PT Unknown
AU Obermeier, F
TI Indigenous letters in colonial Brazil: a Tupi-correspondence during the Dutch Wars in 1645/1646
SE ZiF-Konferenz
PY 2016
BP 1
EP 27
PU Universitätsbibliothek
WP https://macau.uni-kiel.de/receive/publ_mods_00001293
LA en
DE Brasilien Indigene Potiguara-Indianer Briefe Tupi Holländer Kriege Portugiesen  Geschichte 1645-1646
AB Documents in indigenous languages in colonial Brazil and the La Plata-Region written by the Tupi or Guarani themselves are a rather new field of research. Most of these documents are 
not  yet  published  or  were  unknown  until  recently. The  article  stresses  that  the  early documents have been written (or indirectly transmitted as for instance in travel books) by the so called "Go-between", Europeans or Indians living in two civilizations, their own and the 
Spanish/Portuguese one of the colony. In the La Plata-region the texts in Guarani were mainly written by or for the indigenous élite in the reducciones, the Jesuit mission settlements, some of the remaining texts as the newly rediscovered Gülich-manuscript here presented were also 
written  for  use  of  the  new  missionaries  to  improve  their  use  of  the  Guarani-language  in special  pragmatic  situations.  Other  texts  such  as  a  Guarani  Memoria  about  the  Guarani participation in the Spanish conquest of Colonia del Sacramento (now Colonia, Uruguay) in 1704/1705 are very complex and should not be seen mainly as part of an Indigenous historical memory as they were certainly written in the version we have nowadays by Jesuits, probably 
hermanos (lay brothers). In the case of Brazil we only have a military correspondence in Tupi written  by  Potiguara-Indians  allied  to  the  rival  parties  during  the  Brazilian-Dutch  war  in 1645/1646  (Diogo  Pinheiro  Camarão  and  Antônio  Filipe  Camarão  to  Poti  and  Antônio Paraupaba, we have also translations of the answering letter by Poti). The biographies of these indigenous military leaders are here presented. A comparison between the Brazilian and the La Plata-based indigenous literacy and the historical and sociolinguistic background is tried. 
These  texts  show  us  that  the  common  idea  about  an  illiterate  or  semi-illiterate  indigenous population in colonial South-America has to be thoroughly revised.
PI Kiel
ER