Ritual Killings amongst the Tupinambá and the Christian Concept of Sacrifice in Early Modernity

This chapter discusses the utilization of the term ‘sacrifice’ and its variations in European texts that describe ritual killings in Tupinambá societies during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The texts of missionaries, colonists and chroniclers generally coincide in their descriptions of Tupinambá execution methods. Warriors captured in battle would be held captive for periods of time that could vary between mere days and several months. Then they would be killed with a quick head blow, dismembered, disemboweled, and eaten by the community. Were the ritual killings of enemies amongst the Tupinambá really meant as sacrifices though? Would it be possible to suppose that Europeans, at the moment of the occupation of the region that would become Brazil, were particularly sensitive to the topic of sacrifice and all its derivative discussions — anthropophagy included — and, for this reason, they interpreted the war rituals they were seeing in Brazil as sacrificial? This chapter will focus on uses and misuses of sacrificial rhetoric in the description of Tupinamba ritual killings, as well as in their visual representations, against the background of religious, political and ideological conflicts happening in early modern Europe

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Modernity · Sacrifice · Sociology · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Philosophy