Tapirapé people

Tapirapé

A Tapirape girl having her body painted
Total population
(655 (2010))
Regions with significant populations
Brazil (Mato Grosso, )
Languages
Tapirapé language
Religion
Animism, Shamanism
Related ethnic groups
other Tupi-Guaraní peoples

The Tapirapé indigenous people is a Brazilian Indian tribe that survived the European conquest and subsequent colonization of the country, keeping with little changes most of their culture and customs. Stationed deep into the Amazon rainforest, they had little direct contact with Europeans until around 1910, and even then that contact was sporadic until the 1950s.

The main reports about the Tapirapé were written by anthropologists Herbert Baldus (1899-1970) and Charles Wagley (1913-1991) and by a group of the Little Sisters of Jesus, missionary nuns who have helped the Tapirapé continuously since 1953.

Wagley conjectures that the Tapirapé descend from the Tupinamba, who populated part of the coast of Brazil in 1500, since both tribes speak the same Tupi language. As the conquerors expanded their dominion, the theory goes, some Tupinamba would have fled inland, eventually arriving at a large segment of tropical forest 11 degrees latitude South of the equator, close to affluents of the Amazon river. By 1900, there were five Tapirapé villages with a population of about 1500, extended through a large area between 50 and 51 degrees longitude.

Sporadic contact with white Brazilians started in 1910; they brought iron tools and trade goods. They also brought with them germs: measles, mumps, and the common cold. American Elizabeth Kilgore Steen spent the night in Tampitawa, one of the five villages, in 1930. She returned with a number of examples of Tapirape material culture which are housed at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The book Brazilian Adventure by Peter Fleming tells of contact in 1932. By 1939, epidemics and some skirmishes with neighboring tribes had reduced population to just 187 individuals in only one village called Tapiitawa; by 1953 there were only 51 left. That year, the Little Sisters started their mission among the Tapirapé, and the Brazilian government established a post of the Indian Protection Service. The population started to recover, and by 1976 there were again about 136 Tapirapé.