Potiguara

The Potiguara were a Tupi-Guarani people of the northeastern Brazilian coast, whose sixteenth-century lands ran from Ceará to Pernambuco. Their name is said to mean shrimp-eaters, from poty for shrimp.

Around 1500 they may have numbered some 90,000, and they resisted the Portuguese, allying with French brazilwood traders in the Potiguara War of 1574 to 1599 against the settlers and their Tabajara rivals. In the following century they switched to the Portuguese side. Their chief António Filipe Camarão led warriors against the Dutch in the Pernambuco insurrection of 1645 to 1649, including the battles of Guararapes, and was rewarded with a noble title and membership in the Order of Christ.

Despite epidemics and territorial losses, Potiguara communities kept a foothold around the Baía da Traição in Paraíba through the colonial centuries and the early empire.