The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

102 Sabine MacCormack
traveling beyond the well-trodden routes of the coast or the roads of the
Inka empire barely knew where they were.
BRAZIL AND THE GUARANI
In 1500, a Portuguese fleet bound for India made an unplanned landfall
in northeastern Brazil. The crews were greeted on the shore by a group
of Indians who appear to have been Tupinamba. For over a week,
Indians and Portuguese consorted with each other by resorting to sign
language, all the while observing every detail of each other's behavior.
Here, so it seemed to Pedro Vaz de Caminha, who described these
encounters in a letter to King Manuel of Portugal, were people who were
as innocent as Adam before the Fall and blissfully free from sexual selfconsciousness.
Men and women alike walked about naked wearing only
red and black body paint and adornments of feathers and string, feeling
no shame whatsoever. In addition, they apparently performed no agricultural
labor, kept no domestic animals, and followed no discernible form
of worship or idolatry. In short, their existence was as close as might be
imagined to humankind's paradisal origins.
For Europeans, the years preceding and following the voyages of
Columbus were years of millennial expectations: Jerusalem might be
reconquered from the Turks; Antichrist might come; a Utopian paradisal
society might come into existence. This was why Vaz de Caminha,
convinced that the Indians would be eager converts to Christianity,
glimpsed in Brazil promise of a speedy realization of paradise recovered.
The Portuguese would learn the Indians' language, and meanwhile, there
were other forms of expression that transcended the limitations of words
and sentences. One of the Indians, Vaz de Caminha thought, desired the
captain's gold chain, and another liked a rosary of white beads, "but we
did not wish to understand," writes Vaz de Caminha, "because we did
not want to give them [the chain and rosary]." Some other objects,
among them a cloth of feathers and European hats and shirts, did change
hands. The Indians at first vomited the Portuguese food they were offered
but later, sitting down side by side with the newcomers, became accustomed
and swallowed it. Most important, because the Indians freely
participated in the celebration of Mass, following and imitating every
movement of the ceremony, the Portuguese thought that they in some
way understood the ritual's meaning. For the moment, the complicated
world of politics, of the exercise of power over persons and territories,
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