Tremembe

The Tremembé are an Indigenous people of the northeastern Brazilian coast. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they inhabited a long stretch of shore from the region of Pará to Ceará. Their country included the coast near the mouth of the Acaraú, where beaches, dunes and tidal waterways meet.

In 1702 missionaries gathered Tremembé people at Almofala, east of the Acaraú estuary. The mission, initially known as Aracatimirim and later dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Conceição, became a centre of colonial religious administration. A church was built there in the eighteenth century, and in 1766 the mission became a parish called Almofala. Tremembé communities retained traditions of their own, including the torém dance, through the changes brought by the mission and colonial settlement.