Group
Tupinambá
The Tupinambá are one of the various Tupi ethnic groups that inhabit present-day Brazil before the conquest of the region by Portuguese colonial settlers.
The Tupinambás live in São Luis, Maranhão.
Their language survives today in the form of Nheengatu.
The Tupinambás are abundantly described in the Cosmographie universelle (1572) of André Thevet, in Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (1578), by Jean de Léry and Hans Staden's True Story and Description of a Country of Wild, Naked, Grim, Man-eating People in the New World.
Thevet and Léry are an inspiration for Montaigne's famous essay Des Cannibales, and influence the creation of the myth of the "noble savage" during the Enlightenment.
Member Cities