, Textiles: A Classification of Techniques (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994); Annemaie Seiler-Baldinger, "Der Federmantel der
Tupinamba in Museum für Völkerkunde Basel," Atti del XL Congresso Internazionale degi
Americanisti, Roma, Genova, 3-10 Settembre 1972 2 (1974): 433-38; Ribeiro, Arte indígena; Berta
G. Ribeiro, "Bases para uma classificação dos adornos plumários dos índios do Brasil," Arquivos
do Museu Nacional (Rio de Janeiro) 43 (1957): 59-72.
249
Métraux #1, 147. This is also discussed in Gustav Antze, "Die Brasiliensammlung Vollmer aus
der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts," Mitteilungen aus dem Museum fur Volkerkunde in
Hamburg VII (1922): 5-19; and Ch. 58 of Roth, An Introductory Study.

136
 Formats:

The Tupi cloaks come in two formats: bonneted and non-bonneted. The bonneted

capes can in turn be divided into loose-fitting and tight-fitting, or skull-cap sub-

formats. The Copenhagen bonneted cape (#1) is a prime example of a “loosely-

bonneted” cape, while the Milan (#11) and Paris (#10) cloaks have bonnets that are

shaped to the head like skull-caps. The Copenhagen green-yellow bonnet, which

lacks a cape but includes a matching down collar, is exemplary for how the close-

fitting bonnets are made (Fig. 17).

I. Method of attaching to body:

A. Bonneted capes: loosely fitting head

1. Example: Copenhagen (#1)

2. Evidence in the visual record:

a. Stuttgart watercolor procession, Queen of America, 1599 (Fig. 37)
b. Van Campen, Triumphal Procession with Treasures from East and West,
1650-61 (Fig. 23)

B. Bonneted capes: shaped to head:

1. Examples: Milan (#11), Paris (#10), Copenhagen bonnet

2. Evidence in the visual record

a. Aldrovandi, Forest Man, c. 1599 (Fig. 38)
b. Settala frontispiece, Tupi cape, c. 1664 (Fig. 2)
c. Settala codex, Tupi cape, c. 1640-60 (Fig. 39)

C. Bonnet-less capes: tapered

1. Example: Copenhagen (#1)

2. Evidence in the visual record:

a. De Bry, Americae Tertia Pars, [Pajé dance] (Fig. 7)

D. Bonnet-less capes: trapezoidal

1. Examples: Basel (#6), Paris (#10), Berlin (destroyed)

137
 2. Evidence in the visual record:
a. Miller Atlas, 1519 (Fig. 40)
b. Staden, True History, 1557, Cauim drinking (Fig. 14)
c. De Bry, Americae Tertia Pars, 1590-1634, Cauim drinking (Fig. 41)
b. Hans Wiegl, Trachtenbuch, 1577 (Fig. 42)

A. Bonnet-less capes: rectangular

1. Examples: Copenhagen (#2), Florence (#8)

2. Evidence in the visual record:

a. Hanneman, Posthumous Portrait of Mary Stuart (1631-1660) with servant,
1664 (Fig. 43)
b. Luise Hollandine von der Pfalz, Portrait of Sophie von der Pfalz, c. 1644
(Fig. 44)

II. Length
A. To shoulder or on shoulders (52-60 cm.)
1. Examples: Copenhagen (#3, #4, #5)

2. Evidence in the visual record:

a. Stuttgart watercolor procession, Queen of America, 1599 (Fig. 37)

B. Full torso to buttocks length (110-155 cm.)

1. Examples: Copenhagen (#1, #2), Basel, Florence (#9), Paris, Milan

2. Evidence in the visual record:

a. Staden, True History, 1557, Cauim drinking (Figs. 14)
b. De Bry, Americae Tertia Pars, 1590-1634, Cauim drinking (Fig. 41)

C. Trailing ground (188 cm.)

1. Example: Brussels

2. Evidence in the visual record:

None

D. Blankets/ funerary wraps (110 cm.)

1. Examples: Copenhagen (#2), Florence (#8)

2. Evidence in the visual record:

138
a. Hanneman, Posthumous Portrait of Mary Stuart (1631-1660) with servant,
1664 (Fig. 43)
b. Luise Hollandine von der Pfalz, Portrait of Sophie von der Pfalz, c1644
(Fig. 44)

139
Appendix C:

Featherwork classification systems

Featherwork has not undergone the same rigorous classification, or been assigned

the same systematic nomenclature as other Amerindian arts such as ceramics. The

first scholar to produce a typological study of Brazilian featherwork was Berta

Ribeiro, in her 1957 study of the museum objects held in Rio de Janeiro’s National

Museum.250 Her classification system remains a standard tool for anthropologists

in their discussions of Brazilian featherwork. Working with a range of Brazilian

featherwork (mostly modern), Ribeiro produced intricate drawings of feather

binding techniques and discussed many of the problems inherent in classification

systems.251 She does a careful job of justifying the use of her own categorization of

featherwork, based on form, function, and materials employed, to understand

structural “types.”252 Ribeiro discusses the Tupi capes only very briefly, given that

she had no access to them in Europe and thus relied, as so many others, on the

secondary information provided by Métraux.

250
Ribeiro, "Bases para,” 59-72. Ribeiro’s paper and subsequent drawings of various technical
styles was written in the wake of her earlier presentation at the I Reunião Brasileira de
Antropologia, and then published in the Revista de antropologia, vol. 3, no. 2, December 1955.
Much of this is summarized in the more recent Ribeiro book, Arte indígena. Interesting enough,
unlike ceramics, these systems were devised as way to sort out cultural differentiation, and not
chronology.
251
Ribeiro’s study does an astute job of demonstrating the problems in classifying the objects that
have multivalent functions. For example, a plumed garland could either be worn around the neck,
and thus be classified as a necklace, or worn as a belt, or placed on another part of the body. A
classic example of the inconsistencies of feather classification is the famous feathered Aztec
headdress in Vienna, which has been studied as a military standard by some authors, and as a head
adornment by others. For one of the first studies of this canonical artifact see Z. Nuttal, "Sur le
quetzal-apanecaiotl ou coiffure Mexicaine en plumes conservée a Vienna," Paper presented at the
Congrès International des Americaniste; Compte-rendu de la 8e session tenue à Paris en 1890,
(Paris, 1892).
252
Ribeiro, “Bases para,” 62.

140
 Modern and contemporary Brazilian indigenous communities provided

Ribeiro with an understanding of how fibers are turned into threads. The palm of

the hand is used to twist fibers to make thread in a “see-saw motion,” using a

spindle whorl resting on the thigh, as one would spin wool.253 This would take the

form of a stick, around which the previously twisted thread is reeled, attached to a

disk that acts as a balancing wheel for rotation. She postulates that this was likely

how the Tupi plumists also produced their magnificent garments. Ribeiro’s

technical classification system corresponds to the classificatory structures of Julian

Steward’s highly debatable idea of TFC cultures that we have already discussed,

primarily by way of distinguishing those cultural patterns of groups within the

tropical forest (the Tupi, within his system) from those of the savannas or

“margins” of the tropical forest (the macro-Jê linguistic family). In this model,

Tupi featherwork can be grouped with that of other TFC groups, such as the

Mundurukú of the banks of the Tapajós River and its tributaries and the

contemporary Urubus-Kaapor of the Gurupi River. According to Ribeiro all of

these groups, as opposed to the savanna cultures exhibit featherwork of a “plumist

group.” In essence, the Tupi culture gave greater emphasis to this art form. Tupi

featherwork, to use Ribeiro’s description is characterized by the use of small

feathers and tissues, “utilizing minutely elaborate pieces that resemble illuminated

253
Ribeiro, Arte indígena, 39. The Tupi use of spindle whorls is also discussed by Métraux #3, 109.

141
or goldsmith work.”254 Ribeiro further explains the work of this broader “plumist”

class of featherworkers:

By tying the tiny rachis to intertwined strings the Kaapor plumists obtain a
relief effect that imitates the smoothness of the feather layers on a bird’s
body and the flexibility of its wings. Employing feathers and plumes of the
most varied tones, textures, and brilliances from about 40 varieties of birds
–– especially anambés (Cotinga), saís (Cyanerpes), toucans (Ramphastus),
curassows (Crax) and macaws (Ara) –– these plumists produce figurative
effects by employing a mosaic-like collage technique and using plumes of
different birds, which they shape into bird-like ornaments. 255

Ribeiro’s description of contemporary Kaapor plumists resonates with the

craftsmanship of Tupi featherworkers. Though no scholarship has clearly dealt

with the aesthetic appearance of the scarlet cloaks, it is clear to any viewer of these

objects that the overall effect of the cloaks is one of mimicry –– imitation of the

natural contours of a bird’s body. In essence, Tupi plumists were mimicking the

bird itself, by choosing the appropriate feathers of the bird to use on each part of

the cape, and binding them using a repertoire of techniques to create a “natural”

appearance. In contrast, the featherwork of the macro-Jê groups (Karajá, Borôro,

Kayapó) predominantly use the long tail feathers of the macaw, as well as aquatic

birds such the egret or spoonbill, whose large quills are hidden by rows of smaller

feathers. These quills are most often mounted on a rigid plaited framework.256

254
Ribeiro, Arte índigena, 44.
255
Ribeiro, Arte índigena, 43.
256
Ribeiro, Arte índigena, 44.

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Featherwork as textile: methods of spinning and weaving

Many specialists have traditionally classified featherwork according to function.

The Swiss anthropologist Annmarie Seiler-Baldinger, however, takes an

interesting turn and classes plumed capes under the rubric of “textiles.” 257 Her

work provides a useful reference when considering techniques employed, because,

unlike Ribeiro, she produced a meticulous technical study of the Basel Tupi cape.

As a curator at the Basel’s ethnographic museum, and as a South American textile

specialist, she provided a much-needed in-depth technical analysis of what she

terms a “pile formation” in meshwork by such methods as looping, knotting and

diverse array of other possible binding techniques used to fix individual quills to a

larger fabric matrix. She assigns these feathered capes a unique place within textile

classifications, a somewhat hybrid form between a pure fabric construction and an

ornamenting technique of that fabric construction. Thus the matrix and feathers in

Tupi objects combine to constitute the overall fabric, in contrast to other methods

in which feathers are attached to a pre-existing piece of cloth. In this way, Seiler-

Baldinger suggests that one could compare them to “fleece fabrics.” Fleeces are

257
Now retired, Dr. Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger was the Curator of the American collection at the
Museum für Völkerkunde Basel (now the Museum der Kulturen) for most of her long career. Her
technical examination of the Tupi cape in the Basel was in part a study instigated by means of a
disagreement with Métraux’s 1928 analysis of the cape (personal communication). Her
disagreement resulted in a highly technical conference presentation: Seiler-Baldinger, "Der
Federmantel.” Her magnum opus on textile classification (in which she includes featherworking) is:
Seiler-Baldinger, Textiles, 105-106. I would like to thank Dr. Seiler-Baldinger for discussing her
research with me on a trip to Basel, January 26, 2006. She shared with me her knowledge of Swiss
institutional histories, as well as her expertise on the possible relationships between Tupi capes and
hammock weaving techniques, her current field of inquiry.

143
biological fibers made of soft, malleable materials, in which the fleece effect is

created during the production process.

A scientific study of the Copenhagen Tupi capes in the late 1970s revealed

specific information about the raw material used in their construction; we can use

that information as a baseline, to which we can compare the other capes in

Europe.258 The net base, or matrix, was constructed similarly to fishing net, with

the feathers then fastened to the already-constructed base. The feathers were

attached to the net by means of separate threads, which, as the textile conservators

in Copenhagen explain, are tied to each mesh joint in the net base by a sheet band

(Fig. 45). Two of the Copenhagen garments have feathers that are tied to the mesh

below the joint.259 All the threads on the Copenhagen capes are Z-spun, referring

to the direction of the twist (thread spun to the left). Some of the threads are made

of cotton and others of a plant fiber from the pineapple family.260

As Seiler-Baldinger has pointed out in reference to Métraux’s work, all the

capes do not exhibit the same directional twist pattern; the Basel and Paris capes,

for example, were constructed in two different spinning directions.261 As she

further describes, the quill is not fixed into the knot of thread, but is bent over it.

258
Peterson and Sommer-Larsen, "Techniques applied,” 263-70.
259
Peterson and Sommer-Larson, “Techniques applied,” 263.
260
Peterson and Sommer-Larson, “Techniques applied” 263. See also the recent restoration report
for the Tupi club at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. The scientific analysis of the threads
attached to the handle of the club –– which look similar to those threads used in the capes –– were
identified as cotton and “plant fibers.” See Catherine Lavier and Pascale Richardin, "Massue
Tupinamba, Brésil –– Musée du quai Branly N. d'inventaire (Mqb): 71.1917.3.62, N. C2rmf:
61534," in Compte-Rendu d'Etuden N. 8011, ed. Yves le Fur, 1-20 (Paris: Musée du Quai Branly,
2006).
261
Seiler-Baldinger, “Der Federmantel,” 433-438.

144
The rising and falling of the quill is controlled by another thread. An analysis of

the Basel cape reveals that the entire textile matrix was made with one continuous

thread and various types of knots. At the end of each row, the second thread

holding the quill is tied to a woven border and then cut off. Elastic bands of twelve

rows of knots and one row of atypical knotting form the neck border. On the inside

of the neckband there are two thick, twisted, raw, cotton threads that serve as a

matrix for a separate row of feathers. The technical details of each cape are

complicated, but suffice it to say that each cape shows variations in construction

techniques, though they all exhibit the same method of attaching the quill, by

bending the rachis and sewing over it.

145
 Chapter 3:

The Jesuits in Brazil: Aldeias and the Accommodation of Feathers

Non erat mercatura, sed opus charitatis.

–– Pope Gregory XIII, 1582262

If there were not merchants who go to seek for earthly treasures in the East and
West Indies, who would transport thither the preachers who take heavenly
treasures? The preachers take the Gospel and the merchants take the preachers.
–– Father António Vieira, S.J., 1680s263

Our trade is only that of Souls, nor have we any means of assuring our relationship
with God and with the world except to remain completely disinterested in material
considerations.
–– Father António Vieira, S.J.
1680s264

Introduction: Societas Iesu (c. 1700)

The German Jesuit Heinrich Scherer’s (1628-1704) map “Societas Iesu per

universum mundum diffusa Praedicat Christi Evangelium,” [The Society of Jesus

preaches the gospel throughout the world] (c. 1700) shows the global dimensions

of the Society of Jesus’ missionary network, and is an apt place to begin a

discussion of Brazilian-European contact zones (Fig. 46).265 Scherer’s map is

262
Cited in Alden, 528.
263
First published in the eighteenth century as: Antonio Vieira, Historia do futuro: livro
anteprimeyro prologomeno a toda a historia do futuro, em que se declara o fim, & se provaõ os
fundamentos della materia, verdade, & utilidades da historia do futuro (Lisboa Occidental: Na
officina de Antonio Pedrozo Galram, 1718).
264
Cited in Alden, 528.
265
This map is known as: Societas Iesu per universum mundum diffusa praedicat Christi
evangelium. [Munich: s.n., ca. 1700]. Map size: 23 x 35 cm. From Scherer's Atlas Novus, part II,
Geographica Hierarchia. Scherer was a German professor of Hebrew, Ethics and Mathematics at
Dillingen University, later serving in the Bavarian court in Munich as Tutor, and as Court
Confessor in Cologne. Known primarily as a cartographer, his maps show the spread of the

146
shown on a north polar projection and highlights the Jesuit missions on each

continent with shining star trigrams, giving an indication of the sheer vastness of

the Order’s activity and the territorial reach of its religious arms –– extending

throughout Europe and beyond, to the continents of America, Africa and Asia.

Each corner of the map is engraved with an allegorical scene of a different Jesuit

saint: St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, anchoring the composition

on the bottom left; Father José Anchieta, Apostle of Brazil, on the upper left;

Andreas Oviedus, Patriarch of Ethiopia, on the upper right; and St. Francis Xavier,

Apostle of India, on the bottom right. Instead of the usual allegorical

representations of the four continents, so familiar in Baroque imagery, these

pictorial emblems represent a collective allegory of the presence of the Jesuit

Order worldwide. We might further think of the allegory as extending to the map,

the globe, and the conceptual idea of the Jesuits as the saviors of the world.266 The

men depicted in Scherer’s map embody a Christian geography and an unfolding

Jesuit missionary program.

The allegorical vignettes give viewers some sense of the ‘cult of

personality’ in the Society’s mission activity, as well as allude to the

organization’s vast extension, a corporation perhaps unparalleled in the early

Catholic faith and the Jesuit Order around the globe. For the most exhaustive study of Scherer see
Christoph Sandler, "Ein Bayerischer Jesuitengeograph" Mitteilungen der Geografischen
Gesellschaft in München 2 (1907): 1-39.
266
For an overview of Jesuit cartography see Anne Godlewska, "Commentary: The Fascination of
Jesuit Cartography," in Jesuit Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Chroniclers, Geographers,
Educators and Missionaries in the Americas, 1549-1767, ed. Joseph A. Gagliano and Charles E.
Ronan S.J., 99-111 (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1997). See also François de Dainville and
Michel Mollat, La cartographie reflet de l'histoire (Geneva: Slatkine, 1986).

147
modern period in its intricate administration and geographical expanse.267 The

caravels shown on the map speak to the flow of people, information and goods

between and among continents, while the starred missions indicate the mission

communities in the global Jesuit network. In the upper left hand quadrant Father

Anchieta, Apostle of Brazil and this map’s signifier of the Americas, holds a cross

in his right hand, and has a parrot perching on his right shoulder, the only one of

the four Jesuits marked with a local animal. He stands above his missionary

subjects, who feather-crowned, skirted and kneeling, allegorically represent Native

Amerindians and West Africans, the latter present in Brazil through slavery. As

ethnographer and Jesuit Father ‘par excellence’ for the founding activities of the

Order in Brazil, Anchieta helped establish the religious communities of São Paulo

in 1551 and Rio de Janeiro in 1578.

Even this brief description of Scherer’s map points to the diverse interests

of the Society of Jesus, and therefore, the value in examining the specifics of their

activities in Brazil. This will help us understand the nature of European contact

with indigenous Brazilians, and with Tupi cultural artifacts, such as the feathered

garments of this project. This chapter discusses the Jesuit Order in Portugal, Brazil

and Rome to show the interconnectivity of their enterprise and provide the

267
Stephen J. Harris, "Long-Distance Corporations, Big Sciences, and the Geography of
Knowledge," Configurations 6 (1998): 269-304. Historian Dauril Alden takes issue with C.R.
Boxer’s assertion of the Jesuit Order as a “the first multi-national firm” on the order of the modern
and wealthy multinational Dutch or English trading firms. He asserts that lack of swift
communication and the absence of integrated corporate structure contradict this analogy and that
the Jesuit enterprise was unique as a business model. Certainly their investment in education also
made them a unique corporate entity. See Alden, 668-669.

148
foundations for understanding the Society of Jesus as one of the premier early

modern missionary organizations. By highlighting their hierarchical and language-

based structure, I show how a religious institution could function as a cohesive unit

despite its geographic breadth. For example, I address various hubs of Jesuit power

and the methods by which the Society was capable of systematically conveying

information about the Tupi to Europe and the Jesuit ‘overseas’ world.

In Part II, I turn more fully to the Brazilian missions called aldeias, their

markets and culture, and the concept of accommodatio, both as a Jesuit theological

concept and missionary philosophy. One term that the Jesuits used in describing

the transformation of the Tupi as they changed from their semi-nomadic existence

to a stable institutionalized life within the aldeias is the term fazer deçer –– to

descend –– which implies both a physical movement (from forest/sertão to

permanent settlement) and a cultural transformation (from indigenous to Christian

culture). The Jesuit’s relationship with the coastal Tupi on aldeias was one

mediated through performance –– music, oratory, and dance –– of which Tupi

adornment was intrinsically a part. In Brazil, the Jesuits’ soon realized that multi-

sensory performance was a prime conveyor of meaning for the Tupi, and an

available path of cross-cultural articulation and consequently, evangelization.

In order to investigate the Society’s commercial activities in microcosm,

Part III of this chapter examines a case study, the transport of a trunk of Tupi

feathered capes from a Brazilian aldeia to Rome. The Jesuits’ administrative

organization between far-flung locations provided the information for such things

149
as the raw data for Scherer’s map, as well as for the “stuff” of this dissertation, the

shipping of Tupi feathered artifacts to Europe. Jesuit correspondence about the

Tupi and their feathered artifacts, are exempla of the commercial activities of the

Society of Jesus, and the extraordinary spatial distribution and movement of

people, texts and objects throughout the Order. The Society’s economic and

mercantile activities with the New World have not received substantial attention by

scholars and yet have profound cultural and political implications for

understanding the colonial process. 268 In conclusion, I show how the Jesuit

investment in science and the humanities, what Stephen Harris has termed the

‘geography of knowledge,’ was the creation of an early modern religious

organization far from disinterested in the scientific and material affairs of the

world. 269

Part I. Founding and circulation of Jesuit culture and practices

The Society of Jesus was one of many religious orders present in Portuguese

America expressly devoted to the spiritual conversion of the local Native

Amerindian populations. The Jesuits referred to various native Brazilians

268
One of the first major contributions to the financial dimensions of the Society of Jesus in
Portugal remains Alden’s meticulous study: The Making. Alden, however, does not delve into the
larger colonial implications of his impressive findings. For economic studies of other Jesuit
provinces see also Charles J. Borges, The Economics of the Goa Jesuits, 1542-1759: An
Explanation of Their Rise and Fall (New Delhi: Concept Pub. Co., 1994); W. F. Rea, The
Economics of the Zambezi Missions, 1580-1759 (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1976). For a
more recent contribution see Luke Clossey, "Merchants, Migrants, Missionaries and Globalization
in the Early-Modern Pacific," Journal of Global History 1, no. 1 (2006): 41-58.
269
Stephen J. Harris, "Mapping Jesuit Science: The Role of Travel in the Geography of
Knowledge" in O’Malley #1, 214.

150
populations not as Tupi or a variant thereof, but homogenized as “Brasis,” or

“brasilense.” The country where brazilwood grows became the referent for the

metaphorical name applied to the coastal Tupi.270 It is important to give a clear

picture of the larger cultural landscape the Jesuits were facing in order to put into

context the Society’s missionary efforts in regards to Amerindian Brazilians. The

Jesuits were but one facet of a complex system of exchanges between indigenous

and European peoples in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Brazil. Historian Alida

Metcalf, for example, has recently elaborated upon the world of colonial

intermediaries or “go-betweens” in Brazil, arguing that the terrain of Portuguese

Americas was complex and histories should also encompass, beyond the standard

historical players, individuals such as female agents, settlers, and traders. Metcalf

classifies such figures as “third” parties or triads and would include indigenous

colonial Aimoré (Gê-speaking) women, well versed in local languages and

customs, but often reared in a Portuguese colonial setting.271 Other important sites

of contact between indigenes and Europeans included autonomous and semi-

autonomous German, Italian, French, and Dutch traders, whose mercantile

enclaves or feitorias (trading posts or fortress-factories) were spread along the

Brazilian coast for the dyewood and sugar trade.272 Missions, sugar plantations and

270
For a summation of the long etymological history of the name “Brazil,” originally a Celtic word
for the mineral called “breazail” (meaning red), see the first chapter of Bueno and Roquero, Pau-
Brasil, 29.
271
Alida C. Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500-1600 (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2005).
272
The feitoria system is discussed in: John L. Vogt, "Portuguese Exploration in Brazil and the
Feitoria System, 1500-1530: The First Economic Cycle of Brazilian History" (PhD diss. University

151
mills were also sites of contact between not just the Tupi and Europeans, but also

the native Brazilians with African slaves, who often worked side by side, an

important issue to consider in the larger schema of the socio-cultural world of

colonial Brazil.273 The mercantile networks of colonial Brazil, therefore, are vital

in understanding the motivations of any of the European religious arriving on its

shores.

By 1502 the Portuguese King Dom Manuel I (1469-1521) granted a group

of Lisbon merchants a monopoly on brazilwood, a fortune-making move for many

private companies in both Portugal and France.274 As I have discussed in Chapters

I and II, the red dye extracted from this tree was a valuable commodity used in the

finishing of cloths by weavers in Bruges, Liège and other cities in the Low

Countries, while the wood itself was an important resource for furniture makers in

France.275 Manuel’s privatization of the brazilwood trade inaugurated the first

commodity cartel of the tropics, lasting through the next four decades. Europeans

used the Tupi as manual laborers in the cutting, sawing, splitting, quartering,

of Virginia, 1967). Feitorias were spread not only along the coast of Brazil, but also in Portugal’s
territorial possessions in Africa and Asia.
One of the most recent publications on the sugar trade is Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Tropical
Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2004).
273
John M. Monteiro, "São Paulo in the Seventeenth Century: Economy and Society" (PhD diss.
The University of Chicago, 1985). This was later amplified and published in Portuguese as: John
M. Monteiro, Negros da terra: índios e bandeirantes nas origens de São Paulo (São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 1994).
274
One of the best sixteenth-century descriptions of Lisbon remains Damião de Góis and Jeffrey S.
Ruth, ed. and trans., Lisbon in the Renaissance: A New Translation of the Urbis Olisiponis
Descriptio. (New York: Italica Press, 1996).
275
John L. Vogt, "Fernão de Loronha and the Rental of Brazil in 1502: A New Chronology," The
Americas 24, no. 2 (1967): 154.

152
rounding, stripping and loading of each log into factories along the coast.276 In

return the Tupi often received metal tools, trinkets, and other manufactured goods,

an example of the kind of exchange that created the intricate web of relationships

with merchants, especially the French, who were commercially the most

interactive with the Tupi in the early decades of the sixteenth century.277 Many of

the Tupi laborers were traded or sold to European merchants and taken to Europe

as curiosities or slaves aboard return ships.278 Some scholars estimate the number

of Native American men and women brought to Europe in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries to be around ten thousand, and except for some famed

individuals, we know little about the lives they led upon landing in European

cities.279 The physical and cultural presence of the Tupi in Europe, and the

276
There were no draft animals available in colonial Brazil to bear the burden of heavy labor.
Brazilwood was extraordinarily hard, and heavy, and thus required a labor force of men.
277
Marchant, From Barter, 39. As Thevet reports, the Tupi also traded “parrots, doves, and cotton,”
with these same traders for “hardware,” (i.e., tools). See Thevet #1, 116-117.
278
From the surviving logbook of the ship Bertoa, we have a clear sense of the importance of these
feitorias and the contents of the ships traveling back and forth. In 1511, in Cabo Frio (east of Rio de
Janeiro) two Florentine merchants loaded the Portuguese ship with: 5,008 dyewood logs
(ibirapitanga); thirty-five Tupi slaves; a small, spotted leopard (jaguariticas); parrots; and long-
tailed monkeys. The logbook even gives specific instructions on how to get to the trading post in
Brazil and back to Lisbon. See Max Justo Guedes, “Portugal-Brazil: The Encounter between Two
Worlds” in Portugal-Brazil: The Age of Atlantic Discoveries, eds., Luis de Albuquerque, Max Justo
Guedes, Gerald Lombardi, and Arthur Lee-Francis Askins, 168 (Lisbon; Milan: Bertrand Editora;
1990).
279
Amerindian men and women brought to Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came
predominantly as young slaves, but also as interpreters-in-training and curiosities. The best research
conducted has been in regards to Spanish ports. For an impressive new archival study see Esteban
Mira Caballos, Indios y mestizos americanos en la España del siglo XVI (Madrid; Frankfurt:
Iberoamericana; Vervuert, 2000). Caballos has found 2,442 Native Americans taken to Spain
within a 58-year period, between 1492-1550. For an old survey, see Carolyn Foreman, Indians
Abroad, 1493-1938 (Norman, Okla., 1943). For Brazilians in Europe see Hemming, Red Gold, 11-
13. For Native North Americans see: William C. Sturtevant, "The First Discoverers of Europe"
European Review of Native American Studies 7, no. 2 (1993): 23-29; Alden T. Vaughan,
Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006). The exact census of Amerindians brought to Europe is unknown, but the

153
consequent intellectual impact in Europe will be discussed further in the next

chapter.

The commercial networks of Brazil extended to a range of major European

ports. Ships returning from Brazil usually landed in Lisbon and Seville in Iberia

and then proceeded to La Havre, Dieppe and Honfleur in Normandy or Antwerp,

Enkhuizen and Amsterdam in the Dutch-speaking lands.280 Europe was enveloped

in a multifaceted commercial relationship with the New World. The concept of a

history integrated “by the sea” was one that French historian Fernand Braudel first

launched, one in which ports such as those just mentioned, along with such Italian

sites as Genoa and Venice, were connected ‘world’ economies within individual

cities.281 Brazil is an essential component of an early modern history of the sea, of

the Atlantic, and her interconnecting ports.

scholarly guess of “ten thousand” comes from a personal communication with UCSB Prof. of
Portuguese History, Francis A. Dutra, July 10, 2007.
280
In Iberia during the sixteenth century there were two major agencies dealing with overseas
houses in: the Casa de India (established 1500-1501) in Lisbon and the Casa de Contratación
(established 1503) in Seville. Both locations collected enormous royal taxes and duties on overseas
activity and incoming goods, approved all voyages to the New World and beyond, arranged
shipping schedules, stored merchandise, maintained secret information about trade routes, licensed
captains, and in the Spanish case, ran navigation schools. These agencies managed the Portuguese
Padrão Real and the Spanish Padrón Real, an official, secret, and ever-evolving map template used
on overseas voyages.
In the Portuguese case, the Casa da India was based upon a fifteenth century
establishment called the Casa da Guiné in Lagos, Portugal, a place to process products from
Guinea. The location and nature of the house was enlarged after Vasco da Gama’s return from India
(1499) and the Portuguese involvement with the Spice Trade. For an overview see Gustavo Couto,
História da antiga Casa da India em Lisboa: conferência realizada na Sociedade de Geografia de
Lisboa, no dia 28 de abril de 1932 (Lisbon: s.n., 1932).
281
Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme: xve-xviiie siècle, 3 vols.,
(Paris: A. Colin, 1979). Especially pertinent is volume 3: Le temps du monde; Fernand Braudel, The
Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). And for a recent book that gets to the heart of
European mercantile culture see the various essays in Christian Buchet and Michel Vergé-

154
 By the 1540s the large-scale implantation of the sugar industry in Brazil

had begun, an extraordinarily labor intensive business. Here too, European

commercial interests were at the expense of the Amerindian communities, who

provided slave labor in these early decades, while by the seventeenth century the

sugar plantations of Bahia were manned almost entirely by African slaves from

Upper and Lower Guinea, Central Africa and East Africa.282 The origins of the

approximately 700,000 men and women brought to Brazil from Africa during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries include those individuals predominantly from

Guinea, the Republic of Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, Cape Verde, São Tomé, Angola,

the Kongo, and Mozambique, comprising dozens of distinct “ethnic” identities.283

The Jesuits were responsible for the “salvation” of these African souls, along with

the indigenous Brazilians. The enslavement of indigenous Brazilians had a short-

lived legal precedence from 1500-1570, though it continued in smaller numbers,

Franceschi, La Mer, la France et l'Amérique latine (Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne,

2006).
282
E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil, third ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993),
43-44. For the evolution of Native American slavery in Bahia see Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar
Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985). See also the Swiss publication: Urs Höner, Die Versklavung der
Brasilianischen Indianer: Der Arbeitsmarkt in Portugiesisch Amerika im XVI. Jahrhundert,
Beiträge zur Kolonial und Überseegeschichte (Zürich: Atlantis-Verlag, 1980).
283
This figure comes from Burns, A History, 43. Burns gives 3.5 million as the total figure for
African slaves brought to Brazil during the three centuries of the institution and notes that this is a
conservative estimate. For more precise census figures and origins and ethnicities of slaves in
Brazil see James Sweet’s sections “The Slave Trade in the Portuguese Colonial World, 1441-
1770,” and “The Creation of Slave Communities in Brazil: Origins and Ethnicities,” Recreating
Africa, 15-30.
For the continually evolving statistics on the transatlantic slave trade pre-1700 see the
impressive database project, David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, Herbert S. Klein,
and W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, eds. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade a
Database on Cd-Rom (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

155
and illegally, throughout the long durée of the colonial period.284 European

merchants and mariners at first bartered with the Tupi mostly for their daily

sustenance (manioc flour), but more importantly for the key to their financial

success: wood. The Portuguese settlers systematically enslaved the Tupi for their

astute ability and knowledge about local agriculture, as well as their acquaintance

with the best forests along the “brazilwood” coast.285

The European religious fabric of colonial Brazil –– just as the Tupiguarani

and African Diaspora slave communities –– was an equally complicated medley of

constituents. The Catholic Orders present in Portuguese America, included, at

various points, the Carmelites, Capuchins, Franciscans, Benedictines, and

Vincentians (Congregation of the Mission).286 Protestant havens included the

settlements of French Huguenots (also known as the French Calvinists) on the

southeastern shores of Brazil in the sixteenth century and those of the Dutch

Reformed Church on the northeastern coast of Pernambuco a century later.287 Even

284
Stuart B. Schwartz, "Indian Labor and New World Plantations: European Demands and Indian
Responses in Northeastern Brazil," American Historical Review 83, no. 1 (1978): 43-79; See again
Monteiro, “São Paulo,” and Monteiro, Negros.
285
Brazilwood was primarily located in Bahia by 1526 and in Pernambuco by 1531. See Marchant,
From Barter, 30.
286
For a rare study in English of the Third Orders (Franciscans and Carmelites) in Salvador da
Bahia, see A.J.R. Russell-Wood, "Prestige, Power and Piety in Colonial Brazil: The Third Orders
of Salvador," Hispanic American Historical Review 69, no. 1 (1989): 61-89. For an overview of
Catholic Church History in Colonial Brazil see Francis A. Dutra, "The Brazilian Hierarchy in the
Seventeenth Century," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 83, no. 3-4 (1972):
171-86.
287
European religious orders in Brazil did not function in autonomous isolation. A letter from Padre
Anriq. Gomez from a Brazilian aldeia to Rome, April 7, 1611, details Capuchins coming to the
Jesuit missions in Pernambuco and Paraíba to assist with padres suffering from diseases, likely one
of the smallpox epidemics of the region. The goal of the letter is for Rome to send replacements.
See ARSI, Bras. 8-I, 128.

156
with arrangements of power sharing, delineated boundaries of civil and religious

jurisdictions, and physical isolation from the religious wars of Europe, religious

coexistence was deeply fraught.288 And as Brazil grew in economic importance to

Portugal throughout the seventeenth century, so too did the rise of the Jesuit

Order’s importance in Brazil. And in regard to Tupi civilization and their religious

and cultural practices, the correspondence of the Society of Jesus provides one of

the most amply documented and comprehensive sources for colonial Brazilian

histories, while the archival residue of other early orders does so only in discrete

and regionally or temporally limited ways.289 Jesuit missionaries in Brazil were

part of Europe’s “Early modern Catholic Church,” a cultural and religious entity,

reinforced by economic links, sharing elements of an empire.290

The expansion that followed upon technical developments in shipbuilding

and navigational instruments brought Renaissance Europe into contact with a great

variety of cultures in Africa, Asia and the New World. Of necessity, this

John McGrath, "Polemic and History in French Brazil, 1555-1560," Sixteenth Century
Journal XXVII, no. 2 (1996): 385-97. For the Dutch see Frans Leonard Schalkwijk, The Reformed
Church in Dutch Brazil, 1630-1654 (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1998).
288
For French Brazil see McGrath, "Polemic.”
289
The surviving documentation pertaining to non-Jesuit orders in the early colonization effort in
Brazil is piecemeal. The vast majority of early modern sources pertaining to Brazil’s colonial past
were destroyed in Lisbon during the 1755 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. The low-lying port
was leveled into the Tagus River, including the Portuguese royal archives, royal collections,
mercantile houses, palaces and menagerie. See Judite Nozes, The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755
(Lisbon, s.n., 1990).
The Archivum Societatis Iesu (ARSI) in Rome hold 28 large codices (Bras. 1-28)
specifically pertaining to the Jesuit’s Brazilian Province, as well as 99 volumes (Lus. 1-99) for the
Portuguese Assistancy. In addition, there are dozens of other codices that contain hodge-podge
Brazilian material. For the complete ARSI inventory used in this dissertation, see appendix.
290
Clossey suggests using the term “World Church,” paralleling the economic idea of “world
system,” but in terms of spiritual economies. See his “Early-Modern.” For a discussion of the
church sharing elements of empire see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I:
Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century,
Studies in Social Discontinuity (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1974), 15.

157
demanded a philosophical and pragmatic rethinking of the idea of human nature

and of the concept of cultural difference. 291 Although certainly not conceived as

such in the period, the late fifteenth and early-sixteenth century conquests, as well

as Renaissance archeology, laid the foundations for the later disciplines of

anthropology and ethnography. 292 Missionaries, faced with the task of converting

societies that were linguistically and culturally alien, codified local languages and

customs in order better to understand how to communicate with, and reform them.
293
The Jesuits in particular were a highly educated and linguistically adept

corporation, one that as a matter of policy worked from within the cultures in

question. The writings of Jesuit missionaries about Brazil, together with travel

narratives, maps, printed images and the indigenous objects being avidly collected

291
John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
292
Claude Blankaert, ed., Naissance de l'ethnologie: Anthropologie et missions en Amérique XVIe-
XVIIIie siècle, Sciences Humaines et Religions (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985); John Howland
Rowe, "The Renaissance Foundations of Anthropology," in Readings in the History of
Anthropology, ed. Regna Darnell, 61-77 (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1974); Margaret T. Hodgen,
Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1964).
The term “anthropology” (anthropologia) for the study of man was coined in Germany in
1501 and remained restricted to German-speaking areas till the eighteenth century. For an
interesting discussion of the early history of ethnography see Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity:
The Theory of Travel, 1550-1800, Studies in Anthropology and History (Australia: Harwood
Academic Publishers, 1995), 233-268.
293
Alfred Métraux, "The Contribution of the Jesuits to the Exploration and Anthropology of South
America," Mid-America: An Historical Review 26, no. 3 (1944): 183-91. As Métraux tells us, “So
great was the importance attached to the knowledge of native languages by the Company that its
students in Brazil who were weak in Latin could redeem themselves at the examination if they had
a good command of Tupi. A missionary had to learn the vernacular and write a glossary, and if
possible a grammar, as a preliminary step toward the evangelization of a new group of Indians.
Although their grammars were patterned of course after the rules of Latin speech, the Jesuits took
great interest in these barbaric tongues and were the first to realize their intricacies and difficult
phonetics.”The Jesuits were the first to lay the foundations of linguistic studies in South America.
In fact, it was the Jesuit Lorenzo Hervás Panduro (1735-1809) to first classify the relationships
between all native languages of the Americas.

158
throughout Europe, stimulated European intellectuals –– like Michel de Montaigne

–– to question the human condition. 294

Although the Renaissance mind was deeply threatened with the myriad of

religious practices encountered during their travels and conquest, native peoples

were not seen as the same. The most striking example of early comparative

ethnography comes from reading the important works of the Spanish Jesuit, José

de Acosta (1540-1600), and his 1588 missionary manual entitled De procuranda

indorum salute [How to procure the salvation of the Indians].295 Acosta creates a

three-tiered classification system of Native Americans (“civilized communities,”

“chiefdoms,” and “savages”) and the methods needed in the conversion of each

class. As has been noted by scholars, what fascinated sixteenth-century observers

most about exotic peoples were their past, and their ability to preserve and record

their histories.296 This immediately makes intelligible the pretense for Acosta’s

rankings of civilizations.

The highest-ranking form of culture, the “civilized community,” was the

one possessing a “knowledge of letters,” the conduit to such “civilizing” things as

294
The Renaissance discovery of “self” is discussed at length in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of
America: The Conquest of the Other (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1984). For the famous
Montaigne essay see "Of Cannibals."
295
Acosta’s original preamble reads: “It is a popular error to treat the affairs of the Indies as if they
were those of some farm or mean village and to think that, because the Indies are all called by a
single name, they are therefore of one nature and kind… The nations of Indians are innumerable,
and each of them has its own distinct rites and customs.” See the new, Jane E. Mangan and Walter
Mignolo, eds., Natural and Moral History of the Indies: Chronicles of the New World Order, trans.
M. Frances López-Morillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). Mignolo describes this
text as one that at the time was considered a form of “liberation theology.”
296
Michael T. Ryan, "Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,"
Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 23 (1981): 519-38.

159
law, stable republics, ruler-ship and urbanism. This class included the Chinese,

Japanese and certain East Indians.297 The Brazilians ––along with the Floridians,

Chuncos, Chiriguanes, Moxos and Yscayingos –– fell into the third and lowest

category, the “savages.” These Native Americans, he argues, were the “illiterate,”

“naked,” and “nomadic,” discovered by Vespucci, peoples for whom spiritual

salvation could only be administered by force.298 However, in Acosta’s system,

even this lowest tier of men was capable of learning reason and thus, of obtaining

Christian salvation.

José de Acosta’s theoretical writings were very different from the day-to-

day practices of the missionaries living and toiling in Brazil, who were as often as

not, as equally bewildered by the abhorrent behaviors of the Portuguese colonists

and clergy they encountered, as by the native Brasis.299 When the Jesuits arrived in

Brazil in mid-century, they quickly became the “protective” arm of the European

body, keeping the Brasis from enslavement, which by the 1550s, meant primarily

from working on sugar mills.300 By 1570, the Portuguese Crown finally intervened

297
Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of
Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 163.
298
Pagden, The Fall, 164-165.
299
Padre Nóbrega’s 1549 letter to Simão Rodrigues in Lisbon is full of vivid language describing
the “grande peccados” (great sins) of the land. The donatórios, planters, clergy and other Europeans
lived with “moltas molheres” (many women), some indigenous, others African, having “half-
breed” children out of wedlock, etc. He asked that women be sent from Portugal. See Manuel da
Nóbrega, "[Ao P. Simão Rodrigues, Lisbon, 1549]" in Cartas do Brasil e mais escritos do P.
Manuel de Nóbrega (Opera Omnia), ed. Serafim Leite S.J., 28-43 (Coimbra: Acta Universitatis
Conimbrigensis, 1955).
300
For a discussion of the Jesuit plight for the Brasis see Andre Ferrand de Almeida, "The
Organization of the Jesuit Mission of Maranhão in the Seventeenth Century: Antônio Vieira and the
Shaping of a Missionary Project," AHSI Anno LXXIV, no. FASC. 147 (2005): 91-118; António
Vieira and Luiz Felipe Baêta Neves, Transcendência, poder e cotidiano: as cartas de missionário
do Padre Antônio Vieira (Rio de Janeiro: EdUERJ; Atlântida Editora, 2004).

160
(possibly responding on behalf of the Jesuits) and established a law that forbade

indigenous slavery, except for those individuals taken in “just war.”301 The

interaction between the Jesuits and the Tupi are thus only a tip of the larger

cultural “iceberg” of colonial Portuguese America, a vast world of cross-cultural

struggle.

Origins and expansions of the Jesuit Order

The Society of Jesus was a religious order living in the world, not the cloister,

founded in Europe in 1534 by the Spaniard Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556),

originally dedicated to pastoral and social work. It was given papal approval in

1540. Seen as a prime motivator in the Roman Catholic resurgence following the

Reformation, its success was due to a number of factors, including its strict

organizational hierarchy, active attendance to missionary work at home and abroad

(instead of monastic life), rigorous attention to institutionalized education, as well

as the evangelical philosophy of “accommodation,” adapting missionary practices

to fit highly localized conditions.

The Jesuits also had well-timed political fortunes in Iberia. Manuel’s

successor and son, King Dom João III (1502-1557), invited Ignatius to send a pair

of his followers to Lisbon, with the principal idea of assisting in the spiritual
301
The pretexts for a “just war” became a loophole that could be exploited to mean a variety of
things, including native insurgency against the Portuguese, and anthropophagic acts. The Mesa de
Consciência (Board of Conscience and Orders) in Lisbon handled the interpretation of these laws.
It should be noted that this law came belated, two decades after the debates by the Dominican
Bartolomé de las Casas with regards to Indian rights in Spanish America. For a more in-depth
discussion see Mathias C. Kiemen, O.F.M., The Indian Policy of Portugal in the Amazon Region,
1614-1693. Vol. 8, 4-5 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1954).

161
renewal of Lusitania and helping with the “heathens” of all the newly discovered

Portuguese lands.302 And the first Jesuit Province was established in Portugal in

1546, a year before that of Ignatius’ homeland of Spain.303 Soon the Order

acquired the supreme patronage of the Portuguese Crown, due in no small part to

their strong urban ties to the ecclesiastical and lay elites in the burgeoning

international hub of Lisbon, and the growing number of notable recruits to the

newly-founded Portuguese Jesuit Colleges in Coimbra (1542) and Évora (1551).304

And to further demonstrate their good political fortunes (or perhaps tenacity), it

should not go without note that the Jesuits quickly became the principal confessors

of many Catholic royals in Europe.305

Sixteenth-century Lisbon was not just a Jesuit center but also a bustling

multi-cultural city that was the third largest in Europe (behind Constantinople and

Paris) –– a rich storehouse of knowledge from the Graeco-Judeo-Arab scientific

302
The two followers that arrived in Lisbon were Simão Rodrigues and Francis Xavier, two of
Ignatius’ closest friends and allies at the University of Paris. See José Carlos Monteiro Pacheco,
Simão Rodrigues: Iniciador da Companhia de Jesus em Portugal (Braga; São Paulo: Editorial
A.O.; Edições Loyola, 1987).
303
MB, Vol. I, 22.
304
The Jesuits remained the single most important influence in European education for the next two
centuries. For a discussion of the Jesuit ties to elites see Liam Matthew Brockey, "Jesuit Pastoral
Theater on an Urban Stage: Lisbon, 1588-1593" Journal of Early Modern History 9, no. 1-2
(2005): 3-50. According to Alden, among the Society's early recruits were: "The brother of the
Duke of Bragança, a close relative of the King; the sons of the governor of the city of Lisbon; the
secretary of the casa da India, the government agency charged with supervision of trade and
navigation between the kingdom and Its empire; and a son of the captain of Madeira." Alden, 35.
Furthermore, the Portuguese King João III hand selected Simão Rodrigues, Ignatius’ first
Portuguese follower and one of his most trusted friends, to tutor his son, the young Prince João. See
H.V. Livermore, A New History of Portugal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 148-
149.
305
Heinrich Boehmer and Paul Zeller Strodach, trans., The Jesuits: An Historical Study
(Philadelphia: The Castle Press, 1928). Alden devotes two chapters of his book to the confessors of
the Portuguese royal family: Alden, Ch. 4 and 5.

162
world, and also that of the newly “discovered” lands of Asia, Africa and the

Americas. As historian Russell-Wood has discussed in his work on the urban

fabric of Lisbon, the docks of the capital were a display of imperial strength, as

well as colonial and ecological devastation.306 People of all stripes and nations, as

well as agricultural products and manufactured goods could be seen on any given

day: young servants from India and China; natives from Brazil; slaves from all

over Africa; wheat and rye from Northern Europe; copper utensils and brassware

from Germany; sailor’s and merchant’s curiosities, such as parrots, feathers,

monkeys, exotic cats, elephant tusks, seal skins, coral; amber from the Baltic;

velvet, silk and glass beads from Venice; brazilwood from Brazil; mercury and

silver from Central and South America (via Spain); honey, dates, grapes, flounder,

eel and textiles from Morocco; cod from Newfoundland, etc.307 The renowned

sixteenth-century Portuguese humanist and member of the Manueline Court ––

Damião de Góis (1502-1574) –– provides a particularly evocative 1554 description

of Renaissance Lisbon, and the mercantile house that sat on the docks:

Executed in marvelous style and replete with the abundant spoils and
plunderings from many nations and peoples. Because it is there where the
business affairs with India are handled, our people have named it the India
House [Casa da Índia]. In my opinion, it might sooner be called an opulent
emporium, due to its aromas, pearls, rubies, emeralds, and other precious
stones brought to us from India year after year; or perhaps a grand
depository of gold and silver, whether in bars or fashioned into forms.
There stand patent, for whoever wishes to admire them, innumerable
compartments arranged with an artful cleverness overflowing with such

306
A.J.R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America,
1415-1808 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 123-147.
307
Russell-Wood, A World, 125. His introduction also provides a fascinating chart of the
commodity flow in the Portuguese world.

163
 great abundance of those treasures that –– word of honor! –– it would
surpass one’s capacity to believe, if they did not leap before the eyes of all,
and if we could not touch them with our own hands.308

The list of commodities coming and going through Lisbon was extraordinarily

extensive, and for our purposes, highlights the mobility and global aims of the

Lusitanian capital, of which the Jesuit Order was a cog in the imperial engine.

Europe’s overseas activities are captured on a much smaller level through

an examination of the Jesuit administrative headquarters in Lisbon –– the College

of São Roque –– perched high on the narrow, medieval, and winding streets of the

Bairro Alto district. To give some sample of the importance of this Jesuit locale for

the city, São Roque was the place where Jesuit men made their last confessions

before boarding ships for the unknown, and the building where visitors under

Jesuit stewardship (from Brazil, India, the Kongo) would first enter upon

debarking in Europe. 309 It was also the only place, outside Rome, where decisions

would be made for the governance of the Portuguese overseas missions. And the

surviving inventories of the early modern Jesuit church of São Roque give us

further information pertaining to the global accoutrements of the institution: they

include carpets made in the Far East for the side chapels, Chinese polychrome silk

308
This quotation is from Damião’s section, “The Sixth Building: The Ceuta House and the India
House.” See the new translation of Góis in Jeffrey, Lisbon, 29-30.
309
Brockey’s essay does a wonderful job of evoking the majesty and internationalism of this Jesuit
church, especially as a ceremonial hub for so many foreign dignitaries and religious leaders. He
even uses the analogy of São Roque as the Jesuit “Embassy” or “United Nations” building of
sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Portugal. See Brockey, “Tangled Threads,” 2006, electronic. In
the initial years of the sixteenth century the Church of São Roque was the Portuguese Assistancy’s
first novitiate. It then became a professed house in 1590. For the founding (and maps) of all major
Jesuit institutions in Lisbon see António Lopes, S.J., Roteiro histórico dos jesuítas em lisboa,
Colecção "História da Companhia de Jesus" (Braga: Livraria A.I.: Editorial A.O., 1985).

164
and gold vestments for use during mass, as well as vestments made from Indian

satin and yellow cloth.310 These registers provide a more detailed sense of the

international texture of Lisbon as a particularly global Jesuit location, not only of

spiritual cargo, but also of material assets. Though there is no mention of Brazilian

objects acquired for São Roque, we do know that various luxurious, tropical

hardwoods (the Brazilian pau preta and jacarandá) were used by Portuguese

cabinetmakers in their elaborate wooden chests for churches and convents

throughout sixteenth and seventeenth-century Portugal, some of which occupied

Jesuit buildings.311

Leaving the opulence of Renaissance Lisbon behind, what kinds of

religious centers did the Jesuit missionaries fashion in Brazil? Arriving in Salvador

da Bahia, Brazil on March 29, 1549 –– nine years after their papal authorization in

Rome –– a Portuguese fleet of three ships, two caravels, a brigantine, and two

small boats landed with over a thousand men and six Jesuits to help found a new

colonial capital. 312 To use historian Dauril Alden’s apt turns of phrase, the Society

310
The inventory of textile of the Church of São Roque is discussed in Nuno Vassalo e Silva, "Art
in the Service of God: The Impact of the Society of Jesus on the Decorative Arts in Portugal" in
O’Malley #2, 193. The original inventory is reprinted in Gonçalo Couceiro, ed., No caminho do
Japão: Arte oriental nas colecções Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Lisboa (Lisbon: Santa Casa da
Misericórdia de Lisboa; Museu de São Roque, 1993), no. 19-28.
311
Teresa Freitas Morna and Helena Alexandra Mantas, eds., Patrimonio arquitectonico da Santa
Casa da Misericórdia da Lisboa, (Lisbon: Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa; Museu de São
Roque, 2006). For a discussion of Portuguese furniture see Robert C. Smith, The Art of Portugal,
1500-1800 (New York: Meredith Press, 1968), 285-308. Smith explains that there is very little
surviving Portuguese furniture (and information about it) from before 1600. One can assume that
these objects, too, were victims of the Lisbon earthquake.
312
The original Jesuit expedition included (with their nationality and job description): Father
Manuel de Nóbrega (Portuguese; Superior/ later Provincial); Father António Píres (Portuguese;
Master of Works and Vice-Provincial); Father Leonardo Nunes (Portuguese; Founder of the
College of São Vicente); Father João de Azpilcueta (Navarre; Missionary of the Indians); Brother

165
quickly turned its “spokes” along the entirety of the Brazilian coastline and

throughout Spanish Americas as well, reaching Peru, Mexico and Central America

by the 1570s.313 Francis Xavier (1506-1552) had already led six Jesuits to India in

1542 to found the College of Goa and had created an ideal missionary model in

which Jesuits would establish themselves in or near already flourishing urban

centers.314 In the case of Brazil, however, unlike India or early colonial Mexico,

there were no major urban “cities” or imperii to speak of in 1549. Salvador da

Bahia, for example, had a relatively small population, reaching only 1,600 some

forty years after the fleet’s arrival. This was a far cry from Tenochtitlan (now

Mexico City), which had a population of 200,000 when Cortés invaded the Aztec

capital in 1519, hardly a location that needed “founding.”315

When the Jesuits arrived, even the pre-existing infrastructure of

communities like Salvador da Bahia or Rio de Janeiro were not based upon

permanent Native American settlements, such as in the cases of Mexico City or

Vicente Rodrigues (Portuguese; First School Master of Brazil); and Brother Diogo Jácome
(Portuguese; Leather Worker and Cathechist). In the subsequent expeditions of the next fifty years
there were fathers and brothers from the Canary Islands, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Catalania, Flanders,
Ireland, and Naples. For the names and dates of the first wave of Jesuits expeditions to Brazil see
Serafim Leite, S.J., História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, I. 560-572 (Lisbon; Rio de Janeiro:
Livraria Portugalia; Instituto Nacional do Livros, 1938).
313
In his book, Alden uses the underlying metaphor of radiating Jesuit “spokes” of the four
quadrants of the world: the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western spokes. See the table of
content in Alden, xiii.
314
This is in contrast to the medieval monastic orders, such as the Benedictines, Cistercians and
early Franciscans, who settled in rural areas. Of course, the pattern of Jesuit urbanism had to shift
somewhat in the New World, as it was often more beneficial to settle in more remote areas.
315
For a classic history of colonial Brazil see the multi-volume Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen,
João Capistrano de Abreu, and Rodolfo Garcia, eds., História geral do Brasil: antes de sua
separação e independência de Portugal, 10a ed., 5 vols. in 3. (Belo Horizonte; São Paulo: Editora
Itatiaia; Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1981). For a discussion of Aztec and Inka cities at
the time of the Conquest see Geoffrey W. Conrad and Arthur A. Demarest, Religion and Empire:
The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

166
Cuzco, but on European colonial and mercantile enclaves. In the absence of large-

scale, permanent Tupi settlements, the Europeans in Brazil created entirely new

towns, situated on hilltop locations near fortified ports in order to ensure easy

mercantile activity, principally for the extraction of timber and exotic animals or

the cultivation of sugar, which began in 1516. The construction of these

fortifications only began in Brazil in the 1530s, some nineteen years before the

arrival of the Jesuits in Bahia. In 1549, King João III finally took action towards

building a royal government in Brazil, a capital to make evident Lusitanian control

of the territory and prevent French corsairs and smugglers from taking over the

brazilwood trade. 316 In further contrast to Mexico City, which followed a

Renaissance model of ideal town planning, the urbanization templates of

Portuguese America were more in tune with medieval Portuguese hill towns.

316
The preoccupation with Portugal’s jurisdiction over New World territories had to do with the
ambiguities of the delimited zones of Portugal and Castile. In 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas
demarcated a line on the surface of flat maps between a single meridian 370 leagues west of the
Cape Verde Islands. This line gave Brazil and half of Newfoundland to Portugal. Early
cartographic (flat) maps, such as the Cantino map (1502), and the Ortelius map (1570), as well such
terrestrial globes as the “Ambassador’s Globe” (1526) were used as the visual evidence in these
disputes. Determining the meridian line on the face of flat maps changed in the 1520s with the
advent of using terrestrial globes as political evidence in disputes. It became an almost impossible
task of international relations to agree on the exact coordinates of the line, one not resolved until
well into the eighteenth century. Not only Portugal and Spain, but also France, had vested interests
in the ambiguities of the Treaty. In 1533, for example, Francis I of France persuaded Pope Clement
VII to reinterpret the Treaty so that France could lay territorial claims to Brazil, launching France’s
“legitimate” imperial expansion in the Americas. This accounts for the French mercantile
“interlopers” I have discussed. For Francis I, and the role of terrestrial globes in these matters see
Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 56-57.

167
Salvador da Bahia was a hill town, with no rectilinear layout, no university, no

printing press, and most fundamentally, no large population. 317

One of the most significant differences between Portuguese America and

the Iberian homeland or colonial Mexico, was the absence of a guild system

(Corporações de Mestres) for the control of crafts and merchants. This can partly

be explained by the underdevelopment of such guilds in fifteenth-century and early

sixteenth-century Portugal in comparison with those models of Northern Europe,

and partly by the lack of non-enslaved workers in Brazil.318 Because of the

inherent socio-political structure of Tupiguarani civilization, there was no

indigenous tradition of artistic consortiums beyond the structure of the familial-

linked maloca communities and their trading networks. Certainly these loose and

mutable structures could not be compared with the imperial Aztec machine for the

production of luxury feathered goods and tribute textiles between vast geographic

expanses, or the structured colonial feather workshops of the Franciscans a few

centuries later. 319 By contrast, the famous featherworkers of viceregal Mexico (in

Nahuatl called the amanteca craftsmen) worked under Franciscans friars during

the same period and produced magnificent feather mosaics with Christian

317
Stuart B. Schwartz, "Cities of Empire: Mexico and Bahia in the Sixteenth Centuries," Journal of
Inter-American Studies 11, no. 4 (1969): 616-37.
318
Bailey W. Diffie, A History of Colonial Brazil, 1500-1792, ed. Edwin J. Perkins (Malabar,
Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1987), 85.
319
Frances F. Berdan, "The Economics of Aztec Luxury Trade and Tribute" in The Aztec Templo
Mayor, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone, 161-83 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987). For a
discussion of Aztec textiles see Patricia Rieff Anawalt, "The Emperors' Cloak: Aztec Pomp, Toltec
Circumstances," American Antiquity 55, no. 2 (1990); Patricia Rieff Anawalt, "Memory Clothing:
Costumes Associated with Aztec Human Sacrifice" (Paper presented at the Ritual Human Sacrifice
in Mesoamerica, Dumbarton Oaks 1979).

168
theological themes based on European prints –– clear products of a new

colonialized culture.320 One effect of the absence of organized arts and crafts in

Brazil was the comparatively small emphasis that the Jesuits placed on the visual

arts in Portuguese America, instead stressing music and oration as the more

appropriate media of conversion for their audience. Brazil, therefore, presents a

unique colonial model in Latin America, with particularly strong contrasts to

Spanish-held Peru and Mexico.

The impact and endurance of the Jesuit Order in colonial Brazil can

perhaps be best understood in reference to Portugal’s thinly settled colonization of

the region during the early decades of the sixteenth century, due mostly to its

limited economic benefits in comparison with the extraordinary East Indian spice

trade. Portugal was not completely focused on her American possession. Even the

profits of the timber trade paled in comparison with the extraordinarily riches

derived from luxury goods from the East. Beginning in the 1530s Portugal divided

Brazil’s coast into twelve captaincies or land grants and leased them to donatários

(donataries), which included minor nobleman, gentlemen of the middle class,

soldiers of fortune, and government officials. Just as had been done in medieval

Portugal, this system was one of hereditary captaincies and was essentially an

economical strategy for the Crown to settle and develop vacant territory in

320
Maria Martinez del Rio de Redo, "La plumaria Virreinal," in El arte plumaria en México, ed.
Teresa Castello Yturbide, 110-15 (Mexico City: Banamex, 1993); Dolores Medina, "El mosaico de
plumas: la inmaculada concepción. Iconografia, tecnica y restauración," Anales del Museo de
América 1 (1993): 77-83. For more extensive bibliography see G.V. Callegari, "Mitra e manipolo a
mosaico di penne nel Museo degli Argenti a Palazzo Pitti," Dedalo 5 (1924-5): 500-13.

169
Brazil.321 The donatary captains would recoup their costs (and hopefully garner

great riches) from the timber and sugar trade. Leonardo Masser, one of the many

Venetian merchants (and spies for the Venetian Republic) living in Lisbon and

reporting on the encroaching Portuguese trade with the East, provides a useful

commentary on the rental of Brazil by the Crown within the context of the

brazilwood trade:

In the three years since the New World was discovered (sic), each year they
have brought from it twenty thousand quintals of brazilwood, which is
obtained from a large, heavy tree; but it does not tint with the same
perfection as that (dyewood) which we bring from the Levant; nevertheless,
much of it is shipped to Flanders, and from there to Castile and Italy and
many other places; it is valued at two and a half ducats per quintal, and the
trade in brazilwood was granted to Fernão de Loronha, New Christian, for
ten years by His Majesty the King, for four thousand ducats per year; and
Fernão de Loronha has sent, at his own expense, ships and men to the New
World, with the condition that the king prohibit its [brazilwood] further
importation from India. All the expense required in shipping this
brazilwood to Lisbon is only one half ducat per quintal; in this land [Brazil]
there are entire forests of these trees. It lies eight hundred leagues from
Lisbon, in a south-southwesterly course.322

Masser’s 1506 text establishes the competitive nature of transatlantic trade with the

New World and the East, and like the petroleum markets of today, part of an

emerging worldwide scramble for natural resources.

321
Schwartz, “Cities,” 630. For an intricate economic dissection of the donatário system in Brazil
in relation to Medieval Portuguese land grants see H.B. Johnson, "The Donatary Captaincy in
Perspective: Portuguese Backgrounds to the Settlement of Brazil," The Hispanic American
Historical Review 52, no. 2 (1972): 203-14.
322
Leonardo Masser and Prospero Peragallo, Carta de el- rei D. Manuel ao rei cathólico:
narrando-lhe as viagens portuguezas á india desde 1500 até 1505; reimpressa sobre o prototypo
romano de 1505 (Lisboa: Typ. da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1892). A succinct English
translation of this passage can be found in, Vogt, “Fernão,” 155. The precise nature of the original
leasing of Brazil is to date still unknown. See H.B. Johnson, "The Leasing of Brazil, 1502-1515: A
Problem Resolved?," The Americas 55, no. 3 (1999): 481-87.

170
 The captaincies were established to aid in the agricultural production of

Portugal’s colony, with the added benefit of preventing further incursion along

Portugal’s “brazilwood coast” by the French. Until the arrival of the fleets in 1549,

these captaincies were of limited success. The Jesuits worked alongside the Crown

to give additional support to Portugal’s control of the area in a far more quotidian

fashion. Upon their arrival in 1549, they established the College of Bahia (colégio

máximo), and soon the College of Rio de Janeiro (1567), and the College of Olinda

(1568). The Jesuits spread their missions, colleges, residences, seminaries, farms,

hospices and churches along the length of Brazil’s coast, from the Amazon River

to the Rio da Prata region, following the settlement patterns of the colonial Tupi

population.323

The College of Bahia was the Jesuit administrative center in the colony,

and from a 1583 description by Father Cristóvão de Gouveia (1542-1622) we can

grasp the layout and simple amenities of these institutions, very modest when

compared to the highly ornate and European-styled architectural feats of early

colonial Spanish America. The majority of the Jesuit buildings in Brazil were

made of taipa and palha –– stucco wall with straw –– the most common local

323
Between 1549 and 1760, the Jesuits established communities in the following regions:
Amazónia; Maranhão; Ceará; Piauí; Rio Grande do Norte; Paraíba; Pernambuco; Alagoas; Sergipe;
Baía; Espírito Santo; Rio de Janeiro; Minas Gerais; Goiás; Matto Grosso; São Paulo; Paraná; S.
Catarina; Rio Grande do Sul; Rio da Prata. For a list of each individual Jesuit settlement see
Serafim Leite, S.J., Artes e Ofícios dos Jesuitas no Brasil (1549-1760) (Lisbon; Rio de Janeiro:
Edições Broteria; Livros de Portugal, 1953), 32-36.

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resources available for building.324 As the administrative center, the College of

Bahia was a more elaborate complex and designed by Brother Francisco Dias, the

professional architect in charge of building the Church of São Roque in Lisbon.325

The new structure included a building made of stone and “lime/whitewash with

oyster shells” with thirty cubicles (with views of the harbor), a single-nave church,

a library, vineyard and garden of fruit trees.326 By late 1585 the Jesuits’ religious

communities had penetrated as far west as the Rio de São Francisco; thirty-six

324
This was essentially wattle with interstices of clay. These structures differed from the adobes of
Mexico and the Southwestern United States that are sun-baked bricks of clay cemented together
with clay and moistened. See Stetson’s editorial comments in Gândavo, 214, note 42.
325
J. Manuel Espinosa, "Gouveia: Jesuit Lawgiver in Brazil," Mid-America: An Historical Review
24 (New series, Vol. 13), no. 1 (1942): 54. Brother Dias directed building operations in Brazil
during the last decade of the sixteenth century.
326
Padre Cristóvão de Gouveia to Portugal with Padre Fernão Cardim’s letters, December 31, 1583:
“Os padres têm aqui colégio novo, quase acabado; é uma quadra formosa com boa capela, livraria,
e alguns trinta cubículos, os mais deles têm as janelas para o mar. O edifício é todo de pedra e cal
de ostra, que é tão boa como a de pedra de Portugal.” ARSI, Bras. 15, 333-339. This famous letter
is reproduced in many publications, including (in redacted form) the accessible, Maria Beatriz
Nizza da Silva, ed., História da colonização portuguesa no Brasil (Lisbon: Edições Colibri; Grupo
de Trabalho do Ministério da Educação para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses,
1999), 25. The oyster shell reference suggests that the builders pulverized shells, mixed them with
water (called “slaking”), and added the mixture to sand/water, producing mortar, in a technique
used by ancient Romans. The interesting part is that the “oyster shell” deposits used for building
sound very similar to the coastal sambaquis discussed in Chapter 1: Tupi refuse pits. Perhaps the
Jesuits profited from the coastal Tupi dumping grounds. Additionally, building materials were also
brought from Portugal or from the Cape Verde Islands. And the lime used for the construction of
most buildings was brought from the nearby Brazilian Island of Itaparica.
Few original architectural sketches survive of the first Jesuit buildings in Brazil. Most of
the visual material disappeared immediately after the suppression of the Order. However, for a
sketch made after a lost original of the College of Bahia see Leite, Vol. I, 65. For the inventory of
the largest surviving cache of Jesuit plans (housed at the BN in Paris) see Jean Vallery-Radot and
Edmond Lamalle, Le recueil de plans d'édifices de la campagnie de jésus conservé á la
bibliothèque nationale de paris; suivi de l'inventaire du recueil de quimper, Bibliotheca Instituti
Historici S.I. (Rome: Institutum Historicum S I., 1960). There is a small section on the Portuguese
Assistancy, but with only a single entry for Brazil: the C. Januarii Fluminis, or College of Rio de
Janeiro, inv. # (HD-4c, 133). For the plans remaining in Brazil (mostly secular) see Isa de Adónias,
Mapas e planos manuscritos relativos ao Brasil colonial (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério das Relações
Exteriores, Serviço de Documentação, 1960).

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missions were founded, with just 140 Jesuits “converting” an estimated 18,000

Brasis to Christianity.327

Founding philosophies and organization

In comparison with other religious orders of the early modern period, there is a

tremendous amount of surviving correspondence for the Society of Jesus, an

invaluable resource for understanding the movement of information about Brazil,

the Tupi and their customs to early modern Europe. The centralization of the

administration headquarters in Rome and the institution of a highly regimented

bureaucracy accounts both for the extraordinary volume of correspondence and for

its availability to scholars today. To give some indication of the layers of

institutional labor in the Jesuit informational exchange between Rome and Brazil,

we can turn to the extensive documentary record of the Portuguese Father Manuel

de Nóbrega (1517-1570), the founder and first Superior of the Brazilian missions.

The first letters Nóbrega wrote from Brazil were sent via Lisbon to Rome, taking

less than a year to arrive. These missives were then redacted and distributed

throughout the Jesuit houses and colleges of Europe (Florence, Naples, Sicily,

Corsica, Paris, etc.), reaching as far as Goa and other Jesuit loci in Asia via

327
To give geographic fixity to this huge inland expanse of land: the Rio de São Francisco stretched
from the Atlantic Ocean in the modern day state of Alagoas, and curved inland, heading southward
to the center of the modern-day Minas Gerais. There is an excellent map of the expansion of the
Jesuit Order in Brazil compiled by Leite from the missionary letters. See Leite, Vol. I, 512-513. For
a graph of the Jesuit’s “success” rates between 1583-1585 see Charlotte de Castelnau-L'Estoile, Les
ouvriers d'une vigne stérile: les jésuites et la conversion des indiens au Brésil, 1580-1620 (Lisbon;
Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2000), 54.

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Portuguese caravels.328 For example, from a 1552 letter from Goa we know that

letters from Portugal were often read “until one in the morning” and then in the

refectories of the college for “the next ten days straight,” and would later be

summarized, condensed and sent to of the distant colleges in China, Japan and

Malacca and the Maluccas (Indonesia).329 And a 1564 letter from a Brazilian

aldeia in Bahia describes a letter arriving from Portugal that set the brothers in a

“trance,” animating the missionaries so much that “until morning no one was able

to sleep.”330 The Goa examples give some sense of the parallel networks of

information exchange within the Assistancies.

All official Jesuit correspondence was produced in duplicate, triplicate, or

quadruplet to ensure safe arrival across the sea from the hands of French pirates or

shipwreck. The simple task of copying became a monumental effort as missions

grew all over the world. And many of the texts needed stylistic or linguistic

alteration. In fact, historian Peter Burke has found that 260 individual Jesuit

translators were employed by the Society between 1550 and 1749, both as

328
MB, Vol. I, 53-60. See also Rosario Romeo, "The Jesuit Sources and the Italian Utopia in the
Second Half of the Sixteenth Century," in Chiapelli, 165-84.
329
Luís Frois to the Brothers of Coimbra, December 1, 1552: “As cartas que de Portugal vieram,
assim desse Colégio como do Brasil, no ano de 52, sobre maneira nos alegrarem, e houve com elas
assaz de fervor. Na noite que chegaram, se leram com campainha tangida até à uma depois da meia
noite, e no refetório todos os dez dias seguintes. E logo, tresladado o sumário delas, forma
mandados à China, Japão, Maluco e Malaca, e todas as mais partes donde os Padres nossos
andam.” MB, Vol. I, 54.
330
From the aldeia of Espírito Santa, Bahia, to an unknown, May 20-21, 1564: “…Consolou-nos
também o Espirito Santo em sua Casa e em sua mesma véspera, com as cartas que recebemos
aquela noite de Portugal; porque, Segundo minha estimative, seriam duas horas depois da meia
noite quando por casa entrou o que as trazia….Daí até de manhã não havia quem pudesse dormir,
porque logo o Provincial começou a ler as cartas.” MB, Vol. I, 55.

174
amateurs and semi-professionals.331 That is an astounding number of individuals

devoted to a single kind of task within the Order and thus must reflect, to a certain

extent, the rise of the vernacular languages.

In the case of Brazil, the letters were most often written in Portuguese,

translated first into Spanish, then Italian and finally into Latin. By the 1560s, the

“best” Jesuit letters from the “Indies” (New World) were translated into Latin to be

dispersed and printed throughout Germany.332 These measures give some sense of

how information about Brazil spread quickly and efficiently throughout Europe,

especially into the homes of the elite, in a similar way that serial novellas or

newspapers would circulate centuries later. These letters were distributed in the

hopes of informing people about the New World, their customs and culture, as well

as to edify and instruct their readers in Jesuit learning. In many cases, they were

also directly intended to attract additional secular support to the Society’s mission.

After Nóbrega’s death in 1570, six editions of his Informação das Terras do Brasil

[“Information from the Land of Brazil”] were compiled and published in Spanish,

Italian and Latin, with a German edition added in 1586.333

331
Burke notes that there were likely many more than just the 260 that he discovered. These
individuals held other positions, such as that of writer, interpreter, and secretary. Peter Burke, "The
Jesuits and the Art of Translation in Early Modern Europe," in O’Malley #2, 26.
332
The idea of a Latin translation for “las mejores cartas de las Indias” to be printed and distributed
throughout Germany originated from Jerónimo Nadal to Francisco Borja, Innsbruck, December 5,
1562. For the original document see Leite, Vol. I, 59. During the sixteenth century, Germany was
both a printing center of Europe and a strong Jesuit center.
333
Leite, “Expansão,” 60. According to Leite, it was with the publication of Luíz Vaz de Camões’
The Lusiads in 1572 –– one of Portugal’s greatest works of literature –– that interest in the Jesuit
letters from the New World began to lessen. Camões epic poem details the Portuguese voyages of
discovery.

175
 The nature of Jesuit informational exchange is also demonstrated quite well

in the case of the Portuguese Jesuit Baltasar Teles (1596-1675) and his translation

of a work important for understanding Tupi celebrations. His two-volume

Portuguese book printed in Lisbon 1645-47 –– Chronica da Companhia de Iesu,

na provincia de Portugal [Chronicle of the Company of Jesus in the Province of

Portugal] –– describes the arrival and early years of the Jesuits in Brazil, compiled

from clerical correspondence coming into Rome from the Portuguese Assistancy.

An English Jesuit in 1657, some twenty years after the printed original in Lisbon

then translated Teles’ book in Rome. 334 Not only was a final Italian manuscript

translation completed, but also two “rough-drafts” of the same Teles narrative are

extant in the Jesuit Archive in Rome. Telles’ fourth chapter discusses Brazil and

details the customs and nature of the Amerindians. The ceremonial event

surrounding ritual sacrifice is described –– the scarified body of the participant, his

colorful necklace of plumes, and his feather-adorned deadly weapon. Both of these

issues I have discussed at length in Chapter I. What is so decisively compelling in

this example is not what is being described, per se, however, but the labor involved

in the Order’s translation of this volume that was destined not for the printing

press, but as an unpublished Italian manuscript “copy.” The very nature of Jesuit

334
The final Italian manuscript is catalogued: ARSI, Lus. 99: Baldassar Telles: Hist. della Comp. di
Gesu nel regno di Portogallo in lingua portughese e transportata novellamente nell’Italiano. The
two rough-drafts are catalogued as Lus. 98 and 99. The English Jesuit responsible for this huge task
was Nathanael Bacon Southwell (1598/99-1676) from Norfolk. Telles’ quote of interest from “De’
Costumi de’ Naturali del Brasile” reads: “Viene alla fine della festa, quello, che porta seco luttuosa
morte, il deputato Carnefice molto adorno, à suo modo, tinta d’ una creta bianca nel volto, nel
corpo tutto sgraffiato, con un collaro di penne colorate al collo, con una spada alla cintura fatta di
legno, tutta inpennata nel pomo.” Cap. 4, 26.

176
 information exchange can be understood as part of the Jesuits (and i.e., of

colonialism’s) network of acquisitive practices and epistemic structures.

What were the goals of the Jesuit Order that prescribed such a wide-

distribution of information? What can their hierarchical structure, and guiding

missionary philosophies tell us about the particular Tupi-Jesuit encounter in Brazil?

The Jesuit Order was established not only to reinforce the Catholic faith in turbulent

Europe, but also to extend the faith all over the globe, persuading non-Christians to

convert to the “true faith.” In Jesuit teachings, this could be accomplished through

preaching, confession, public disputations, liturgical and para-liturgical music,

theatrical performance, counseling and a number of other techniques. Letter

publishing also became part of their “modern” marketing skills in a world

discovering the printed page. And so much of the Jesuit’s activity could occur

because of the institutional foundations of the Order. The Society of Jesus was the

first Catholic Order to understand higher education to be a formal ministry, as well

as the first religious order to operate institutions of higher learning. By the mid-

eighteenth century the Jesuits administered eight hundred universities, seminaries

and secondary schools across the globe.335 In the case of universities in Portugal, a

major function was to train missionaries to serve overseas.

Ignatius of Loyola, his secretary Juan Alfonso Polanco (1516-76), and

assistant Jerónimo Nadal (1507-80) wrote the Jesuit Constitutions in the 1550s to

lay the foundational rules and ideals for becoming a Jesuit, a voluntary position

335
John W. O'Malley S.J., The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993),
15-16.

177
which required a certain character and personality, including the patience to

proceed through educational or spiritual stages.336 This idea of ‘development’ (from

novice to priest) was a key component of the Constitutions, for as a Jesuit grew

spiritually, so would his responsibilities or offices, as well as training. Furthermore,

men were trained for positions that best fit their particular skills and interests,

another fundamentally “modern” idea for religious organizations of the period. It

specified a Jesuit style of life or ministry that is well encapsulated in an Ignatian

expression: “noster modus procendendi” (“way of proceeding”). 337 All Jesuits

undertook the three standard monastic vows: poverty, chastity and obedience. The

fully professed Jesuits also took a fourth vow of obedience to the Papacy: to travel

wherever the Pope should choose to send them. And the Papal Bull of 1540 firmly

established the Order’s allegiance to Rome and encapsulates Jesuit global

ambitions:

[We are to go] to whatever lands we may be sent –– whether to the Turks,
whether to the lands of other infidels, even the parts called the Indies, as
well as to the heretical and schismatic countries.338

336
A future Jesuit should possess: “A Pleasing manner of speech so necessary for communication
with one’s fellow men,” and “a good appearance by which those with whom they deal are more
usually edified.” See George E. Ganss, trans. and ed., "The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus
and Their Declarations," in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit
Sources, 1970), 420. An excellent overview of the Constitutions and the founding of the Jesuit
Order can be found in O'Malley, The First, 6-10. The first Latin version of the document was
published in 1558-59, ten years after the Jesuit missionaries arrived in Brazil.
337
O’Malley, The First, 8. For an in-depth study of the Jesuit commitment to higher education see
George E. Ganss, Saint Ignatius' Idea of a Jesuit University: A Study in the History of Catholic
Education, Including Part Four of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1954).
338
Regimini Miltantis Ecclesia of September 27, 1540 discussed in Diffie, A History, 92.

178
The rules or “ways of proceeding” mapped out in the Constitutions provided only a

rough guide for the new missionaries. Additional prescriptions had to be written

for the adaptation of a Jesuit to “local” situations –– as in the freedom of dress (no

garb or habit required) and a healthful diet matched to the particular region.339 And

to give some sense of the enormous popularity and power of the Order in the early

modern period, there were 1,500 members of the Jesuit Order in 1556, the year of

Ignatius’ death, and by 1749 there were 22, 589 members.340

The Constitutions also spelled out the hierarchical structure of the Society.

Indeed, scholars have commented on the similarity of the Order (often nicknamed

“The Soldier’s of Christ”) to a smooth-running military organization, with its

chain-of command structure, owing perhaps to Ignatius of Loyola’s own martial

background, as well as his interest in the centralized structures of secular

governments.341 More recently, however, scholars have produced regional works

that demonstrate that, for all Ignatius’ penchant for a centralized administrative

model, the organization often functioned in a far more fragmented nature.342

According to the Constitutions, a General is elected for a life term and

heads the Jesuit organization, with the assistance of a socio (companion), a

339
The fact that the Jesuits did not have a distinctive dress was controversial within Catholic
communities of the sixteenth century, as was their potential for “going native,” one of their most
powerful tools in their overseas missions. For the rules of dress see George E. Ganss, trans. and
ed., "The General Examen and Its Declarations," in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, 84-85
(St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970).
340
See the table in Alden, 17.
341
René Fülöp-Miller, D. F. Tait, and F. S. Flint, The Jesuits: A History of the Society of Jesus
(New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), 24-27; H. Outram Evenett, The Spirit of the Counter
Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 82; Alden, 8-10.
342
Clossey, “The Early-Modern.”

179
secretary, a procurator-general (chief legal officer) and several assistants (four to

six). To give some sense to the sequence of chain-like links involved in decision-

making for Brazil (as in all provinces): the Jesuit missionaries in Brazil reported to

Rectors in Brazil, who reported to Father Provincials in Brazil and Visitors living

in Europe (who came to Brazil every few years as a “cross check” mechanism to

evaluate the Provincial’s work), who reported to the Father General in Rome, who

reported directly to the Congregation in Rome.343 What is so important to point out

in regards to this structure –– and thus for the trans-oceanic flow of information

from Brazil to Europe –– is that the Order was organized as a uni-directional,

centralized command structure reporting to Rome. However, the language-based

Assistancies would function as quasi-autonomous units and often trump the hub, as

we have seen just with the example of translation. Jesuit missionary letters were

dispersed widely around the Jesuit world in various ways, attesting to the

possibilities of the “provincialization” of Rome.344

In 1558, four “Assistancies” were assigned more or less along linguistic

lines to cover the geographic expanse of Europe and their missions abroad, and

343
The most important men to consider in this chain-of-command structure are the Father
Provincials, who had the most effect on the activities of the missionaries, and usually served a term
between one and ten years. In the case of Brazil, some of the most notable Father Provincials were
Fathers Nóbrega (1549-1550), Father Anchieta (1577-1587), Father Cardim (1604-1609), and
Father Vieira (1688-1691).
344
Here I take the term “provincialization” from Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe:
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Circumnavigating Rome could be a direct or indirect
move. Pragmatically, it would occur if decisions in the provinces required immediate attention and
could not wait in the long line of proper administrative circuits. Zupanov discusses the “de-
centralization” of European centers in relation to the Jesuit’s missionary activity. See Ines G.
Zupanov, Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India, 16th-17th Centuries, History,
Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2005), 4.

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each assistant was responsible as a liaison between a particular Assistancy and the

Generalate.345 Within each of these Assistancies there existed a range of territorial

“provinces,” corresponding very roughly in the case of Europe, to the old

provinces of the Roman Empire.346 No one man or position had independent

authority within the structure and all ultimately reported to the Father General of

the Society. For the purposes of this project, I speak specifically of the functions of

Lusitaniae, or the Portuguese Assistancy. Beyond Portugal and Brazil, the

Portuguese Assistancy also included: the Portuguese Estado da India (Mughal

court of the north, coastal centers of Goa, Bassein, Bay of Cambay, Cochin,

Quilon); the Persian Gulf (Ormuz); portions of Africa (Ethiopia, Mozambique,

Kongo, Angola) and Asia (China, Japan, Malacca and the Maluccas).347

Part II. Jesuit aldeias and “ways” of colonizing in Brazil

In Brazil, the Jesuits founded indigenous communities called aldeias, similar to the

reducciónes (“reductions”) of neighboring Spanish-controlled Paraguay. As we

will see, the aldeias were intercultural sites where the Tupi continued to make

345
The Assistancies of the Old Society (pre-suppression) included: Italiae; Lusitaniae; Hispaniae;
and Germaniae. The “German Assistancy” included not only the German-speaking lands, but also
the English, Flemish and Belgian provinces in the northwest and the Polish, Bohemian and
Austrian (now Hungary, Croatia, Serbia) provinces to the east and southeast. The Jesuit “linguistic”
divisions were thus fairly flexible. The “Polish Assistancy” was split from the “German” and this
included Greater and Little Poland, Lithuania and Muscovy in 1755. Already, in 1608, Galliae had
been added.
There were eleven Provinces of the Jesuit Order in 1556: Portugal (1546); Spain (1547);
Goa (1549); Italy (1551); France (1552); Brazil (1553); Sicily (1553); Castille (1554): Aragon
(1554); Andalusia (1554); Greater Germany (1556); Lesser Germany (1556). See MB, Vol. I, 22.
347
For an excellent overview of the Portuguese Empire, of which the Jesuits were some of the main
players in its sustenance, see Russell-Wood, A World.

181
feathered capes and use them in ritual activities. This sustained cultural practice

within the precincts of a Christian religious institution raises fascinating questions

about the shared cultural experience of Tupi and Jesuits. As I will discuss, one way

of understanding this site of cultural interaction is as an instantiation of Homi

Bhabha’s “third space,” a realm of ambivalent cultural identity.

The usage of the term aldeia is an important and interesting one, for it was

hardly an invention of the Jesuit Order. Aldeia has thirteenth-century Andalusian-

Arabic roots, and was first used in Portugal in the fifteenth-century to denote a

small, rural population.348 In colonial Brazil it came to signify an indigenous

settlement under the direction of missionaries or military leaders.349 Mission

communities were designed to tame the natural spaces of the Brazilian topography

and transform the Tupi population from their nomadic life of hunting and fishing,

348
The original Medieval Arabic word was ad-daiâ (also spelled aD-Dai’a), referring simply to a
“village,” one of about 4,000 Arabic loan words in Spanish and Portuguese. See Bernard Dulsey,
and Eugen H. Mueller. "Some Common Spanish "Al-" Nouns of Arabic Origin," Hispania 36, no. 3
(1953): 319-20. For an etymological history of the word aldeia see Antonio Joaquim de Macedo
Soares and Julião Rangel de Machado Soares, Dicionário brasileiro da língua portuguêsa:
elucidário etimológico crítico das palavras e frases que, originárias do brasil, Vol. I. (Rio de
Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1954), 16-17. See also José
Pedro Macahdo, Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa (Lisbon: Editorial Confluência,
1956), 146.
Interestingly enough, the use of the word aldeia in reference to indigenous Brazilian
communities likely arose from Caminha’s deployment of this term in his famous 1500 letter to the
Portuguese King: “E o capitã mandou a dous degredados e a d(o) dijz que fosem la a aldeia e a
outras.” Pero Vaz de Caminha and Sílvio Batista Pereira, ed., Vocabulário da carta de Pero Vaz de
Caminha: Seguido da reprodução fac-similar e da leitura diplomática do manuscrito autógrafos
(Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1964), 8 [from original folio, 9v. 26-28].
349
For modern usage see Antônio Houaiss, et al., Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, 1a ed.
(Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2001), 145. In modern Brazil the term aldeia has re-acquired the more
generalized Medieval Portuguese usage to refer to any small, rural populations (smaller than
towns), and simultaneously in southern Brazil, has been a referent for modest homes that are
constructed cheaply, often located near military outposts to house the families of soldiers.

182
to a more stable and sedentary Christian life, where they would all live together

(beyond familial clan units) and “eat like the whites, on tables.”350

There are almost no surviving images of these establishments. One rare

pictorial vestige of an aldeia comes to us from a much later German manuscript,

the seventeenth-century traveler Zacharias Wagner’s (1614-1668) illustrated

Thierbuch [Animal Book] (Fig. 47).351 This is an extraordinary collection of 110

drawings of flora, fauna and ethnographic images from Wagner’s years in Brazil as

a surveyor and cook for Maurits of Nassau, the Dutch-Governor of the

Pernambuco region. Wagner exemplifies the multilateral European presence in

Brazil; he is a German employee of the Dutch regime, surveying a Jesuit mission,

in Portuguese territory, under Portuguese control, which was of course also the

home of Tupiguarani men, women and children.

The watercolor image of an aldeia is one of the few visual glimpses we

have of some of the spatial dimensions of these highly structured Jesuit-indigenous

communities. An artistic product of a Dutch-led expedition from coastal

350
Leite, Vol. II, 85. For the initial years of the Jesuit enterprise in Brazil see also the published
sources: Leite, Cartas; Anchieta and Peixoto, Cartas, informações; Manuel da Nóbrega, Alfredo do
Valle Cabral, and Antonio Franco, eds, Cartas do Brasil (1549-1560), Cartas Jesuiticas (Rio de
Janeiro: Officina Industrial Graphica, 1931).
351
The original manuscript (Ca. 226a. M. (a) 7a) is held in the Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden and in
German reads: Their Buch Darinnen viel unterschiedene Arter der Fische vögel vierfüssigen Their
Gewürm, Erd- und Baumfrüchte, so hin undt wieder in Brasilischen bezirck, undt gebiethe, Der
Westindischen Compagnie zu schauwen undt anzutreffen…van Zacharias Wagenern von Dresden.
[Animal Book in which there are many different kinds of fish, birds, quadrupeds, worms, fruits of
the ground and trees, as you can see and meet them here and there in the Brazilian district and
area of the West Indian Company, and which are therefore foreign and not known in German
lands.] The latest two edited translations of the text are: O.H. Spohr, Zacharias Wagner: Second
Commander of the Cape (Cape Town; Amsterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1967); Zacharias Wagner,
Cristina Ferrão, José Paulo Monteiro Soares, Benjamin Nicolaas Teensma, Dante Martins Teixeira,
and Alvaro Alfredo Bragança Júnior, eds., Brasil Holandês, 3 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Index,
1997). Volume 2 contains the Thierbuch.

183
Pernambuco to the Portuguese-controlled interior regions of the area, the

watercolor shows Tupi malocas built of wood and palm, characteristic of many of

the mission settlements throughout colonial Brazil. However, by reading Wagner’s

own caption to this drawing, one can gain much more knowledge about the

illustration, which in turn points towards the complex nature of the aldeia system:

The Brazilian villages are neatly built; they usually consist of two long
rows of thatched houses. In the centre is a low church, where they all meet
three times a week for religious instruction in Portuguese by specially
appointed persons. Our people install a commander in each village. The
villagers recognize him as an authority and they have to obey him. He
instructs them in the proper use of firearms, gives them daily exercise, so
that they may be prepared for a sudden encounter with the enemy…. In an
aldea there are about 700 or 800 men, women and children. The men have
to march behind the captain in an orderly way, then come the women with
big baskets full of food and drinks, and every creature, young or old, dog or
cat, who can walk or crawl, comes along and the village is emptied and
deserted.352

These thatched structures flank a central, communal space, often used for

worship, teaching, or recreation, though here we see individuals presumably

practicing with firearms –– though these objects look more like long sticks than

guns. Two of the malocas in Wagner’s image show an enclosed garden with tidy

rows of crops, perhaps indicative of the agricultural self-sufficiency of many of the

aldeia settlements, which grew their own food for the mission community. Part of

the mission effort was to entice the Amerindians into a more “stable” livelihood,

one far more sedentary than the agricultural semi-nomadism of the Tupi. One

mission inhabitant in white cotton clothing hunts in the bottom right corner of the

352
Spohr, Zacharias Wagner, 61. This image is one of nine ethnographic illustrations in a larger
manuscript devoted to naturalia.

184
image, symbolized by the bow and arrow in his arms, adjacent to the fenced

confines of the garden, another indicator of the autonomy of the community. In the

lower right corner we see more residents covered in typical mission clothing as

well as a hammock (ini) in use, which was also already a stereotypical Brazilian

artifact associated with the Tupinambá.353 Wagner’s image is not especially

concerned with showing the religious life of the aldeias, but it does underscore

how these architectural and conceptual spaces served many purposes, including

such pragmatic tasks as Portuguese language schooling (an important tool towards

Christian conversion), military training, and instruction in the maintenance of

economically self-sufficient villages.

The colonial communities the Jesuits first encountered in Brazil were far

from ideal. The first Jesuit fathers in Pernambuco, the region depicted in Wagner’s

drawing, wrote extensively about corrupt clergy, illegal slavery and the

proliferations of concubinage.354 If one turns to the Jesuit College and mission

complex in Rio de Janeiro, to cite another example, the social inadequacies of

353
As an aside, in colonial Brazil hammocks were not only used for sleeping and resting (by all
constituents), but were also used as a mode of transport for wives of sugar mill owners. Two slaves
would hold the ends of the ini, which were ornately embroidered (often with feathers) and supplied
with pillows. This tradition lasted until the nineteenth century. Zacharias Wagner and Edgard de
Cerqueira Falcão, ed., Zoobiblion: Livro de animais do Brasil (São Paulo: Emprêsa Gráfica da
"Revista dos Tribunais", 1964), 389-390.
354
As an interesting aside, the “immoral” behavior extended to those within the Order as well. For
example, in 1638 a Jesuit priest married the daughter of a Dutchman in the province, much to the
chagrin of his Jesuit compatriots. He was captured and imprisoned with other wrongdoers:
“Tambien dicen como á aquel padre nuestro, que estando en el Brasil se habia casado con la hija de
uno de los holandeses, le habian los nuestros cautivado con otros companeros y quedaba preso:
Dios quiere que pague su pecado y reconozca su hierro.” See Anon, "[Cartas de algunos pp. de la
Compania de Jesus sobre los sucesos de La Monarquía]," in Memorial Histórico Español:
colección de documentos, opúsculos y antigüedades, que publica la Real Academia de la Historia,
304 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1638).

185
these “self-sufficient” Christian establishments are further revealed. For example,

the 1640s census figures show that the College included six hundred Africans, five

hundred of whom were field hands, while the other one hundred worked within the

College.355 The Society needed labor for their missionary enterprise, and thus saw

little contradiction between the salvation of the aborigines and the forced labor of

the imported African work force. The commercial necessity of manual laborers ––

as well as the long historical precedents of the slave trade in Iberia –– perhaps

anesthetized the Jesuits to such institutions.356 Thus Wagner’s idyllic illustration

captures only one constituent of the mission population and alludes to none of the

obstacles in the mission process.

How, then, were these mission communities first conceived and how can

that help us understand not only Wagner’s image, but the cultural dimensions of

Tupi-Jesuit life? In 1548 the King of Portugal, Dom João III, appointed the

Portuguese nobleman, Tomé de Sousa (1503-1573), as the first Governor-General

of Brazil. Sousa’s principal job was to restore the King’s authority in Brazil and it

was in a set of “Royal Instructions” for his new office that a detailed plan of

colonization for Portuguese America was established. The Royal Instructions were

355
Fr. Simón Mendez, "[Mendez to Sebastian Gonzales, 1640]," in Memorial histórico, 238, 48.
Also cited in Alden, 517.
356
See Alden’s subchapter, “Jesuit Involvement in African Slave Trade,” in Alden, 544-546.
Contrary to what some scholars claim, Alden asserts that there is no documentary evidence to
suggest that the Jesuits ran fleets of slave ships between West Africa and Brazil. The Jesuits were
most certainly complicit, however, in acquiring African slaves on the open market. For a more in-
depth theological discussion of Jesuit attitudes toward African slavery see Carlos Alberto de Moura
Ribeiro Zeron, "La Compagnie de Jesus et l'institution de l'esclavage au Bresil: les justifications
d'ordre historique, theologique et juridique, et leur integration par une memoire historique (XVIe-
XVIIe siecles)" (PhD diss. École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1998).

186
a model of colonial administration –– this document became a precursor to the

official aldeia edicts that the Jesuits thereafter instituted.357 Two of the items on

the Instructions are particularly pertinent to the discussion of indigenous-crafted

goods, and thus of Amerindian life, as they give a fuller dimension to the dynamics

of colonial exchange. From the first moments of the Portuguese/Jesuit arrival in

1549, the idea of an indigenous marketplace was already one conceived as an

ordered, regimented, and contained colonial social space:

[#21] Market days are to be established in the settlements one day a week,
or more often, if it seems necessary, where the natives can bring their wares
to buy, sell, and barter. The Christians are not to visit the Native villages
for trade except those within their own grant or sugar plantation. But if the
Governor considers it desirable he will confine the right of local trade with
the natives to a single agent within the area. [#22] For Christians to trade
with the natives on days other than these appointed for the market they
must obtain a special license from their captain or one of his officers.358

As we have already seen in Frans Post’s formulaic depiction of a colonial

Pernambucan marketplace discussed in the Introduction (Fig. 1), the social terrain

of such Brazilian markets was a fascinating liminal zone between colonial worlds:

the natural terrain of the forests, the Christian spaces of the Jesuit aldeias, and the

colonist’s labor-intensive plantations and sugar mills. These marketplaces were

thus cross-sections of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Portuguese America,

spaces where European and mestiço colonists, Amerindians, and Jesuits would

mingle, buy, sell and exchange goods. And, no doubt these were also sites of

357
An English translation of the 48 points in the Regimento de Tomé de Sousa (December 17, 1548)
can be found in Ruth Lapham Butler, "Thomé de Sousa, First Governor General of Brazil, 1549-
1553," Mid-America: An Historical Review 24 (New series, Vol. 13), no. 4 (1942): 229-51.
358
For the full list see Butler, “Thomé,” 239.

187
human exchange in a slave-driven economy. The markets, in fact, were an

antecedent to the formal establishment of the Jesuit’s evangelization program in

Brazil.

Governor-General Sousa gave Father Nóbrega the task of putting the aldeia

system into action and founding the first Jesuit missions in Brazil. Years later, in

1558 Nóbrega devised a six-point list with respect to the conversion of his new

Amerindian charges. These rules included the eradication of anthropohagy,

polygamy, magic, and warfare and the introduction of clothing, (“because there is

so much cotton” available) and the relocation of the Brasis to Jesuit-controlled

spaces for indoctrination.359 In reality, the aldeia system was a complex institution

tied to a particular strategy of catechism and conversion of the native Brazilian

populations. New, permanent indigenous-Christian communities were created,

segregated from the larger mutable networks of Amerinidian religious and cultural

space. The dislocation of the Tupi to new, permanent communities near colonial

settlements was a physical and spiritual rupture for the Tupi, who were increasing

fleeing westward to escape European expansion.

The language often used in the period described aldeias as places to fazer

deçer (“to descend”) in Portuguese, allowing one to understand the spatial

implications of a largely political move on the part of the Jesuits and the

Portuguese Crown. In this case the spatial/temporal term “descend” was used to

359
Nóbrega’s six points from the “Diálogo sobre a conversão do gentio,” are reprinted in MB, Vol.
II, 54. The exact wording of the clothing clause reads: “#3: vestirem-se, pois têm muito algodão, ao
menos depois de cristãos.”

188
describe a cultural transformation. The idea of a descent into another cultural realm

is somewhat reminiscent of Homi Bhabha’s discussion of the “Third Space,” or

ambivalent space that helped articulate various colonial identites.360 The Tupi-

Jesuit aldeias were just such cultural spaces, zones where cultural difference was

lived and breathed. The Brasis would “descend” into Portuguese territory –– from

the sertão to the coast, from forest to sea, from indigenous culture to Christian

culture. During the late sixteenth century, this meant an increasingly protectionist

stance, ensuring the safety of the Brasis from slave raiders, often mamelucos, who

were mestiço men of European and Amerindian ancestry who could speak

brasílica fluently, and who were often agents of the merchants and colonists.361

And as historian Metcalf has described, mamelucos often developed relationships

with local indigenous communities to aid in their employment possibilities and

thus acted as transactional go-betweens for Europeans and Native Americans.362

360
For example, it’s interesting to ponder Bhabha’s discussion of Third Space: “It is significant that
the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or post-colonial provenance. For, a
willingness to descend [emphasis mine] into that alien territory…may open the way to
conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the
diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity.” See Homi K.
Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1994), 98.
361
The word “descend” is used in Phillip II’s law of July 26, 1596 to ensure the “freedom” of the
Brazilian Indians from the slave raiders and hunters. “Me pareceo emcarregar por hora, em quanto
eu nom ordenar outra cousa, aos religiosos da la Companhia de Jesus o cuydado de fazer deçer este
gentio do sertão, e o enstruir nas cousas de religião xpãa, e domesticar, emsinar, e encaminhar no q
convem ao mesmo gentio, assi nas cousas de su salvação, como na vivenda comun, e tratamento
com os povadores, e moradores daquellas partes.” Transcribed in Leite, História, Vol. II, 625-626.
For a summation of all the colonial laws pertaining to indigenous Brazilians see Beatriz Perrone-
Moisés, "Índios livres e índios escravos: os princípios da legislação indigenista do período colonial
(séculos XVI e XVII)," in História dos índios no Brasil, ed. Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and
Francisco M. Salzano, 115-32 (São Paulo: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São
Paulo; Companhia das Letras et al., 1992).
362
Metcalf, Go-betweens, 59.

189
 Primarily aldeias were considered places where the precepts of Christianity

could be instilled, and indigenous practices of warfare, homicide, anthropophagy,

idolatry, polygamy and the “superstitions” called feitiçeiros, could be forever

eradicated.363 Jesuit aldeias were perceived as physical and psychological

structures for the spiritual conquest of the Tupi. The “civilizing” of aborigines was

enacted through the ordered control of their daily lives, their work, and their

interpersonal relationships. Catechism was to be taught twice a day, mass was to

be celebrated on Sunday, and the sacraments of baptism, marriage, and death

administered. And, as I will show in numerous examples, removing Amerindians

from their indigenous cultural spheres and acculturating them to Christian precepts

of living, was seen as the fastest way towards a spiritual “conversion.”

We gain a fuller picture of Jesuit-Tupi life, and their thriving material

culture, by looking at the first Jesuit aldeias in Bahia and Pernambuco, almost 100

years before Wagner’s watercolor was produced. In these missions, a small

number of priests looked after and preached Christianity to a large community of

indigenous people, as was done in rural European hamlets.364 The earliest Jesuit

correspondence from Bahia reveals a rich array of ethnographic detail from these

363
The word feitiçeiros was the general term deployed by the Jesuits to describe any kind of
“magic,” one that was also applied to witchcraft in Portugal. For the Jesuit fight against feitiçeiros
read the introduction to Father Vasconcelos’ letters, edited as Simão de Vasconcelos, S.J. and
Serafim Leite, S.J., ed., Crônica da Companhia de Jesus, 3. ed. (Petropolis: Vozes, 1977). For a
good discussion of cultural terrain of superstition and missionaries in colonial Brazil see Pompa,
“Profetas.”
364
For a discussion of the continuity between rural European and overseas mission practices see
Dominique Deslandres, Croire et faire croire: les missions françaises au XVIIe siècle, 1600-1650
(Paris: Fayard, 2003); Louise Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and
the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c.1500- c.1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1997).

190
first aldeia settlements, far from the ordered and militaristic world of Wagner’s

watercolor. The first decades of the Jesuit presence in Brazil were marked by an

unfolding comprehension of the religion and culture of the Brasis, and, therefore,

of the best way to reach their souls. From these letters we can gather much about

the use and production of feathered capes in Bahian aldeias, giving texture to the

material dimensions of cross-cultural power struggles. In 1557, the same year that

Hans Staden’s captivity narrative was published in Germany, the Spanish Jesuit

António Blázquez wrote to Ignatius of Loyola with equally extraordinary

ethnographic details of the Tupinambá:

Six nude women came by the public square, singing in their customary
way, and making such gestures and shaking movements that they really did
seem like demons. From head to feet they were covered with red feathers.
On their heads they wore caps [in the style of “Inquisition” caps] of yellow
feathers. On their backs they wore an armful of feathers that appeared like
a horse’s mane [i.e., enduap], and to animate the celebration they played
flutes made from the shinbones of their slain enemies. With this attire they
walked around barking like dogs and faking speech with so many mimes
that I do not know with what I could compare them. All of these acts took
place six or eight days before the killing.365

The vestments of the “demonic” woman described in this scene most closely

resemble the Tupinambá scarlet ibis cloaks that are the subjects of this dissertation.

Moreover, the yellow “caps” Blázquez describes correlate to the yellow bonnets of

365
Trans. mine. “Vinhão seis molheres nuas polo terreiro cantando a seu modo e fazendo tais gestos
e meneos que parecião os mesmos diabos: dos pees até a cabeça estavão cheas de penas vermelhas;
em suas cabeças trazião humas como carochas de pena amarela; em suas espaldas levavão hum
braçado de penas que parcia coma de cavalo, e por alegrar a festa tangião humas frautas que tem
feitas das canellas dos contrarios pera quando os hão de matar. Com estes trajos andavão ladrando
como cães e contrafazendo a fala com tantos momos que não sey a que os possa comparar; todas
estas invenções fazem seite ou oito dias antes de hos matar.” António Blázquez, "[Do Ir. António
Blázquez por comissão do P. Manuel da Nóbrega ao P. Inácio de Loyola, Roma, 1557]" in MB,
Vol. II, 386.

191
Léry, discussed in Chapter 2 (Fig. 17), only one of which survives today. At the

most basic level, this 1557 description from Bahia thus provides us with

documentary evidence that Tupi capes and other featherwork were witnessed in the

earliest period of the Jesuit presence in Brazil.

More profound is Blázquez’s description of the women walking “around

barking like dogs and faking speech with so many mimes.” On the surface this

seems only to suggest that he was unable to make sense of their noises and/or

words. Clearly he intends to convey to his readers a vivid idea of the bizarreness of

the spectacle, but there is something more at work here. The fact that he chooses to

qualify their activities as “faking” speech [contrafazendo a fala], however, is

telling of a level of discomfort caused by his incomprehension, an anxiety that the

women are at some level deceptive in their behavior. Mimicry borders on

mockery. We know from other passages in Blázquez’s letter that he had command

of the Tupi language and was trained in the requisites of Jesuit accommodatio.

Here, though, in a disturbing ritual –– this is afterall the prelude to an execution ––

he was forced to adopt the weaker position of uncomprehending outsider, a witness

without understanding. Without perhaps wishing to do so, the narrator sees the

Tupi as a willful agent who constructs the self for the colonizer, thereby

jeopardizing the colonizer's narrative authority over the true Tupi.

There is an odd echo here of the humanist scholar Pero de Magalhães

Gândavo’s comments about tapirage in his 1576 History of the Province of Vera

Cruz, which I discussed in Chapter 2. After providing a detailed description of the

192
process itself, he ends by ascribing a deceitful motive to the Tupi who practice

tapirage: “Thus it happens that the Indians deceive people by selling [the color-

altered parrots] for the true species.”366 This is more than just a suggestion of

trickery. Gândavo states explicitly that tapirage is intentionally used as a scheme

for illicit financial gain, selling fake exotica in the market, hawking counterfeit

species in a site of social intercourse introduced by the colonizing Europeans

themselves, fleecing the tourists.367 Still today this is a common travelers’ anxiety:

immersed in a strange culture where they lack the ability to decipher intent, and are

therefore in constant danger of being cheated. Gândavo’s anxieties represent the

inversion of the colonizer’s meta-narrative of cheating the ignorant natives with

trinkets. Which was precisely how the bureaucrat Pêro Vaz de Caminha

characterized the exchange between Cabral and the Tupi at the earliest moment of

European-Tupi encounter, when the Portuguese traded “some varvels [i.e.,

trinkets]” for large red parrots (probably macaws) and feathered capes.368

Gândavo’s term, which confirms the association of mimicry with deceit that we

noted in Blazquez, is contrafazer, counterfeiting. This term remains directly linked

to tapirage as I noted in my discussion of this passage from Sousa in Chapter 2.

Modern Brazilian indigenous groups use contrafazer in conjunction with tapirage,

as did nineteenth century naturalists.369

366
See Chapter 2, footnote [86]
367
In regard to Gândavo and financial motivation, see Janiga-Perkins, “Pero de Magalhães
Gândavo’s,” 29-44.
368
See Chapter 2, footnote [49]
369
See Chapter 2, footnote [86]

193
 There is another aspect of Blázquez’s narrative that is important to

consider, which involves the gendering of Tupi ritual. He observed women

wearing scarlet-feathered cloaks during part of the lengthy anthropophagite rituals,

and thus these objects cannot be associated exclusively with spiritually or

politically privileged men.370 In this case, the six women that performed in the

public spaces of the Bahian aldeia must have occupied positions of authority

and/or sacred power within the mission community. Furthermore, they play flutes

made of human bone, of which we also only have one surviving example from

Copenhagen (Fig. 5), giving evidence that native practices of warfare were far

from a distant past on the aldeia. This quotation, therefore, shows the endurance of

Tupi rituals and Tupi objects, within mission life. And at this early date –– a year

before Nóbrega’s six-point rule of evangelization –– Blázquez displays an acute

register for observation. As his narrative continues, we gather more about the

feathered individuals and the Jesuit response to their spectacle.

One would think this was quite a spectacle if they saw the tears of
compassion springing forth from one and then another, because the plumed
[women] seem as if they were dressed for the greatest benediction in the
world.371

370
This is in direct contradiction to Métraux’s discussion of Tupi feathered diadems, bonnets and
capes as solely male adornments. He concludes that while men were ornately adorned, woman only
wore “necklaces” or “bands” of plumes on their bodies. “Les diadems, les bonnets et les manteaux
semblant avoir été autant d’ornements reservés aux hommes. Les femmes se contentaient de se
collar des plumes sur le corps.” See Métraux #1, 148. These statements originally come from Léry,
66.
371
Trans. mine. “Espectaculo era este que a quem o vira lhe saltarão as lagrimas de compaixão de
huns e de outros, porque às empenadas lhe parece que estar asi vestidas hé a mayor bem-
aventurança do mundo.” Blázquez, 1557, 386.

194
Blázquez’s use, in fact, of the expression bem-aventurança (benediction) is

significant, as it shows that he saw these vestments as in some way equivalent to

European liturgical robes. The ritual of Apostolic benediction, called in Portuguese

the bem-aventurança, for example, requires the officiating priest to wear a special

cape called a humeral veil. These European silk vestments look similar to Tupi

capes both in size and in the way they drape along the body.

A fascinating narrative follows in which Blázquez tells Loyola how they

intervened to convince the women to receive baptism. In fact, the Holy Spirit

“moved” one of the cloaked women to accept the Catholic faith.372 Meanwhile, the

mission priest, Father Navarro, devised a plan to baptize the Amerindians a day

before the scheduled execution of a prisoner:

When the morning dawned the Indians came with a great thunder and
bravura, with their backs painted and full of parrot feathers, the same ones
they use to construct their capes for these ceremonies. And putting them in
a circle Father Navarro taught them to comprehend the baptism and the
forgiveness of their sins. Afterwards, he baptized them. 373

The men and women of this Bahian aldeia were baptized in the feathered

adornments of their own cultural practices. This speaks to the accommodation of

feathers –– of ritual adornments –– in the new Jesuit Christian complex of colonial

Brazil. For Amerindian Brazilians, the Christian God, could likely be superficially

incorporated into their own pantheon of spirits and ghosts. For the Jesuits, the fact

372
Blázquez, 1557, 387.
373
Trans. mine. “Como bem amanheceo vierão os Indios com grande terremoto e brafundaria com
suas espadas pintadas e cheos de penas de papagayos, de que elles fazem capas pera estas festas, e
levando-os ao corro fazia-lhes o P. Navarro huma pratica onde lhe encarecia o bautismo e o
arrependimento de seus peccados, e após isto os bautizava.” Blázquez, 1557, 387-388.

195
that they permitted the use of Tupi feathered capes in a baptismal ritual may

indicate that they recognized their value in solemnizing a particularly significant

ceremony. In other words, the Jesuits may well have understood the cultural

significance of Tupi featherwork as a component in the performance of spiritually

transformative rituals. The Blázquez quotation is additionally interesting in his

identification of “parrot” feathers as the same ones used to create the capes of the

women’s dance. It is hard to know for certain if he means to suggest that these

parrot feathers were the “same” in color, or the “same” in species. I would imagine

that his analogy was one of color, but it bears mentioning that it is possible that

capes were also created out of parrot feathers and not just those of the scarlet ibis.

By 1598, when the aldeia system was past its infancy, it was decided that

four Jesuits would reside in each mission, usually in charge of a few hundred Tupi

peoples.374 In the mid sixteenth-century aldeias were established near white

settlements, as it was then assumed that close proximity with Christian peoples

would be a beneficial tool in sustained conversion. In Brazil, as elsewhere, the

Jesuits soon realized this was actually counterproductive, as the colonists were in

desperate need for a native labor force for the ever-growing plantation economy.375

The Society began to move their mission settlements farther and farther away from

urban settlements. By the seventeenth century, missions were constructed mostly

374
Leite, Vol. II, 48.
375
For the North American experience (New York State and Canada) see Allan Greer, Mohawk
Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Carole
Blackburn, Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632-1650,
McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series (Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000);
and for the classic history of the Jesuits in Canada see Lucien Campeau and Pierrette L. Lagarde,
La mission des jésuites chez les hurons, 1634-1650 (Montréal: Institutum Historicum S.I.), 1987.

196
in remote areas of Brazil to protect the indigenous communities from slave labor

and the continued hardships and unsavory aspects of early colonial life.

The aldeias were considered both models of European civilization and

markets for Indian-produced goods and Jesuit-supervised Indian labor. 376 What

exactly did the Tupi produce on Jesuit aldeias, to sell to the various colonial

constituents of their neighboring communities? Though there are no extant images

that record the marketplaces of specific Jesuit aldeias, we can again refer back to

the Frans Post painting as a possible clue to visual typologies of such markets on

the Pernambucan aldeias (Fig. 48). As mentioned previously, the immediate

foreground of Post’s landscape painting shows us a marketplace, well supplied

with foodstuffs, baskets of vegetables and tropical fruits, and indigenous ceramic

vessels and utensils, all possible items of exchange or sale on the aldeais. Post’s

site of commercial activity and social interaction is thus similar to what is

described in the Royal Instructions. It seems safe to assume that if foodstuffs,

animals, indigenous artifacts, and cotton clothing were all items of exchange or

sale in these markets, that featherwork –– as the premier art of the native

Brazilians –– was also a predominant feature.377 Frans Post, for example, clearly

had first-hand experience with these objects in order to depict them with such

technical expertise, capturing their size, coloration, and way of attaching to the

body (Fig. 49). These were not imagined objects, but ones drawn from life. Post’s

376
Alden, 73.
377
As early as 1558, a Tupi man on the aldeia of São Paulo began producing white, cotton fabric en
masse. See António Pires, "[Do P. António Pires ao Provincial de Portugal, 1558]," in MB, Vol. II,
472.

197
painting shows us, beyond the confines of the mission marketplace, a scene of

scarlet-cloaked Amerindians taking part in a ritual dance.

In 1551, just two years after the Jesuit arrival, Brother Correia describes the
feather crafts near Rio de Janeiro in a letter to his brethren in Africa:
[The Tupi]…manipulate feathers in works that display a kind of art, and
on their heads they place diadems of colored feathers that are well made,
and other such inventions.378

Brother Correia clearly exhibits an aesthetic appreciation for Tupi featherworking,

even employing the Portuguese term “arte” in his description, a term usually used

in mid-sixteenth-century Europe, to refer to “craft” in both its technical and

theoretical aspects. Interestingly enough, Correia describes seeing the feathered

objects beyond the boundaries of the mission. If these objects were produced in

indigenous communities outside of the missions, and also sold “officially” in

colonial marketplaces, then it seems highly probable that they continued to be

produced within Jesuit settings.

In another letter of the Jesuit Father Blázquez, written eight years after

Correia’s, the nature of feathered indigenous objects in an aldeia of São Paulo is

emphasized:

The Indians of this town of São Paulo want to change all of their traditions
and those who are already Christian now begin to construct separate houses
from palm leaf fiber in which to live more permanently, because their
previous custom was to renew their houses every two to three years and
move elsewhere. They also have sold all the featherwork that they had for
dressing themselves and their wives, which is a very clear sign of the Holy
Spirit having touched their hearts. Because the feathers that they have are
the finest ornaments that they own, and they used them when they killed

378
Trans. mine. “Pegan la pluma en lavores que tienen alguna arte, y en las cabeças ponen
diademas de plumas de colores mui bien hechas, y otras invenciones.” Brother Pero Correia, "[Ao
P. João Nunes Barreto, África]," in MB, Vol. I, 228.

198
 their enemies and ate them, they make from them the capes and other
clothing they wore. They sent off and rid themselves of all that which,
previously, was held among them, and it would be a dishonor if they lacked
[this featherwork]. The highest chief of all, Garcia de Sá says that the
reason wherefore they do this is so that their children do the same when
they are adults, having seen that they [the parents] rid themselves of all of
this in their lifetimes, and thus by [the parents’] example the road to a good
life will be made for them [the children].379

Blázquez’s letter reveals that the Jesuits were well aware of the original function of

these feathered adornments. It also gives an indication that the Jesuits saw

feathered cloaks as powerful symbols of the Tupi past –– of the cultural space

preceding and outside the aldeia and of the anthropophagic rites of the aboriginal

Tupi communities. Thus, Blázquez’s mention of the “Holy Spirit” is of great

importance in the context of this letter. The willingness of the aldeia inhabitants to

sell off their featherwork signifies their abandoning of their pagan ways and

becoming Christian. In fact, Blázquez’s market anecdote is part of the letter’s

larger message, which is that of the success of Jesuit enterprise in Brazil. He writes

a long account about how the Tupi are evolving and wanting to change their

indigenous customs to more Christian ones. The Brasis were not merely marketing

craft items to feed their families; they were ridding themselves of their cultural
379
Trans. mine, with the kind assistance of Jeanette F. Peterson and Eduardo Douglas. “Los yndios
desta Villa de Sant Pablo en todo quieren mudar sus custumbres, y comieçan agora los que ya son
christianos a hazer cassas apartadas y de tapias para syempre viver en ellas, porque su custumbre de
antes era cada dos y tres años renovar las casas mudándose a otras partes. Vendieron también todo
el plumaje que tenian para vistir ellos y sus mujeres, lo qual aver hecho es muy cierta señal del
Spíritu Sancto aver tocando sus coraçones. Porque esta plumas, que ellos tienen, son las mejores
alhajas que ellos tienen y dellas usavam quando matavam los contrarios y los comian, haziendo
dellas sus capas y otros trajes con se vestian…. Todo lo expendieron y desecharon de sy, de lo qual
sy antes carecían dello no se tenia por honrrado entre ellos. La causa por que hazen esto, dize el
Principal de todos ellos García de Sá que es para que sus hijos hagan lo mesmo quando mayores
viendo que ellos se deshizieron de todo esto en vida dellos, y ansí con su exemplo les tenga hecho
el camino para seguir buena vida.” António Blázquez, "[Do P. Antonio Blázquez por comissão do
P. Manuel de Nóbrega ao P. Diego Laynes, Roma, 1559]," in MB, Vol. III, 137.

199
objects from their past, just as they were abandoning their semi-nomadism for

permanent homes. They were giving up warfare and their beautifully crafted

objects of warfare, in order to embark on a new Christian life in Jesuit territory.

Blázquez also praises the “sale” of these feathered capes, which attests to

their continued existence, and makes clear that the Jesuits did not confiscate, burn,

or destroy these objects as symbolic gestures of conquest and dominance over

foreign and idolatrous practices, as was frequently the case in the colonial

Americas.380 This is most evident in the Spanish attitute towards the New World.

Phillip II’s Royal Cedula of 1577 forbade the production of painted books of

native traditions and the exportation of native material culture was discouraged for

fear of spreading paganism.381 In this light, the situation in Brazil and with

Blázquez is unusual. He wants to convey the willingness of his native subjects to

dispose of the feathered adornments or to convert them from ritual apparel to

marketable goods. The market is the locus of social transformation. The fact that

these objects could be sold in a Jesuit-sanctioned fashion and that he

acknowledged them as “precious adornments,” speaks to the cultural polyvalence

380
For a discussion of the mendicant orders in Mexico destroying pagan idols see Samuel Y.
Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico,
1st ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001); Mariano Cuevas, ed., Historia de la
Iglesia en México, 5. ed., 5 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1946); For the North American
case see Pius Joseph Barth, "Franciscan Education and the Social Order in Spanish North America
(1502-1821)," (PhD diss. University of Chicago, 1945).
381
See Friar Bernardino de Sahagún’s response in Vol. 2, appendix 1.267 in: Joaquín García
Icazbalceta, Juan Bautista Pomar, Alonso de Zurita, and Gerónimo de Mendieta, eds. Nueva
colección de documentos para la historia de México (Mexico City: Andrade y Morales, sucesores,
1886). The 1577 Cedula and the clandestine trade it inaugurated is discussed in Anthony Alan
Shelton, "Cabinets of Transgression: Renaissance Collections and the Incorporation of the New
World," in The Cultures of Collecting, ed. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, 199 (Oxford: Reaktion
Books, 1994).

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of Brazilian featherwork, to the way in which they retained value but gained

different meanings as they passed into colonial hands. Feathered capes could be

appreciated and to some extent understood by Europeans, including Jesuits, as

objects that held cultural meaning for the Tupinambá culture. For Europeans, they

also contained aesthetic value and mercantile value, and as we will see in the third

section, that embodied evidence of cultural difference and thus ‘collectibility.’ We

will see in other cases, moreover, that featherworking survived and flourished

within the aldeias, even to be used in apparent Tupi rituals, as well as in Jesuit-

Tupi processions and in other Catholic rites.

Accommodatio

The strategy of social interaction used by the Jesuits in their missions was based

upon the concept of “accommodation” –– from the Latin accommodatio –– which

predicated the success of evangelization upon not just the learning of native

languages, but also the adaptation of aspects of indigenous culture to facilitate the

missionary process.382 The central idea behind accommodation was to find the

382
For a nice description of the process of accommodatio in the Brahman world see Ines Zupanov,
Disputed Missions: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century India
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
I prefer to retain the Latin term accommodatio for its period usage. Within Jesuit studies,
art historian Gauvin Bailey uses the twentieth-century term “acculturation” (and the term
“mestizo”) to describe the outcome of something similar to the process of accommodatio, to
describe the artistic product of contact between two cultures. Acculturation carries with it a strong
sense of the imposition of European values and practices on indigenous cultures, while
accommodatio acknowledges to a greater extent the two-way nature of this process. His terms are
taken from modern anthropology, and filtered through post-colonial theories of “hybridity.” See
Gauvin A. Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999), 22-23; For Jesuit Canada, White also does a similar theoretical
move by moving away from period concepts and employing modern anthropological terminology.

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most effective way of communication with a target community, be it the European

laity or an overseas population. Accommodation was directly linked with Jesuit

spirituality and was not intended to be the result of the Jesuits’ missionary

presence, but part of the process itself. Accommodatio has deep roots in Jesuit

oratory and in Ignatius’ own writings on a Jesuit’s interior discipline and spiritual

mooring. 383 One can easily see, however, how a Jesuit practice of spirituality

could become a missionary philosophy. For example, in a letter Ignatius wrote in

Rome in 1541, he states:

In dealing with men of position or influence, if you are to win their

affection for the greater glory of God our Lord, look first to their
disposition and accommodate [emphasis mine] yourselves to them. If they
are of a lively temper, quick and merry of speech, follow their lead in your
dealings with them when you talk of good and holy things, and do not be
too serious, glum, and reserved. If they are shy and retiring, slow to speak,
serious and weighty in their talk, use the same manner with them, because
such ways will be gratifying to them. "I become all things to all men.”384

As Ignatius’ letter makes abundantly clear, accommodation was a political and

rhetorical concept applied to all facets of Jesuit existence. It was precisely the

application of accommodatio, however, that made the Jesuits such a powerful

missionary presence abroad when dealing with vastly different cultural

See Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes
Region, 1650-1815, Cambridge Studies in North American Indian History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991). Much of the move towards employing modern anthropological terms in
contact situations originates with Serge Gruzinski’s ideas of métissage and le monde mêle now
available in English as Serge Gruzinski, The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of
Colonization and Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2002).
383
For a detailed theological discussion of accommodatio see Zupanov, Disputed, 4-5, 22-23. She
makes clear just how hugely controversial this philosophy became for other missionary orders,
church hierarchy and even those within the Society to accept.
384
The letter was written to Salmoren and Broet, Rome, IX.1541. William J. Young, ed. and trans.,
Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1959), 51.

202
expressions. Thus the Society did not set out to create a “hybrid” melding of

religions and quotidian life, but their chosen strategy of finding effective mediums

of convergence between cultures did result in a unique climate of cultural meeting.

Though part of this was spelled out specifically in Ignatius’ Constitutions,

much of it evolved as the missionary enterprise grew and the Jesuits saw the

necessities of Jesuit adaptation in various areas of the world. In the missionary

context, accommodation was seen as a temporary conversion strategy –– part of

the acclimatization period as the Order established itself in new religious terrains.

The cultural dimensions of the practice of accommodatio, i.e., understanding the

complexities of native religions, was one that ignited huge debate both within the

Jesuit Order, and from rival orders as a potential threat to the strength or purity of

Christianity in the hinterlands. 385 For example, in his discussion of the aldeia

system in Brazil, Father Nóbrega writes that for “short periods of time” (i.e., the

acclimatization period) it is not good to take the Brazilians away from all their

customs, such as “crying, singing, and drinking in moderation,” less they become

“melancholic.”386 Nóbrega realized that these were small sacrifices the Jesuits

must make to local customs, in the bigger fight against anthropophagy and

polygamy. Even these larger issues become obscured in the early Jesuit

correspondence, which reveal consistent indications that ritualized warfare

385
For a discussion of the debates of accommodatio (as well as the modern, post-Vatican II debates
on “inculturation”) see Zupanov, Missionary, introduction.
386
“Como os índios para morrerem basta tomarem melancholia, etc., parece que não é bem
tirarem-lhe os Nossos seus costumes, que se não encontrarem com a lei de Deus, como chorar,
cantar e beberem com moderação.” Padre Nóbrega, XVII c. “Algumas advertencias para a
Provincia do Brasil,” BNC, Coll. Mss, Vitt. Eman. Fondo Gesuitico, 1255, 18v.

203
practices and post-battle rituals continued well into the seventeenth century and

with the knowledge of the Jesuits. This raises the question of just how much

toleration for these ritual events was maintained in the name of accommodation

and the Order’s evangelical strategies.

Another foundational imperative to Jesuit missionary practice of the period

was their study of the native languages. While members of several other orders

immersed themselves in the study of local tongues, no other institution came to

rely so exclusively and wholeheartedly on this practice. In fact, in Decree 67 from

the fifth General Congregation meeting in Rome (1593), the Society issued a

proclamation in regards to language learning in both East India and the New World

“Indies”:

For those who dwell in the provinces of India, an expertise in the Indian
languages is very necessary in order to achieve the salvation of the people
of India. … It seemed good to the whole congregation, therefore, seriously
to enjoin upon all the superiors of that region, as well as upon the other
fathers and brothers, that they diligently carry out what the fathers general
have often commended in regard to learning and using the languages of the
Indies… It is to be commended, then, to our Reverend Father General that
he compose an instruction on the procedures to be adopted in this matter,
describing what he will judge most suited to the distinctive nature and
characteristics of these nations.387

Such an explicit decree was a remarkable concept in the period and important for

understanding just how and why the Jesuits came to such predominance as the

premier missionary order.

387
John W. Padberg, Martin D. O'Keefe, and John L. McCarthy, eds., For Matters of Greater
Moment: The First Thirty Jesuit General Congregations: A Brief History and a Translation of the
Decrees, 1 ed. (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1994), 211.

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 The ability of Jesuits to master local languages, and thus to communicate

with indigenous authorities, as well as to initiate trade, was an important issue for

the Society as a whole.388 In the case of Brazil, the College of Bahia inaugurated a

course in the Tupi language in 1556, seven years after the Jesuits arrival in the

region. That same year the Canarian Jesuit Father José de Anchieta, the Apostle of

Brazil shown on Scherer’s map, completed his famous grammar book of the

coastal Tupi language.389 For the Jesuits, knowing the language was not in itself

sufficient. A Jesuit became fluent in order to have influence over the Brasis. 390 In

the case of the Tupi language, that meant that social and political domination on

the aldeias would entail mastering very complex idiomatic expressions.391

As I discussed in the first chapter, in relation to language distribution in the

Amazon, the tongues of the various coastal peoples of sixteenth-and seventeenth-

century Brazil were melded by the Jesuits into a lingua franca for easy

388
For a fascinating discussion of the Jesuit language issues in India, Japan and Southeast Asia, see
the subchapter, “The Secret of Language,” in Liam Matthew Brockey’s: Journey to the East: The
Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2007), 245-250.
389
Anchieta’s grammar was originally published in Lisbon in 1595 and the first edition is
extremely rare, with only five known copies in the world (Rome, Rio de Janeiro, London). See the
new facsimile edition of Anchieta’s grammar: José de Anchieta, Leodegário A. de Azevedo Filho,
ed., Arte de grammatica da lingoa mais usada na costa do brasil, Ed. Facsimilar, 2 vols. (Madrid:
Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 1999).
Linguistic research today has shown that Anchieta overlooked (or simplified) the
phonetics when devising his grammar and dictionary. However, his grammar still remains the basis
for modern investigations of Old Tupi. Old Tupi has left a huge mark on Brazilian Portuguese, with
several thousand words added to modern usage for animals, plants, food and place names, as well
as the intensification of nasalization in speech.
390
ARSI, Lus. 68, fol. 410-11. December 1, 1584: “Tienen mucha gracia, efficacia y autoridad con
los indios para hazerles praticas de la cosas de la fe y les persuaden todo lo que e menester para
tenerlos quietos y contentos.”
391
Roland Schmidt-Riese, "Gramáticas brasileiras anteriores a 1700: o problema dos universais
sintáticos" in Estudos de história da gramaticografia e lexicografia portuguesas, eds. Rolf
Kemmler, Barbara Schäfer-Priess and Axel Schönberger, 177-14 (Frankfurt: Domus Edition
Europaea, 2002).

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communication between the various colonial constituents. Called a variety of

things, including neengatú (“the good language”) in Old Tupi or the língua

brasílica (“Brazilian language”) in Portuguese, a version of the Tupi language was

standardized, artificially creating a codified grammar and vocabulary.

Furthermore, the cultural references to which this is attached are firmly Christian,

as historian Kittya Lee emphasizes.392 Though based on Latin speech, Anchieta’s

grammar tackles Tupi phonetics, and is one of the earliest and most comprehensive

sources for Old Tupi language.393 With the imprimatur of the Holy Office and the

publishing permission from the Society of Jesus, the Tupi grammar book was an

important tool in teaching Jesuit missionaries the aboriginal tongue of Brazil. In

fact, language training was given so much importance in the period, that Jesuit

students weak in Latin could redeem themselves in their examinations if they had a

solid command of brasílica. As I have discussed in Chapter 1, a Jesuit missionary

would not only have to learn the language, but additionally write a glossary and a

grammar (if possible) as a preliminary step towards the Christianization of a Tupi

community.394 The study of languages thus implied a core social component of the

missionary activities in Brazil. And by 1574 the Jesuit fathers realized that

structured language classes were close to useless. To give further evidence of the

Jesuits as early ethnographers, they closed the language school in Bahia and

392
As cited in the first chapter, see the recent dissertation: Lee, Conversing, 2005.
393
The earliest record of the speech pattern and dialogues of Old Tupi come from Léry, Ch. XX.
394
Métraux, “The Contribution,” 189.

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inaugurated a new policy of “living among the Indians,” as the only proper method

to acquire the language.395

The cultural dominance of the newly created idiom, brasílica, cannot be

overemphasized. Until the Jesuit expulsion in the eighteenth century, the common

language spoken throughout Brazil by the indigenous inhabitants, mestiços and

European colonists was brasílica, and not Portuguese.396 The cultural

consequences of the Jesuit missionary’s accommodatio to the culture and language

of the Brasis was the development of a certain level of reflexivity and flexibility

on the part of the missionaries. The Jesuits turned toward the things that worked

best within Brazilian indigenous culture: performance.

Music, song and dance on the aldeias

In the case of Brazil, and as we have already seen to a certain extent in relation to

Blázquez’s letters, Jesuits primarily emphasized performance, involving song,

music and dance –– all important aspects of Tupi ritual culture –– as the ideal

rhetorical means to deliver their religious and social message to their new

congregations.397 In Europe, sung and chanted mass was seen as a highly effective

psychological means of communication, and an evolving new Jesuit strategy for

increasing attendance and enthusiasm for sermons, confessions and lectures within
395
ARSI, Congrationes Provinciales 42, fols. 321r.-322r. Congregação Provincial do Brasil, 1575.
396
Stuart B. Schwartz, "The Formation of Colonial Identity in Brazil," in Colonial Identity in the
Atlantic World, 1500-1800, eds. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, 30 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987).
397
For a discussion of music and performance see especially: M. Kittya Lee, "The Arts of
Proselytization: Music as Mediator of Jesuit-Amerindian Encounters in Early Colonial Brazil,
1549-1579," Leituras: Revista da Biblioteca Nacional 6 (2000): 149-72; and Castagna, "The Use.”

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congregations in their chapels and colleges.398 Jesuit overseas missions were also

the recipients of such tactics. In the context of missions, music was at times far

more effective than written or oral communication, as it had the potential to bridge

the gap that language could not, especially in the face of linguistic mistranslations.

Performance –– through the medium of music –– could bind and reconcile cultural

difference with both native and European participants acting as active agents in the

creation of sound and, therefore, of religious meaning. 399 Since the difficulties of

learning the brasilica language were early on identified as obstacles to the

evangelical process on Brazilian missions, music became an especially ideal form

of communication. And to these ends, Amerindian schoolchildren were seen as

prime participants in the process of Christianization.400 In 1583, Jesuit Father

Fernão Cardim visited the Brazilian aldeias and described the musical abilities of

the young Tupi boys:

In one of them [the aldeias] they teach them how to sing and they have
their choral singing and flutes for their celebrations. They do their dances
“Portuguese style,” with drums and viols [i.e., viola da gamba], with such
grace, as if they were Portuguese boys. And when they do these dances
they put diadems on their head, of multi-colored bird feathers. And of this
sort they also make laurels, feather and paint the body, and like this,
painted and in their way very gallant, they make their celebrations quite

398
For discussions of the Jesuit reliance on music in Europe see Thomas D. Culley, Jesuits and
Music: A Study of the Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome During the 17th
Century and of Their Activities in Northern Europe, Sources and Studies for the History of the
Jesuits (Rome; St. Louis: Jesuit Historical Institute; St. Louis University, 1970); Frank T. Kennedy,
S.J., "The Jesuits and Music," in O’Malley #2, 413-26.
399
The importance of the Jesuit’s use of music (and other arts) in their encounter with the non-
Europeans is discussed in Frank T. Kennedy, S.J., "Candide and the Boat," in O’Malley #1, 317-35.
400
For a discussion of the Jesuit interest in using Amerindian schoolchildren as tools in the
Christianization process, and indeed in language acquisition, see Padre Simão de Vasconcelos’
letters complied in: Simão de Vasconcelos and Innocencio Francisco da Silva, Chronica da
companhia de Jesu do estado do Brasil (Lisbon: A. J. Fernandes Lopes, 1865), 29-32.

208
 pleasing, ones that are satisfying and cause devotion because they were
made by people so indomitable and barbarous, and by Our [the Jesuits]
divine goodness and diligence we have made them civil and Christian
men.401

Cardim’s comments are quite remarkable for a number of reasons. First, his

narrative demonstrates the perceived effectiveness of the Jesuit’s emphasis on

music as an instrument of conversion. Second, he draws attention to the material

aspects of these Christian mission celebrations. Cardim shows that feather

adornments, such as diadems and laurel crowns, even the feathering of the body

itself, was not discontinued when young Tupi schoolchildren (curumins) left their

maloca communities and moved into the Jesuit-defined mission spaces. And in

1552, a confraternity of Portuguese Orphan Youths from Lisbon was even brought

to the aldeias of Bahia for purposes of catechism.402 They wrote letters describing

celebrations they had with the Amerindians: shaking maracás, singing, playing

instruments made of coconut shells (with small rocks inside). As one Jesuit priest

said, after this experience:

401
Trans. mine. “…Em uma delas lhes ensinam a cantar e têm seu côro de canto e flautas para suas
festas, e fazem suas danças â portuguesa, com tamboris e violas, com muita graça, como se fôssem
meninos portugueses; e quando fazem estas danças poem uns diademas na cabeça, de penas de
pássaros, de várias cores, e desta sorte fazem também os arcos, empenam e pintam o corpo, e,
assim pintados e mui galantes, a seu modo, fazem suas festas muito aprazíveis, que dão contento e
causam devoção por serem feitas por gente tão indómita e bárbara, mas, por bondade divina e
diligência dos Nossos, feitos já homens politicos e cristãos.” See transcription of Cardim’s letter in
Serafim Leite, S.J., "Cantos, músicas e danças nas aldeias do Brasil (Século XVI)" Broteria 24
(1937): 43.
402
This is described in: Pedro Fernandes, "[D. Pedro Fernandes ao P. Simão Rodrigues, Lisboa,
1552]" in MB, Vol. I, 357-66.

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 It seems to me that according to the [orphan] boys, that they [the Tupi] are
friends of music, and that we [the Jesuits], playing instruments and dancing
among them, will win them over.403

Even as early as 1549 in Bahia, Father Navarro was teaching prayers –– the

most practical form of catechesis on the aldeias –– by means of songs, using

European melodies and Tupi words.404 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

the Jesuits trained the Brasis to play musical instruments, sing plainchant

(cantochão) and polyphony (canto de orgão) for Christian ceremonies. Musical

education, in fact, was standardized by a series of internal Jesuit legislations in

1586, 1658 and finally in 1694.405 For example, the 1586 “Aldeia Regulation of

Brazil,” established that schoolchildren should be instructed for one and half hours

in the mornings and afternoon in reading and writing, and then after each lesson,

those that had the ability, should be taught to sing.

And as ethnomusicologist Paulo Castagna has discussed, in the seventeenth

century, young Amerindian boys called nheengaribas (“musicians of the land”),

who were trained in these musical traditions, spread the music of Christianity from

settlement to settlement, often using homemade Brazilian version of European

instruments such as the shawm, a Renaissance predecessor of the oboe.406 The

Jesuit fathers imitated Amerindian dances and songs as a way of winning their

403
Trans. mine. ARSI, Bras. 3 I, fol. 65 v. “Carta dos meninos orfãos da Baía,” August 5, 1552.
Also reproduced in Serafim Leite, S.J., "As primeiras escolas no Brasil. Com documentação
inédita," Revista da Academia Brasileira de Letras 45 (1934): 226-51.
404
Manuel da Nóbrega, "[Do P. Manuel da Nobrega ao P. Simão Rodrigues, Lisboa, 1549]," in
MB, Vol. I, 112.
405
The Regulations are transcribed and compiled in Leite, “A Música,” 378.
406
Castagna, “The Use,” 642, 650-651. Castagna also makes very clear that music as a method of
proselytization among the Brasis was used by other religious orders in Brazil, including the
Franciscans and the Capuchins, and enduring into the eighteenth century.

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hearts and ears.407 Christian processions and family celebrations on the Jesuit

aldeias frequently featured not only plumed participants, but also ones holding

maracás, those vessels containing Tupi spirits, now turned into “Christian”

instruments, as well as the famous berimbau (musical bow).408

The continuation of Tupiguarani indigenous craft traditions, such as that of

featherworking and instrument making, endured well into the colonial period and

were fostered because of the Jesuit’s need to accommodate to local Brasis cultural

traditions. If the accoutrements of Tupi celebrations could remain somewhat intact

(i.e., feathers, movement, recitations), then they could be manipulated to excise

unsavory aspects (i.e., warfare and anthropophagy), and emphasize the more

permissible elements, such as the myriad of native celebrations that could be

adapted into Christian ones. In this manner, Tupi celebrations in Christian

packaging become as much cultural transformations as cultural ruptures. To the

Jesuits, a successful baptism, such as the one that Blázquez recounted in which a

feathered cape was used, was a demonstrable Christian triumph, a successful

“conversion.” The Jesuits in Brazil writing to Rome in this early period often

describe the ordered Christian processions and celebrations of the Amerindians,

transforming their old “dancing and drinking” fêtes in homage of their “enemy,” to

407
Leite, “Cantos,” 43.
408
As a small sampling, for maracás in a Bahian processions see the letter: Leonardo do Vale, "[Do
P. Leonardo do Vale por comissão do P. Luís da Grã ao P. Diego Laynes, Roma, 1561]," in MB,
Vol. III, 447. For a plumed Jesuit-Tupi procession in Bahia see António Blázquez, "[Do P. Antonio
Blazquez Ao P. Diego Miron, Lisboa, 1564]," in MB, Vol. IV, 74. There are also quite a few
documented and named processions and family ceremonies on the aldeias from Father Achieta’s
literary legacy. They have such titles as “Dance of the ten boys for the reception of Father
Provincial Baliarte,” and “Dance for the Procession of St. Lawrence of the Twelve Boys,” etc. See
ARSI, Opp. NN. 24, f. 24r-24v., 92.

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the “glory and work of the Lord.”409 The psychological dimensions of the

conversion were surely another story all together.

Part III: Navigating feathered capes to Rome

As I have discussed, letters and other documentation written by colonial Jesuit

priests and brothers provide crucial information concerning the cultural value and

the continued ritual use of feathered capes within Christian aldeias. These

representatives of the Society of Jesus did not simply document Tupi feathered

adornments in their missionary correspondence but also played a critical role as

intermediaries in the transportation of these cloaks to Europe. Jesuit

correspondence concerning their Brazilian missions, the Tupi, and their culture and

customs was widely distributed in the sixteenth century. Together with such

sensationalist literature as Staden’s captivity narrative, the Jesuit accounts

contributed to a growing European curiosity about the New World, thereby helping

to stimulate the market for collecting singular Amerindian objects. In all

probability, Jesuit fathers and bishops in Rome and elsewhere requested such

items. Many objects crafted from unusual materials, such as the feathered capes,

were sent from overseas missions to Europe as directed gifts to important Jesuits in

the hopes of garnering support (money, more missionaries, necessary items) for an

Assistancy’s particular enterprise.

409
Leite, “Cantos,” 50.

212
 Jesuit missionary letters, in fact, provide the only verifiable trace of the

exact, dated movement of a shipment of Tupi cloaks from Brazil to the ports of

Europe. This is significant because the Society of Jesus, like other early modern

religious orders, has long been credited with bringing artworks, books, and

Western aesthetic principals from Europe to their overseas missions, often to outfit

churches and schools, as well as to train local artisans.410 The reverse voyage, on

the other hand, the Jesuit transport of Amerindian artifacts to Europe is far less

documented and equally important in understanding early modern cultural

interchange. The mercantile activities of the Jesuit Order reveal an interest in the

movement of more than simply people and letters, but also in the use of these

material goods to construct political relationships that were woven into intricate

webs of a sixteenth and seventeenth-century global, corporate culture. Missionary

goods from the far-off Jesuit Assistancies came to Rome, an urban nexus and

barter-point for early modern ethnographic goods.

In 1610, the Jesuit Father Jácome de Monteiro writes of feathered mantles

in a letter to his superior in Rome, relating how he shipped a box of Tupi capes

from Pernambuco to Rome. “Your Highness, a few days ago I sent across the sea

410
The shipments of retablos, crosses, liturgical vestments, and other Catholic cult objects from
Europe to Brazil are documented in Leite’s five-volume compilation of Jesuit letters, MB, Vol. I-V,
and in his Artes e ofícios. For a fascinating study of colonial Mexico see Luisa Elena Alcalá, "The
Jesuits and the Visual Arts in New Spain, 1670-1767" (PhD diss. New York University, 1998). For
South America see Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, as well as his "Cultural Convergence at the
Ends of the Earth: The Unique Art and Architecture of the Jesuit Missions to the Chiloe
Archipelago (1608-1767)," in O’Malley #2, 211-39.

213
for you a box of feathered capes.” 411 Though much of the rest of the letter is

indecipherable, there are some indications in the next few sentences of how these

objects were viewed. Monteiro further describes how the “Indians,” through the

vehicle of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), gave him these capes.412

Monteiro’s mention of the Agnus Dei appears to refer to the special

sacramental wafers made of beeswax that were consecrated in limited numbers

directly by the pope upon the occasion of his election. The wafer was a special

form of the host used during mass. Monteiro thus exchanged these wafers, for Tupi

feathered capes within the context of the Catholic liturgy.413 Thus, this letter

provides further evidence that the Jesuits saw these Tupi cloaks as analogous to

priestly vestments. This is a fascinating sub-text for objects that contained such a

complicated medley of seemingly idolatrous (i.e., anthropophagic) functions for a

Christian register. Monteiro’s letter, perhaps more than any other document,

demonstrates how the Society’s clergy endowed these objects with particular

meanings for their own evangelical interests. Finally, the fact that Monteiro sent

these capes from the region of Pernambuco is also highly important, as this region

411
Trans. mine. “Pouquos dias ha [ofereceu?] a V.A. e mandei hua’ caixa de envoltorios de pennas
que por mar se enviar.” Jácome Monteiro, "[Enformação da Provincia do Brasil, 1610]," in Bras. 8-
I, fols. 99v-100r (modern pagination, 352-55).
412
Trans. mine. Monteiro, “[Enformação],” “Hua eu sei me deram de Agnus Dei por ella dou
Indios.” Fol. 99v.
413
The use of the term agnus dei could also refer either to a liturgical prayer (“Lamb of God, who
takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us, etc.”), the last part of the Roman mass, or a
talisman. As a talisman, the agnus dei took the form of beeswax wafers imprinted with an image of
a lamb, often made out of the remainder of the consecrated candles burned during Easter. They are
blessed by the pope and worn as an apotropaic talisman. Some had a grey dust mixed in with them,
said to be from the bones of saints, and thus effectively relics. Special thanks to Prof. Francis Dutra
for advising me on the alternate possibilities of the agnus dei in colonial Brazil.

214
again and again appears as the originating locus for these objects in both Jesuit

letters, and later, in Dutch pictorial sources.

The term Monteiro uses to describe “capes” is envoltorios, a word used

specifically within Jesuit circles to describe religious vestments.414 In addition to

Monteiro’s letter, we encounter the term envoltorios in early modern Jesuit

inventories. In an inventory from 1581, for example, three separate envoltorios

from the Indies are listed on a shipment from Lisbon to Rome, intended for three

separate Jesuits in Rome.415 Lisbon was, of course, the first stopping point on any

Jesuit entry from overseas missions into Europe, before unloading and heading to

Rome. The inventory’s mention of “the Indies” is indeterminate, so that the capes

mentioned could at this early date refer to either Brazilian feathered “vestments”

(from the West Indies) or to Indian silk “vestments” (from the East Indies) that

were destined to Rome.416 The list includes a fascinating mix of materials from

diverse sources, all being shipped to Jesuits in Rome –– amber, lead, doves,

rhinoceros horn encased in wax, sugar, books, and porcelain –– and also employs

some Tupi terms.417

414
I would like to thank the Jesuit archivists at ARSI for assisting me with this term, especially
Father R.J. Thomas Reddy, S.J., and Robert Danieluk, S.J., Rome 2006. The word envoltorios was
a Portuguese and Spanish term also deployed in sixteenth-century Iberia and the New World to
indicate anything “enveloped” and “wrapped,” such as bundles of correspondence, cloth, etc. See
the online historical dictionary, REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA: Banco de datos (CORDE) [en
línea]. Corpus diacrónico del español. <http://www.rae.es> [July 2007]
415
Gabriel Afonso, “[P. Gabriel Afonso an P. General Claudio Acquaviva, Lisbon, 1581],” in Josef
Wicki, S.J., "Die Anfange der Missionsprokur der Jesuiten in Lissabon Bis 1580," Archivum
Historicum Societatis Iesu 40 (1971): 319.
417
Wicki, “Die Anfange,” 319.

215
 Into whose hands was Father Monteiro’s letter delivered in Lisbon? Whose

job was it to make sure that both Monteiro’s letter and his box of capes were

dispatched safely in Rome? It is important to mention here one last Jesuit

administrative position –– that of the Procurator –– as he tied together the Jesuits’

Brazilian aldeias to the larger mercantile activities of the Order in Europe with

which we began this chapter. The job of Procurator of the Portuguese missions was

a complex post occupied by a priest living in Lisbon and dealing with all matters

relating to the Portuguese Assistancy’s missions abroad.418 His job included such

things as preparing the missionaries for their journey overseas, paying their board,

dispatching the necessary items to replenish missions (such as clothes, wine, olive

oil, hosts for mass, etc.), and dealing with the elaborate financial issues of the

missions, including royal taxes, incoming and outgoing bulk commodities,

correspondence, and miscellaneous gifts, such as Monteiro’s. The Procurator held

enormous power in the daily working of the missionary enterprise. The Procurator

in Lisbon might best be described as a kind of agent, making sure that the

corporate machine was running smoothly and efficiently.

The fact that Jesuits were involved in shipping Tupi artifacts to Europe is

significant for several reasons. First, it again points to the existence of these

418
The role of the Portuguese Assistancy’s “Procurator” in Lisbon has, unfortunately, received no
substantial study to date. There are few surviving documents for the Procurator in Lisbon’s ANTT
Archive. For the administrative instructions for this post see: Josef Wicki, S.J., "Instrución para el
Procurador de las Provincias de Portugal, Brasil y India Oriental que reside en Corte de Valladolid
Católica, Hecha en enero de 1584," Documenta indica 13 (1948-88): 475-86; Felix Zubillaga, S.J.,
"El Procurador de la Compañia de Jesus en la Corte de España (1570)," AHSI 16 (1947): 1-55;
Felix Zubillaga, S.J., "El Procurador de las Indias Occidentales de la Compañia de Jesus (1574),"
AHSI 22 (1953): 367-417.

216
mantles within the colonial landscape. Second, it indicates the Jesuits were

shipping material objects, and not just letters, back to Italy, and thus were a source

of American ethnographic materials and information about them for Europe. Third,

this confirms that Lisbon was not the only port to receive Tupi objects; Rome was

also a point of entry, as were northern ports, which I will discuss in the next

chapter. Finally, both the physical shipment of the capes and the use of the term

envoltorios highlight the part that the capes clearly played in the Jesuit imaginary:

they collected ethnographic materials as evidence of the world they encountered in

Brazil and the activities within it. Furthermore, and most crucially, they clearly

associated Tupi ceremonial vestments and European religious apparel at a

symbolic, functional, and even aesthetic level.

Conclusion

As we have seen in this chapter on the Jesuit role in Brazilian colonialism,

feathered capes widely circulated in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Brazil.

They were features of Amerindian communities both inside the aldeia system, and

outside of the confines of Christian missions. The scarlet vestments continued to

be produced long after European contact and within Christian contexts. Within

aldeias, Brazilian featherwork took on new cultural meanings apart from its use in

funerary rites, warfare, caium drinking, and the myriad other significant Tupi

ceremonies and celebrations of the early contact period I have discussed. In the

mid-sixteenth century and continuing through the early seventeenth century, Tupi

217
featherwork was redeployed in Jesuit contexts, for such events as Christian

processions and the teaching of catechism, as well as various other religious

performances within the new Jesuit-sanctioned aldeia spaces.

Additionally, plumed cloaks were sold in another site of intercultural

meeting –– the colonial Brazilian marketplace –– along with other Amerindian arts

and crafts, such as ceramics and weaving (baskets, hammocks). Furthermore, we

can gather from such pictorial evidence as Frans Post’s mid-seventeenth-century

paintings that scarlet-colored Tupiguarani feathered head-coverings were part and

parcel of the 1640s Dutch-controlled Pernambuco region, the same northeastern

region where the Jesuits documented these objects almost a hundred years before.

As we can recall also from Chapter 1, the Capuchin French chronicler Abbeville,

detailed the Tupinambá production of two sizes of scarlet-feathered capes in early

seventeenth-century Maranhão (north of Pernambuco).

In the following chapter, I turn to early modern Europe, the last of the

colonial spaces I will discuss, to investigate the deployment of Tupi featherwork

and the Tupi themselves in courts, collections and performances. The Jesuit

documentary evidence of the current chapter will aid in the contextualization of

these cultural artifacts as they circulate around Europe, always retaining some

vestiges of their “Brazilian-ness.” I will discuss the impact of Brazilian material

culture in Europe, and the role various agents played in their circulation. In the

process we will get some sense of the complex networks that determined the

geographic movement and changing perception and use of the capes.

Chapter 4:

218
 Performing Brazil: European Collections,

Courts and Networks as Sites of Colonialism

Taking pleasure, like the Cimmerians did in erudite stories the Arimaspi called the
Griffins barbarians, who wore capes and hoods of feathers and seemed to be not
humans, but birds. The very same dress is used in the New World, as it is
commonly known, and it s not rare –– even I keep one of these capes of the highest
manufacture at home; but it is not taken from the hyperborean regions, but from
Brazil, where there are people such as this, who may properly be called Griffins.
They pretend to be of leonine body, so that not otherwise the lions might devour
the humans; because of this, ignorant writers gave them a false name, the latest
Scythian anthropophagi. Indeed, even with those people who are familiar with
Christian Rites, a leonine habit of devouring humans continues.
––Johannes Goropius Becanus, Origines Antwerpianae 1569419

Happy, indeed, is the city that lies in a good location.

—Hugo de Groot, Encomium to Paludanus, 1603420

Introduction: The colonial contours of early modern Europe

As we have seen in the previous chapter, Tupinambá featherwork was integral to

performative rituals inside and outside the Jesuit aldeia missions. The Jesuit

missionary concept of accommodatio, in fact, was broad enough to countenance

419
Trans. mine with kind assistance of Markus Friedrich. “Arimaspi verò more Cimmeriorum
fabulis eruditis gaudentes, Grypes nominauerunt Barbaros homines, qui cùm chlamydes & palliola
ex auium plumis induti effent, non homines sed aues videbantur. Eiusmodi autem ornatus hactenus
in orbe nouo, ut vocant, in vsu est; atque tam non est rarus, utipse unum pailliolum domi maea
summa arte confectum, seruem; quod tamen non ab illa parte Hyperboreis vicina est allatu, sed è
Brasilia, ubi hactenus homines tam esseri sunt, ut meritò Grypes dici possint. Fingebant autem
corpore leonine esse, quòd haud secus atque leones homines deuorarent; de quibis ultimi
Scytharum Anthropophagi falsum nomen coacti sunt ferre, apud scriptores remotiorum ignaros.
Durat enim hactenus etiam leoninus hic mos homines deuorandi, quamuis apud eos, qui Christianis
ritibus assuescunt.” Becanus, Johannes Goropius, Origines Antwerpianae, Sive Cimmeoriorum
Becceselana Novem Libros Complexa (Antwerp: Christoph Plantin, 1569). [FSL, Liber IX, Fol.
1039] For an important discussion of humanist recovery of the ancient world and the comparison of
“exotic” peoples to pagans, see Ryan, "Assimilating,” 526.
420
Thanks to Mark A. Meadow and Emily J. Peters for translation of this poem. For the full poem,
see note [149] below. Hugo de Groot, Dat is een Verhael in Rijm van den Oorspronck end
Fondeeringe der Seer Vermaerder zee ende Coopstadt Enchuysen (1603). Cited in Jo Daan, "Het
Ogelijin der Stad," West-Frieslands Oud en Nieuw (1955): 1.

219
the use of feathered capes within Christian religious rituals. Turning now to

Europe, I want to start by briefly considering three early modern watercolors, from

Italy, Germany and France, which depict Tupi feathered capes and headdresses.

Each representation shows the Tupi featherwork again being used in performances,

now within different European contexts. However, the three images, the modes of

performance shown in them, and the information each conveys are quite distinct.

They collectively encompass such diverse forms of knowledge as ornithology,

craft technology, commodity economics, princely splendor and the nature of

kingship. All three images, and the events to which two of them refer, are of

course imaginary constructions of the Tupi and their society for the Europeans

who both wore and watched Tupi vestments in performance. Cultural difference —

the dangerous, licentious and exotic qualities assigned to the Tupi — provided a

mirror or a foil for constructing self and state in Europe. Thus, European identities,

culture and politics were transformed, in subtle ways perhaps, by contact with

Brazil and its inhabitants.

In Chapter 3 I discussed how sixteenth-century European missionaries and

colonizers perceived a similarity between the Tupi feathered capes and the

vestments worn ceremonially by their own clergy or nobility. The lore about the

capes that was transmitted by Jesuits and writers such as Staden, Léry, Sousa and

others, repeatedly emphasized the ritual nature of these garments. They continued

to be shown, described and used as performative costumes across Europe as they

moved into the hands of clergy, theologians, scholars, poets, doctors, officers,

220
kings and princes, and much more recently, into the hands of modern ethnographic

collections. At the same time, the capes were luxury commodities to be bought or

given as gifts. They were ideal collectibles: rare, strikingly beautiful, intricately

crafted, markers of wealth and colonial ambitions.

My interest is not to review the pedigree and iconography of each

Renaissance and Baroque image of a feathered Native American in Europe –– a

terrain already well trodden by scholars –– but to explore the particular contexts

and motivations relevant to a select group of images depicting the Tupi and/or their

feathered mantles being used in performances.421 In order to better understand how

Tupi people, objects and images performed for their new owners and audiences, I

trace the European and colonial networks that defined a distinctly pan-European

relationship with colonial Brazil and its Amerindian inhabitants. Brazil occupied a

unique position within sixteenth and seventeenth century Atlantic culture. One of

the great ironies of the Portuguese colonization of Brazil, is that Iberia (both

Portugal and Spain), the primary colonial power in South America, deeply engaged

in the economic exploitation of their New World conquests and the conversion to

Christianity of their peoples, had comparatively little interest in retaining New

World cultural artifacts.422 Of necessity, therefore, my discussion in this chapter

421
The literature is far too vast to do justice here. For some of the most foundational texts see:
Chiappelli; Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the
Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975); Impey; and the exhibition
catalogue Jay A Levenson, ed., Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991).
422
For a discussion of Spain in relation to collections of exotica see the meticulously researched:
Renate Pieper, "Papageien und Bezoarsteine: Gesandte als Vermittler von Exotica und

221
centers upon particular collection and collectors in Italy, France, Germany and the

Low Countries. The case studies I consider in this chapter should be understood as

highly localized, bound at a given moment to particular people and circumstances,

and not indicative of broader national characteristics in the response to the Tupi

and their featherwork.

Part I, for example, examines a watercolor commissioned by the Bolognese

naturalist, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) titled the Forest Man, featuring a nude

man wearing an extraordinary Tupi feathered half-cloak (Fig. 38). An illustration

in a natural history treatise, this firm-buttocked and rosy-cheeked body, shown

stepping forward, gestures with his left hand and holds a rather strange, pineapple-

like maracá in his right hand. The maracá, together with the carefully depicted leg

bands with attached ahovay pods (both discussed in Chapter 1) are Aldrovandi’s

indications of how the cloak was used in relation to dance and music, an attempt to

show a fuller Brazilian context for the objects. Aldrovandi’s placement of the cape

on the figure demonstrates to the viewer how feathered capes were worn in Brazil,

including the appropriate accoutrements accompanying them in indigenous

performances. Aldrovandi includes a detail analyzing how individual feathers were

bound to the underlying fabric matrix in the lower left-hand corner, indicating a

keen interest in understanding the technical aspects of making artifacts from

feathers. The Florentine, Bolognese and Milanese examples of Tupi objects and

Luxuserzeugnissen im Zeitalter Phillip II," in Hispania-Austria II: Die Epoche Phillip II (1556-
1598), ed. Friedrich Edelmayer, 215-24 (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Polis, 1999).

222
imagery, as I shall argue, coincide with the emergence of institutionalized natural

history, and indeed in Aldrovandi’s case, more specifically of ornithology.

Turning north, to sixteenth-century France, Part II of this chapter explores

the impact of the dyewood trade for the textile industry of the Norman capital of

Rouen. The watercolor Joyous Entry into Rouen pictures a Brazilian performance

during Henri II’s Royal Entry into Rouen (Fig. 50). This pageant featured a

recreation of Tupi villages, Tupi warfare, French-Tupi brazilwood collecting, and a

French-Tupi political alliance against the Portuguese. Through this image and a

discussion of the French Royal Cosmographer, who may be linked to the Tupi

cape now housed in Paris, I demonstrate how a Tupi pageant in France –– and a

performance of the Tupi in France Antarctique –– was imbricated in the larger

presentation of Rouen’s economic interests in colonial Brazil. Rouen was the

administrative capital of Normandy, the seat of one of the largest archbisphorics in

France, the busiest port in France, and a major center of both manufacture (cloth

and stockings) and trade.423 Normandy’s ports –– Rouen, La Havre, Dieppe and

Honfleur –– were the principal French docks for incoming Brazilian commodities

and centers of the textile industry that utilized the red dye derived from the pulp of

brazilwood.424

423
Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), 3. In fact, he quotes a 1526 Rouen hosier who states: “From all the lands people insist on
having stockings only from this city, and… in the fairs and towns of this kingdom there is a great
traffic in them.” For a discussion of the Rouen cloth industry and this quote see Benedict, Rouen
during, 13-15.
424
For a discussion of the French investment in the dyewood trade see Bueno, Pau-Brasil, Ch. 5.
Bueno explains how the brazilwood trade financed the construction of the Treasury of the Church
of Saint-Jacques in Dieppe, which contains a frieze representing Native Americans, Africans and

223
 Lastly, moving to the sixteenth-century ducal city of Stuttgart, we can see

the deployment of various kinds of Tupi capes in the Queen of America Procession

from 1599 (Fig. 37). This watercolor appears to have been used in designing and

orchestrating a Stuttgart ducal festival. Some of the European performers in this

event wore actual Tupi feathered capes raising the question of how they ended up

in such a seemingly unlikely location. The dissemination and performative

deployment of Brazilian artifacts from local Northern collections is the subject of

Part III. As this image makes clear, it is important to realize that although these

artifacts were housed in collections, they were hardly static museum pieces. Not

infrequently, these garments were ritually re-activated within the context of local

spectacles in Europe, attesting to the changeable but continuing ritual functions of

Tupi objects. The presence of these artifacts and their display can be attributed to

the extended political and scholarly network systems of the period. Northern

European visualizations of Brazil provide an illustration of how the Tupi and their

featherwork were woven into an intricate, broader “Tupinambization” of early

modern Europe.425

Asians, along with plants, fruits, and animals from Brazil. The Amerinidans are featured with
plumed adornments. Bueno claims the frieze was intended to function as a demonstration of the
good relations between French navigators and the “savage” populations of the globe. See especially
his examination of Dieppe on page 157. Thise frieze is known as the “Frise des Sauvages.”
In the early sixteenth century, “Dieppe-Rouen-Honfleur,” were known as an economic
triangle. Dieppe was a center of nautical chart production, as well as stone and wood sculpture.
Rouen was home to important French royalty and cardinals.
425
The term “Tupinambization” was first applied in William C. Sturtevant, "Le Tupinambisation
des Indiens d’Amérique du Nord," in Les figures de l'indien, ed. Gilles Thérien, 293-303 (Montréal:
Université du Québec à Montréal, 1988). The seeds of this argument are present in his earlier work.
See also Sturtevant, "First Visual,” 417-54.

224
 I will return to these images in greater depth later in this chapter, to show

their relationships to other illustrations, objects, and personalities. Only by

understanding the financial, social and political exchanges, as well as the

informational networks, which brought Tupi objects into courts, collections, and

ultimately, into European spectacles, can we begin to understand the role of

Brazilian material cultural in shaping the colonial contours of early modern

European cities.426 By examining the complicated intersection of these objects with

social networks, people of varying professions, and their discourses, we can begin

to construct how it was that the Tupi feathered capes and the “marketing” of Tupi

culture fundamentally defined a Native American identity for Europeans, as a foil

against which European civilization was defined. Tupi visual culture was used

flexibily by Europeans to accommodate the intellectual, economic and political

needs of a newly forming concept of “Europe” as a unified whole. While

reconstructing a precise provenance for each Tupi cape is effectively impossible, it

is possible –– and I would suggest ultimately more useful –– to show how the

histories of the eleven capes interlinked with mercantile, religious, scientific and

courtly discourses in Europe.

426
I take the methodological cue of network systems analysis from: Renate Pieper,
"Communication Networks of the Habsburg Empire (1493-1598)," in From Commercial
Communication to Commercial Integration: Middle Ages to the 19th Century, ed. Markus A.
Denzel, 21-35 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004). She includes an excellent graph of the
networks of manuscript information after the arrival of American bullion (1498-1576). See also
Renate Pieper, "The Upper German Trade in Art and Curiosities before the Thirty Years War," in
Art Markets in Europe, 1400-1800, ed. Michael North and David Ormrod, 93-102 (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1998).

225
 Tupinambá capes traveled on ships from coastal Brazilian towns (such as

those in Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro), to the ports of Lisbon or Seville.

These objects, like missionary correspondence, were then transferred to entrepôts

elsewhere in Europe, and finally into the hands of their new owners.427 The office

of the Jesuit Procurator –– just as with factors, merchants, agents, and the

equivalent offices of the other missionary orders –– earned their livelihoods from

the successful transferal or delivery of raw products, material goods, and news

from overseas hubs of commercial activity to European centers of trade, printing

and manufacture. Brazilian artifacts were part and parcel of this complex market-

economy, where Amerindian peoples, feathered capes and exotic animals first

disembarked in Europe.

Moreover, colonial Brazil was a pan-European endeavor and thus any

responsible study of its early history and the dispersal of Tupi culture cannot

simply be confined to a relationship with Portugal, the nominal colonizer of Brazil.

In fact, Italians, Germans, the French, Portuguese and the Dutch all had a role in

shaping sixteenth and seventeenth-century Brazilian history, uniquely in early-

427
Strangely, there is little documentary evidence from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to
suggest Tupi cultural artifacts ever stayed in Portugal. The only evidence of Lusitanian ownership
of Tupi artifacts comes from Caminha’s 1500 letter to the King upon the landing on Brazil. Gifts of
Tupi featherwork were sent back to Portugal, but we know nothing of the lives of the objects
thereafter. Possibly, they were all destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake, or possibly Brazilian objects
were either given to other European sovereigns or sold to the European market for collectibles.
The one visual vestige in Portugal remains Vasco Fernandes’ Adoration of the Magi
painting, ca. 1505, from the Cathedral of Viseu. One of the magi wears a feathered laurel-wreath
crown reminiscent of the Tupinambá, and holds a Brazilian arrow. For a meticulous examination of
all Brazilian artifacts left in Portugal see Theckla Hartmann, "Artefactos indígenas brasileiros em
Portugal," Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, (1984): 175-82; Theckla Hartmann,
Bibliografía crítica da etnologia brasileira. Vol. 3. (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag), 1984. All
date to the eighteenth century or later.

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colonial Latin America. What is equally important to stress is that contact with

Brazil in turn shaped what we might call a “colonial” Europe. Cultural artifacts

and cultural information about Brazil were dispersed widely and, as a result,

created a highly artificial construct of Tupi “life” in the Old World. By analyzing

the interlocking networks of the colonial process we can better understand the

route by which Tupi objects reached their final destinations and how they came to

be redeployed in laboratories, studioli and Kunstkammern and in civic and courtly

spectacles. In this chapter I use three regional case studies: Florence, Bologna,

Milan in Italy; Paris and Rouen in France; and Stuttgart, Enkhuizen and Antwerp

in the North. These various sites show how the eleven existing feathered capes are

woven into a European history of travel, discovery, mercantilism, humanism, and

courtly culture. I conclude with an addendum discussing the Tupi cloaks in

Brussels and Basel to demonstrate how the colonial legacies and performative

activation of such objects persisted well into the twentieth century, giving further

testimony to the cultural potency and endurance of these objects as ceremonial

vestments.

Albrecht Meier: instructions for travelers

Before I turn to my discussion of the various collectors and of Tupi material in

Europe, I would like briefly to discuss European ways of viewing travel, and

specifically, an ideal of the kinds of data that a learned man should collect during

explorations of foreign lands. With the example of the Jesuits, I have already

227
discussed the importance of highly elaborate bureaucratic structures for the

dispersal, translation and printing of missionary correspondence. As we move from

the religious networks of the Jesuits to the equally expansive humanist networks of

Europe, we can see similarities (though with different goals) in the ever-expanding

res publica litteraria, or humanist’s “Republic of Letters.”428

The German humanist-bureaucrat Albertus Meierus, or Albrecht Meier

(1528-1603), was employed by the Danish governor of Schlesweig-Holstein to

write a traveler’s instructional manual, which sheds valuable light on how

sixteenth-century travelers recorded the world they moved through.429 Indeed, later

in my chapter, I will discuss how Meier’s narrative specifically coincided with the

travels of Tupi capes in Denmark. Here, though, I would like to introduce Meier’s

1587: Methodus describendi regions, urbes & arces [Certaine briefe, and special

instructions for gentleman, merchants, students, souldiers and mariners].430

Meier’s text functioned as an instructional aid on ars apodemica or the “art of

428
The humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, a prolific correspondent with a vast epistolary network,
apparently was the first to coin the expression “res publica litteraria”. See Fritz Schalk,"Von
Erasmus' "Res publica literaria" zur Gelehrtenrepublik der Aufklärung," in Studien zur französichen
Aufklärung, ed. Fritz Schalk, 143-63 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977).
429
Meier’s text was written under the direction and expense of the Danish governor Heinrich
Rantzau, Herr von Bredenberg (1526-1599), a scholar, patron and collector. He was educated as a
page under Emperor Charles V. For a discussion of the employer, Rantzau, and the author Meier
see Stagl, A History, 127-129.
430
Methodus describendi regions, urbes & arces, & quid singulis locis praecipue in
peregrinationibus hominess nobilis ac docti animadvertere, observare at annotare debeant,
Helmstedt, 1587. The English translation I use comes from two years later: Albrecht Meyer, and
Abraham Ortelius, ed. Certaine Briefe, and Speciall Instructions for Gentlemen, Merchants,
Students, Souldiers, Marriners, &C. Employed in Seruices Abrode, or Anie Way Occasioned to
Conuerse in the Kingdomes, and Gouernementes of Forren Princes, trans. Philip Jones (London:
Printed by Iohn VVoolfe, 1589).

228
travel, ” for those journeying abroad. 431 In the sixteenth century, a codified

practice of travel emerged in which some three hundred surviving treatises attest to

a new systematization of the travel experience, imposing an encyclopedic program

on how to observe and best make use of one’s foreign visit.432

Texts like Meier’s would have provided an educated European traveler

with a working checklist of observations to be made, and therefore provide

fascinating insights into the “norms” of cultural data collection. Many travel books

I have already discussed, such as those of Léry and Thevet, the letters of the

Capuchins, and some of the published Jesuit and missionary letters, such as those

of Jácome Monteiro, correspond quite closely to Meier’s instructions. Meier’s

guidebook gives instructions for the notation of such macro details as the

“longitude and latitude” of one’s location, and to the micro level of describing the

“wits and conceits” of the foreign people’s encountered.433 I would like to

highlight how Meier’s book specifies such comparative ethnographic information

as: the “habits and apparel of men, women, wives,” the “handicrafts of the place,”

and “the annual fayres and markets, where they are kept, and howe often, and what

commodities do there principally abound.”434 Meier’s text therefore, prepares

travelers for the acquisition of such things as foreign clothes as ideal items of

“comparison” with those at home, and indeed the idea of foreign acquisition is tied
431
For an excellent overview of this literature see Justin Stagl, "The Methodising of Travel in the
16th Century: A Tale of Three Cities," in Facing Each Other: The World's Perception of Europe
and Europe's Perception of the World, ed. Anthony Pagden, 123-58 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
432
Stagl, “The Methodising,” 136, 321.
433
Meier, Certaine, 3, 14.
434
These items are all listed in the eighth section, “The political state, wherein is to be marked.”
See Meier, Certaine, 13-14.

229
to the interest in commodities and markets.435 In regard to Meier, my point is to

show the larger mechanism in place for the kinds of information European

intellectuals wanted to acquire about Brazil, and what cultural specificities were

deemed most desirable as evidence of similarity and cultural difference.

Part I: Florence, Bologna and Milan: the (Re-) naissance of Natural History

Those who carry on commercial traffic with the new countries lose no
opportunity to collect rarities, which they attempt to sell in the following
way: since they are unable to bring back the birds of that country alive in
their ships, they flay them in order to obtain the skins: chiefly those of the
most beautiful colors, among which is the one we are now describing, and
out of which the sailors have made their profit, having given it the name of
the Brazilian blackbird [i.e., the fiery-red Ramphocelus bresilicus]. Many
complete skins have been found.
–– Pierre Belon, L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, 1555436

Unlike Portugal, France and later Holland, Italy never attempted a territorial

colonization of Brazil in the early modern period. The Italian presence in Brazil

was fundamentally mercantile, feeding into princely and scholarly collecting in

Italy. How three Tupi feathered cloaks ended up in Italian collections in Florence

and Milan, and why cultural knowledge about them traveled via separate but

equally potent channels, are the issues I will explore in this section.437 In the early

435
Meier is even cited in an interesting article concerning the history of comparative education. See
William W. Brickman, "Prehistory of Comparative Education to the End of the Eighteenth
Century," Comparative Education Review 10, no. 1 (1966): 30-47.
436
Erwin Stresemann, ed. and trans. Ornithology: From Aristotle to the Present (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975), 26-27. Originally from the French: Pierre Belon, L'histoire de la
nature des oyseaux (Paris, 1555), 319.
437
Italy was politically and culturally fragmented in the early Renaissance and consisted of the
Kingdom of Naples, the Papal States, the Duchy of Milan, and the city-states of Florence and
Venice. By the mid-sixteenth century, France, Spain and the Hapsburg Empire were attempting to
gain control of these areas. Though the boundaries between legal systems, currency and codes of

230
sixteenth century, Italian merchants and explorers had an enormous interest in the

commercial profits that were only possible through acquiring knowledge of the

new navigational, topographical, political, culture, religious and ethnographic

dimensions of overseas territories of places such as the Americas. Italy’s

knowledge of the ethnographic terrains of Brazil dated back to more than fifty

years before the Jesuits’ missionary endeavors of the mid-sixteenth century.

In fact, Italy’s entanglements with the New World began from the first

moments of European contact in South America in 1500. Much of this had to do

with the Portuguese Crown’s privatization of overseas expeditions and their need

for financial assistance. When Vasco da Gama failed to return from Calicut in

1499 with valuable cargo to recoup the cost of the voyage, the Portuguese Crown

decided to take another approach and enter into a “profit-sharing” enterprise with

future explorations. Thus when Cabral set sail for his “India” voyage in 1500, his

men had already agreed to a new payment system in which they would earn their

salary with the spices bought in Calicut, which they would sell in Lisbon upon

their return. In addition to this, certain individual investors could buy shares in

Cabral’s expedition. The largest single investor on Cabral’s accidental voyage to

Brazil was the Florentine banker, Bartolomeo Marchioni, who financed the ship

Anunciada.438 Men such as Marchioni, as well as the Florentines Benedetto

conduct abound, to provide simplicity in reference to New World activities, I will include all of my
examples of these regions as “Italian” given the very broad unification of cultural trends and
language in the period.
438
In fact in 1498 Portuguese King Dom Manuel had given Marchioni exclusive privilege in the
sugar trade with Madeira Island. Historians have noted that Marchioni acted as an intermediary or

231
Morelli, Giovanni da Empoli and Girólamo Sernigi, provided the vessels and

equipment for outfitting the new voyages to the East, and most importantly for this

discussion, they also reported their findings of the expeditions.439

Florentine traders were at this time falling behind the Venetians –– their

competitors –– and Portugal’s expeditions provided a perfect venue for investment.

With the imperial expansion of Spain and Portugal, Italy was suffering from a

collapse in its Mediterranean political importance and thus Italians entered into the

Iberian ventures of the day to gain a slice of the burgeoning mercantile

economy.440 Lisbon was also the ideal location for foreign mercantile enterprises,

with an enormous community of Italians (from Venice, Florence, and Genoa), as

well as German and Flemish factors (business agents) and merchants, all living in

Lisbon’s bustling waterfront community.441 Thus we can see that from the year

1500, Italians worked hand-in-hand with the Portuguese in their commercial

investment in America’s economic potential, and equally important, in the art and

agent for all foreigners in Lisbon. See Carlos de Araújo Moreira Neto, "Presença de Italianos no
processo histórico brasileiro," in A Italia e o Brasil indígena: L'italia ed il Brasile indigeno, ed.
Berta G. Ribeiro, Carlos de Araújo Moreira Neto, Eduardo Hoornaert and Valeria Petrucci, 25-41
(Rio de Janeiro: Index Editora, 1983); Jaime Cortesão, A expedição de Pedro Alvares Cabral e o
descobrimento do Brasil (Lisbon: Impr. Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1994).
439
Dutra, “Brazil,” 150.
440
For a discussion of Italy’s strange new “de-centralized” position in the Western political
economy of sixteenth century Europe see Theodore J. Cachey, "Italy and the Invention of America"
The New Centennial Review 2, no. 1 (2002): 17-31. Cachey’s discussion focuses on how the
“crucible” effect of Italy’s raging regional wars, the religious consequences of Luther’s reforms,
and the explorations that geographically put Italy in a subordinate position to Iberia, were indeed
part of the emergence of the Italian High Renaissance.
441
Dutra, “Brazil,” 150; Diffie gives a list of the foreigners (or their agents) living legally in Lisbon
and trading with Brazil: Fugger, Welser, Seitz, Rom, Hirschfogel, Hochstetter, Ratt, Paris,
Ximenes, Marchioni, Morelli, Affaitai, see “The Legal,” 2. For a discussion of the foreign
merchants present in Lisbon since the fifteenth century see Virginia Rau, "A Family of Italian
Merchants in Portugal in the Fifteenth Century: The Lomellini," in Studi in onore di Armando
Sapori I, 715-26 (Milano: Instituto Edit. Cisalpino, 1957).

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science of cartography.442 Though the Portuguese ships were not sailing with

Florentine flags, they were sailing with Florentine money.

Amerigo Vespucci and the invention of ‘America’

The most famous of the Florentine personalities engaged with Brazil in the early

sixteenth century was the navigator, mariner, and cosmographer Amerigo

Vespucci (1454-1512), an employee sent to Seville by Lorenzo di Pier Francesco

de’ Medici (1449-1492), and the man who was the source for the very name of

“America.”443 Vespucci was sent to Brazil in 1501-1502 in the Portuguese

expeditions to explore the eastern seaboard after Cabral’s voyages. His letters

remain the earliest printed works referring to the Portuguese navigations of the

Atlantic. There has been no shortage of historical controversy surrounding the

validity of the widely circulated Vespucci letters written between 1501-1502.444

Fifteen editions of the pamphlet called the Mundus Novus were published in

442
It should be noted that one of the most famous maps of the Renaissance period, the 1502
Cantino mappemundi showing Brazil as the “Land of the Parrots,” was acquired by an Italian agent.
Alberto Cantino, agent for Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, acquired the map in Lisbon by an
unknown Portuguese mapmaker in 1502. This map shows the first Portuguese activity in North
America and Brazil. See Max Justo Guedes, "O Descobrimento do Brasil," Oceanos: O Achamento
do Brasil 39 (1999): 8-17; Albuquerque, Portugal-Brazil.
443
German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller, on his world map of 1507 and accompanying
book, first bestowed the name “America” after Amerigo’s first name. For recent readings of the
Vespucci controversies see: Dutra, “Brazil,” 147-150; and Francisco Leite Faria "Literary Echoes
of the Portuguese Discoveries," in Portugal-Brazil: The Age of Atlantic Discoveries, ed. Luís de
Albuquerque, Max Justo Guedes, Gerald Lombardi and Arthur Lee-Francis Askins, 237-57
(Lisbon: Betrand Editora, 1990).
444
For a complete bibliographic history of Vespucci see Moraes, Vol. II, 345-357. Given the wide
circulation of the Vespucci letters and the paucity of information available of the first few years of
Brazilian contact, the four centuries of controversy are well merited. Dutra maintains that the three
“authentic” Vespucci letter were not published until 1745, 1827, 1789 respectively. Anything
published during his lifetime (Mundus Novus and Lettera) were fraudulent. See Dutra, “Brazil,”
148.

233
Florence, Venice, Paris, Augsburg, Antwerp and Nuremberg between 1503 and

1507, although interestingly, none were printed in Portugal or Spain.445

It is not clear how many journeys Vespucci actually made to the New

World, although it is certain that Vespucci made one voyage to Brazil in 1501-02

in an expedition led by Gonçalo Coelho, meeting en route two of Cabral’s ships

that were returning from India. The historical accuracy of Vespucci’s voyages and

letters aside, the impact of his widely circulated printed accounts of America

cannot be underestimated, as they were the first news of these new lands to reach a

wide audience and provide an “eyewitness” account of the strange new inhabitants

of Brazil. Though highly pejorative and propagandistic, Vespucci’s pamphlets

were the kind of printed news people had access to in the first years of the

sixteenth century. His description of Brazilians has become almost mythic of the

first accounts of the Tupi, and thus emblematic of a whole and largely unknown

continent of America, Americans and their customs and appearance:

None have patrimony among them, but everything is common. They have
neither king (chief) nor government; and each is his own master. They take
as many wives as they please. In the intercourse of the sexes they have no
regard to kindred, intermarrying the son with the mother, the brother to the
sister… in these things they live ungoverned by reason… Their cheeks,
their jaws, their noses, lips, and ears have not one little hole only, but many
large ones in them; so that I have often seen one with seven holes in the
face, each one more than half a span in size…. I saw in the houses of a
certain Indian village, in which I remained twenty-seven days, where
human flesh, having been salted [?], was suspended from the beams of the

445
Rudolph Hirsch, "Printed Reports on the Early Discoveries and Their Reception," in Chiapelli,
537-560.

234
 dwellings, as we use to do with bacon and pork…. They live a hundred and
fifty years.446

While much of Vespucci’s description resonates with the kinds of ethnographic

information other sixteenth-century authors charted in regard to Tupi marriage

customs and facial adornments, his description of anthropophagic acts merely

emphasize the horror and the “othering” of cannibalism as a cultural practice. My

interest in quoting from Vespucci (or his forgers) here is only to highlight how the

wide circulation and print mechanism for portraying American culture in such

negative terms was in place very early in Europe, and was one connected

immediately with a printed image. Vespucci’s narrative, therefore, is the Italian

precursor to understanding the interest in American feathered adornments.

Amerigo’s letters had a secondary impact on the circulation of information

about the New World as they were used as pictorial sources for the production of

printed images. The earliest known image showing Native Americans, now housed

in the New York Public Library, was based upon Vespucci’s description and

shows the first introduction of the “feathered” American body in Europe (Fig.

51).447 Made by an unknown German wood engraver, it was published alongside

446
Vespucci is quoted in: Rudolph Schuller, "The Oldest Known Illustrations of South American
Indians," Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, Indian Notes 7 (1930): 490.
447
The anonymous German woodcut actually came three years after the 1502 Portuguese
manuscript map called the Kustmann II, also featuring a Brazilian (not feathered), who is skewering
a white man over a spit. This map is also likely based on Vespucci’s accounts. See Sturtevant,
“First Visual,” 420. There are actually two copies of the German woodcut, one in the New York
Public Library and the other in Bayerische Staatsbibliotek, Munich. Borba de Moraes suggests that
Johann Froschauer in Augsburg printed both versions in 1505. See Moraes, Vol. II, 355. One of
these was used by Jan van Doesborch in his 1511-23 Antwerp printing of De novo mondo
(University Library, Rostock) and Of the newe landes (British Library, Huntington, Bodelain
Library). See Amerigo Vespucci, Balthasar Springer, Jan van Doesborch, and M. E. Kronenberg,

235
the narrative account and gives insight into the dissemination of the Native

American as monstrous and anthropophagic.448 The woodcut shows a group of

men, women and children adorned with feathered skirts, headdresses, necklaces,

and ankle bracelets. One figure in the bottom left corner even wears a version of

the feathered enduap rosette adornment for the buttocks. The inclusion of such

plumed body-wear here shows a first attempt at picturing Tupi costume, including

such items as the feathered bands worn on their calves, albeit here pictured around

their ankles. These Americans gnaw on human limbs, while other body parts hang

from the wood structure that shelters them. Their behavior directly references

Vespucci’s narrative description. But what kind of information is conveyed in the

four-line narrative included in German Gothic type below the image?

This figure represents to us the people and island that have been discovered
by the Christian King of Portugal or by his subjects. The people are thus
naked, handsome, brown, well-shaped in body. Their heads, necks, arms,
private parts, feet of men and women, are a little covered in feathers. The
men also have many precious stones in their faces and breasts. No one
alone has anything, but all things are in common. And the men have as
wives those who please them, be they mothers, sisters, or friends, therein
make they no distinction. They also fight with one another. They also eat
one another, even those who are slain, and hang their flesh in smoke. They
become a hundred and fifty years old. And have no government.449

The text that introduced the image to its readers is only slightly altered from the

printed letter I cited previously, but in this case the image and text reinforce each

eds., De Novo Mondo, Antwerp Jan Van Doesborch <About 1520>: A Facsimile of an Unique
Broadsheet Containing an Early Account of the Inhabitants of South America, Together with a
Short Version of Heinrich Sprenger's Voyage to the Indies (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1927).
448
This topic has been well covered by scholars. See especially: Michael J. Schreffer, "Vespucci
Rediscovers America: The Pictorial Rhetoric of Cannibalism in Early Modern Culture," Art History
28, no. 3 (2005): 295-310; and Thomas B. Cummins, "Pre-Columbian Art, Western Discourses of
Idolatry, and Cannibalism," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 42, no. Autumn (2002): 109-29.
449
Trans. from German in Schuller, “The Oldest,” 486.

236
other. The nudity and supposed promiscuity of the Tupi, their “man-munching”

ways and their feathers are presented as the primary constituents of their culture at

large. The feathered capes of the Tupi represented all of these qualities — the

exception to the nakedness, the appurtenances of ritual and the exotic birds — and

so become highly desirable objects and evidence of Brazilian lands. Vespucci’s

narrative informed the German engraver’s image, and thus served as the basis for

popular knowledge of the Americas at large.

Antonio Pigafetta: an Italian source

Vespucci links the Tupi and their strange ways to feathers, but the first Italian to

mention Tupi feathered capes was the Vincenzan navigator, Antonio Pigafetta

(1491-1534), who is often postulated as the source for the Tupi material acquired

by the Medici in Florence.450 From Pigafetta’s 1519-1522 Primo viaggio intorno al

globo [First voyage around the world] we get the first concrete Italian citation of

the scarlet robes of the Tupinambá.451 Pigafetta paid large sums of money to

accompany and assist the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) on

his westward exploration of a route to Asia between 1519 and 1522. Under the

auspices of the Spanish Crown they found a passage around Tierra del Fuego that

enabled them to reach the Maluka Islands, or Spice Islands, of Indonesia. By

450
Minelli and Ciruzzi. "Antichi oggetti,” 121-142.
451
Pigafetta’s Italian manuscript was entitled: Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo ossia
ragguaglio della navigazioni alle Indie Orientale per la via d’Occidente fatta dal cavaliere Antonio
Pigafetta, patrizio vincentino, sulla squadra del Cap. Magaglianes negli anni 1519-1522. Four
copies exist, three written in French and one in Italian. The Italian manuscript is now housed in
Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, the same repository where the Milan cape is now housed.

237
cutting through the southern strait of South America, Magellan was the first

European to cross the Pacific Ocean. Pigafetta kept a detailed diary that he

presented to his patron, Charles V, upon his return to Spain, but which had been

commissioned by Pope Clement VII and Villiers de l’Isle Adam, grandmaster of

the Order of Rhodes, before he embarked.452 Pigafetta’s account still remains the

most authoritative text of the voyage.453 While off the coast of Brazil, an

impending storm made the crew land on Portuguese American soil for a brief

respite. Magellan’s ships visited the coastal communities from present-day Rio de

Janeiro to Cabo Frio. Pigafetta observed the Tupi peoples he encountered and even

described their feathered capes and enduaps:

They clothe themselves in a dress made of parrot feathers, with large round
arrangements at their buttocks made from the largest feathers, and it is a
ridiculous sight…. They have an infinite numbers of parrots, and gave us eight
or ten for one mirror; and little monkeys that look like lions, only [they are]
yellow and very beautiful.454

Pigafetta’s observation gives us a sense that, even if “ridiculous,” the feathered

cloaks were noteworthy attributes of the people encountered and thus merited a

small description in his diary. It even begs the question of which celebration or

important cultural event they encountered, that would have necessitated the Tupi

452
This certainly is evidence of the pan-European investment of such expeditions. For a detailed
history of the manuscript see Moraes, Vol. II, 146.
453
Know as one of the “masterpieces” of discovery literature, Gabriel Garcia Márquez cited
Pigafetta’s account as a source for the “Latin American novel” in his Nobel Prize lecture. See
Gabriel Garcia Márquez, "The Solitude of America," New York Times February 6 1983, Section IV,
17.
454
Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's Voyage around the World, 2 vols., trans. James Alexander
Robertson. (Cleveland: A.H. Clark Co., 1906), 41. Pigafetta also famously included eight Tupi
words in the 1525 French edition of his journal, the first Tupi words to see the printed page in the
1525 French edition.

238
use of their ritual adornments. Though there is no mention of Magellan’s men

(including Pigafetta) receiving gifts of Tupi capes upon their departure, it is

possible that they did acquire such items.455

The Medici of Florence: merchants and princes

We do not know when, in fact, the first Tupi featherwork made its way to Italy,

though examples certainly had arrived by the 1530s. Once there, the capes were

quickly absorbed into the collections of princes, merchants and scholars. In the

larger story of Tupi artifacts in Europe, the Medici family of sixteenth-and

seventeenth century-Florence represents a combination of Italian mercantilism and

princely culture. The Medici produced three Popes (Leo X, Clement VII, Leo XI)

and frequently dominated the city governance of Florence and (via the Papacy)

Rome during the sixteenth century. Pope Clement VII (1478-1534), who was Pope

from 1523 to 1534, was well versed in activities related to the New World, as is

evidenced by his commissioning of Pigafetta’s travel narrative and as can be noted

in his diplomatic relations with Charles V.456 The Medici were one of the

455
Scholars have long used Pigafetta’s description of a Tupi cape as evidence of the connection
between his sixteenth-century voyage and the Tupi cape that was housed in Manfredo Settala’s
collection in Milan by the seventeenth century. Though he conceivably could have been the source
for the cape, there is no verifiable evidence to confirm this suggestion. This idea seems to have
originated with museum officials in Milan: G. Galbiati, "Antichita Sud-Americane All'ambrosiana"
Le vie d'Italia e del l'America latina 9 (1926): 1027-1030; and then duplicated by Alfred Métraux,
"A propos du deux objects Tupinamba du Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadero" Bulletin du Musée
d'Ethnographie du Trocadero 3 (1932): 3-18.
456
For example, after the Aztec dancers and musicians that Cortes brought to the court of Charles
V, were then dispatched to Rome where in 1527, Pope Clement VII staged a public performance
with the same Aztec troupe for Charles V. Howard F. Cline, "Hernando Cortes and the Aztec
Indians in Spain," Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress XXVI, no. April (1969): 70-90.

239
wealthiest and most powerful families of early modern Europe, patrons of art,

architecture and scholarship, power brokers across Europe, who negotiated

intermarriages with other great princely houses, such as the noted marriage

between Pope Clement’s kinswoman, Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) and Henri

II (1519-1599), king of France, whom we will discuss later in regard to French

collecting.

Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s (1519-1574) New World collection, as well as

some of the European princely collection, was kept in his studiolo, a form of

collection akin to the Kunstkammern of Northern Europe. The rooms in which

such collections were held had various names in Italy, including, a cabinet as in the

English curiosity cabinet (gabinetto), a private study (studiolo), or more

specifically housed in the Medici office (scrittoio) and wardrobe (guardaropa)

located in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.457 Cosimo’s sons, Francesco I (1574-

1587) and Ferdinando I (1587-1607), expanded the collection into the gallery of

the Palazzo Vecchio (stanzino), as well as into a room off of the Uffizi

(Tribuna).458 As a mercantile family that had risen to the level of great princes,

they used their collections as a way of displaying magnificence and building

457
The scrittoio, a synonym for studiolo or private study, housed family records and treasures, as
was the guardaropa. The last was also a room where art and silver would be shown. This room
would also function for storing textiles and tapestries to be used in the palace as needed. Like the
Kunst- und-Wunderkammern phenomenon of the North, which Samuel Quiccheberg described as a
collection combining man-made works of art (artificialia) and objects from nature (naturalia),
Italian collections combined a wide range of materials. For a succinct discussion of the conceptual
differences in language see Adriana Turpin, "The New World Collections of Duke Cosmino I de'
Medici and their role in the creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio," in
Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and Alexander
Marr, 63-86 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).
458
Turpin, “The New World,” 66.

240
political and diplomatic networks through elaborate gift giving. These political

interconnections represent a second network system beside the mercantile

networks I just discussed. Rather than the mercantile concern with the

translocation of information and objects as aspects of the economics of trade,

princely collections were used to build relationships between sovereigns. The

Medici collections also differ from the Italian natural history and apothecary

collections I will discuss in a moment, which were used more strictly in teaching

and research and whose attention to ornithological detail and scientific precision

are distinct.

Though it is difficult to distill the functions of New World objects in

general within princely collections, and it is beyond the scope of this dissertation

to do so, it should be noted that while such objects as the Tupi featherwork were

appreciated for their aesthetic pleasure and scientific inquiry, by and large they

were used by the Medici as material evidence of their hegemonic control within an

expanding world system, and in confirmation of the ties that bind such

networks.459 It should be noted, as well, that owning feathered artifacts became a

standard component of early modern collecting across Europe. This is most

evident by examining one of the world’s first museological treatises, Samuel

459
As a caveat, it is increasingly becoming clear through the ever-expanding literature on early
modern European collecting that there were an enormous variety of types of collections (i.e.,
princely, mercantile, scientific, humanist, etc.) and that the boundaries in distinguishing their
manifold function(s) were mercurial. My main point here is to emphasize what I see, in particular,
as the colonial dimensions and broader political ramifications of princely collecting. Though these
issues seem explicit, they often remain unarticulated in European scholarship. This may be the
historiographic legacy of the foundational work by Julius von Schlosser, Die Kunst - und
Wunderkammern der Spatrenaissance (Leipzig: Verlag von Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1908).

241
Quiccheberg’s 1565 text on collecting, written in the context of the Bavarian ducal

court, which mentions feathers and feathered objects in three separate classes of

his system.460 One could say, in fact, that the very roots of sixteenth and

seventeenth-century colonialism and of its accumulation of goods were planted in

the studioli and Kunst- und Wunderkammern of Renaissance Europe.

The Medici’s New World holdings have been extensively studied,

particularly in reference to their specimens of Aztec material culture.461 Here I

wish to focus only on their ownership of several Tupinambá cloaks, of which two

survive today in the Museo Nazionale di Antropologia e Etnologia, Università

degli Studi di Firenze (#8 and 9) (Figs. 34 & 35). The earliest inventory of the

Medici collections, from 1539 lists “three small frocks of Indian feathers” and

“two dressings gowns of Indian feathers,” while the inventory of 1553 records

“four feathered capes” and a “bedcover of bird’s feathers.”462 The fact that

460
Samuel Quiccheberg, Inscriptiones vel tituli Theatri amplissimi, complectentis rerum
universitatis singulas materias et imagineseximias, 1565. My thanks to Mark A. Meadow and
Bruce Robertson for advance access to their forthcoming translation of Quiccheberg’s treatise.
461
For a survey of the literature on the Medici and the New World see: Turpin, “The New World,”;
Shelton, "Cabinets of Transgression,” 177-203; Feest, “Mexico,” 237-44; Sara Ciruzzi, "Gli antichi
oggeti amerticani nelle collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Antropologia e Etnologia di Firenze,"
Archivio per l'Antropologiae la Etnologia CXIII (1983): 151-65; Detlef Heikamp, "American
Objects in Italian Collections of the Renaissance and Baroque: A Survey," in Chiapelli, 455-82;
Detlef Heikamp and Ferdinand Anders, Mexico and the Medici (Florence: Edam, 1972).
The Medici owned many Aztec objects, which are well discussed in the above literature.
Only six Aztec objects of featherwork (one headdress and five shields) have survived until today.
See Feest, “Mexico,” 237-238. Feest finds that Brazilians and Mexican objects were represented on
about the same scale. Feest, “Mexico.”
462
The first inventory of the Medici was collected in 1539. See Ciruzzi, “Gli antichi,” 155. In 1539,
American featherwork was described “tre vesticuole di penne d’India e due vestaglie di penne d’
India.” By 1553, the New World collection had expanded, with the “four feathered capes” listed
under the heading of “vestimenti da homo di varie sorte,” and the “bedcover of bird’s feathers ”
listed under “skins and linings.” See Turpin, “The New World,” 69 from the documents of the
Archivo di Stato di Firenze, Guardaropa Medicae, Inventario della Guardaropa del Duca Cosimo
alla consegna di Giovanni Ricci da Prato, 1553.

242
feathered cloaks were present in the Medici collection by 1539 precludes a Jesuit

origin for these artifacts, and makes it more likely that either Pigafetta or the

Portuguese Royal family were sources, which I will discuss below. Thanks to the

meticulous archival work of Laura Minelli and Sara Ciruzzi into the later

inventories of 1631, 1650 and 1696, much of the history of the three Tupinambá

capes has come to light. In 1631, seventy-three years after the last inventory, the

Medici collections contained:

Three Indian garments of red parrot feathers with plumes of the little
ostrich at the top and a straw cap covered in parrot feathers like the
garment. The most colorful [piece] an Indian shirt underneath one of the
garments.463

The Medici owned three feathered capes by this date, and there is no mention if

these are the “small frocks” or the “dressing gowns” that had been mentioned in

1539. There is also no longer a mention of the “feathered bedcover,” which

conceivably could be the rectangular feathered blanket now in the Florence

ethnographic collections. Furthermore, whatever confusion there may have been as

to the cultural origins of the these capes, i.e., whether they were Tupi or Aztec,

was gone by 1631, since their fabrication of “red parrot feathers” could only refer

It is important to note that princely inventories were usually drawn up by accountants and
were seen as juridical documents to summarize property, usually describing the objects in terms of
material and form. They are summary documents meant to document the entire property and
identify particular objects for purposes of valuation. Inventories of burghers were quite different,
for example, often drawn up while people were still alive, and more often containing details
concerning provenance. Thus, this accounts for the less “scientific” nature of such princely
inventories as those of the Medici. For a longer discussion of the production of inventories see Elke
Bujok, Neue Welten in Europaischen Sammlungen: Africana und Americana in Kunstkammern bis
1670 (Stuttgart: Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH, 2004), 45-57.
463
Trans. mine. "Tre veste alla Indiana di penne rosse di Pappagallo con pen(nacch) in capo di
penne di struzzolo e berretta di paglia coperta di penne di pappagallo come la vesta. Una camiciola
alla Indiana di piu colore sotto a una di dette veste." Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Guardaropa
Medicea, 513, 1631. Cited in Minelli and Ciruzzi, “Antichi oggetti,” 125.

243
to products of Tupi plumists. It furthermore matches Pigafetta’s terminology of

“Brazilian parrot garments” from decades earlier. The mention of ostrich feathers

on “top” of the “straw caps” is intriguing, as it begs one to wonder if the yellow

oropendola feathers that we know were used to crown some of these feathered

capes (see for example the Van Campen painting, Fig. 23) were thought of as

“ostrich” plumes because of their large size, or if these capes actually had rhea

plumes (easily confused with ostrich) that have since been lost. Given that scarlet

ibis plumes were mistaken for those of “parrots,” then ostrich feathers could be

used as a generic term for anything unusually large. The ornithological confusion

in the inventory may be a by-product of having been written by an accountant

rather than a scholar. By 1650, only nineteen years later, the Medici inventory

chronicles:

Three Indian garments of red parrot feathers with crest plumes of the
captive little ostrich, with straw caps with red feathers. A colorful and
striped Indian shirt underneath one of the garments.464

The inventory largely repeats the previous one, with the notable exception of

further describing the “little ostrich” as “captive.” It is likely that the term

“berrettoni di paglia” here refers to the underlying textile matrix of the capes, and

that the inventory is in fact referring to the bonnets that were frequently attached to

the garments, as we can see in the Aldrovandi watercolor discussed earlier in this

chapter (Fig. 40). The “Indian striped shirt,” however, remains a mystery, as there

464
Trans. mine. “Tre veste alla Indiana di penne di pappagallo rosse con pennacchi in capo di
penne di struzzolo cattivi, con berrettoni di paglia con penne rosse. Una camiciola alla Indiana
vergata di più colori sotto a una dette veste.” From the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Guardaropa
Medicea, 633, 1650. Cited in Minelli and Ciruzzi, “Antichi oggetti,” 125.

244
is no indication that the Tupi produced feathered garments with striped motifs.

This could be an indication of an artifact of Aztec origin, or possibly something

without an American origin at all.

In 1696, the language of the inventory remains quite similar:

Three Indian costumes of a red parrot feather fabric and other colors in the
long garment, with an [attached] straw fabric hat with feathers similar to
the feathers of the captive little ostrich.465

Hence three cloaks are extant in 1696, but now the writer makes a distinction

between the lengths of feathered objects. There are two capes of similar length,

and one that is “longer” and mixed with “other colors.” This could indeed be an

indication of the difference between two feathered capes that reached to the length

of one’s buttocks, such as the one in Copenhagen (#1), Milan and Paris, or the

rectangular feathered “blanket” which was often longer and wider in dimensions

and included feathers of birds other than the ibis, though we cannot know this with

any certainty. What is clear, though, is that the Medici owned three capes by 1696,

which is confirmed by the inventory of 1715. By the time the Florence Museum

loaned a Tupi feathered garment to the newly formed Berlin Museum für

Volkerkunde in 1892, little had changed in their holdings.

What the inventories tell us is that the Medici owned Tupi feathered

“Indian” garments as of 1539, though we have to wait until physical descriptions

of 1631 and later to verify them as Tupi. They also owned at least two capes that

465
Trans. mine. “Tre abiti indiani di penne di pappagallo tessute rosse e d’altri colori cioè veste
lunghe, con berrettoni di paglia tessuti sopra di penne simili con pennacchi di penne di struzzolo
cattive.” From the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Guardaropa Medicea, 1091, 1696. Cited in Minelli
and Ciruzzi, “Antichi oggetti,” 125.

245
had integral feathered bonnets, which indicates that at least one of the Tupi capes

in Florence today (#9) was probably altered or damaged resulting in the loss of the

bonnet.466 The Florentine cape destroyed in Berlin is documented only in a single

photograph in Métraux’s dissertation, taken before the Allied bombing. Despite the

poor quality of the image, it is possible to determine that this cape was roughly

similar to the specimen now held in Basel, Switzerland (#6). 467

Though no exact provenance has been traced for the Tupi capes currently

housed in Florence, Minelli and Ciruzzi suggest that these capes had a Portuguese

origin. This suggestion is based upon the existence of a letter, now housed in

Florence, between Ferdinando I de’ Medici and the Bolognese scientist Ulisse

Aldrovandi. Minelli and Ciruzzi propose that Aldrovandi had a scholarly interest

in one of the Medici Tupi capes and wrote to the Grand Duke to discuss it. They

further suggest that Ferdinando I’s response implies that the capes were given to

the family as a Royal gift from Portuguese King João III (1502-1557), who

succeeded Dom Manuel and was in power from 1521-1557, during the height of

the Portuguese Empire. 468 Aldrovandi produced a watercolor illustration of a Tupi

466
Special thanks to Conservator Sig. Vito Stanco at the Museo di Storia Naturale,
Universitá degli Studi di Firenze for facilitating the examination of: two Florence Tupi capes
(#281, 288), and Tupi war-club (#2649), March of 2007.
467
Records exist for a third Tupi cape (#VB 4101), which was loaned by Florence to Berlin in
1892, and then destroyed in WWII bombing. See Minelli and Ciruzzi, “Antichi oggetti,” 134. The
Berlin museum has no surviving documentation per personal communication with Dr. Manuela
Fischer, Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, Curator of the Americas, January 2006. There does exist
one photograph, however, from Métraux’s dissertation, which can help place it within the Tupi
cape groupings. See Métraux #1, (Fig. 17) 146.
468
Minelli and Ciruzzi, “Antichi oggetti,” 140, footnote 15. I have not seen this unpublished letter
in person, nor seen the exact wording in Italian: Ms. XIV, Discorso brevissimo di Ulisse
Aldrovandi sopra le Quattro figure ed il frutto indiano mandati a Ferdinando I granduca di
Toscana, Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, no date. Ferdinando I was Grand Duke from 1549-1609

246
cape for his treatise on natural history. We do not know for certain if Aldrovandi

sketched one of the Medici capes for his book project, or if he obtained access to a

Tupi cape through a colleague in Bologna. Issues of provenance aside, the very

fact of the correspondence and sharing of information between the merchant-

princely Medici, and that of the scientific community of Bologna places the

Brazilian feathered capes at a point of intersection between political and scholarly

networks.

Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Giganti: The scientific culture of Bologna

Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), biologist, zoologist, botanist and professor of

fossils, plants and animals at the University of Bologna was nicknamed the

“Aristotle of Bologna” and “Pliny of his time” by his contemporaries.469 He was

known as one of the great naturalists of the sixteenth century, writing the first

published cetology, on whales, establishing an enormous botanical garden, and

compiling one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of natural history of the

period.470 Aldrovandi’s museum (studio) in Bologna was famed as one of the most

and Portuguese King João III reigned from 1521-1557. King João III of Portugal established a
stronger alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, by marrying his sister Infanta Isabella of Portugal
to Charles V. He also married his sister-in-law, his first maternal first cousin, Catherine of
Hapsburg, to further strengthen his ties.
469
Findlen, 23; Laura Laurencich Minelli, "Museography and Ethnographical Collections in
Bologna During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Impey, 17-23
The foundational studies of Aldrovandi are: Ulisse Aldrovandi and Sandra Tugnoli
Pattaro, ed., Metodo e sistema delle scienze nel pensiero di Ulisse Aldrovandi (Bologna: Clueb,
1981); Ulisse Aldrovandi and Giuseppe Olmi, ed., Ulisse Aldrovandi: Scienza e natura nel secondo
cinquecento (Trento: Unicoop, 1976).
470
E.W. Gudger, "The Five Great Naturalists of the Sixteenth Century: Belon, Rondelet, Salviani,
Gesner, and Aldrovandi," Isis XXII (1934-35): 21-40.

247
impressive in Europe. His visitors included popes, princes, nobles, painters,

diplomats, lawyers, secretaries, military leaders, doctors, professors, philosophers

and scholars, and (at least) one woman.471 His Album Amicorum, or “book of

friends,” reveals the enormous social constructs of Aldrovandi’s museum, with

over 1,579 signatures from across Europe, including such important Northern

European figures as those of Samuel Quiccheberg (1529-1567), Carolus Clusius

(1526-1609), Bernardus Paludanus (1550-1633).472 Paula Findlen points out this

was seven times the number of autographs as the famed naturalist Conrad Gesner’s

(1516-1565) Album amicorum.473

Aldrovandi’s museum was his personal collection, but as a university

professor he used it in his teaching and research.474 Aldrovandi saw himself as an

empirical observer of reality and directed his naturalistic research towards

“improving the condition of others,” i.e. using science to understand the human

and animal worlds.475 Aldrovandi was fixated on the New World, and it was one of

471
For a meticulous reconstruction of Aldrovandi’s networks see Findlen, 136-146. There is only
one female signature in Aldrovandi’s visitor’s book, that of Ippolita Paleotti, a “student.” This gives
some indication of the male-dominated world of museum culture in early modern Europe. As Paula
Findlen highlights, “Aldrovandi and many of his contemporaries perceived women as the true
‘foreigners’ in the museum.” Women, however, would not usually sign a “book of friends” which
also makes that much more difficult to discern their presence in such collections. As Findlen states,
they were “invisible visitors.” Findlen, Possessing, 143.
472
Findlen, 137.
473
Findlen, 137.
474
Minelli, “Museography,” 17, footnote 1. Aldrovandi gave his museum to the Senate of Bologna
to be transferred to the Palazzo Publico (seat of Bologna’s government) upon his death. Thus the
museum became city property and was later given to the University of Bologna where it is now
housed in the Palazzo Poggi.
475
For an excellent overview of Aldrovandi’s role in Bologna’s intellectual community see
Giuseppe Olmi and Paolo Prodi, "Art, Science, and Nature in Bologna Circa 1600," in The Age of
Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed.
National Gallery of Art, 213-35 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1986).

248
his dreams to embark on an expedition to chronicle the natural history of

Mexico.476 Unfortunately, he was never able to make a trip to the Americas. His

collecting reflected interests in the natural world, and especially in acquiring such

specimens as embalmed and stuffed animals, fish, shells, coral, herbs, botanical

and zoological drawings and the like from the Americas.477

Furthermore, Aldrovandi’s museum was located next door to another

important museum of a different kind, that of his friend Antonio Giganti (1535-

1598), a secretary to two important Italian clerics. As scholars have observed,

Giganti’s was a collection representing the ecclesiastical strand of humanism

during the period of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which encouraged

missionary work that often led to the exchange of exotic gifts.478 I mention

Aldrovandi and Giganti together because their collections functioned in tandem;

their friendship was based upon mutual intellectual exchange, and most

particularly because they shared an interest in American artifacts.

Giganti’s collection was encyclopedic, encompassing such things as

natural, ethnographical and archeological materials, as well as focusing on

technical materials such as optics. What is pertinent to our discussion is that his

476
Heikamp, “American,” 458; Laura Laurencich Minelli, "Ogetti americani studati da Ulisse
Aldrovandi," Archivio per l'Antropologiae la Etnologia 113 (1983): 187-206; Mario Cermenati,
"Ulisse Aldrovandi e l'America," Annali di Botanica 4 (1906): 313-66.
477
For a printed selection of Aldrovandi’s original inventories see Cristiana Scappini, Maria Pia
Torricelli, and Sandra Tugnoli Pattaro, ed., Lo Studio Aldrovandi in Palazzo Publico (1617-1742)
(Bologna: Editrice Bologna, 1993).
478
Giganti was the secretary of the humanist Ludovico Beccadelli from 1550-1572 and the
Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti from 1580-1597. See Minelli, “Museography,”
17, 18. For a discussion of ecclesiastical humanism see Shelton, “Cabinets,” 185.

249
1608 inventory reveals two items, which though described as “Floridian,” are

clearly of Brazilian origin.

#119. A headdress worn by the women in Florida, which hangs over the
back; it is from red feathers of a parrot or another bird tied together on the
inside like a net, length two and a half feet…. #120. Another similar item
of small, fine, [cunningly-wrought] yellow feathers, I do not know of
which bird, mounted together with another artificio, but it is not whole.” 479

The person who inventoried Giganti’s collection names these objects as Floridian.

That featherwork was erroneously associated with Florida at this date is an

indication of the kinds of general ethnographic knowledge circulating in Bologna

by the clerk that drew up this list. Only one sixteenth-century source mentions

their feathered accoutrements: the narrative description of the Timucua peoples

(i.e., the sixteenth century “Floridian” culture), from Jacques Le Moyne de

Morgues’ 1562-1565 journey to Florida and South Carolina with the French

Huguenots. 480

479
#119 trans. Christian F. Feest, "North America in the European Wunderkammer before 1750.
With a Preliminary Checklist," Archiv fur Volkerkunde 46 (1992): 97. Original Italian reads:
“Un’acconciatura che portano le donne in cappo alla Florida, et le pende giù per la schiena, è di
penne rosse di Papagallo, o altro uccello ligate insieme, che di dentro par una rete, lunga, .2. piedi
et mezzo.”
#120 trans. mine. “Un’altra cosa simile di penne gialle piccole fine, non sò di qual uccello,
messe insieme con altro artificio, ma non è intiera.”
Though there are no surviving Giganti letters, his original inventory is transcribed and
published in Laura Laurencich Minelli, "L'indice del Museo Giganti: Interessi etnografici e
ordinamento di un museo cinquecentesco," Museologia scientifica 1, no. 3-4 (1984): 191-242. It
should be noted that these are listed following item #118, which was a feathered miter that is
described as made in the New World and belonging to Cardinal Poggio of Spain. Thus there was
far more specificity displayed in some descriptions. Giganti’s inventory also reveals another item
that could also be of Brazilian origin, item #13, which is described as a “feathered carpet made in
the Indies.” Minelli, “L’indice,” 226.
480
Floridian artifacts were some of the first Native North American objects to enter European
Kunst –und wunderkammern. Feest estimates there were approximately one thousand North
American pieces in European collections prior to 1750, of which some were from Florida. Christian
F. Feest, "American Indians and Ethnographic Collecting in Europe," Museum Anthropology:
Journal of the Council for Museum Anthropology 16, no. 1 (1992): 7-12; Another Feest article

250
 The conceptual insertion of Brazilian featherwork into a description of

Florida is typical in the period, as Brazilian material culture became the symbols

par excellence of a “Native America” for European audiences. Giganti’s American

objects, as well as those of East Indian and Turkish origins, were valued as

presentations of the technical utilization of unusual raw materials in foreign

lands.481 Though this inventory was only produced in 1608, most of Giganti’s

collecting took place during the mid sixteenth century, with his museum formally

established by 1586.482 Given his ecclesiastical ties, it is assumed that Giganti

came upon most of his exotica through links with the Catholic Church.

What do Giganti’s ethnographic items have to do with Aldrovandi’s own

museum collection, more particularly with Aldrovandi’s scientific drawing of a

Tupi cape? As Ulisse was collecting primarily as a naturalist, ethnographica were

not a dominant interest of his. From his 1587 museum treatise, we know that

Aldrovandi was primarily focused on assembling animals, plant fossils, rocks and

other natural specimens and that he was less inclined to create the kind of broad

asserts that there are no documented pieces of Floridian featherwork in museum collections. See
Feest, “North America,” 97.
De Bry, in his Grands Voyages, later republished Le Moyne’s narrative. “They [the native
Floridians] were armed with bows and arrows, clubs, and darts, and adorned, after the Indian
fashion, with their riches: feathers of different kinds, necklaces of a special sort of shell, bracelets
made of fish teeth, belts of silver-colored balls, round and oblong, and pearl anklets.” See John
White, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues and Stefan Lorant, ed., The New World: The First Pictures
of America (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946), 38. The original Le Moyne publication was:
Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americai provincia Gallis acciderunt, 1591. His drawings
were all lost during his journey, and thus all the De Bry images were done from de Moyne’s
memory and the book’s artists. For de Bry’s engravings of “Floridians” see Bry, America de Bry,
60-110. De Bry does not show any feathered capes, but many of the figures don feathered
headdresses and waistbands.
481
Minelli, “Museography,” 18.
482
Minelli, “Museography,” 18.

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encyclopedic museum that his good friend Giganti was compiling.483 Aldrovandi,

however, made use of Giganti’s objects to write more complete studies on different

scientific topics. To that end, he produced faithful representations of real

specimens. Aldrovandi even states that painting makes it possible to reproduce “in

lifelike fashion what nature has produced” and that its duty is “to be an example

and imitation of all things natural.”484 Art, therefore, had a scientific function for

Aldrovandi and was an indispensable tool in serious study and teaching.

Aldrovandi acted as a consultant for Giganti’s naturalia, and Giganti returned the

favor for Aldrovandi’s ethnographic objects.

Featherwork was indeed ethnographica, but has a special interest for

Aldrovandi whose ornithological study was one of the first of the sixteenth

century.485 When Aldrovandi produced his Opera Omnia [General Natural

History] a catalogue of his collection, he included many objects that he did not

himself own, but had the privilege of inspecting.486 It is in the first ornithological

483
Index alphabeticus rerum omnium naturaliumin musaeo appensarum incipiendo a trabe prima,
Biblioteca Universitaria, Aldrovandi MS 26.
484
Olmi and Prodi, “Art,” 223; Giuseppe Olmi, "Osservazione della natura e raffigurazione in
Ulisse Aldrovandi," Annali dell'Instituto storico italogermanico in Trento 3 (1977): 105-81.
485
Aldrovandi’s ornithological text was entitled: Ornithologiae hoc est de avibus historiae libri XII
[-XX], published 1599-1603 in 14 volumes and over 2,000 pages. For a partial English translation
of this book and his important contribution to the study of chickens see L.R. Lind, trans.,
Aldrovandi on Chickens: The Ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600), Volume II, Book XIV
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963).
486
Ulisse Aldrovandi, Clemente Ferroni, Giovanni Battista Ferroni, Francesco dei Franceschi, and
Nicolo Tebaldini, Opera Omnia, 13 vols., (Bononiae: apud Franciscum de Franciscis Senensem,
1599). Aldrovandi’s [“General Natural History”] museum catalogue was produced in 13 volumes,
with several thousand-woodcut illustrations in text, and done over a hundred- year period (1599-
1667), completed by his successor at the Bologna botanic gardens. German and Italian woodcut
engravers that Aldrovandi employed completed the artistic renderings. See Olmi and Prodi, “Art,”
222.

252
volume of his natural history that Aldrovandi drew the image of the Forest Man

[Homo sylvestris] (Fig. 40), next to the Queen from the Island of Florida [Regina

insulae Floridae] (Fig. 52). The Forest Man is unmistakably dressed in a Tupi

cloak. This gouache drawing comes with the Latin in folio inscription: “Indian

forest man” [“wild” man] from the New World dressed lavishly for war in a

feathered pelt.”487 Aldrovandi thus identifies the Forest Man figure as a “savage,”

i.e., the antithesis of a civilized man. He also knows that these accoutrements are

specific to war rituals –– a kind of Tupi performance –– and he employed specific

cultural/ethnographic information to these aims. Aldrovandi wanted to physically

demonstrate in what manner the garments were worn.

It is clear that Aldrovandi’s drawing of the Forest Man is based on a close

observation of an actual scarlet ibis Tupinambá cloak. One of the indications of

Aldrovandi’s Tupi cape illustration is now housed in the Biblioteca Universitaria di

Bologna (BUB), Fondo Aldrovadini, Tavole di Animali (Tav), Vol. 1, c. 74, 70. It was first
published in Vol. I of the Opera Omnia, which was also separately published as: Ulisse
Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae, Hoc est de avibus historiae, libri XII (Bononiae: apud Franciscum de
Franciscis Senensem, 1599). The Forest Man was included as an image separate from the birds.
The image was then included in Volume 11, Monstrorum historia published posthumously by
Bartolomeo Ambrosini in 1642. The "monsters" and “monstrosities” volume includes fetal
development and deformities, inter-uterine illustrations. It also proceeds to document fabulous
creatures, birds, and mammals. This also includes descriptions and figures of fan-eared humans,
four-eyed Ethiopian, Cyclops, bearded lady, hairy man, mermaids, centaurs, and “peoples of
diverse customs” [i.e. caped “Floridians]. As an aside, Europe’s famous living “monster,” or “hairy
man,” the hirsute Pedro Gonzales, visited Aldrovandi’s villa with his children in the 1580s. Lavinia
Fontana completed her famous sketch of Gonzales’s daughter during this visit. See Findlen, 309.
Agostino Carracci’s painting, “Hairy Harry, Mad Peter and Tiny Amon,” (1598-1600) from the
Museo e Gallerie di Campodimonte, Naples, features the “hairy man” wearing a feathered cape.
Caracci was an acquaintance of Aldrovandi’s. At the very least, this unusual painting attests to the
collision of the courtly culture of Rome and the scientific culture of Bologna. There is no evidence
that Carraccaci saw either Gonzales or the objects in Aldrovandi’s or Giganti’s collections. See
Findlen, 312-313.
487
Trans. mine. “Homo sylvestris plumario Indutus pileo ad bellum profuiscens ex novo orbe.” The
Floridian Queen is described as: “Regina insulae Floridae plumario tacto velo.” This and other of
his “monstrous” drawings have been most recently reproduced in Biancastella Antonino, Animali e
creature monstruoso di Ulisse Aldrovandi (Milan: Frederico Motta Editore, 2004), 99.

253
this is the precision with which he details the contour of the cape on the figure’s

body. Minelli has suggested that when Giganti retired to Fossombrone in 1597, he

may have given or sold his two feathered items to Aldrovandi.488 The scarlet ibis

cape with attached bonnet tightly covers the head and forehead and falls along the

back of the figure, as do the three half-capes in Copenhagen (Figs. 29-31).

Aldrovandi’s inclusion of black plumes interspersed among the red are indicative

of the black-wing tips of the scarlet ibis feathers that are often interspersed in the

cloaks. His drawing, therefore, is tightly connected with his study of the natural

world. The artist of Aldrovandi’s book uses a compendium of Brazilian attributes

together to show the activation of such capes in a ceremony, where sight, bodily

movement, and sound (the rattling ahovay pods around the calves and the maracá

in his hand), function together. Thus the sketch stresses the performative nature of

feathered capes within their cultural context.

Aldrovandi and his artists must have had access to travel narratives about

Brazil and the Tupi, as the specificity of the objects and how they work in tandem

are far too precise to be otherwise accounted for. In this case, we have some idea

of where Aldrovandi derived his ethnographic information. He notes in his

Braziian catalogue [Bresilae Catalogus] that the cape images were produced from

the information provided by the Jesuit letters from Brazil.489 Thus, depending on

488
Minelli, “Museography,” 21.
489
BUB, Fondo Aldrovandi, Bresilae Catalogus, Manoscritto 143, Tomo IV, c. 92, c. 188. As
Minelli and Ciruzzi cite, “L’Aldrovandi afferma che questo dato, trascritto nel Ms. 143, proviene
‘Ex prima parti degli avvisi da Gesuiti scritti.’” Minelli and Ciruzzi, “Antichi,” footnote 10, 140.

254
the letters he was reading, he should have been well aware that the Brazilian cape

was produced from the feathers of the scarlet ibis. The inclusion of the textile

component on the bottom left of the page is striking as it speaks to a technical

interest in how these capes were made. One can even see how the ibis plumes were

attached to the rows of cotton netting via individual threads. There can be no

doubt, therefore, that the artist of this gouache produced the image with direct

access to an actual Tupi feathered cape.

Furthermore, it has also been postulated that the wig-like yellow headpiece

of the Queen could be based on the yellow-feathered headdress of Giganti’s

inventory (Fig. 43).490 This would appear to be confirmed by the construction

detail shown in the bottom left quadrant of the image. The small, yellow down

feathers, which appear like wispy flames, are attached into vertical bundles that

stand upon the fabric matrix of the yellow headpiece. The Floridian’s woman’s

mantle differs in appearance from the red cape of the Forest Man, exhibiting the

fuzzy and out-of-focus appearance of small down feathers arranged in this way, as

we can see in the photograph of the Copenhagen bonnet (Fig. 17). As I noted in

Chapter 2, this particular construction technique appears to be designed to mimic

the appearance of a baby bird. The mantle tightly hugs the head, as does the Tupi

bonnet in Copenhagen. Just as in the case of the Forest Man, a definitively Tupi

object is used to typify the indigenous “American.”

Though I have not scene this manuscript in person, it would be valuable to catalogue the exact
Brazilian-Jesuit correspondence Aldrovandi was reading and circulating to his artists.
490
Minelli, “Museography,” 20.

255
 The fact that this image was first included in the “Ornithology” volume and

then duplicated in the “Monster” volume of Aldrovandi’s Opera Omnia, also

speaks to how these feathered objects were understood as part of the avian world.

In this age of explorations, these caped figures were also inserted into the strange

and diverse human world. In fact, when this image was reproduced in the German

version of the Ornithologia in 1610, the cloaked figure was included on the same

page as depictions of various kinds of parrots, which is to say treated

taxonomically (Fig. 53).491 The Queen and the Forest Man grace the upper

registers of the page, as examples of the by-products of the various New World

parrots documented below, giving a further dimension to the early name of Brazil

as “Land of the Parrots.” It is also interesting to note that even though Aldrovandi

was an ornithologist and had access to the proper identification of the bird species

used in the construction of Tupi ritual adornments, the German edition chose to

group these objects on the same page as parrots, perhaps adding to the aesthetic

dimension of the printed book, or mirroring the misidentification popularized in

the widely read Pigafetta accounts. Aldrovandi’s drawings of Giganti’s objects are

evidence that Bologna was a late-sixteenth century nexus, a place were religious

and humanist networks converged, where objects and information about foreign

lands were studied, rendered in two dimensional form through drawings, and made

491
The first edition of Ornithologia was printed in 1599-1603 in Bologna, while the German
edition came out in 1610 in Frankfurt. For a discussion of the various editions of Aldrovandi’s
Ornithologia see Antonino, Animali, 13-16.

256
accessible to the privileged Bolognese university clientele, as well as to the larger

European intellectual community through printed texts and images.

Manfredo Settala and Milanese collecting

Italian scholarly interests in the Tupi continued into the following century, where

we find again an intersection between religious and political agendas. Moving

northwards to the seventeenth-century Duchy of Milan, we turn to the important

figure of the cleric Manfredo Settala (1600-1680), one of the most prominent

collectors of seventeenth-century Italy and one of the most renowned Milanese

personalities of the period. One of Settala’s contemporaries in Rome in 1681

described his Museum Septalianum as:

The most famous among all these [museums] in Italy for the variety of
works, both of Nature and Art, that are conserved there.492

The importance of Settala’s museum for the culture of Milan cannot be

emphasized enough, as contemporary travel books from 1679-1702 cite Settala’s

collection as one of the major attractions of Italy, and certainly the most important

art and science collections of seventeenth-century Lombardy.493 With Settala, the

492
This quote comes from the Italian Jesuit scholar in Rome, Filippo Bonanni (1658-1723), in his
Ricreatione dell’occhio e della mente nella osservatione delle chiocciole (Rome, 1681). Bonanni
was a curator for the famous German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher’s (1602-1680) collections
in Rome. Cited in Findlen, 34.
493
For early “Grand Tour” travel guides that discuss Settala’s collection see Françoise-Jacques
Deseine, Nouveau voyage d'Italie contenant une description exacte de toutes ses provinces (Lyon:
J. Thioly, 1699); Giacomo Barri, The Painters Voyage of Italy. In Which All the Famous Paintings
of the Most Eminent Masters Are Particularised, as They Are Preserved in the Several Cities of
Italy, trans. William Lodge. (London: T. Flesher, 1679); Jean Mabillon, Museum Italicum, sev
collectio veterum scriptorum ex bibliothecis italicis, eruta a D. Johanne Mabillon, & D. Michaele
Germain, 2 vols., (Luteciae Parisiorum: apud viduam E. Martin, J. Boudot & S, Martin, 1687-89);

257
story of Tupi cloaks in Europe returns to the Jesuits. Manfredo was the son of the

famed Milanese physician Ludovico Settala (1552-1633), himself a collector of

books and materia medica.494 As a student at the University of Pisa and Siena,

Manfredo was interested in the emerging scientific theories of Galileo and new

technologies, immersing himself in the vibrant scientific culture and contacts

available to him through his new Medici patrons in Florence.495 After his studies

and extensive travels through Asia, Manfredo returned to Milan, where he was

appointed the canon of the Church of San Nazaro. As Manfredo himself describes,

he was the intellectual disciple of the great Jesuit rhetorician, Maestro Emanuele

Tesauro (1592-1775).496 After the death of his father, Manfredo inherited the task

of maintaining the family collections. His life was thus intricately tied with courtly

culture, travel, and Jesuit humanism. Manfredo’s close liaisons with the Society

are confirmed by the elaborate Jesuit-sponsored public funeral held in the city of

Milan upon his death.497

Bernard de Montfaucon, L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, 5 vols., (Paris: F. Delaulne,

1719).
494
Antonio Aimi, Vincenzo de Michele, and Alessandro Morandotti, ed.. Septalianum Musæum:
una collezione scientifica nella milano del seicento, (Firenze: Giunti Marzocco, 1984), 25.
495
Aimi et al., Septalianum, 25.
496
A discussion of Settala’s father is found in Silvia Rota Ghibaudi, Ricerche su Ludovico Settala,
(Firenze: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1959). For Settala’s relationship with Tesauro see Findlen, 34, via
surviving Settala letters.
497
For the rare printed pamphlet describing Manfredo’s Jesuit-sponsored funeral see Giovanni
Maria Visconti, Exequiae in Templo S. Nazarii Manfredo Septalio ..., eiusdem basilicae canonico
celebratae, quas summatim exposuit March. Ioannes Maria Vicecomes (Mediolani: apud
Impressores Archiepiscopales, 1680). [BAV, Cigognara IV, M, 105, int. 206] The pamphlet
includes an engraving of Settala’s tomb (as the patron of Milan), a sonnet, a Jesuit oration by Padre
Giovanni Battista Pastorini, and a proceeding of the funeral prepared by the rectors of the College
of Brera. The Jesuits also erected four columns in a temporary mausoleum in his memory.

258
 Settala’s museum was considered one of the true Kunst- und

Wunderkammern of Europe, a vast, broad and witty storehouse of natural and

ethnographic objects, comprising 2200 to 3000 pieces divided into the realms of

the “natural,” “vegetable,” and “animal” worlds.498 As Italian scholars have

pointed out, it is no surprise that Milan would be an Italian locus for northern

museum practices, as the city was one of the major centers of production for late

sixteenth-century Kunst- und Wunderkammer objects.499 Manfredo acquired his

own pieces through many avenues, including via the Cardinal and Archbishop of

Milan, Federico Borromeo (1564-1631) in the beginning of the seventeenth

century. Borromeo was one of Settala’s patrons and an avid art collector in his own

right.500 Settala’s Museum Septalianum remained part of the Settala family until

after Manfredo’s death in 1680, and then passed into the hands of Borromeo’s

newly founded Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where Settala’s objects still reside today.

The Ambrosiana Library was (and still is) located next to the Church of the Holy

Sepulcher in Milan. In the seventeenth century, this esteemed library had many

functions beyond that of just holding books. It was considered a college of writers,

498
Carla Tavernari, "Manfredo Settala, collezionista e scienziato milanese del '600" Annali
dell'Instituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze I (1976): 43-61. Settala’s contemporary
fame in the non-Italian speaking world has been only rather recent with Paula Findlen’s
publications. The great Julius von Schlosser, however, published part of Settala’s Latin inventory
pertaining to musical instruments in 1920. See Julius von Schlosser, ed., Die Sammlung Alter
Musikinstrumente (Vienna: A. Schroll & Co., 1920).
499
Milanese workshops produced items made of wood, bone, ivory, crystal, gemstones, miniatures,
objects turned at the lathe, etc. And Milanese agents often were the ones bartering objects between
and among aristocratic collections. See Antonio Aimi, Vincenzo de Michele, and Alessandro
Morandotti, "Towards a History of Collecting in Milan in the Late Renaissance," in Impey, 25.
500
Findlen, 34-35.

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a seminary of savants, a school of fine arts, a collection of paintings and books,

and after the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the first public library in Europe.501

Among the thousands of Settala objects, there were several feathered Tupi

artifacts, including a feathered belt, crown and cape, as well as various Brazilian

weapons.502 The catalogue of Manfredo’s collection was produced first in Latin in

1664, with an Italian translation two years later in 1666.503 The 1664 catalogue was

dedicated to the Medici family, in admiration of his student days in Tuscany with

friend Cosimo III and his father, the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, to thank them for

501
Scholars emphasize that though the Ambrosiana never rivaled the Vatican Library in Rome or
the Laurentiana Library in Florence, it was far more popular as it allowed open access to all
students without distinction, almost unheard of in the period. See the Ambrosiana section of John
Willis Clark, The Care of Books: An Essay on the Development of Libraries and their Fittings,
from the Earliest Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Pub.,
2005).
Today the Ambrosiana Library represents a unique opportunity for scholarly study of early modern
objects, as it is one of the few cultural institutions in Europe that was never purged of ecclesiastical
control during the Enlightenment. Thus, the objects have remained within their original context, are
controlled by the Catholic Church, and with few exceptions are not displayed, nor museologically
conserved. The Ambrosiana may be the closest surviving relic to the Milan Cathedral’s late-
medieval treasury tradition. Today, unlike in the seventeenth century, access to the Ambrosiana
objects is extremely restricted and only granted by the Prefect and reigning Monsignor. I thank Dr.
Laura Laurencich Minelli of the University of Bologna for facilitating my access to examine the
Tupi cape on February 17, 2006 under the auspices of the Director of the Ambrosiana, Rev. Mon.
Ravasi, and the Prefect, Padre Navoni.
502
The Tupi items are listed in Chapter XXXIV: “Exotica Quaedam e Coloratis auium Indicarum
plumis contexta,” and listed as item #4: “Earundemmet plumarum, & cingulum, & corona, quibus
Sacerdotes ijdem ornantur. Haec dono dedit Princeps Landus Piae memoriae.” Paolo Maria
Terzago, Musaeum Septalianum Manfredi Septalae Patritii Mediolanensis Industrioso Labore
Constructum (Dertonae: typis filiorum qd. Elisei Violae, 1664), 91. For the Brazilian weapons see
Chapter XXXV: “Clauae Variarum Regionum.” Terzago, Musaeum, 92. [BAV, R.G. Scienze IV.
193, Barberini O.VII.67]
503
For the Italian inventory see: Paolo Maria Terzago, Museo ò galeria adunata dal sapere, e dallo
studio del Sign. canonico Manfredo Settala nobile milanese descritta in Latino dal Sign. Dott. Fil.
Coll. Paolo Maria Terzago et hora in Italiano dal Sign. Pietro Francesco Scarabelli, dott. fis. di
voghera e dal medemo accresciuta, trans. Pietro Scarabelli (Tortona: per li Figliuoli del qd. Eliseo
Viola, 1666). [BNR, Coll. 6 13.L.30/ 6 1.D.17.12/ 12.2 M.2]

260
their many donations to his collection.504 This was a politically astute move given

that in 1642 (and then again in 1644), the Grand Duke Ferdinando II visited

Manfredo’s collection with the King of France.505 Settala was thus situated within

both Jesuit circles and those of the Medici, another example of early modern

Italian collections as nexus points for different social networks. Though each of the

personalities I have spoken of operated in their own professional spheres of

interest, they were all interconnected.

Turning first to the famous engraved frontispiece of Manfredo Settala’s

collection from the Terzago catalogue, one immediately recognizes a Tupi cape on

the right hand wall of the room, which is dedicated to exotica (Fig. 2). This

frontispiece is quite well known within Wunderkammern studies as an important

example of how early modern museum spaces were represented as a site to display

a great variety of materials. In this it is comparable to other frontispieces that grace

the pages of Northern European and Italian catalogues, such the Musaeum

wormianum in Copenhagen, or the Museo Imperato in Naples.506 The Tupi cape

pictured in Settala’s collection hangs above a fireplace or mantel of some kind, and

as we know from inventory records, it was kept with other exotica in the three or

four rooms of the Settala family Palazzo on via Pantano. 507 Other objects were

kept at the workshop rooms in the nearby cloister of the San Nazaro Church.

504
Tavernari, “Manfredo,” 47-48; Carla Tavernari, "Il Museo Settala. Presupposti e storia,"
Museologia scientifica 7 (1980): 29.
505
Aimi et al., Septalianum, 27.
506
These frontispieces and others are reproduced in the back of Impey, The Origins.
507
Aimi et al., “Towards,” 26.

261
Settala’s artifacts therefore were better known via his catalogues than by public

visits during his lifetime. Italian scholar Aimi suggests that Settala’s collections

were available to those “in-the-know” in seventeenth-century Milan. The

collection only became truly public when they were transferred to the Ambrosiana

after Manfredo’s death.

The frontispiece shows a full-length Tupi cloak with an attached bonnet,

similar to an earlier Thevet image (Fig. 4). This is the only Tupi object for which

we have a surviving artifact, an image of that particular artifact in its early modern

museum context, and an accompanying scientific drawing of the artifact in color.

By studying the images of the Milan Tupi cape in conjunction with the actual

object (#11), one can ascertain much more about its original state, than would

otherwise be possible given its present ruinous condition. Three hundred

watercolor illustrations of the most significant Settala objects were produced in

five codices between 1640-1660, with notations by Settala himself. Beautiful

illustrations of Settala’s Tupi cape and Tupi crown are among these images (Figs.

39 & 54).508 These tempera drawings, like the Aldrovandi gouaches, are invaluable

for the technical information they provide about the original condition of these

objects, which is not available from the period printed catalogues.

508
The 300 Settala watercolor drawings are now split into seven volumes and five catalogues.
Three of the volumes are housed in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana [Ambr. MS Z 387-89 sup.], while
the other two at the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria [MSS Campori y H1, 21-22]. The Tupi cape
and the Tupi crown images are included in the Modena volumes with call numbers that have
changed in the few years [BEU, MS 338 Campori TQVV 20-21, H1.21, f. 5r, f. 6r.]. The Italian
artist Cesare Fiore was hired to produce many of these drawings. Given that many Italian artists
worked on these volumes, it is unknown who produced these two images in particular. See Aimi et
al., Musaeum, 27-28.

262
 The feathered belt, crown and cloak, appear in a 1664 inventory under the

category of “rare curiosities made from feathers.”509 The description of the cape

included in the inventory gives some indication of the limited knowledge that

would be passed on with an object. The cloak was described as a “priestly cape” in

the Latin inventory and a “sacrificial cape,” in the Italian inventory.510 The

confusion between these cloaks as priestly and sacrificial garbs mirrors the Jesuit

letters I discussed in Chapter 3. These capes represented a point of cultural

intersection, recognizable, as they were as forms of ritual attire similar to European

religious vestments. The watercolor and accompanying caption, however, offer us

more information for the contextual information that accompanied this object.

Written in Italian along the bottom register, it reads:

A garment of an Indian priest made from the feathers of the precious raven
and donated to me by the Most Excellent Lord Prince Landi, as it appears
in the history of Brazil on page 228, in the third book of navigations, where
one sees all of their [Brazilian] religious ceremonies [accompanied] with
music according to their customs [depicted] in copper engravings.511

The reference to a specific historical account written on the drawing may

be a reference to Pigafetta’s account of the Magellan voyage, specifically his

509
Chapter XXXIV of the 1664 inventory is entitled: “Exotica Quaedam e Coloratis auium
Indicarum plumis contexta,” Terzago, Musaeum, 91.
510
The terminology used in the Latin to describe this cape is that “of a Priest” (Sacerdotes). Aimi et
al., Septalianum, 92. See footnote 76. In Scarabelli’s Italian translation he changes Terzago’s
“priestly cape” into a “sacrificial cape” (capo de’sagrificij). Scarabelli, Museo, 183. Thus there is
clearly a different functional connotation for this object depending on whether reading the Latin or
Italian inventory.
511
Trans. mine. “Vesta di sacerdote d’India fatta di piume di corvo preciosa donatami dall’Ecc.mo
Sig.re Principe Landi come apare nel historia del Brasile alla pagina 228 delle navigationi nel libro
terzo dove si vedono tutte le loro foncioni con musica alla loro usanza in stampa di rame.”
Transcription found in Aimi et al, Septalianum, 83. I am assuming that the word foncioni is a
variant of the Italian word funzioni (duty, ceremony, religious service).

263
description of Tupinambá feathered dress. Again, the cataloguer’s and/or artist’s

narrative connection between Brazilian feathered vestments and religious garb is

similar to Jesuits’ descriptive writings of these objects and later sources.

Particularly fascinating is the specificity of source named for Settala’s acquisition,

with Prince Landi.512 It is likely that this Italian prince was Federico Landi II of

Valditaro, who owned a large collection in the Bardi castle, in the province of

Parma. I have not been able to locate any documentation pertaining to Landi’s

connections with the New World, but at the very least this information provides

evidence of the princely-scientific exchange networks and potential avenues for

further investigation with regard to the Milan cape.513

Lastly, the visual record of the Milan cloak, captured in watercolor,

provides crucial evidence of its original appearance. In particular, it highlights the

geometric “stepped” patterning in green, blue and yellow plumes that ran down the

back of the Milan cape, which is difficult to discern given the cape’s present

sullied condition, but this unique design is still visible (Fig. 22). Although a

testament to the difficulties of creating a corpus of objects based on so few

surviving artifacts, it does establish a much wider range of patterning than is

evident from the other cloaks. One cannot know for certain if this was the norm, or

512
Item #4 lists the Tupi items. “Earundemmet plumarum, & cingulum, & corona, quibus
Sacerdotes ijdem ornantur. Haec dono dedit Princeps Landus Piae memoriae.” See Terzago,
Musaeum, 91.
513
The Landi family was connected to the Grimaldi’s of Monaco through the marriage of
Federico’s sister Maria in 1595. Later, the Landi family united with the Doria Pamphilij family
through marriage. Prince Landi’s personal correspondence is now housed in Rome’s Galleria Doria
Pamphilij Archives. A study of the Landi archival material could reveal important information
about the Italian connections to Brazil.

264
the exception, given that a particular geographic locus for this object in Brazil

cannot be determined, nor can we determine anything of its production or history

prior to its display in Settala’s collection by the mid-seventeenth century. Though I

have described this cape at length in the technical section of Chapter 2, it should be

noted here that what is apparently an armhole was cut into the cape at one point in

time. This was not part of the original design, as is clear from the underlying

textile matrix, but one sliced through the fabric. One possibility is that the hole was

cut after reaching Europe, to make it easier to wear, perhaps in a European

performance of some kind.514

Aldrovandi’s and Settala’s artistic/scientific renderings show the close

association between art and science in early modern Europe, and the formation of

the institutionalization of natural history in the process of museum building.

Through these examples we can see how Italian princes, merchants and travelers,

acquired Brazilian feathered capes; how they were studied, described and depicted

by Italian artists; and how ethnographic, technical and ornithological knowledge

was disseminated through them. Tupi feathered artifacts were important in

understanding the use of avifauna, as well as evidence of cultural contact with new

locations. The collections of the Medici, Aldrovandi and Settala differed vastly in

form and function. The Medici, and to a certain extent, Settala, represent

aristocratic collecting practices in Italy, part of the studiolo and Kunst- und

514
This comes from my own personal examination of the back matrix of the Milan cape on
February 17, 2006. The armhole is small and clearly not woven into the matrix. Dimensions of cut:
16.5 cm.

265
Wunderkammern tradition of sixteenth-century Europe. Aldrovandi, through his

taxonomical work, is the clearest example of a sixteenth-century collector of Tupi

materials to deploy them in the service of an emerging discipline of natural history.

Settala belonged to the aristocratic collecting traditions of the Medici. He

aspired to the scientific ambitions of Aldrovandi, and as a cleric, he could

appreciate the sacramental nature of Tupi featherworking. He corresponded widely

with scientists of the day, engaging in a variety of technical, scientific and craft

activities; his commission of the five codices speaks to his interest in making his

collections available for a broader scholarly and amateur community.515 As Paula

Findlen discusses, early modern science depended on varying social and political

circumstances, institutional matrices, and cultural expectations.516 Early

institutions of natural history, as one could call both Aldrovandi’s and Settala’s

collections were prime tools in the colonial process and their collections can be

seen as precursors to the grand museums of Nature we find in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries. 517

Part II: Dyeing for wealth in Paris and Rouen

515
The first scholar to classify Settala as coming from a “Northern” collecting tradition was
Schlosser, Raccolete. 105. For a discussion of the various personalities of Italian collections see
Giuseppe Olimi, "Science-Honour-Metaphor: Italian Cabinets of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries," in Impey, 5-16; and for a defense of Settala as a “scientist” see Aimi et al., “Towards,”
26-28.
516
Findlen, 407.
517
For a further discussion of this in relation to Brazil see Amy J. Buono, "Natural History and the
Space of Empire in Jean-Baptiste Debret’s Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil" (Master’s
thesis University of California, Santa Barbara, 2002).

266
 The fashion of their [Brazilian] beds, ropes, swords, and of the wooden bracelets
they tie around their wrists, when they go fight, and of the great canes, bored
hollow at on end, by the sounds of which they keep the cadence of their dances,
are to be seen in several places, and amongst others, at my house.
–– Michel de Montaigne, Of Cannibals, 1580518

In this section, I discuss the possible origins of the Tupi cape now in Paris (# 10)

and an early modern spectacle in Rouen that are exemplary of the reception of

Tupi culture in France and the ways in which indigenous Brazilians become

inextricably linked to the economic prosperity of the French body politic.

Sixteenth-and seventeenth-century France, in contrast to Italy, had very real

political ambitions in Brazil, despite the fact that their colonization attempts were

in direct defiance of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas and the 1504 papal bull

confirming the treatise.519 Within the first five years of the sixteenth century,

French sailors and traders, especially those from Rouen and Dieppe, explored

Brazil’s coasts for brazilwood (bois rouge) as a natural resource for the flourishing

textile industry of Normandy. The French colonial empire in the New World ––

Nouvelle France –– was a territorial entity predicated on economic development of

the log trade for timber and dye. Rouen had a burgeoning textile industry, a major

component of which was cloth dyeing, as early as the thirteenth century. By the

518
Michel de Montaigne and W. Carew Hazlitt, trans., "Of Cannibals," in The Essays of Michel
Eyquem de Montaigne, ed. Robert Maynard (Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, Inc., 1952), 94.
519
For recent studies of the French in Brazil see: Adriana Lopez, Franceses e tupinambás na terra
do brasil (São Paulo: Editora SENAC, 1999); Maurice Piazola, Os papagaios amarelos: os
franceses na conquista do brasil (São Luis de Maranhão: Alhambra, 1992).

267
seventeenth-century Rouen was the center of Europe’s first dye chemical

laboratory based on scientific principles.520

Between the years 1555-1560, the French maintained Fort Coligny as a

base on an island in the Bay of Guanabara (near Rio de Janeiro). The adventurer

Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon was sent to fortify French trade interests and

compete with Portugal for control of the territory. The expedition included

Norman and Bretons, and both Catholics and Protestants.521 Later in the

seventeenth century, as I have already discussed in previous chapters, the French

tried once more to gain a foothold in Brazil. Between 1612 and 1615 Huguenot

and Capuchin missionaries settled on the island of São Luis de Maranhão, south of

the Amazon River, and established the colony called “Equinoctial France.”522

Neither of France’s attempts at colonization in Brazil was ultimately successful.

To a certain degree the failures of Nouvelle France had as much to do with the

520
Stuart Robinson, A History of Dyed Textiles: Dyes, Fibres, Painted Bark, Batik, Starch-Resist,
Discharge, Tie-Dye, Further Sources for Research (London: Studio Vista, 1969), 30-31. Jean
Baptiste Colbert (1614-83) developed the first dye laboratory under Louis XIV.
521
The literature on French Brazil is vast. For a succinct overview see Lestrigant, Cannibals and
A.L. Garraux, Bibliographie bresilienne: catalogue des ouvrages francais et latins relatifs au
bresil: 1500-1898 (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio Editora), 1962. For more specialized
works on the Huguenot expedition to Brazil see: Silvia Castro Shannon, "Religious Struggle in
France and Colonial Failure in Brazil, 1555-1615," French Colonial History 1 (2002): 51-62; Silvia
Castro Shannon, "Villegagnon, Polyphemus, and Cain of America: Religion and Polemics," in
Changing Identities in Early Modern France, ed. Michael Wolfe (Durham: Duke University Press,
1997); Frisch, The Invention; Andrea Frisch, "In a Sacramental Mode: Jean de Lery's Calvinist
Ethnography," Representations 77 (2002): 82-106.
522
For Capuchin-Tupi encounters in Maranhão see: Laura Fishman, "Crossing Gender Boundaries:
Tupi and European Women in the Eyes of Claude d'Abbeville," French Colonial History 4 (2003):
81-98; Laura Fishman, "The Noble Savage Revisited: "Nature Alone" in The New World as
Reported by Yves d'Evreux," French Colonial History 2 (2002): 29-44; Andrea Daher, Les
singularites de la France Equinoxiale: histoire de la mission des capuhins au bresil (Paris: Honore
Champion, 2002); Laura Fishman, "Claude d'Abbeville and the Tupinambá: Problems and Goals of
French Missionary Work in Early Seventeenth-Century Brazil," Church History 58, no. 1 (1989):
20-35.

268
ongoing confessional struggles between Catholics and Huguenots back home as

with the battles with Portuguese forces along Brazil’s shores. However, while they

lasted, both territorial settlements, as economically driven missionary enclaves,

strongly affected local Tupiguarani civilizations.

Furthermore, the French efforts at colonization also led to notable cultural

and economic effects. The French occupations of sixteenth and seventeenth-

century Brazil produced a certain Tupi “afterlife” in France through the production

of images and textual narratives, and the conveyance of Brazilian objects and

people to France. Equally, the introduction of Brazilian bulk commodities had

significant economic effects on European communities, with Rouen and the cloth

dyeing industry a prime example. While Italy’s early modern relationship to

Brazil was indeed one dominated by financiers and mercantile “go-betweens,” as

well as princely and naturalist collectors, France’s relationship to Brazil was far

more concerned with direct commodity control.

André Thevet and the Paris cape

Political issues are also linked to the only surviving Tupi cape in France, which is

now in Paris (#10). The primary figure (provisionally) linked to this cape, the

French Franciscan, André Thevet, is furthermore an example of scholarly interests

extending beyond Italy. What was the source of the feathered cloak and war-club

now housed in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris and what can their provenance

tell us about France’s relationship with, and knowledge about, native Brazilians?

269
Though the cape’s (and war-club’s) exact provenance are, once again, uncertain,

the most probable European owner and transporter of the Paris cape was the friar

and scholar André Thevet, who was the chaplain during Villegagnon’s Rio de

Janeiro expedition. As mentioned in the first chapter, Thevet was the royal

cosmographer of France under four French Kings (Henri II, Francis II, Charles IX,

Henri III) during the sixteenth century. What exactly were the duties of a royal

cosmographer, and how did Thevet’s job place him in a unique position relative to

conveying information about the Tupi?

Thevet’s own writings offer insight into his position as cosmographer for

King Charles IX (1550-1574).

As for rare, good, and inquiring minds, I can confirm that he [Charles IX]
esteemed them very much. I confess having received many courtesies,
bounties, and liberalities from him, and he often sent for me to clear up the
problems he had with respect to maps and foreign countries.523

The job of a royal cosmographer was to inform the sovereign on matters

concerning the known universe and heavens, which specifically included imparting

knowledge about cartography, navigation, new nautical technology and the general

features of geography. Thevet also had many other job descriptions. He was also

chaplain to Catherine de’Medici, canon of the Cathedral in Angoulême, abbot of

Notre Dame of Madion in Saintonge, and most importantly for this discussion, the

523
Quoted and translated in André Thevet and Roger Schlesinger, ed., André Thevet's North
America: A Sixteenth-Century View, trans. Arthur Phillips Stabler (Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 1986), xxii. This comes from Thevet’s Vrais portraits, 1: fol. 228v. Renaissance
France collections were most often referred to as: cabinets de curiosités, singularités or for
collections of exotic animals, cabinets de leur mémoires.

270
overseer of the Royal Cabinet des Curiosités at the Palace of Fontainebleau.524

This was where the French royal menagerie and exotica collections were kept.525

Thevet traveled to the Rio de Janeiro in 1555 as chaplain with the

Villegagnon expedition, spending only ten weeks in Brazil because of illness, but

publishing the first French New World accounts upon his return to France.526 In an

unpublished manuscript now housed in Paris, Thevet claims that he acquired two

Tupi feathered capes during his time in Brazil as “evidence of the indigenous art of

the new colony.”527 According to Lestringant, Thevet characterized these Tupi

524
André Thevet and Roger Schlesinger, ed., Portraits from the Age of Exploration: Selections
from André Thevet's Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres, trans. Edward Benson
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 5.
525
There is a surprising lack of secondary literature on sixteenth-century French collecting,
including published inventories. One suspects that the French Revolution had its effects on
documentation. For a very brief discussion of Francis I’s Cabinet see Janet Cox-Rearick, The
Collection of Francis I: Royal Treasures (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1996). See also the more
dated: Gustave Loisel, Histoire des ménageries de l'antiquité à nos jours (Paris: O. Doin et fils,
1912); E.T. Hamy, Les origines du Musée d'ethnographie (Paris: Jean Michel Place, 1988) [original
pub. 1889]. And for an early modern source see Pierre Dan, Le tresor des merveilles de la maison
royale de Fontainebleav (Paris: S. Cramoisy, imprimeur ordinaire du Roy, 1642).
For a discussion of seventeenth-century French collecting see Antoine Schnapper, "The
King of France as Collector in the Seventeenth Century," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17,
no. 1 (1986): 185-202. See also the recent Krystof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and
Venice, 1500-1800, trans. E. Wiles-Portier, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). Though this book is
excellent for working through conceptual issues of collecting, Pomian’s focus is on the eighteenth
century.
526
As a reminder from Chapter 1, Thevet’s publications were as follows: Singularitez, 1557;
Cosmographie Universelle, 1575; Vrais Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes illustres, 1584; Histoire de
deux voyages and Grand Isularae, 1584-1590. These are all discussed in Thevet/Schlesinger, ed.,
Portraits, 1-18.
527
“Comme échantillon de l’art indigène de la nouvelle colonie.” Histoire d’André Thévet
Angoumoisin, Cosmographe du Roy, de deux voyages par luy faits aux Indes Australes et
Occidentales, contenant la façon de vivre des peoples Barbares…, c. 1587-88, BnF, Ms. fr. 15454.
This information was written directly in the Paris cape object file, MQB, which came from the old
Musée de l’Homme, file #DT 1917.3. I have not seen this manuscript in person, but it is also cited
in Thevet/Schlesinger, ed., André, 273 and Lestringant, Cannibals, 200, footnote 6.
Interestingly enough, the Tupi war-club (#71.1917.3.62) is exhibited today, while the cape
is not, no doubt because of the poor conservation state of the cloak and the perceived “market
value” of Tupinambá weaponry. For a recent scientific examination of the club see Catherine
Lavier and Pascale Richardin, "Massue Tupinamba, Brésil –– Musée du Quai Branly N.
d'inventaire (Mqb): 71.1917.3.62, N. C2rmf: 61534," in Compte-Rendu d'Etuden N. 8011, ed. Yves

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artifacts as being of an “indescribable color” and “too large for him to wear.”528

Thevet was himself a collector and even mentions owning Brazilian “green stones”

of the famous Tupi leader, Quoniambec, whose portrait he includes in his Les vrais

portraits book.529 Furthermore, in this same book of famous sixteenth-century

men, Thevet describes how the acquisition of these “rare objects” was of use in

delineating accurate portraits of foreign leaders.

For my own part, I can assure the reader of having visited most libraries and
shops, French as well as foreign, in order to recover, to the extent possible,
all the rare objects [rarités & singularités] which I knew to be necessary to
accomplish my aim.530

That Thevet procured two or more Tupi cloaks is not in doubt. What is more

uncertain, however, is if the Tupi feathered cape that was part the Royal Cabinet

des Curiosités at Palace of Fontainebleau was given to the King by Thevet, or if it

came from another source.531 Though the cape’s provenance is obscure, we do

Le Fur, 1-20 (Paris: Musée du Quai Branly, 2006). I owe a special thanks to Curator André
Delpuech for offering me the MQB’s documentation on these objects.
528
This is cited in: Frank Lestringant, "La Flèche du Patagon ou la preuve des lointains: sur un
chapitre d'André Thevet," in Voyager à la Renaissance. Actes du Colloque de Tours, ed. Jean Céard
and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Editions Maisonneuve et Larouse, 1983), 473. Lestrigant uses
this as a preface to dicuss Thevet’s collecting of Patagonian materials. This is also cited in Peter
Mason, "From Presentation to Representation: Americana in Europe," Journal of the History of
Collections 6, no. 1 (1994): 3.
529
“I recall having written somewhere in my Cosmographie that the man whose portrait I
reproduce here as I brought it from those parts, wearing two green stones which I still have in a
cupboard in his cheeks and one at the end of his chin.” Thevet, Portraits, 132. This is an awkward
translation, at best, but emphasizes Thevet’s own collecting practices. The Vrais portraits book is a
compilation of 232 biographical sketches of warriors, navigators, sea captains, lawyers, orators,
doctors, and artisans, and each with a copperplate-engraving portrait.
530
Thevet, Portraits, 14.
531
The current museum file for the Tupi cloak at the Musée du Quai Branly notes that either Thevet
or Léry gave it to the King. However, there is no corroborating documentary evidence. The cape’s
provenance shows that it was originally part of the Royal Collection, then passed to the Louvre
when it became an institutional museum, and then to the newly formed Parisian ethnographic
museum of the late nineteenth century: “Le Département d’Amérque du Musée de l’Homme ne
possède sûrement du XVIè siècle que deux pièces qui, sans doute, ont été deposess au Cabinet des

272
know that sixteenth and seventeenth-century French royalty had different modes of

contact with people who had lived and worked in Brazil, and who brought back

objects with them. As I shall show with the Rouen performance, and as can be

shown with a number of other French spectacles, the French monarchs had direct

contact with Tupi people who had been brought to France.532 Far from an

abstracted reality, Brazil was physically present in sixteenth-century France, in the

form of Tupis and their material culture, and it was put to the task of constituting

political identity. Contemporaneous and popular books in French discussed the

ritual use of Tupi objects, such as feathered capes, rattles, war-clubs, and musical

instruments; these books were a likely source of information about the artifacts

that landed in French collections.

Thevet, I suggest, illustrates how information about the Tupi crossed the

Atlantic and became attached to objects. As a traveler, as part of a French

expedition, as royal cosmographer, chaplain, canon, abbot, historian, and curator,

Curiosités du Roi, puis ont passé au Louvre et enfim au Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro,
aujourd’hui Musée de l’Homme. Ces pièces acquises sur place par Jean de Léry ont dû être données
par ce dernier à Thevet qui le aurait offertes au roi.” MQB file #DT 1917.3 in “Notes.”
The Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro was founded in Paris in 1878. This institution
later became part of the Musée de l’Homme, founded in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the World’s Fair,
which also inherited the French Royal Curiosity Cabinet. The ethnographic collections of the
Musée de l’Homme were recently transferred to Chirac’s Museé Quai Branly last June 2006. Thus
the current collection is a medley of both early modern royal acquisitions and later anthropological
expeditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
532
I speak specifically of the fascinating early-seventeenth century performance in Paris of newly
baptized Tupi men who performed on the behest of the newly returned Capuchin friars. These
Amerindian men wore feathered headdresses, held maracás, and sported Christian crosses around
their necks, another index of the “accommodation” of feathers within Christian ritual. Images of
this little-known event are found in Yves d’Evreux’s Suite de l’Histoire of 1615. These are
testaments to the continued “performance” of Tupi-French identity well after the sixteenth century
heyday. See Moraes, Vol. II, 383-386, plates in back. This book has a fascinating history itself, tied
to the French battles with Spain during Philip II’s short reign (1580-1598) of Brazil.

273
Thevet had the perceived “eye-witness” reputation to fill in the cultural gaps with

regards to these objects, the ability to put meaning, howsoever projected, onto a

feathered cape and thus transform it from an empty sign, to something that held

cultural value for Europeans. In many ways, he was an “expert” on the topic of

Tupi life in the same way that Aldrovandi could speak of all things ornithological.

Thevet’s publications on the royal collections, as well as his own, based on years

of work in and on them, demonstrate his versatility and broad knowledge of early

modern collecting. For whom and to what ends, though, was Thevet’s knowledge

being performed?

Rouen and the performance of the dyewood trade

The most famous event today concerning French-Brazil relations is, without

question, the Royal Entry of Henri II and his wife Catherine de’Medici’s into the

Norman capital of Rouen on October 1-2, 1550.533 The Brazilian portion of the

Rouen pageant is described in detail in the published booklet of 1551, and

533
The prose commentary on the pageant was produced one year later, in 1551, in a booklet by
Robert le Hoy and Robert and Jehan du Gord, C’est la deduction du sumptuex ordre plaisantz
spectacleset magnifiques theatres dresses, et exhibes par les citoiens de Rouen ville Metropolitaine
du pays de Normandie, A la sacree Maiesté du Treschristian Roy de France, Henry second leur
souverain Seigneur, Et à Tresillustre dame, ma Dame Katherine de Medicis, la Royne son espouse,
lors de leur triumphant joyeulx et nouvel advenement en icelle ville. Qui fut es jours de Mercredy et
jeudy premier et second jours d’Octobre, Mil cinq cens cinquante [This is the account of the
sumptuous procession, pleasant spectacles and magnificent theaters prepared and exhibited by the
citizens of Rouen, capital of the Province of Normandy, for his Sacred Majesty, the very Christian
King of France, Henri II their sovereign Lord, and the very illustrious Lady Catherine de’Medici
the Queen his wife, on the occasion of their triumphant, joyous and recent entry in that city which
took place on Wednesday and Thursday, 1-2 October, 1550] (Rouen: chez Robert le Hoy, Robert et
Jehan dictz du Gord, 1551). For a facsimile of the entry and the plate Figure des brisilians see
Margaret M. McGowan, ed., L'entrée de Henri II á Rouen 1550; a facsimile (Amsterdam:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1977). The book contains 29 woodcuts. For a discussion of the book see
Moraes, Vol. I, 151-154.

274
discussed at length in Denis’s meticulous archival study and numerous modern

publications.534

Two villages with a combined population of three hundred “Brazilian”

inhabitants were created along the banks of the Seine. Fifty of these Brazilians

were actual Tupinambá recently brought to Rouen, wearing the prized white and

green facial stones of Chapter 1, carrying their weapons and –– one assumes ––

featherwork. 535 The other two hundred and fifty of these “Brazilians” were naked

Norman sailors and female prostitutes acting the part, and apparently mimicking

the behavior and speech patterns of the Tupi. They were painted with urucú and

genipapa, the red and black body paints so familiar from the travel accounts of

Thevet, Léry and Staden, covering the more indiscrete parts of the bodies.

534
Ferdinand Denis and Christóvão Valente, Une fête brésilienne célébrée a Rouen en 1550: suivie
d'un fragment du XVIe siècle roulant sur la théogonie des anciens peuples du brésil, et des poésies
en langue tupique de Christovam Valente, (Paris: J. Techener, 1850). For the Portuguese translation
see Ferdinand Denis, Uma festa brasileira, com os poemas brasílicos de Pe. Cristóvão Valente,
S.J., trans. Candido Jucá and Plínio Ayrosa (Rio de Janeiro: ESPASA, 1944).
For excellent articles in English see: Lestringant, Cannibals, 41-43. Michael Wintroub,
"Civilizing the Savage and Making a King: The Royal Entry Festival of Henri II (Rouen, 1550)"
Sixteenth Century Journal 21, no. 2 (1998): 465-94. See also: Richard Cooper, "Court Festival and
Triumphal Entries under Henri II," in Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics
and Performance, ed. J. Mulryne and E. Goldring, 51-75 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); Steven
Mullaney, "Strange Things, Gross Terms, Curious Customs: The Rehearsal of Cultures in the Late
Renaissance," in Facing Each Other: The World’s Perceptions of Europe and Europe’s
Perceptions of the World, ed. Anthony Pagden, 185-212 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Michael
Wintroub, "Taking Stock at the End of the World: Rites of Distinction and Practices of Collecting
in Early Modern Europe," Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 30, no. 3 (1999): 395-424.
535
“Le long de la place se demenoient ca et la, jusques au nombre de trios centz hommes tous nuds,
hallez et herissonnez, sans ancunement couurir la partie que nature commande, ils estoient faconnez
et equipez la mode des sauvages de l’Amerique don’t saporte le boys de Bresil, du nombre desquelz
il y en avoit bien cinquante naturelz sauuages freschement apportez du pays, ayans cultre les autres
scimulez, pour decorrer leur face, les ioues, lèvres et aureilles percées et entrelardeez de pierres
longuettes, de l’estendue d’un doight, pollies et arrondies, de couleur d’esmail blanc et verde
esmeraude.” From the sixteenth-century description by M. Lemercier, transcribed in Denis, Uma
festa, 18.

275
 Log and hatched versions of malocas were built to simulate Tupi villages.

The meadows along the Seine were decorated to appear like a Brazilian forest: the

tree trunks and shrubbery were painted red (to represent brazilwood trees) and

colorful fruits (both natural and artificial) were hung on them.536 Parakeets,

starling-like birds, and monkeys were brought from Brazil by Rouen merchants

and also placed in the “red” trees to further create a simulacrum of France

Antarctique.537 Scenes of Brazilian life were performed for Henri II and his

Queen, including such things as hunting, fishing, walking, romantic encounters in

hammocks, and the collection of brazilwood. Brazilwood was not only cut, but it

was taken to a fort built along the banks of the French river, which replicated the

same kinds of constructions the French built along the coasts of colonial Brazil. A

scene of trade was included in the pageant, where the French merchants gave the

Tupi iron tools and other weapons for the exchange of the precious brazilwood.

The timber was then symbolically hauled off in ships with French flags.538 This

theatrical performance of the brazilwood trade clearly demonstrates that the

economic benefits of the French relationship with the Tupi were of paramount

importance to those who staged the event, the civic leaders of Rouen.

536
“Le tronc des arbres estoit peint et garny en la cyme de branches et floquartz de buys et fresne,
rapportant assez près du naturel aux fueilles des arbes du Bresil.” Denis, Uma festa, 17.
537
“Parmi les branches des arbres volletoient et gazoulloient à leur mode grand norbre de
perroqutz, estliers, et moysons de plaisantes et diverses couleurs. Amont les arbres grympoient
plusiers guenonnez, marmotes sagouyns, que les navires des bourgeois de Rouen avoient nagueres
apportez de la terre du Bresil.” Denis, Uma festa, 17-18.
538
“Les autres coupoient du boys qui, par quelques uns d’entre eulx, estoit porté à un fort construit
pour l’effect sur riuière: ainsy que les marininers de ce pays ont accoustumé faire quand ils traictent
avec les Brisilians: letroquoient et permutoient aux mariniers dessusditz, en haches, serpes et coings
de faire. La troque et commerce ainsi faite, Leboys etoite batellé par gondolles et esquiffes, en un
grande navire à deux Hunes ou gabyes radiant sur ses ancres.” Denis, Uma festa, 19-20.

276
 Ultimately, the Brazilian tableau ended in warfare against an enemy

village.539 A mock battle was staged between two competing tribes, the victorious

“Tupinambaulx” warriors vs. the weak enemy of the “Tabagerres.” From the

written description the author assures his audience that the Norman “Brazilians”

were “indistinguishable” from the true “savages.”540 The valiant and chivalrous

warring Tupinambá thus charmed Henri II, who fashioned himself a great warrior

and likely saw the victorious Tupinambá as allies of the French, thus signaling the

inevitable (but imaginary) French victory over the intrepid nation of Portugal.541

The Brazilian pageant was a climactic point of one of the most spectacular

French Renaissance entries ever staged.542 Within the context of this dissertation,

this entry is an example of the larger phenomenon of what I am terming the

“colonialization of Europe” in the period. The entry, as all royal entries, was a

staging of the place of kingship in the French social order, but it was also a

theatrical performance about French political ambitions in the New World and an

event that deployed material knowledge about the Tupi to shape a French

audience’s reception of these messages. The fabrication of “Brazil” on the banks of

the Seine was akin to the performative display of Brazil through its artifacts within

studioli, Kunskammern, and natural history collections, but one that explicitly

539
Lestrigant, Cannibals, 41-42.
540
“Les surplus de la compaignie, ayant frequente le pays, parloit autant bien le langage et
exprimoit si nayfuement les gestes et façons de faire des sauuages, comme s’ilz fussent natifz du
mesmes pays.” Denis, Uma festa, 18-19. See also Wintroub, “Civilizing,” 467.
541
The chronicler of the 1551 narrative description captures Henri II’s positive response to the
scenes of warfare and the martial finesse of the Brazilians. Wintroub, “Civilizing,” 469.
542
The importance of this entry for Renaissance France was first discussed in Jean Chartrou, Les
Entrées Solennelles et triomphales à la Renaissance, 1484-1551 (Paris, 1928). 415.

277
addressed practical issues of sovereignty and economics. Brazil was thus “created”

to serve the purposes and needs of the French body politic in general, i.e., the

monarchy. More specifically it presented to Henri II the economic concerns of

Rouen, linking the sovereignty and glory of the monarch to the continuation of

French military intervention in Brazil, in order to secure a monopoly in the

brazilwood trade.

Henri II’s entry into Rouen –– like all royal entries –– was an event that

included various tableaux vivants that employed classical texts, genealogical

myths, biblical scriptures and contemporary events to convey metaphorical

commentaries about the social and political concerns surrounding the investiture of

a new ruler. As has been much discussed in historical and literary scholarship,

entry festivals were one of the central rites of early modern kingship, a reciprocal

exchange of power between citizens of a city and their sovereign leader: the latter

a recognition of a king’s authority, and the former the king’s acknowledgement of

the privileges of his subjects.543 The ceremony would show off the wealth and

importance of Rouen, and remind the monarch of the possible glory obtained by

fostering the prosperity of his subjects.

What is of particular relevance here is the way in which the Brazilian

pageant addressed specific economic concerns of the textile industry of Normandy

in general and of Rouen in particular. To ensure that the King would recognize the

economic potential (and necessity) of the brazilwood trade for the local economy,

543
Wintroub, “Civilizing,” 465.

278
the Rouen actors carried ibirapitanga logs to the banks of the Seine in their

pageant. As we know, the dye produced from brazilwood logs was used in the

manufacture of luxury textiles, such as velvet, which was in high demand during

this period. Thus this theatrical performance was both a literal and metaphorical

display for the King: a performance of Rouen’s mercantile activity in the Atlantic.

The various episodic, theatrical tableaux one encountered throughout the

entry were experienced and pondered while the royal entourage moved toward and

then through the space of the city of Rouen, utilizing the natural features and

topography of, the surrounding area. In the process, memory, homage, spirituality

and emotion for the royal viewer were evoked in ideal forms.544 What is so striking

about the event is not merely that “America” is invoked as one of its themes. The

Brazilian tableau is most significant as it tangibly and explicitly engages viewers

(citizens and royals) with the contemporaneous economic interests in Brazil of

France in general, and Rouen in particular. Norman sailors, traders, prostitutes and

the textile workers of Rouen played parts as actors within the fête, and built the

larger-than-life forest cum theatrical stage through which their King and Queen

processed.

From the 1550 festival entry we have two surviving images pertaining to

the Brazilian performances, one a woodcut of the fabricated Brazilian village

included in the published description of the entry and the other a watercolor

miniature from a manuscript account of the event that shows a key moment in the

544
Randolph Starn, "Seeing Culture in Room for a Renaissance Prince," in The New Cultural
History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 226, 230-31.

279
Brazilian pageant, when Henri II crosses the bridge over the Seine.545 The

watercolor of the Joyous Entry of Henri II into Rouen is the lesser known of the

two images, surprisingly absent from the growing body of literature that centers

upon the woodcut (Fig. 41).546 More colorful and more detailed than the print, it

parses out many of the key issues in the creation of a “colonial” Europe. This

watercolor shows Henri II and his entourage on the bridge. On the left side of the

image, in the background, we see a battle between French and Portuguese ships on

the Seine, reenacting the struggle for control of Brazil that I have discussed at

length in connection with the brazilwood trade. A poem written for the occasion

implores Henri II to take steps to expel the objectionable Portuguese from Brazil in

the interest of French subjects.547 In the faux-forested region of the Fauborg-Saint-

Sever, the green grove pictured in the left middle ground, a large group of Tupi

men are shown wearing yellow-feathered crowns and carrying implements of war

such as spears and shields.

The visual comparison of the royal party and the Tupi warriors mirrors the

spatial division between civilization and that which is both beyond and preceding

civilization, a Tupinambized nature as a metaphor, as a physical and conceptual

545
The woodcut comes from Hoy and Gord, C’est la deduction, 1551. It shows a recreation of a
Brazilian maloca community along the Seine and a battle scene between the Tupi and an enemy
tribe.
546
With the notable exception of Lestringant’s brief discussion of the image in Lestringant,
Cannibals, 41-43.
547
This poem is included in Denis, Une fête bresilienne, 73-74. Most of the Tupi poems came from
Jesuit sources. For a compilation of Tupi poems likely circulating in France see Denis, Uma festa,
Parte III.

280
space of “nakedness,” “savagery,” and “warfare.”548 The royal cortège, however,

is depicted facing away from the forest, watching the naumachia between France

and Portugal below, the sea battle beneath the bridge replete with live canons, the

dueling European forces, and a mythological escort, Neptune with seahorses and

mermaids visually enhancing this staging of war.549 There is even a small boat of

Amerindians in the foreground, demonstrating the role played by Tupi as allies in

purging Portugal from the shores of Brazil, and another group of red-painted men

shooting arrows from the banks of the Seine to further aid the French forces.

A poem accompanies this image, enhancing the audience’s understanding

of the scene: “Thy power to the cannibals extend: / Faithless to others, they remain

our friends, / And in those islands we may safely dwell.”550 The entire staging of

the Brazilian pageant was one that allied French economic interests with the Tupi,

and against Portugal, whose territorial treaty they were ignoring. One could say

then that this functioned on multiple levels: the Brazilians were thus allies in

fighting the same enemy (Portugal), a labor for French economic interests

(gathering brazilwood), and a mirror of French power and dominance in the New

548
Colored engraving by Louis de Merval, Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen, MS 1268 (y28).
This engraving has been reproduced infrequently, but can be found in Jean-Louis Auge, ed., Image
du Nouveau Monde en France (Paris: Editions de la Martiniere, 1995), 31. The only serious
discussion of the image can be found in a publication devoted to this artist: Stephane de Merval,
ed., L'entrée de Henri II, Roi de France à Rouen au mois d'octobre 1550, imprimée pour la
première fois d'après un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque de Rouen, orné de 10 planches gravées á
l'eau-forte par Louis de Merval, accompagné de notes bibliophiliques et historiques par S. de
Merval, Société des Bibliophiles Normands. (Rouen: Imprimerie de Henry Boissel, 1858). Image
can be found on fol. xvii verso.
549
There is a nice description of the water battle in Lestringant, Cannibals, 42.
550
This comes from the Merval, L'entrée de Henri II, fol. xvii verso. The English translation is
cited in Lestringant, Cannibals, 42.

281
World via their warring ways. They might well be cannibals, but they were

nonetheless noble allies who shared similar political interests. There could be no

more perfect tableaux for staging Henri II’s kingship and power both on a local

level, in the city of Rouen, and in Nouvelle France, than forest scenes and the sea

battle beneath the bridge.

The 1550 Entry, therefore, represents a supreme colonial performance of

economic power and political savvy. The detailed lives of the Tupi men and

women in Rouen for the 1550 have been obscured in history, but Borba de Moraes

claims that they were living in Rouen “long” before 1550 as “famous curiosities,”

and still living in Rouen in 1562 when they were presented to King Charles IX

(1550-1574) during his visit to the city.551 Normandy was in fact a regional

European site of Brazilian culture. From as early as 1505, Tupi men and women,

including the famous Carijó “Prince Essomeriq,” were brought to live in Honfleur

by the French navigator Binot Paulmier de Gonneville on his ship L’Espoir that

had navigated the Bahian coastline in 1504.552

551
“These Brazilians Indians living at Rouen were one of the city’s curiosities for a long time.
Later, in 1562, when Charles IX visited the city they were presented to the King. Montaigne was
present at the interview, and he must have retained a vivid recollection of the Indians, for he refers
to them in a famous passage of his Essais.” Moraes, Vol. I, 152. Denis also mentions that
“Brazilians” were among the three hundred “foreign” men who appeared before for Charles IX’s on
his visit to Bordeux on April 9, 1565. See Denis, Uma festa, 33. Interesting enough, they were
named “Brazilian” and not “American” or “Indian.”
552
This incredible story is recounted in: Leyla Perrone-Moisés, Vinte Luas: Viagem de Paulmier de
Gonneville ao Brasil, 1503-1505 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992). To cover the cost of his
trip, Gonneville brought back Tupi men and women, brazilwood, monkeys, and parrots. Apparently
Essomeriq, the indigenous Prince, married a niece of Gonneville and fathered fourteen children,
living in Normandy until his death, at the ripe old age of ninety-five years.

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 Perhaps the best place to end the Rouen story is by briefly noting another

visual reminder of Norman traders on Brazilian shores. Dated to circa 1535, and

thus significantly pre-predating Henri II’s entry, are two carved oak panel bas-

reliefs which show idealized mythological bodies cutting and hauling brazilwood

to the coast, and placing it on ships. Presumably these ships were set to sail back to

Rouen. These double panels were produced and displayed on a building called the

Hôtel l’Isle-du-Brésil, the “House of the Isle of Brazil, ” no. 17 de la rue Malpalu

in the Norman capital (Fig. 55).553 These panels, and the very existence of the

hôtel, confirm in the most concrete of ways that Rouen was a mercantile center for

the importation of brazilwood, and a site for the almost industrial use of

brazilwood dye in the luxury cloth trade so valued by the French court of the

sixteenth century. These activities were reliant on Tupi manual laborers.

The fact that these panels considerably pre-date the Brazilian pageant

indicates the long-standing centrality of Brazil to the economic well-being of

Rouen. The 1550 entry was staged by the city of Rouen, not by Henri II. The

Brazilian pageant thus presented a model of kingship to Henri that he was expected

to follow, specifically in reference to the nobility’s role in militarily protecting the

interests (including the financial interests) of their subjects. As a civic spectacle, it

was produced to serve the particular interests of the commune of Rouen. The

553
This building was destroyed in 1837, but the two panels were removed and relocated to the
Musées Départementaux de Seine-Maritime, Musés de Antiquités, Rouen. The most in-depth study
of these panels remains the dated, but valuable: E.T. Hamy, "Le bas-relief de l'hotel du brésil au
Musée Départemental d'antiquités de Rouen," Journal de la Société des Américanistes Novelle
série, Tome IV, no. Numéro 1 (1907): 1-6; Denis, Uma festa, 36-37. Denis claims these wood
panels were painted, but there is no evidence to suggest this today.

283
presence of the Brazilians is linked inextricably with the local economic

foundations of the Rouennais, i.e., the cloth industry, and the merchants that

brought them to Normandy.554 The city thereby reminds Henri II of an important

source of their economic prosperity, the brazilwood trade in the New World, which

in turn will affect his financial interests. The log and dye industry was equally as

much an investment for the King of France, as for the city of Rouen, for he

benefited from the economic prosperity of the region through taxation. The oak

panels, and the Entry of 1550, linked highly localized prosperity and security to the

French body politic.

Brazil played a similar role in Northern Europe, where regional centers of

power had vested interests Brazil, albeit, in particular aspects other than dyewood.

As we will see in relation to Germany and the Low Countries, Brazil and its

culture represented a commodity for barter on the open market. I will show how

one particular physician was in fact responsible for most of the dissemination of

Braziliana in the North. The colonial space of Brazil in Northern Europe was as

tied to local economies as it was in Normandy, including cultural tourism as a

source of regional and personal wealth.

Part III: The Dutch Connection and the “Tupinambization” of Europe

554
Benedict puts forth this argument in regard to larger Entry as a whole. He asserts that it
illuminates Rouen’s economic foundations and social structure. He does not examine the Brazilian
pageant in detail, but looks more towards the corporate nature of Rouennais society. See Benedict,
Rouen, 11.

284
Tupi featherwork and the politics of appeasement in Stuttgart

1599 saw a remarkable spectacle in the narrow streets of Stuttgart, the principle

residence of the Duke of Württemberg. The ducal court staged a ritual Queen of

America procession, in which German courtiers dressed as indigenous Americans

in lavish feathered regalia (Fig. 37).555 In the watercolors that recorded the event,

some of the figures, such as the young man with a red, feathered cape surmounted

by a cluster of yellow feathers, apparently wear actual Tupinambá garments, as

was also done in the Rouen procession. We can posit their existence and use in the

Stuttgart ritual by the startling ethnographic accuracy with which the feathered

capes are depicted. 556 The Stuttgart watercolor, thus shares the precision of detail

evident in the scientific drawings of Adrovandi and Settala. In the last of the

European regions I investigate in this chapter, that of Germany and the Low

Countries, I discuss how the global economic, political and scholarly networks of

the Netherlands enabled the redeployment of Tupi capes as props in the Stuttgart

ceremonial procession.

The scarlet cape worn by the man seen in the bottom center holding a

parrot has so many idiosyncratic details of construction that it can only have been

555
This is a quill drawing on paper with bister, watercolor, opaque color (deckfarben) and gold.
Since the drawing exhibits heavy wear (splashes of ink, punctures, corrections, etc.), Bujok
suggests that it was used as a sketchbook for the actual procession, likely hanging on the wall. The
script even names individuals actors used in the procession. For an in-depth discussion of the image
see the excellent new study: Bujok, Neue Welten, 149-160. This watercolor is now housed in
Weimar at the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen, Schlossmuseum, Graphische
Sammlung. 1588/89. 29.6-30.5 x 38.6-56.3 cm.
556
This is a complex assemblage of figures and many of the other garments and ritual paraphernalia
(such as the feathered shields) are of Aztec origin and came from the Ochssenbach collection. For a
detailed examination of each figure see the graph in Bujok, Neue Welten, 155-157.

285
based on direct observation of original Tupi objects, indicating that Tupi garments

were not just collected in Europe as scientific specimens, museum curiosities or

trade goods, but also utilized within ritual performances. None of the eleven

surviving mantles exactly matches the cape shown in the Stuttgart image, but

individual details of the latter do directly correspond to particulars of the extant

examples.

To begin, the full-length hooded cape now housed in Copenhagen (#1) is of

similar full-body length, is also crowned with a bundle of yellow feathers, and has

an attached bonnet, all of which can be seen in the Stuttgart watercolor. The

depicted cloak shows a geometric pattern of blue, green and black feathers set into

the larger red ground of scarlet ibis plumes. The Milan cape (#11) shares this

unusual abstract design. Settala’s codex drawing of it gives a more vivid picture of

the “stepped” pattern, almost identical to what we see in this German processional

figure (Fig. 30). The Milan cape also has a fringe of yellow feathers along its

bottom edge, again matching the Stuttgart watercolor (Fig. 22). The manner in

which the yellow feathers are bunched in the illustration, though, suggests that

these may have been feather tassels, such as those attached to the rectangular cape

from Copenhagen (#2). Remnants of similar tassels can be found on the Brussels

cape (#7).

Other figures in the watercolor also wear Tupi featherwork. The two

figures in the litter holding the “Queen of America,” and the other two individuals

trailing the train of people and holding a hammock wear Tupi half-capes, fitting

286
over their heads like skull-caps and extending only to the shoulders (Fig. 37).

Capes of this type are found in Copenhagen (#3-5). One of the illustrated half-

capes is red, as are all the surviving mantles, but the other is yellow. This, together

with the pictorial evidence in Van Campen’s painting (Fig. 23) and the

documentary evidence discussed in Chapter 2 by Caminha, Léry and other early

modern chroniclers, further confirms the existence of such yellow garments.

A narrative poem about the Stuttgart festivities, written in 1602 by M.

Jacob Frischlin vividly describes the “Americans” in the procession:

“Their coats were manifold…in colors, like [those of] parrots … [with] red
streaks and blue, …further also yellow … [and] light grey.”557

Frischlin refers repeatedly to people wearing feathers and also mentions a

parrot.558 According to Elke Bujok, these watercolors show evidence of heavy

wear, suggesting that they were working sketches used by designers and

choreographers for the preparations of the actual procession.559 Alterations are

pasted into the procession image, a further indication of the watercolors’ planning

function. The festivity was staged as a courtly triumphal procession, which had an

impressively large audience of 6000. The occasion was Duke Friedrich’s

summoning of his territory’s estates to Stuttgart for a Diet or Landtag. The

assembly was called to repair political troubles between the duke and his Estates;

557
Trans. Markus Friedrich. M. Jacob Frischlin’s 1602 poem of the 1599 procession provides one
source for understanding this watercolor, along with the image itself, and one archival file in
Stuttgart. Frischlin also mentions another figure with “nice clothes,” and “people wearing parrot
feathers.” He does not mention any specific objects. Bujok provides a transcription of entire
German poem: Neue Welten, 15.
558
Bujok, Neue Welten, 17.
559
Bujok, Neue Welten, 149.

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the processional spectacle confirmed the magnificence of the ruler and, according

to Frischlin, also served to relieve the stress and tedium of the negotiations. 560 It is

also interesting to note that this performance coincided with the beginnings of

spring, the season of traditional Carnival celebrations.561

How did these objects reach the unlikely destinations of the courts of

Stuttgart and Copenhagen? The capes certainly passed through many hands and

many places, but the Netherlands served as the crucial nexus for the transmission

of both the physical artifacts and knowledge about them. The Dutch physician,

collector, and traveler Bernardus Paludanus (Berend ten Broeke), who had signed

Aldrovandi’s Album amicorum, played a crucial role in the dissemination of Tupi

artifacts and information about them.562 As the town physician of Enkhuizen,

560
The political context for the procession is quite important. Duke Friedrich I was known for his
poor relationship with his Estates due to his autocratic ideas of government. He tried to severely
diminish the Estates’ influence on politics and sidestepped their prerogatives in many ways, trying
to cancel the so-called “Tübinger Treaty,” the fundamental late medieval constitutional agreement
on which the whole traditional political arrangement in the Duchy rested. The 1599 meeting of the
estates ("Landtag") was only one episode in a series of ever more troublesome meetings between
the Duke and his Estates. In 1599, however, Friedrich urgently needed the cooperation of the
Estates in some very complicated and expensive affairs and thus temporarily backed down. This is
the context for the procession. Given that the Diet met between February 4th and March 16th, 1599,
the procession must have taken place within this time frame. See Walter Grube, Der Stuttgarter
Landtag, 1457-1957; Von Den Landständen Zum Demokratischen Parlament (Stuttgart: E. Klett,
1957), 251-274.
561
Little could the Stuttgart participants imagine that Carnival floats depicting European royal
processions would be replicated in the New World in twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro Carnival
celebrations. Equally fascinating, tableaux of modern floats have depicted the interplay between
European monarchs and plumed Brazilians as a post-colonial staging of the Conquest.
562
For a basic overview of Paludanus’ collecting see: H.D. von Schepelern, "Natural Philosophers
and Princely Collectors: Worm, Paludanus, and the Gottorp and Copenhagen Collections," in
Impey, 121-27; Bernard Paludanus and James D. Tracy, ed. and trans., True Ocean Found:
Paludanus's Letters on Dutch Voyages to the Kara Sea, 1595-1596 (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1980), 35-39; Ans Berendts, "Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) and Bernardus
Paludanus (1550-1633): Their Contacts and Correspondence," LIAS V, no. I (1978): 49-64. In 1591
Paludanus was invited to be on the medical faculty of the new University of Leiden, as well as be
curator of plants and herbs. He declined and the famous post went to the botanist Carolus Clusius.

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Paludanus’s access to materials for his collection, including Tupi artifacts, is

directly tied to that city’s status as a major port in the early modern period.

Enkhuizen was just as vital for indigenous Brazilian goods as Lisbon, Seville,

Rouen, Antwerp or Amsterdam.563

From Enkhuizen to Stuttgart and Copenhagen: The great Tupi ‘cache’

The Stuttgart watercolors verify that Duke Friedrich of Württemburg (1557-1608)

owned capes and other Tupinambá paraphernalia. His inventory and other

documentation tell us that he acquired them from Paludanus.564 Bernardus was

bound in in the global scholarly, mercantile and political networks in which the

Netherlands participated in the early modern period. He exchanged objects with

the likes of Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) and Jan Huyghen Linschoten (1563-

1611).565 Linschoten, the so-called “Marco Polo” of the Netherlands, was another

563
For a nice overview of the city of Enkhuizen in early modern times see Rudolph E.O. Ekkart,
Portret Van Enkhuizen in de Gouden Eeuw (Zwolle: Waanders; Zuiderzeemuseum, 1990).
564
Duke Friedrich I visited Paludanus’ collection in Enhuizen in 1592 and requested that certain
items be sent to him in Stuttgart. For Friedrich’s inventory see: Jabob Rathgeber, Kurtze Und
Wahrhaffte Beschreibung Der Badenfahrt: Welche Der Durchleuchtig Hochgeborn Fuerst Und
Herr / Herr Friderich / Hertzog Zu Wuerttemberg Unnd Teckh / Grave Zu Muempelgart [...] in
Negst Abgeloffenem 1592 Jahr / Von Muemppelgart Auss / in Das Weitberuembte Koenigreich
Engellandt / Hernach Im Zurueck Ziehen Durch Die Niderland / Biss Widerumb Gehn
Muemppelgart / Verrichtet Hat. Auss I.F.G. Gendigem Bevelch / Von Dero Mitraisendem Cammer-
Secretarien / Auffs Kuertzist / Von Tag Zu Tag Verzeichnet. [Brief and Truthful Description of the
Tour of Prince Friedrich Undertook to the Spas of England and the Netherlands. Truthfully, Day by
Day Recounted by the Duke's Chamber-Secretary]. Tuebingen Erhard Cellius, 1602. WLS, W.G. qt
488 and HB 4435. This inventory is produced in tabular form, with the provenance of many objects
inserted. I consulted three printed copies of this book, each slightly different (with mis-paginations
and cuts). Special thanks to Markus Friedrich for archival assistance in Stuttgart.
565
Paludanus, True Ocean, 35-37.

289
resident of Enkhuizen and a close friend of Paludanus.566 Linschoten had traveled

widely and is a possible source for Paludanus’ American ethnographic exotica.567

Paludanus’ vast social networks are well documented through his own

Album amicorum, which helps illustrate how Paludanus’ connections contributed

to the circulation of objects and knowledge of the Tupinambá among both scholars

and princely courts. The Album amicorum, with its 500 folios, documents the

thousands of visitors to his famous collection.568 The entry that is particularly

relevant to the Brazilian material is that of Duke Friedrich of Württemberg in

1592, the same duke who seven years later staged the Queen of America

procession. Other entries shows that three of the most important Italian collections

— Ferrante Imperato (1550-1625), Michael Mercatus (1541-1593) and, for our

purposes most significantly Ulisse Aldrovandi — visited Paludanus’ collection in

566
Paludanus contributed the “Indies” information for Linschoten’s 1596 book Itinerario. See
Harold J. Cook, "The New Philosophy in the Low Countries," in The Scientific Revolution in
National Context, eds. Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 122.
567
Linschoten traveled widely for fourteen years throughout the Lusophone world (primarily Goa,
Mozambique, Azores). Though there is no evidence he reached Brazil, he was an avid collector,
finally settling in Enkhuizen. Linschoten’s friendship with Paludanus is widely documented and
Schepelern claims that Linschoten’s book –– Itinerario –– is “almost a running commentary to
Paludanus’s catalogue.” It has been suggested that Linschoten was the source for much of the
naturalia and ethnographica in Paludanus’s collections. See H.D. von Schepelern,
"Naturalienkabinett Oder Kunstkammer: Der Sammler Bernhard Paludanus und Sein
Katalogmanuskript in der Koniglichen Bibliothek in Kopenhagen," Nordelbingen: Beitrage zur
Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Band 50 (1981): 172.
For the latest English edition of Linschoten’s book see: E. van den Boogart, Civil and
Corrupt Asia: Images and Text in the Itinerario and the Icones of Jan Huygen Van Linschoten
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Charles McKew Parr, Jan Van Linschoten: The
Dutch Marco Polo (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1964). See also Ivo Kamps,
"Colonizing the Colonizer: A Dutchman in Asia Portuguesa" in Travel Knowledge: European
"Discoveries" in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna G. Singh (New York:
Palgrave, 2001).
568
KB, Special Collections: 133 M 63, Paludanus Album amicorum, 1592-n.d. For these entries,
see folios 23r-29r. Given time constraints, I was able to consult only a small portion of the
manuscript.

290
1579, further highlighting Paludanus as a point of convergence, not just of objects,

but also of scientific and scholarly information about other collections (Fig. 56).569

Paludanus was born in 1550 in Steenwijk in the northeast province of

Drenthe.570 By the age of twenty he had moved to Padua, where he received a

doctorate in medicine. Between school terms he traveled widely in Europe and the

Mediterranean world, reaching Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Syria, Palestine,

Egypt, Malta and Sicily, collecting objects, specimens and information. In 1586 he

accepted an appointment as town physician at Enkhuizen. By this point Paludanus

was a renowned physician and collector, his Cabinet among the first

Wunderkammern of note in the United Provinces, attracting an enormous number

of visitors. In a letter to the Dutch poet and scholar Constantijn Huygens (1596-

1687), a contemporary states that: “Thousands of people could not have thought of

their lives in Enkhuyzen, had Doctor Paludanus not had his collection of

rarities.”571 This is a remarkable statement, confirming as it does the economic

impact of cultural tourism in the later-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries.

This is echoed by a poem dedicated to Paludanus by Hugo de Groot that discusses

the large numbers of people who come to Enkhuizen just to see Paludanus’

collection. Furthermore, the reference in the poem to “strange” clothing “from the

Indian land” may well make reference to the Tupi capes as a later inventory

suggests.

569
For a brief discussion of these collections see Paul Grinke, ed., From Wunderkammer to
Museum. (London: Quaritch, 2006). It is organized by country.
570
For the following biography sketch I utilized Berendts, “Carolus Clusius,” 49-50.
571
Trans. Emily J. Peters. J. Brosterhuizen to Huygens cited in Daan, Jo. "Het Ogelijin,” 1.

291
 The city lies very comfortably on the sea, thus one finds there
From all corners of the world, evidence
Of gems and jewels, stones, money, a few,
And clothing to be sure, very strange from the Indian land:
Various animals, and the same with plants,
[All that] has grown in earth, stone or sea, to [cause] speculation
From what one sees there, yes, works full of knowledge
That the learned man Paludanus, upon an oath,
Has fastidiously gathered, to his praise.
His work is famed in many strange lands,
Many travel great distances, it is known to many,
Those who can come here aboard many ships
Or by wagon, each according to his inclination.
Happy, indeed, is the city that lies in a good location.572

As we have already seen, among the multitude of cultural tourists who

visited our doctor-collector Paludanus, in the fortunately situated Enkhuizen, was

the soon-to-be-owner of one of Germany’s great collections of New World objects.

In 1592, Duke Friedrich of Württemberg’s secretary describes Paludanus’

collection as “a chamber of miracles,” making particular note of the Brazilian

objects that the Duke would later acquire:573

572
Thanks to Mark A. Meadow and Emily J. Peters for this translation. “De stadt leyt seer bequaem
ter zee, dus vintmen daer/ Ut all hoecken claer, des werelts, eenich blijck/ Van cieraet en cleynoodt,
ghesteenten, geldt, een paer/ En cleederen voorwaer; seer vreemt uyt’t Indisch rijck:/ Ghedierten
veelerley, oock t’ ghewas desghelijck/ Op, in, aerd’, steen, of zee, ghegroyt tot speculeringhe/ Van
also machment daer sien, ja wercken vol practijck:/ Did den gheleerden man Palidaen tot
besweringhe/ Heeft neerstlijck versaemt, hem tot eender lauderinge:/ Sijn werck dat is ruchtbaer in
menich vreemt lant/ Veel comen verd’ ghereyst, t’is menich wel bekant/ Licht men hier comen can,
met schepen abundant/ Of met waegen mee; elck na dat hy gheneghen; is/ Gheluckich is een stee;
ter goeder plaets gelegen; wis.” Hugo de Groot, in Enkhusanem, P.P.K., Historia. Dat is een
verhael in rijm van den oorspronck end fondeeringe der seer vermaerder zee ende coopstadt
Enchuysen (1603). Cited in: Daan, “Het Ogelijin,” 1, see footnote 2.
573
Thanks to Markus Friedrich for translation. “Nach Mittag hat der Statt bestalter Medicus,
Bernhardus Palludanus, der Artzney Doctor / jhren F.G. sein Wunder Kammer geyeigt / welche mit
warheit ein Wunder Kammer genent werden kan / dann er dergleichen und solche wunderbarliche
sachen / die er selbst ausss Indien unnd Egypten / und andern weit gelegnen frembden Landen zur
handt gebracht / dass nicht bald mueglich solche anderwerts also beysamen zufinden. Wie dann
umb wunders willen / derselbigen beschreibung von stuck zu stuck hernach folgt." [“After noon the
city's physician, Berhardus Palludanus, Doctor of Medicine, showed his wonder-chamber to the
Duke. And truely, this is called a chamber of wonders, since it is unlikely that one easily finds

292
 [In the]“63rd chest, [there are] 20 little chests, [with] everything from Birds
of Paradise… [to] clothing of feathers from Brazil.”574

It is worth noting that the Duke and his entourage, on the same European tour, also

visited the collections of Aldrovandi in Bologna and the Medici in Florence, both

of whom owned spectacular scarlet-colored Tupi cloaks, though the report of the

visit to Florence only rather laconically mentions that the duke was “mostly

impressed by the statues and paintings.”575

When Friedrich returned to Germany he requested objects from Paludanus’

collection, including “a couple of hundred different clothes and exotic things from

East and West India.”576 Archival evidence from 1598-99 refers specifically to the

duke buying “Indian things.”577 Since the duke of Württemberg made his purchase

shortly after his visit and just before the procession, we can further conclude that

the Brazilian materials acquired from Paludanus were those used in the Stuttgart

Queen of America spectacle.578

Paludanus’ collection is similarly connected with both Prince Maurits of

Nassau and Maurits’ friend Frederik III of Denmark (1609-1670) in regard to Tupi

featherwork. These connections led to the court of Copenhagen acquiring what is

similar and similarly wondrous objects somewhere else as he has brought together from the Indies
and from Egypt partly also on his own. Regarding the wonders it seems worthy to describe the
collection piece by piece here.”] Rathgeber, Kurtze und wahrhaffte, 44v.
574
Thanks to Markus Friedrich for translation. “Die 63. Laden hat 20 Kästlein/ darinn alles was von
frembden Vöglen/ darunter dreyerley Paradis Vögel/ und die Kleidungen von Federn aus Brasyl.”
Rathgeber, Kurtze und wahrhaffte, 54v.
576
Rathgeber, Kurtze und wahrhaffte, 54v.
577
Quoted in Bujok, Neue Welten, 110.
578
Part of the collection may also have come from Kassel. Bujok explains that, from an inventory
dating from 1638 that American costumes were used in Kassel in 1596 and would be given away to
“friendly courts” if needed. It may be possible that some of the Kassel objects were lent to
Stuttgart. No archival sources can verify this securely. Bujok, Neue Welten, 149-153.

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today the largest collection of Tupi artifacts in the world.579 So far, scholars have

largely seen Maurits of Nassau as the only likely source of the Copenhagen capes,

largely because of the documented gift of twenty-six Eckhout paintings to

Frederick III.580 No ethnographic objects are mentioned as part of Maurits’ gift to

Copenhagen, however. Today, Denmark’s National Museum has about fifty Tupi

objects, including five feathered ritual garments, among which are two full-length

scarlet-feathered capes and three half-capes, as well as headdresses, bonnets and

belts.581 Maurits may or may not have given Tupi objects to Denmark, but it is

important to keep in mind that there were other routes by which both objects and

information about them reached Stuttgart and Copenhagen.582

579
This is a highly complicated story. Paludanus was an intermediary between the Germans and
Danes. Two years after Paludanus’ death (in 1635) his heirs tried to sell his collection. Eighteen
years later, on behalf of the Danish Duke Friederich III of Schleswig-Hollstein, the cousin of the
Danish king, the German scholar Adam Olearius bought the Paludanus collection for the ducal
castle at Gottorp. From there, one hundred years later, it was transferred to Copenhagen with other
parts of the Gottorp Kunstkammer. Schepelern has researched the connections between Paludanus
and the Copenhagen court and has only been able to make a few exact matches of Brazilian objects
(a hammock, dagger, war-club, pipe, and vessel) between Paludanus’ 1617 inventory (now housed
in the Copenhagen Royal Library) and the Copenhagen kunstkammer inventories. See Schepelern,
"Naturalienkabinett,” 157-82.
580
In 1654, King Frederik III of Copenhagen received the 26 Eckhout paintings as a gift from
former Governor-General of Brazil, Prince Maurits of Nassau, who had administered Pernambuco
from 1636-44. See Copenhagen, 35. Citing Maurits as the source of the Copenhagen Tupi materials
has been recycled in almost all major Dutch-Brazil studies. There is no evidence, however, of
inventories listing Tupi artifacts and this assumption is based on the Dutch occupation of Brazil
from 1640-47, Maurits’ interest in Brazilian exotica, and his gift of the Eckhout paintings to
Copnehagen. The most persuasive visual evidence is of Maurits’ ownership of Tupi capes is the
Van Campen painting (Fig. 23). See Inge Schjellerup, "The Danish-Dutch Brazilian Connection
and the Paintings by Albert Eckhout," FOLK 34 (1992): 95-118.
581
For a complete listing of Tupi objects in Copenhagen see the “Amerika” section in Copenhagen,
17-39. This list includes musical instruments, maracás, hammocks, featherwork and weapons.
582
For a classic study of the Stuttgart Kunstkammer see: W. Fleischauer, "Die Geschichte der
Kunstkammer der Herzoge von Wurttemberg in Stuttgart,” Veröffentlichungen der Kommission fur
geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Wurttemberg Ser. B, no. 87 (1976).

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 Paludanus’ relation to Copenhagen starts with the 1617 inventory he made

of his own Cabinet, which still lists clothing made of feathers, despite having sold

many feathered garments to the Stuttgart Kunstkammer in 1598-99.583 In the

1660s, the Danish court –– through the agency of the German scholar Adam

Olearius (1603-1671) –– bought a large part of Paludanus’ collection. H.D.

Schepelern has found seventeen exact matches between the 1617 Paludanus

inventory and Tupi material in Copenhagen today. His correlations concern

weapons, musical instruments and other small objects, but Paludanus’ collection

was likely the source for other Braziliana, including the capes. This has important

implications. Maurits’ military occupation of Pernambuco, which began only in

1637, was not the only means by which Brazilian ethnographic objects entered

Europe via the Dutch. Earlier collectors and scholars like Paludanus, deeply

enmeshed in humanist, mercantile and political networks, played a crucial role in

the dissemination of Braziliana. Although no Tupi capes remain in Germany

today, inventories such as Rathgeber’s indicate that there may have been hundreds

of feathered capes circulating in German courtly collections during the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, many of them having passed through the hands of such

intermediaries as the Dutch Paludanus.584

583
Paludanus’ Brazilian holdings were extensive and his inventory of 1617 mentions “clothes and
other ornaments made of feathers,” “a box containing bird feathers.” See Schepelern,
"Naturalienkabinett,” 162.
584
Rathgeber, Kurtze und wahrhaffte. For a visual compendium of feathered images of “America”
in German-speaking lands in the early modern period see: Friedrich B. Polleross, Andrea Sommer-
Mathis, and Christopher F. Laferl, ed., Federschmuck und Kaiserkrone: Das Barocke Amerikabild
in den Habsburgischen Ländern: 10. Mai-13. September 1992, Schlosshof Im Marchfeld (Vienna:
Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1992). Also, Dresden likely had a significant

295
 In 1650-51, Jacob van Campen painted both a red and a yellow Tupinambá

cloak in the wall-size Triumphal Procession with Treasures of the East and West

in the Oranjezaal of the Huis ten Bosch (Fig. 23). We may consider this image to

be a form of processional performance of Brazilian objects (i.e., “commodities”)

for the seventeenth-century Dutch court. Sophie von der Pfalz (1630-1714),

Maurits’ niece and the future Electress of Hannover, dressed in a Tupi cape and

bonnet for a masquerade in 1646 (Fig. 35). Finally, a posthumous portrait of

Maurits’ widow, Mary Stuart, clothed her in a similar fashion. In conjunction with

the Stuttgart procession, this raises the intriguing question as to why European

nobility would choose to array themselves in garments closely associated with

lurid tales of cannibalism (Fig. 34). Certainly, these depictions of Tupi feathered

capes are indices of the larger commercial and political networks at play in the

dissemination of objects, images and knowledge about Brazil.

The Brussels cape, Goropius Becanus and imaginary etymology

As an addendum to these narratives concerning the Tupi capes in Florence, Milan,

Paris and Copenhagen, I wish to address the scantily documented Tupi capes in

Brussels (#7) and Basel (#6). I give them only brief mention, not because they do

collection of Braziliana. Only four Tupi weapons now exist in Dresden, housed at the Staatlichen
Museum für Völkerkunde. For a discussion of Dresden’s four Tupi weapons see: Klaus-Peters
Kastner and Theckla Hartmann, trans., "As Coleções do Brasil do Museu Etnográfico Estatal de
Dresden" Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia 1 (1991): 147-63; Klaus-Peter Kastner,
Indios do Brasil: Fotos históricos dos museus de etnologia de Dresden e Leipzig (São Paulo:
Instituto Hans Staden/ Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, USP, 1990). For the story of the
Brazilian bird paintings in Schloss Hoflössnitz near Dresden see Peter Mason, "Eighty Brazilian
Birds for Johann Georg" FOLK 43 (2001): 103-21. Tupi weaponry can also be found today in the
Berlin (1 item), Munich (4 items), and Vienna (3 items) ethnographic collections.

296
not merit more intensive historical study, but because more substantial archival

investigation is needed to address the question of how they reached their present

locations in Belgium and Switzerland, as well to tie them to broader European

networks of exchange. I will briefly sketch out here what is known and not known

about these two feathered objects from a historical standpoint. What both capes do

have in common is that they are physically distinct from the other extant capes, as

I have discussed in Chapter 2, Part II. The Brussels cape is likely a composite

created by sewing together two different Tupi feathered cloaks, while the Basel

cape’s textile matrix and quill size are unique.

The Brussels cape, because of its comparatively excellent physical

condition and the generosity of the Musées Royale d’Art et d’Histoire (its current

institution) –– has been displayed in many international exhibitions, resulting in a

certain amount of worldwide recognition.585 We know little or nothing about how

this Tupi cloak came to the Low Countries. It is first mentioned in a 1780

inventory compiled by Georges Gérard of the collections in the Royal Arsenal, at

the request of Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria.586 The mis-attribution of this

585
The Brussels Tupi cape, for example, came to the United States for the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.’s impressive “Circa 1492” exhibition: Levenson, Circa 1492, 574. In its
singularity, it is often the iconic example of Tupi featherwork because of the well-circulated
museum photograph.
586
The two formative articles on the Brussels Tupi cape remain: J.S. Harry Hirtzel, "Le manteau de
plumes dit de "Montezuma" des Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire de Bruxelles" Paper presented
at the Acta XXIII International Congress Americanists, New York, September 1928, 649-651;
Marguerite Calberg, "Le manteau de plumes dit ‘De Montezuma’: Musees Royaux d'art et
d'histoire a Bruxelles" Bulletin de la Societe des Amerianistes de Belgique Decembre, no. 30
(1939): 103-33.

297
Tupi cape as “Montezuma’s” cape stems from Gérard’s inventory.587 He notes that

many of the items in the Brussels Royal Arsenal came into the collection from a

Jesuit college library.588 Untangling the web of sources for the eighteenth century

Brussels royal inventory is challenging and there exist no exact references for the

Tupi cape from before 1780. Thus the cape may have had a Jesuit origin,

conceivably via the important sixteenth-century port of Antwerp.589

Antwerp, in fact, was the most significant European ports for the sugar

trade in the sixteenth century, which made a relationship with colonial Brazil

inevitable.590 In fact, one of the little known histories of sixteenth-century Brazil is

that by 1534, one of the first engenhos (sugar mills) established in Santos (along

the southern coast of Brazil) was run by the Schetz family, one of the most

important Antwerp mercantile families of the sixteenth century, whose financial

587
“Curiosités qui sont dans la Salle des Armes de Bruxelles… un manteau en plumes rouges
provenant de Montézuma…” From the 1781 M. Georges Gérard inventory cited in Hirtzel, “Le
manteau,” 649. Linking the provenance to the Mexican ruler is not surprising, especially given
France’s interest in Mexico and travel narratives about Mexico in this period. The cultural origins
of the Brussels cape were not remedied until 1980.
588
“Avant qu’on transportât au collège des ci-devants Jésuites les pieces qui composoient l’arsenal,
l’on vendit publiquement quantité d’anciennes armures qui ne furent vendues qu’au poids du fer,
parce qu’on avait negligée de rassembler les pièces qui composoient une armure complete.” Also
from the Gerard inventory and cited in Janine Schotsmans, "1835-1885" in Liber Memorialis:
1835-1985, ed. Herman de Meulenaure, 15 (Brussels: Koninklijke Musea Voor Kunst en
Geschiedenis & Musees Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, 1985).
589
Sergio Purini, Curator of the Americas at the Musées Royale d’Art et d’Histoire has suggested
that the Antwerp archives likely hold a clue to Brazilian objects coming into the Low Countries at
this early date. Personal communication, December 15, 2005. After a brief visit to the Stadsarchief
Antwerpern, I could find no codices on the Portuguese trading houses in Antwerp that mentioned
artifacts. Files do exist for Portuguese trading houses by the mid 1500s in the section called:
Privilegekamer #2, Natie van Portugal. Thanks especially to Emily J. Peters for assistance in the
Antwerp archive.
590
For a good overview of the history of Antwerp see Jan van der Stock, Antwerp: Story of a
Metropolis, 16th-17th Centuries (Antwerp: Martial & Snoeck, 1993).

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interests extended across Europe.591 Archival sources indicate that the Schetz’

family brought eighty-five Brazilian men and women to Valencia, Spain to be sold

as slaves.592 That a prominent Antwerp family was present in Brazil at such an

early date, and is documented to have brought Tupi Amerindians back to Europe,

strongly suggests that Tupi articles entered the Low Countries long before the

Dutch occupation of Brazil in the 1640s, and by means other than the scholarly

networks of Paludanus.

For example — to turn to the epigraph with which I began this chapter —

the Antwerp Jesuit humanist Goropius Becanus (1519-1572), in his 1569 book on

the antiquities of Antwerp, mentions owning a Brazilian feathered cape. He

proceeds to use the cape as material evidence in a convoluted story that ultimately

“proves” that Dutch was a language spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise.593 That

Becanus was a resident of Antwerp again ties Tupi objects and their dissemination

to the intersection of commercial, scholarly and courtly networks. Like the Dutch

port of Enkuizen, Antwerp was a probable entry point for Brazilian artifacts into

Europe.

Fastnacht in Aarau, modern ethnography and the Basel cape

591
The sugar plantation was called São Jorge dos Erasmus. Today there is an on-going excavation
of the ruins, as well as a study of the extant archival documents in Belgium archives pertaining to
the Schetz family activities. See the excavation and history project available online: Paul Meurs,
"Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos, the Remains of an Early Multinational," Arquitextos (2006),
http://vitruvius.com.br/ arquitextos/arq070/arq070_031.asp.
592
Caballos, Indios, 141-143.
593
See note [1] above

299
The Basel cape (#6) is the only one of the eleven discussed in this dissertation that

has no provenance history prior to the late nineteenth century. The earliest

reference to it that we have places it in a modern geographic and ethnographic

society, which introduces the final stage of all of these capes, their lives within

modern institutional museums.

It entered the collection of the ethnographic museum in Basel –– now

called the Museum der Kulturen –– in 1918 via an Aarau geographic society

devoted to exploration.594 Called the Mittelschweizerischen Geographisch-

Commerzielle Gesellschaft, the society was formed in 1885 by a prominent group

of doctors devoted to the ethnographic study of South America.595 The Society

held an exhibition of the objects brought back from their travels to Paraguay and

Brazil. It is thought that the Basel cape was procured during their travels.

Curiously paralleling what we have seen in sixteenth-century Germany and France,

it was apparently worn in an Aarau Fastnacht (carnival) festival before 1888,

594
The seminal articles for the Basel cape: Métraux, "Une rarite”; Seiler-Baldinger, "Der
Federmantel,”; Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger, "Basels Beitrag zur Kenntnis Lateinamerikas: 1493-
1930" Societe suisse des Americanistes/ Schweizerische Amerikanisten-Gesellschaft 66-67 (2002-
2003): 161-75. Special thanks to Curator Dr. Alexander Brust, and Dr. Annmarie Seiler-Baldinger,
for discussing this cape with me in Basel, January 24, 2006.
595
Dr. Emil Hassler (1864-1937) founded the Society, and Carl Buhrer was the secretary. Hassler
had an extensive South American collection of objects, especially Gran Chaco materials. He lived
in Paraguay and died in Asunción. In 1883 he went to Matto Grosso. The most extensive
documentation available on the Society can be found in the Aarau archives. I obtained a microfilm
of their holdings from the Staatsarchiv Kanton Aargau, manuscript 0265/0001. Thanks to archvist
Martin Lüdi for his assiatnce. There is no mention of the cape in the surviving documentation of the
Society. For a history of the Society see also: Hermann Brunnhofer, Ueber Zweckund Ziel der
Mittelschweizerischen Geographisch-Commerciellen Gesellschaft in Aarau (Aarau: Votrag, 1887).

300
which may account for an arm-hole cut in the cape.596 When the Society went

bankrupt in several years later, they sold off their objects, with the ethnographic

museum in Basel acquiring the artifact. The late date at which the cape first

appears is remarkable, given the extremely fragile nature of these capes and the

fact that the Tupi were extinct by the early eighteenth century. If this cape were

procured during the Swiss doctors’ travels it would be the only example we have

of Tupinambá featherwork that was preserved in Brazil beyond the seventeenth

century. It is possible, however, that the geographic society could have acquired

this cape through European contacts. Whatever the case may be, it is an instance of

an object appeared only after the establishment of institutional ethnographic

collections and an object that, even in the nineteenth century, was used in a

communal ritual festivity, echoing the much earlier stately fêtes of Rouen and

Stuttgart.

Conclusion: objects, images, texts and the making of colonialism

The mental universe of the early modern colonial world drew heavily upon the

evidence provided by, and the lore associated with, material objects. The Tupi

materials in general –– and the splendid capes in particular – are a case in point.

Images, texts, and objects together all fed the early modern imaginary of the

exotic. In fact, only the combined effects of these media make it possible to

596
The odd part about this armhole is that there is only one of them, and it is structurally part of the
textile matrix, thus not something that was spliced into the fabric at a later date. Also, though this
cape has never been conserved, it is in remarkable condition. The color of the feathers is still vivid.

301
understand the complex origins of early modern perceptions of the Americas.

Hence, a collective “cultural biography of objects” –– to use Igor Kopytoff’s term

–– must be an integral part of further attempts to reconstruct the conceptual

framework of the colonial world.597 Collecting as a cultural practice, the studioli,

Kunst- und Wunderkammern, and early natural history collections and their

constructions of the Tupi, inevitably played a role in this history.

As did ideas, objects circulated within a social space, through intersecting

social, economic and political networks. In the process, they were transformed into

commodities to be bought and sold, gifted and bartered. The Medici family,

Aldrovandi, Settala, Thevet, Paludanus and others were all nexus points within

these networks. Merchants, princes, scholars, physicians and cosmographers, they

demonstrate that the dissemination of Tupi artifacts and the discourse concerning

the Tupinambá was shaped by a wide range of people and personalities. Their

interlinkages with one another and with the artifacts were enacted through the

complex system of social networks that were required to transport and transfer

exotic objects in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through the webs of

colonialism, scholarship, trade, and diplomacy, these figures aided in making

Florence, Paris, Copenhagen, Brussels and Basel resting places for some of the last

remnants of Tupi culture, and participated in the process of the “Tupinambization”

of early modern Europe.

597
Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process " in The Social
Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 64-94 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).

302
 In the course of their lives, Tupi feathered capes thus assumed multivalent

roles in varied cultural contexts, embodying different types of knowledge for their

various owners and viewers. As mediated by colonial accounts, the Tupi appear to

have valued the capes as essential components in highly charged religious and

communal ceremonies, as well as as precious commodities. Missionaries and

merchants carried Tupi plumage back to Europe as material evidence of their

experiences and as commercial evidence of the new economic potential of

brazilwood of the territories. In Europe, merchants sold and traded feathered

artifacts, scholars and collectors studied them, and princes and queens wore them.

In modern times these objects have again lived very different lives, for the most

part stored away, riddled with dust and mites, and in one case, destroyed by the

bombs of WWII. As I explore in the coda, the contemporary relevance of these

objects to Brazilian national identity derives from this long colonial history of

these objects in exile.

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 Coda:

Contemporary Constructions: The Afterlife of Tupi Featherwork in

Brazilian Art

I had an artistic sensibility especially linked to music, as well as a fascination

[from my father] about collecting Brazilian birds. For him, the beauty of a bird was
something seductive. From an early age I became accustomed to these things, to
seeing marvelously colored birds, like the red-crested cardinal and many others. I
had an interest in the arts, yes, but it wasn’t something flaunted, no one considered
it intellectual. Both the taste for music and the curiosity for birds were spontaneous
sentiments in the family. I felt like I was living in an indigenous village because at
home we had something like thirty toucans, fifty parrots; it was an exaggeration.
My lived experience with the beauties of music and of birds was something
natural.
––– Lygia Pape, Palavras do artista, 1998598

The indigenous objects in Brazil: Body and Soul are neither inert nor static. They
each have a role in the “performance” of the lives of the peoples who created them.
In confrontation with the depictions of Brazil by painters such as Post and
Eckhout, they take on an active role as paradigms of the civilizations European
artists have sought to depict and possess. In a larger context, the performative
aspect of these objects, their inherent activity, adumbrates or parallels similar
concepts of theatricality, absorption, and integration inherent in the
conceptualization of other works of Brazilian art.
––– Edward J. Sullivan, “Brazil: Body and Soul,” 2001599

Lygia Pape’s (1929-2004) artwork –– Tupinambá Cloak (2000) –– is a mixed

media installation featuring a large red cloth stretched across the space of the room

598
Trans. mine. “Havia uma sensibilidade artística especialmente ligada à música, além da
curiosidade de meu pai em colecionar pássaros brasileiros. Para ele, a beleza do pássaro era algo
sedutor. Desse modo me acostumei, desde pequena, a olhar pássaros de cores maravilhosas, como o
cardeal e muitos outros. Havia um interesse pelas artes, sim, mas não era algo alardeado, ninguém
se considerava intellectual. O gosto pela música e a curiosidade por pássaros eram atitudes
espontâneas dentro da família. Eu me sentia morando numa taba porque, em casa, tínhamos algo
em torno de trinta tucanos, cinqüenta araras; era um exagero. A minha convivência com a beleza da
música e dos pássaros era algo natural.” Lygia Pape, Lygia Pape: Entrevista a Lucia Carneiro e
Ileana Pradilla (Rio de Janeiro: Lacerda Editores; Centro de Arte Helio Oiticica, 1998), 8.
599
Edward J. Sullivan, "Brazil: Body and Soul," in Brazil: Body & Soul, edited by Edward J.
Sullivan, 8 (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2001).

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(Fig. 57).600 This installation was most recently shown in the Guggenheim’s

Brazil: Body and Soul exhibition that was held in New York City during 2001-

2002.601 This highly controversial exhibition charted the heritage of Brazilian

visual culture over a five hundred year period, though the focus of the exhibition

was on the Brazilian Baroque.602 Pape’s red cloth is pitched with wire strings to

nearby beams, extending all the way to the floor, appearing almost like a tent in the

forest canopy. The bright red vinyl cloth is filled with orbs of red ibis feathers that

have dismembered limbs –– bloodied hands, feet, and bones ––– peeking out of the

plumed spheres. The red canopy was metaphorically and metonymically evocative

of ibis and parrot feathers, of cannibalism, of the blood of the dismembered

victims of colonialism whose hands extend out of the orbs and lay upon the

canopy, and thus are suggestive of the Tupi. The canopy hovers above dark

metallic balls filled with cockroaches that structurally and visually anchor the

fabric tent above, and provide an earthy echo of the red-feathered spheres above.

Pape’s piece, in the spirit of Andrade’s 1928 Anthropophagite Manifesto discussed

in Chapter 1 –– “Tupy or not Tupy, that is the question.” –– engages the museum

goer with an aggressive visual display of Brazilian history, of Brazilian modernist

metaphors, of cannibal tropes, and of the creation of an artistic language that links

a Tupi past to a Brazilian present in the confines of a museum space.

600
Lygia Pape, Tupinambá Cloak, 2000, mixed media, 150 x 800 x 800 cm. Collection of the artist.
601
For the 600-page catalogue see Sullivan, ed., Brazil: Body and Soul, plate 305. The show was
held in New York from October 11, 2001-January 27, 2002 and was supposed to proceed to the
Bilbao Guggenheim from March 23-September 29, 2002, but was canceled due to “lender
apprehension” [i.e., terrorism risks].
602
For a review of the exhibition see Edward Leffingwell, "Discovering the Art of Brazil," Art in
America 90, no. 5 (2002): 108-17.

305
 I use Pape’s piece in this coda not to forge ahead into another realm of

historical inquiry in relation to the Tupi. Instead, I use her piece as a beginning, as

a way to show the possibilities of future investigations regarding the ingestion of

Tupi culture and Tupi cloaks as enigmatic symbols of culture for modern and

contemporary Brazil. The scarlet Tupi cloaks have lived in exile for the last five

centuries, gaining meaning and producing knowledge along their journeys. In

Pape’s installation, we can see an instance of the return or artistic repatriation of

the metaphor, of the power of early modern narratives and infamous and rare

museum objects that serve as figures for continuing political commentary and

performances of cultural identity.

In the end, the piece is most successful, like all of Pape’s artworks, in

engaging the viewer as a participant in the construction of meaning, both of history

and current Brazilian social conditions. As the contemporary art critic Luiz

Camillo Osorio has recently pointed out in regard to Pape’s work:

The wish to make visible the forces of cultural resistance that mobilize a
creative process or, rather, to bring about a confrontation with the
established order in the name of a potential social transformation, is evident
in many of her [Pape’s] works and the artistic ideas presented from the time
of her Master’s dissertation on.603

Of course, knowing some of the history of the Tupi capes helps viewers construct

meaning when viewing Pape’s installation. In fact, the first audience for the

Tupinambá Cloak was not the New York City spectators, but Brazilians

603
Luiz Camillo Osorio, "Lygia Pape: Experimentation and Resistance," Third Text 20, no. 5
(2006): 583.

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themselves, who likely knew far more about the origins of Pape’s materials and

cultural quotations.

One year prior to the Guggenheim exhibition, this work was revealed to a

large public for the São Paulo exhibition commemorating the 500 year anniversary

of Cabral’s “discovery”: the Brasil +500 Mostra do Redescobrimento [Brazil 500

Years Rediscovery] exhibition of 2000.604 This piece was one of Pape’s last major

works of her career, fusing many of the ideas and themes of her oeuvre.

Commentators on the show clearly understood the political context of the

installation.

In the dissertation she discusses the relationship between experimentation,

resistance, and adversity, a relationship visible in at least two works from
her final years: Manto Tupinambá (Tupinambá Robe) (2000) and
Carandirú (2001). The former existed in several versions, of which the one
produced for the exhibition to commemorate 500 years since the discovery
of Brazil had the most impact. Nothing could have greater political impact
than bringing to the fore this memory of the defeated. It was an installation
consisting of balls with red feathers, some of which held pieces of
dismembered bodies –– hands, feet, heads, etc. Carandirú refers back to
this work. Made for her solo show at the Hélio Oiticica Art Centre at the
end of 2001, this installation mixed images of prisoners with Tupinambá
Indian designs reproduced by Hans Staden. It is relevant to point out that
Carandirú was the prison where an uprising by its inmates in 1992 resulted
in a massacre and 111 deaths. Both Indians and prisoners were decimated
and marginalized; a whole cultural heterogeneity is destroyed in the name
of the civilizing process. Her interest in these wasted energies is one of the
ethical and political hallmarks of Pape’s artistic approach. Inside the
exhibition space, a great red waterfall symbolized oppression and intensity.
As always, the physical beauty of her installations lent power to their
political impact rather than obscuring it.605

604
This show was held from April 23-September 7, 2000 at the Parque Ibirapuera in São Paulo. The
exhibition was enormous and required a catalogue in 14 volumes. Fundação Bienal de São Paulo,
and Associação Brasil 500 Anos Artes Visuais, eds., Mostra do Redescobrimento, 14 vols (São
Paulo: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo: Brasil 500 Anos Artes Visuais, 2000).
605
Osorio, “Lygia Pape,” 583.

307
Osorio’s comments again highlight the consumptive nature of Pape’s artistic

practice, quoting past events from Brazilian history, and in a sense, resurrecting,

like the Brazilians modernistas, the idea of the Tupi as icon: Tupi bravery and Tupi

cannibalism stand for modes of resistance against European domination.606 In this

case the Tupi become an icon for the marginalized, defeated and subaltern

populations of contemporary Brazil, whether living indigenous groups or prisoners

in São Paolo jails. The stories of these marginalized others –– as Pape visually

evokes them through the image of the cockroaches (i.e., contemporary indigenous

populations) –– are linked to the story of the Tupinambá, and linked to the story of

Brazil’s colonialism and metaphorical resistance efforts.

The Copenhagen Tupinambá cape (#1) was loaned to the São Paolo

exhibition, and so was present in the same show as Pape’s installation. As I

mentioned in the Introduction, the presence of the Copenhagen cape was the

source of great controversy.607 It was the first, and so far only, time that one of the

Tupi capes returned from Europe to Brazil since they left in the early modern

period. The reputation of the Tupi had changed over the intervening centuries,

eventually becoming multivalent icons of Brazilian identity and symbols of

resistance to both colonial powers and the central government. Local indigenous

groups demanded the repatriation of the Danish cloak, attracting considerable

606
Pape’s use of the Staden woodcuts in a Rio de Janeiro installation can be seen in the exhibition
catalogue: Paulo Sergio Duarte, ed. Lygia Pape. Rio de Janeiro: Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica,
2002.
607
See Introduction, note [15]

308
attention from the press. Enigmatic, beautiful and the center of a controversy, this

artifact was the only object in the exhibition to gain such popular press attention. If

nothing else, this speaks to the endurance of the Tupi cloak as an exiled object, an

artifact that has taken on powerful meaning for contemporary indigenous Brazilian

constituents as an artifact of their own cultural past, of an “originary” indigenous

Brazilian culture. The cape was returned to Copenhagen and will likely never be

loaned to Brazil for fear both that it might never come back and that it might again

spark a heated political and museological dilemma.

Pape engaged her viewers with the Tupinambá Cloak –– which was to hang

in the “Encounter” rooms of the Guggenheim exhibition with other modern

Brazilian featherwork –– as a dialogue with the material foundations of a Brazilian

historical past, merging it with the “cannibal” myths of Tupi and Brazilian culture

defined by European chroniclers. One of the centerpieces of the New York City

exhibition was intended to be, again, the Tupi cloak from Copenhagen (#1), to be

placed elsewhere in the exhibition. Had it been present, Pape’s Tupinambá Cloak,

through its title, the use of feathers and the vibrant reds of her installation and its

intended proximity to the actual Tupi artifact nearby, would have resonated

powerfully with viewers. Pape’s work, an ingestion of the Tupi, to use Andrade’s

formulation, redeploys the Tupi in a complex mixture of national identity, political

critique and personal memory. When Denmark cancelled the loan of its cape

following September 11, Pape’s Tupinambá Cloak instead became a “stand-in” for

309
the missing Danish Tupi vestment, resulting in a profoundly different relationship

than had first been envisioned.

I use Pape’s installation as a coda to the dissertation, to think about ways in

which the Tupi feathered capes –– as the first objects of a “Brazilian” visual

culture –– have been framed by artists and museums. For example, contemporary

art critic Nelson Aguilar, writing about Pape’s installation in the Guggenheim

show, suggests that Pape intended this tent to be like a “red cloud,” and

furthermore claims that Pape was visually engaging with Staden’s captivity

narrative on several levels. His comments were likely based on her use of Staden’s

woodcuts in previous artworks.608 Aguilar claims a biographical component. In a

strange biographical turn, Aguilar links Pape’s fascination and dialogue with the

Tupi to her own childhood. He claims that Pape grew up in the Cabo Frio region,

which had been a home of the Tupi until their extermination by slavery and

disease. He further postulates that invoking Tupi cannibalism for Pape is not

simply an expression of nationalist sentiment, as it had been for Andrade, but a

stinging critique of an unjust society:

In modern times, cannibalism came to represent the assimilation of certain

aspects of dominant cultures in the formation of national identity, and the
process of going outside oneself without losing one’s individuality. Pape
offers a different interpretation. The flight of the cloak, propelled by the red
plastic and the feathers in her piece, lands on heavy dark balls spread out
on the floor and surrounded by insects: While the country strives to reach
the stature of a mythical bird, the everyday reality of the lives of the
indigenous peoples is no better than that of insects.609

608
Nelson Aguilar, "Nine Times Brazil," in Brazil: Body and Soul, ed. Edward J. Sullivan, 491
(New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2001).
609
Aguilar, “Nine Times,” 492.

310
If one is to take Aguilar’s biographical suggestion further, one could also say that

the Tupi culture of feathers must have also held substantial fascination for Pape as

well, given her childhood love of Brazilian birds, mentioned in the epigraph above.

Perhaps, then, Aguilar’s commentary is best seen as highlighting the debates and

tensions inherent in the interpretations of Pape’s work as cultural assemblage,

political commentary, and biography.

Two cinematic directors in Brazil bear mentioning in closing as they,

perhaps, bridge the gap even more emphatically between early modern text and

twentieth-century dissemination of cultural stories. These directors, like Pape,

conceptualize the Tupi past through the story of the German gunner Hans Staden

and his captivity among the Tupinambá in the early sixteenth century. Directors

Nelson Pereira dos Santos in his award-winning film How Tasty was My Little

Frenchman (1971) and Luis Alberto Pereira in his film Hans Staden (1999), utilize

their respective reenactments of this colonial encounter as the means to explore

issues of cultural performance, especially in regards to translation, sound, and

ritual.610 They place emphasis not just on Staden’s story as an emblem of

indigenous resistance to colonization but also on his attempts to persuade the Tupi

to make cultural distinctions of their own, claiming to be French, not German, and

thus an ally who was to be spared from being ritually consumed in a cannibal feast.

610
For a discussion of How Tasty was My Little Frenchman within the history of Brazilian cinema
see: Robert Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema
and Culture, Latin America Otherwise (Durham N.C.; London: Duke University Press, 1997);
Ismail Xavier, Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian
Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

311
These movies especially highlight the need to work through and understand the

mythic role of the Tupi and cannibalization for making and remaking Brazilian

history. Thus the institutionalization and performance of Tupinambá culture

happens just as much in modern museum spaces today, or on Brazilian DVD’s, as

it did in the early modern period.

The Staden movies, like Pape’s Tupinambá Cloak, and like this

dissertation, are all constructions of the Tupi. In Chapter 1, we encountered the

construction of the dangerous and cannibalistic Tupi –– their garments part of

various celebrations and ceremonies associated with war-like behavior,

anthropophagy and elaborate magico-religious belief systems, as seen through the

early modern narratives of such figures as Thevet, Staden and Léry. Chapter 2

explored the construction of the Tupi as a craftsman of his/her natural world, tied

to avian life and the materials of the coastal forest, as seen through the eyes of such

chroniclers as the French Capuchins. Within the mission aldeias we further saw

the Tupi constructed by the Jesuits according to precepts of salvation and

accommodation, their featherwork incorporated into Christian ritual and collected

and transported to Europe as rarified objects. Once in Europe, the Tupi capes

served to fashion still other visions of the Tupi. In Rouen the Tupi were seen both

as an economically beneficial “savage” and a noble ally in the political struggle

with Portugal over control of Brazil, while in Stuttgart the Tupi served to exalt the

prince through the visual brilliance of a court festival. Aldrovandi constructed the

312
Tupi as an ornithological curiosity, while for Paludanus the Tupi served as an

index of the Netherlands as a scholarly and economic nexus.

Finally, in modern and contemporary Brazil the Tupi were and are once

again constructed for particular purposes. For Métraux they served as untainted

“primitive” peoples, while for the modernists, Pape, and twentieth-century

filmmakers, they serve as a Brazilian artistic alter ego and a formidable

counterforce to European cultural colonialism. My project also constructs the Tupi

within a narrative of mobility –– one that crosses historic and temporal spaces and

places and seeks to highlight the shifting meaning and function of Tupi capes as

objects in motion and objects in exile. Displaced from Brazil for early modern

economic motives related to brazilwood and sugar, these feathered cloaks continue

their peripatetic lives. Housed as treasures of European natural history and

ethnography museums, they are now the objects of an art historian’s scrutiny.

313
Figure 1. Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, 1669, oil on panel, 50.8 x 66 cm,
owned by The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
On loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

314
Figure 2. Tupi cape in the museum of Manfredo Settala, Milan.
From Scarabelli inventory, 1666, engraving.

315
Figure 3. Tupi feathered cape, Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling,
EH391, 120 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

316
Figure 4. André Thevet, Funerary Procession in The Peculiarities of France
Antarctique, (Antwerp, 1558), woodcut.

317
Figure 5. Tupi flute, Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling, EHb28,
human bone, 18 cm. Photo: Amy J. Buono.

318
Figure 6. Hans Staden, Tupi village, in The True History of his Captivity,
(Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

319
Figure 7. Theodore de Bry & sons, Pajés Dancing, in Grand voyages, 1590-1634,
hand-colored engraving.

320
Figure 8. Tupi maracá, Frankfurt, Museum der Weltkulturen (N.S. 25818), wood,
seeds and feathers, 56 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

321
Figure 9. Theodore de Bry & sons, “Cannibal” grill scene, in Grand voyages,
1590-1634, color engraving.

322
Figure 10. Hans Staden, Tupi Lip and Cheek Plugs, in The True History of his
Captivity, (Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

323
Figure 11. Hans Staden, Palisaded village, in The True History of his Captivity,
(Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

324
Figures 12 & 13. Hans Staden, Tupi War-club and Consecration of a War-club, in
The True History of his Captivity, (Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

325
Figure 14. Hans Staden, Cauim drinking, in The True History of his Captivity,
(Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

326
Figure 15. Hans Staden, Execution scene, in The True History of his Captivity,
(Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

327
 Figure 16. Hans Staden, Tupi “couple,” in
The True History of his Captivity, (Frankfurt, 1557), woodcut.

328
Figure 17. Tupi feathered bonnet, Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling,
EH5932, 29 cm., down parrot feather,
Photo: Amy J. Buono.

329
Figure 18. Hans Staden, Enduap, in The True History of his Captivity,
(Marburg, 1557), woodcut.

330
Figure 19. Jean de Léry, Tupi Man Wearing an enduap, in History of a Voyage to
the Land of Brazil, otherwise Called America, (Genève, 1580), woodcut.

331
Figure 20. Anon (possibly Albert Eckhout), Gúara [Scarlet ibis], in Schloss
Hoflössnitz, near Dresden, Germany, oil painting on ceiling, c1650s.

332
Figure 21. Tupi diadem, Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling,
EHc56, red and blue scarlet macaw feathers, 65 cm.

333
Figure 22. Tupi cape, Milan, Museum Septalianum, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, [no
accession number], 155 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

334
Figure 23. Jacob van Campen, Triumphal Procession with Treasures from East
and West, c. 1650-51, oil on canvas, 380 x 205 cm.,
The Hague, Huis ten Bosch Royal Palace, Oranjezaal.

335
Figure 24. Identifying Milan cape feather as “red & green macaw” (Milan feather
held against real bird sample), Smithsonian, Museum of Natural History,
Division of Birds, October 2007.

336
 Figure 25. Sample scarlet ibis from Brazil,
Smithsonian, Museum of Natural History, Division of Birds,
October 2007, Photo: Amy J. Buono.

337
Figure 26. Identifying Milan cape “yellow” feather as a tapirage feather (Milan
feather held against red ibis bird sample). Smithsonian, Museum of Natural
History, Division of Birds, October 2007, Photo Amy J. Buono.

338
Figure 27: Two modern feather boxes from Amazonia.

339
 Figure 28. Tupi feathered “rectangular” cape with tassels, Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet, Etnografisk Samling, Ehc52, 110cm, Photo: Amy J. Buono.

340
Figure 29. Tupi feathered half-cape, Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling, EH5933,
60 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

341
 Figure 30. Tupi feathered half-cape, Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling, EH5934, 52 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

342
 Figure 31. Tupi feathered half-cape with collar, Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet Etnografisk Samling, EH5935, 60 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

343
Figure 32. Tupi feathered “trapezoidal” cape, Basel, Museum der Kulturen,
N. IVc657, 116 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

344
 Figure 33. Tupi feathered “modular” cape, Brussels,
Musées Royale d’Art et d’Histoire, AAM 578, 188 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

345
Figure 34. Tupi feathered “rectangular” cape, Florence, Museo di Storia Naturale,
Universitá degli Studi di Firenze, n. 281, 110 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

346
Figure 35. Tupi feathered “trapezoidal” cape, Florence, Museo di Storia Naturale,
Universitá degli Studi di Firenze, n. 288, 110 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

347
Figure 36. Tupi feathered “trapezoidal” cape with bonnet, Paris,
Musée du quai Branly, #17.3.83, 121 cm., Photo: Amy J. Buono.

348
Figure 37. Anonymous, Queen of America Procession, Stuttgart 1598-99, Weimar,
Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen, Schlossmuseum, Graphische
Sammlung, 29.6-30.5 x 38.6-56.3 cm. Quill drawing on paper with bister,
watercolor, opaque and gold.

349
Figure 38. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Homo sylvestris plumario Indutus pileo
ad bellum profuiscens ex novo orbe, Bologna, 1599,
(BUB, Tav. Animali, Vol. I, c. 74, p. 70), drawing with watercolor.

350
Figure 39. Unknown Italian artist, Manfredo Settala Codex, Tupi feathered
cape with bonnet, Modena, 1640-1660,
(BEU, MS 338 Campori TQVV, H1.20, f. 5r), gouache.

351
 Figure 40. Pedro and Jorge Reinal, Lope Homen (cartographers) and António de
Holanda (miniaturist), Atlas Miller, 1519, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris,
6 parchment leaves (8 maps 41.5 x 59 cm. and 2 maps, 61 x 117 cm.).

352
Figure 41. Theodore de Bry & sons, Cauim drinking, in Grand voyages,
1590-1634, hand-colored engraving.

353
 Figure 42. Hans Weigel, Woman in a Brazilian cape, Habitus praecipuorum
populorum, tam virorum quam foeminarum: Trachtenbuch darin fast allerley und
der fürnembsten Nationen, (Nüremberg, 1577), woodcut.

354
Figure 43. Adriaen Hanneman, Posthumous Portrait of Mary I Stuart (1631-1660)
with a Servant [in a Brazilian cape], 1664,
oil on canvas, 129.5 x 119.3 cm., Mauritshuis.

355
Figure 44. Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz, Portrait of Sophie von der Pfalz [in a
Brazilian cape], c. 1646, oil on panel, 104 x 86 cm.,
Museum Wasserburg Anholt, Isselburg.

356
Figure 45. Technical drawing of feather binding technique.

357
Figu
re 46. Heinrich Scherer, Societas Iesu per universum mundum diffusa praedicat
Christi evangelium, Atlas Novus, Part II, Geographica Hierarchia, (Munich, ca.
1700), Map size: 23 x 35 cm.

358
Figure 47. Zacharias Wagner, Aldea, 1631- c.1641, Thierbuch
(Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden), watercolor.

359
 Figure 48. Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, 1669, det. of Fig. 1: Market, oil on
panel, 50.8 x 66 cm, owned by The Catholic University of America, Washington,
D.C. On loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

360
 Figure 49. Frans Post, Indians in the Forest, 1669, det. of Fig. 1: Capes, oil on
panel, 50.8 x 66 cm, owned by The Catholic University of America, Washington,
D.C. On loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

361
Figure 50. Louis de Merval, Joyous Entry into Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale de
Rouen, MS 1268 (y28), c1551, hand-colored engraving.

362
Figure 51. Anonymous German artist, Tupi Men and Women,
(Augsburg or Nüremberg) c. 1504, woodcut,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, 13. 5 x 8.5 in.

363
 Figure 52. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Regina insulae Floridae plumario tecta velo,
Bologna 1599, (BUB, Tav. Animali, Vol. 1, c. 75, p. 71), drawing with watercolor.

364
Figure 53. Ulisse Aldrovandi, page from German edition of Ornithologia,
(Frankfurt, 1610-1621, Wolfgang Richter and Nikolaus Basse),
(BUB, A.IV.H III.-10).

365
 Figure 54. Unknown Italian Artist, Manfredo Settala Codex,
Tupi Headdress, Modena, 1640-1660
(BEU, MS 338 Campori TQVV, H1.21, f. 6r), drawing with gouache.

366
Figure 55. Carved oak panels from Rouen showing brazilwood extraction, c. 1503-
1549. Originally housed on the Hôtel l’Isle-du-Brésil. Musées Départementaux de
Seine-Maritime, Musés de Antiquités, Rouen.

367
 Figure 56. Bernardus Paludanus, Album Amicorum,
Inscription by Duke Friedrich of Württemberg, 1592
(Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, Special Collections: 133 M 63).

368
Figure 57. Lygia Pape, Tupinambá Cloak, 2000, mixed media,
150 x 800 x 800 cm., collection of artist.

369
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