Brazilian Indians today form a contingent that represents around 0.47% of the Brazilian population.
According to the IBGE census (2010), there are 896,917 indigenous people in the country, of which around 60% live in indigenous lands officially recognized by the federal government.
Of this number, 324,834 live in cities and 572,083 in rural areas. The northern region has the largest indigenous population in the country.
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
According to the IBGE census (2010), there are 305 ethnic groups in Brazil. Among them, there are two main trunks:
Macro-Jê: which include the Boróro, Guató, Jê, Karajá, Krenák, Maxakali, Ofayé, Rikbaktsa and Yatê groups.
Tupi: where the Arikém, Awetí, Jurúna, Mawé, Mondé, Mundurukú, Puroborá, Ramaráma, Tuparí and Tupi-Guarani are located.
The 10 main indigenous tribes in Brazil
According to data from the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), the tribes that stand out the most for number of inhabitants they are:
- Guarani: Originally from the Tupi-Guarani linguistic family, the Guaraní have a population of around 85 thousand in the country. They live in several states in Brazil and are divided into three groups: kaiowá, mbya and ñadevaesse.
- Ticuna: belonging to the Ticuna linguistic family, it has about 50 thousand inhabitants - who live in the Amazon, especially on the banks of the Solimões River. They are considered the largest indigenous group living in the region.
- Caingang: originating from the trunk of the macro-Jê linguistic family, the Caingangues gather around 45 thousand people. They are in four Brazilian states: São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
- Makushi: From the Karib linguistic family, the Macuxis are found, to a great extent, in the state of Roraima. About 30,000 indigenous people live in villages and small isolated dwellings across the state.
- Guajajara: from the Tupi-Guarani family, the 27 thousand existing Guajajaras live in the state of Maranhão.
- terena: from the Arawak linguistic family, there are about 26 thousand people of this ethnic group in the Brazilian territory. They are found in the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo.
- Yanomami: from the Yanomami linguistic family, this group gathers around 26 thousand people in the states of Amazonas and Roraima.
- Xavante: originating from the trunk of the macro-jê linguistic family, the Xavantes have a population of 18,000 inhabitants, who are concentrated in indigenous reserves in the state of Mato Grosso.
- Potiguara: belong to the Tupi-Guarani language family. The potiguaras total about 18 thousand people in the states of Paraíba, Ceará, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte.
- Pataxó: from the Pataxó linguistic family, this group gathers around 12 thousand people in the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais.
Indigenous culture
Indigenous culture is diverse, and each ethnic group has its own habits and a way of relating to the world. Still, many tribes share similar ways of life, rituals, and social organization.
indigenous languages
Currently, there are 274 indigenous languages in Brazil, according to the 2010 IBGE census. Many of them arose from the Tupi and Macro-Jê linguistic trunks.
Orality is something notorious in indigenous communities, and much of the culture is transmitted in this way.
Social organization in indigenous societies
In general, the Indians of Brazil live in collective housing, sharing huts or malocas, usually made of wood and straw.
These large places are without divisions and usually house several families.
The division of tasks is very clear in indigenous societies, so that men are in charge of hunting, defending the territory and building.
The women are in charge of planting and harvesting food, in addition to taking care of the children and producing the utensils and ornaments used by the tribe.
indigenous religion
The indigenous religion, roughly speaking, is pantheistic, where there is not only one figure related to a creator being. In religious rituals, the Indians tend to revere ancestral beings and nature.
The shaman, also called a shaman, is responsible for mediating between the spiritual and earthly world. Rituals vary between tribes and can occur by taking some substances (usually hallucinogenic), which will make the connection between the spiritual and material worlds.
indigenous art
Indigenous art is extremely rich and manifests itself in music, dance, feather art, basketry, pottery, weaving and body painting.
The use of colors and certain materials are related to rites of passage, agricultural and everyday celebrations.
Among the tribes of Brazil, we can especially mention the Marajoara pottery, which uses countless geometric shapes to compose domestic utensils.
History of Brazilian Indians
First inhabitants of Brazil, at the time of the discoveries there were about 5 million indigenous people spread across the country.
When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, they found an indigenous population that inhabited the coast. The Indians Cabral encountered in Bahia belonged to the Tupi linguistic group.
At first, contacts between Indians and whites were reasonably cordial and marked by barter, that is, the exchange of products.
The work of felling the brazilwood and preparing the wood for shipment was done by the indigenous people, in exchange for clothes, necklaces, mirrors, knives, saws and axes.
When the Portuguese implanted a colonial system and intended to transform the Indian into an agricultural slave, he segregated them on the plantations and deprived them of hunting, fishing and fighting enemies. Thus, a war broke out between whites and Indians.
Indigenous populations lost their lands and suffered progressive annihilation.
The captaincy of São Vicente (São Paulo), in the 16th and 17th centuries, was the greatest example of this. From there departed the Indian hunting banners, which promoted veritable wars of extermination.
Indigenous society in colonial times
The Brazilian Indian lived in a primitive community regime, where community production prevailed.
Work was divided according to sex and age. The women took care of the crops, the children and cooked. Mainly corn, beans, cassava, yam, sweet potato, pumpkin and tobacco were planted.
Men hunted, fished, built tabas, fought and prepared the soil for farming.
Food obtained from hunting, fishing, gathering and farming was shared among all members of the community.
The Indians lived in huts, where they slept in hammocks and mats. The huts were built of thatch or palm trees. They were distributed around a large circle, where the Indians had their meals and their religious ceremonies.
The set of hollows formed the village or taba. Several tabas formed a tribe and a set of tribes formed a nation.
The Indians worshiped several gods, admitting a superior trinity composed of Guaraci (the sun), Jaci (the moon) and Perudá or Rodá (god of love). The religious head of the village was the shaman, who had magical powers.
They worshiped the forces of nature (wind, rain, lightning, thunder) and were afraid of evil spirits.
One of these evil spirits, for example, was the Jurupari, which caused nightmares and tightened the throats of children at night.
Marriage was monogamous, although chiefs had as many wives as they could support, as the number of wives was a prestige factor in certain tribes.
When a young man wanted to marry a girl from another group, he worked for his future father-in-law for a time.
For the Carajas, a young man who carried a very heavy wooden trunk was considered suitable for marriage, and among the curinas, the bride and groom had to endure a whipping.
Anthropophagy among the Indians
When the Indians needed new hunting grounds, due to the scarcity of animals, or when they wanted more fertile land, they used war.
Thus developed, generation after generation, a warrior ideal of masculinity, courage and strength.
Anthropophagy among the Indians was not caused by the absence of food. The Indians devoured their fellow men for two reasons: revenge and ancestor worship.
In some tribes the members of the tribe who died of natural death were also devoured. They believed that in this way they assimilated the virtues of the deceased relative.
Indigenous nations in colonial times
Since colonial times, there has been an interest in getting to know the indigenous people, in order to make them allies against invasions by other Europeans.
Thus, the first way to understand the indigenous people was to gather them into linguistic groups or large nations, from which the following stood out:
- Tupi - spread over the entire Atlantic coast and various areas of the interior;
- Ge or Tapuia - lived in the Brazilian Central Plateau;
- Arawak - largely inhabited the Amazon Basin;
- Karib - occupied the north of the Amazon Basin.
Indigenous cultural heritage
The Brazilian people have several customs inherited from the indigenous people. Among them, the following stand out:
- the use of the hammock;
- the use of corn, cassava, guarana and other native fruits;
- the use of various medicinal herbs;
- the techniques of making canoes, rafts and straw and vine artifacts;
- the use of burning the fields before planting again, etc.
The Portuguese language spoken in our country has an infinity of words of indigenous origin, such as Iara, Jaci, Itu, Itapetininga, Anhanguera, tapioca, beiju, pamonha, trough, puçá, arapuca, among others.
The Indians contributed to the formation of the Brazilian people. In colonial society, the union between Indians and whites - at first illegitimate - gained the name of "mameluko" or "caboclo". In turn, the union between Indians and blacks, which occurred to a lesser degree, was called "cafuzo" or "caburé".
Read too:
- Guarani Indians
- indigenous culture
- Tupi-Guarani culture
- Brazilian indigenous art
- Formation of the Brazilian people: history and miscegenation
- Indigenous Slavery in Colonial Brazil
- Indian's day
- indigenous games