Tupi Indians

Tupi

Albert Eckhout's painting of the Tupi
Total population
1,000,000 (historically), Potiguara 10,837, Tupinambá de Olivença 3,000, Tupiniquim 2,630, others extinct as tribes but blood ancestors to Pardo and Mestizo Brazilian population
Regions with significant populations
Central and Coastal Brazil
Languages
Tupian languages, later língua geral, much later Portuguese
Religion
Indigenous, later Christianity
Related ethnic groups
The Kayapo and Guaraní tribes

The Tupi people were one of the most important indigenous peoples in Brazil. Scholars believe they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, but 2900 years ago they started to spread southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast.

The Tupi people inhabited almost all of Brazil's coast when the Portuguese first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly equal to the population of Portugal at the time. They were divided into tribes, each tribe numbering from 300 to 2,000 people. Some examples of these tribes are: Tupiniquim, Tupinambá, Potiguara, Tabajara, Caetés, Temiminó, Tamoios. The Tupi utilised agriculture and therefore satisfied a Neolithic condition. They grew cassava, corn, sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, tobacco, squash, cotton and many others. There was not a unified Tupi identity despite the fact that they were a single ethnic group that spoke a common language.

From the 16th century onward, the Tupi, like other natives from the region, were assimilated, enslaved, or killed by diseases such as smallpox or by Portuguese settlers and Bandeirantes (colonial Brazil scouts), nearly leading to their complete annihilation, with the exception of a few isolated communities. The remnants of these tribes are today confined to Indian reservations or acculturated to some degree into the dominant society.