Aimberê

Image description: This is a painting depicting a dramatic scene on a beach. On the left side, we see sea waves crashing onto the sand. In the center, a man lies on the beach, naked, with an expression of pain or exhaustion. He is covered with a red and black sash. Beside him, a man dressed in a brown cloak is leaning over him, holding a small object in his hands. The background features a coastal landscape with darkened rocks and green vegetation. In the distance, we see the gray sky and some seagulls flying.

The one considered the greatest leader of Indigenous resistance to Portuguese colonization in Brazil, Aimberê, is also the one about whom we have the least information and historical sources. Strictly speaking, we only know of this Tupinambá warrior through a small excerpt of a letter left by the Jesuit José de Anchieta. In this document, the religious man recounts in detail what happened during the time he spent in the village of Ubatuba together with his ecclesiastical superior Manoel da Nóbrega, when they were trying to negotiate a truce with the Tamoio people in the year 1563. The episode became known as the "Peace of Iperoig."

This primary source provides the little information we have about the man who led thousands of confederated indigenous people in combat efforts against the Portuguese between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the 1560s. For this reason, the "history" of Aimberê is often told based on fictionalized sources, mainly the poem "A Confederação dos Tamoios," by Gonçalves de Magalhães. The information this work gives us about Aimberê is invented, even though many take the events narrated there — such as the claim that Iguaçu was the name of his wife — as facts.

The truth is that we don't know much about this person. We don't even know if his name really was Aimberê, since Anchieta names him with the variant "Aimbiré," reporting that the epithet in Tupi meant strong, tough, inflexible. We don't know how, or when he died – whether before, during, or after the decisive battle of Uruçumirim in January 1567. Nor do we know from which Tupinambá village in Rio de Janeiro he came. However, we do know that he existed, and that his importance was such that he continued to be demonized by the Portuguese authorities years after the conquest of Guanabara.

Aimberê's best-known feat in those years was the organization of the general attack on Piratininga in July 1562, an event that was only prevented from being more successful by the betrayals committed by some of the São Paulo Tupiniquim. The assault had the support of several indigenous ethnic groups, causing astonishment among the settlers of São Vicente. The episode was decisive for the priests' decision to head to Ubatuba. As Anchieta relates, the coastal Tamoio appeared both by sea and by land, destroying the villages, freeing the slaves, and killing the Portuguese they came across. With no strength to resist for much longer, the Portuguese authorities decided to resort to diplomacy. They hoped, according to Anchieta himself, to “bring peace to this Captaincy, which is so plagued by them [the Tamoio] that the men now think of almost nothing but how they might leave and abandon it.” They especially wanted to stop the “great oppressions inflicted upon this land by some enemies of ours called Tamuya, from Rio de Janeiro.”

The priests traveled to Iperoig, one of the “first places of the enemies” – the name of one of the Tupinambá villages that stood where the city of Ubatuba is located today. José de Anchieta was a skilled speaker of Tupi, and thus the two priests managed to be well received by the residents. They stayed in the village awaiting the Tamoio leaders, while the Indigenous people of Iperoig would go to São Vicente in a hostage exchange – as a guarantee of the Jesuits' lives. At the same time, the other ship would depart with “five of the most esteemed [Tamoios], and they set off on the way to Rio de Janeiro, where the greatest force of their people is, and the agreement with the French to bring about peace with them.” The priests realized that the peace mission of which they were messengers had held back a great attack involving more than two hundred canoes, which could possibly have devastated the town of São Vicente.

Image description: This is a painting depicting a religious ceremony in an indoor setting, likely a chapel or meeting room. On the left, there is an altar with a cross and an open book, covered by a red cloth. On the right side, four indigenous men are standing, wearing traditional leather and hide clothing. They are holding objects such as axes and ropes. In the central part, two men dressed in black attire are in a position of prayer, while a third, also in black attire, is raising an arm in a gesture of blessing. The painting is colorful, with a predominance of brown and green tones on the walls and wooden structure.

The first Tamoio leader to arrive was Pindobuçu. He had gone to visit a brother and did not know about the priests' presence. At first he ordered the priests to leave, and only after much effort and speeches was Anchieta able to convince him. However, at that moment it was not Pindobuçu who would decide on any truce with the Portuguese. Days later, alerted by the messengers who had gone to Rio de Janeiro, ten canoes full of warriors arrived in Ubatuba. It was Aimberê's squad, coming from Guanabara to talk with the priests. He was the leader they needed to negotiate with, the one who represented the villages of Rio de Janeiro. Aimberê came accompanied by a French son-in-law, who had given him a granddaughter and advised him.

According to Anchieta, Aimberê was "a tall, lean man, with a sad and heavy countenance, and whom we had known to be very cruel." Dressed in a shirt and lying in a hammock surrounded by his warriors, Aimberê launched into speech "with fierce spirit," fidgeting with his bow and arrow all the while, causing fear among the priests. The Tamoio leader told the envoys from São Vicente how much he had already suffered at the hands of the Portuguese and how he himself had once been deceived and imprisoned, "under the pretext of peace, but that through his own valor, with irons on his feet, he had leapt from the ship and escaped their hands, and with this he rolled up his sleeves and fidgeted with his arrows." Anchieta, with his skillful speech, countered everything with promises of friendship, but Aimberê "showed himself incredulous and hard, recalling to memory how much harm our people had done him."

Aimberê knew how to negotiate and imposed conditions for any peace agreement to be sealed, insisting “that we had to give him to kill and eat the chiefs among our Indians who had broken away from his own, just as we had once done to them.” He wanted the heads of those he considered traitors to the Tamoios, who had fought against their own people in favor of the Portuguese. However, this proposal was not accepted by the Jesuits, who said that those were their disciples, “that God did not want this,” and that, therefore, such a request was out of the question. Aimberê replied: “Our enemies are not God; you are the ones who deal with God's affairs, you must hand them over to us.” No agreement was reached by either side, and the morubixaba-guaçu decreed: “Since you are so stingy with our enemies, let us have no peace with one another.”

Image description: This is a painting depicting a nude human figure with defined muscles and a serene facial expression. He holds a sword in his right hand, with the tip pointing downward, and has a colorful sash hanging from the hilt. The figure stands on yellow ground, with a human skull lying on the ground before him. The background is white, with a few patches of color.

Faced with this impasse and as a way of gaining time, a proposal was made to head to São Vicente and consult the Portuguese authorities, since they did not have permission to negotiate such a condition. Pindobuçu, who had watched it all in silence, already an elder, intervened immediately, accepting the proposal, to which the others ended up agreeing. It was settled that Aimberê himself would go to São Vicente to meet with the indigenous people exchanged by the priests and the Portuguese authorities, “with whose words that chief was already coming tamed and entered these towns, preaching that he greatly rejoiced at the peace” and the once so feared tamoio leader ended up “received with much joy and celebration by our people, with which he was quite satisfied.” It is not clear what else occurred during Aimberê's trip to São Vicente in the conclusion of the “Peace of Iperoig,” but it is possible that he freed enslaved indigenous people as part of this agreement and, finally, returned to Guanabara to report on the agreement to the other leaders.

The Jesuits' actions in Ubatuba were decisive. Besides the truce it granted the Portuguese, it served mainly to weaken the union of forces among villages that so threatened the Portuguese of that captaincy. Aimberê would come to realize that the "Peace of Iperoig" was merely a pretext to buy time. The following year, a fleet coming from Lisbon and commanded by Estácio de Sá would enter Guanabara Bay to try to seal the conquest, and the Tamoios went into battle again, with Aimberê once more setting the example for the indigenous captains, leading the fight. If, on one hand, there are more speculations than certainties about his death, on the other, it is certain that in life Aimberê was one of the greatest Tupinambá leaders we have on record.