Tupiniquim

The Tupiniquim are a Tupi-Guarani people whose name means the neighboring Tupi, kin and rivals of the Tupinambá along the Brazilian shore. In the sixteenth century the name covered two groups, one in southern Bahia and another around the Santos lowlands and São Paulo plateau.

They were among the first Brazilians to meet Europeans, encountering the Portuguese fleet at Porto Seguro in April 1500 and choosing alliance. Tupiniquim warriors and porters backed the colonization of Santos and Bertioga and stood beside the Jesuit Manuel da Nóbrega at the founding of São Paulo in 1554. Smallpox and other epidemics in mission villages such as Aldeia Nova and Reis Magos sharply reduced their numbers.

In 1610 a Jesuit secured them a royal land grant, surveyed in 1760 around Nova Almeida. There a community of three thousand kept Tupiniquim identity alive into the early nineteenth century.