Two cultures clash as the ships carrying the drooling Europeans bridge the vast expanse of water that had kept them apart since the beginning of time. From the East they arrive, driven by an economy based on the rules of capitalism. Armed with superior technology, they come across semi-nomadic people living a subsistence life. The indigenous people of America had a set of beliefs based on community life and respect for the natural world. No doubt both civilisations had a great deal to learn from one another. The opportunity was there for a fascinating social phenomenon. Descendents of two worlds who had evolved, yet never encountered, over thousands of years had come face to face for the first time in history.
The white men from afar, with their gleaming greedy eyes, saw an un-resistible opportunity to get rich. The immediate result was the domination and extermination of millions of Indians by war, slavery and disease1. An indigenous population of an estimated 4 million people had been reduced to less than 1 million by 18232. Not quite the Star Trek way of dealing with new civilisations where no white man has gone before.
A French colonialist spoke to an old wise man from the Tupinamba tribe, who asked him: “Why do you, mairs e peros (French and Portuguese), come looking for firewood from such a long distance? Do you not have wood in your land?”
He answered that they had a lot, but not of such good quality, and that anyway they didn’t use it for fire but to extract dyes, like they did for their cotton and feathers.
The old native man replied immediately, “And so you need a great deal!”
“Yes” responded Jean de Lery, “for in our country there exist traders who possess more bread, knives, treasures, mirrors and other merchandise which you cannot even imagine, and one single trader is capable of buying all the wood in Brazil…”
“Ah!” replied the Indian, referred to as the savage in the original script, “but this man so rich of whom you talk about, does he not die?”
“Yes” said the French man, “he dies like others do”.
The Native was not satisfied, and insisted to take this conversation further: “And when he dies, who takes what he leaves behind?”
“His children, if he has any,” replied the ‘civilised’ man, “and if he doesn’t, his brothers or closest relatives do”
“To tell the truth”, continued the old man, “now I see that you mairs are completely insane, for you cross the sea and suffer great discomfort, as you said when you arrived, and work so hard to accumulate riches for your children or for those who outlive you! Will it not be the land that feeds you which will feed them too? We have fathers, mothers and sons who we love; but we are certain that after our death the land which feeds us will also feed them, which is why we rest without such huge preoccupation”3.
With just 1 million Portuguese in Portugal, they could not conquer such huge lands without a systematic policy of breeding with the locals. This was both a political and personal need, as the colonialists were all men. But the labour intensive work that was needed to grow sugar could not be satisfied by the surviving Indians and their cross-bred off springs alone. Between the mid XVI and the mid XIX century, it’s estimated that over 3 million slaves were shipped over from Africa. While the Indian population shrank, that of the Africans grew. By 1822, of a total population of 5 million, 800,000 were Indians, down from 4 million in 1500, and over 1 million were African slaves.
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