Word: tupinamba
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History has been just as imaginative as theater and myth. The South American Tupinamba tribe would take a prisoner of war, make him consort with a woman of their tribe, then allow the woman to bear a child so that they could increase the tragedy by slaughtering both the prisoner and his baby. Sometimes in New Zealand, when a chieftain was killed during a war between two tribes, hostilities were broken off while the body of the leader was chopped up by his opponents, roasted and devoured. Among the southern Slavs a mother has been known to ay her infant...
...these reports are similar to tales of witches. Often the explorer or traveler simply misinterprets the unfamiliar tribal language. Plagiarism, and the marketability of savage tales from the wilds have also helped establish the existence of cannibalism, says Arens. One example: 16th century accounts of cannibalism among the Tupinamba, a now extinct Brazilian tribe, all use similar wording. Arens thinks it unlikely "that a parade of international travelers all passed through a Tupinamba encampment on different days when the Indians were about to slay a war captive while the main characters were repeating similar statements to each other...
...woodcuts and paintings of the time reflect that Arcadian vision, which would duly be modulated into the cult of the Noble Savage. By 1505, only five years after Cabral's discovery of Brazil, the first American Indian had made his way into a European painting: a Tupinamba chief, crowned with feathers, included as one of the Wise Men from the East in a Portuguese nativity...
...post, Bill O'Dwyer seemed a happy choice for a sunny job. Mexicans were complimented by his political prominence in the U.S., pleased that he is a Catholic, and tickled with his pretty wife and his appreciation of bullfighting. In the bullfighters' Café Tupinamba, a torero seriously explained, "A good fan of the bulls cannot be an imperialist."'And the ballad singers in buses and bars spread the news in a hastily composed corrido...
...just outside the Federal District limits, where pesos change hands with every spur-thrust. Thousands play la bolita, an illegal policy game paying off 80 t01 on the last two numbers of the regular winning National Lottery ticket. In the bullfight fans' cafés such as the Tupinamba, big money is bet on which matador will get the privilege of cutting off a bull's ear in the Sunday corrida...