Iraçéma: the Honey-lips, a Legend of Brazil/Historical argument

by José de Alencar

HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.

 

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This legend of the aborigines is laid in Ceará, a northern province of Brazil, at that time unknown and unconquered.

In 1603, Pero Coelho, a gentleman of Parahyba, another northerly province, then already belonging to the Portuguese, arrived at the mouth of the river Jaguaribe in Ceará, with a command of 80 colonists and 800 Indians. He there founded the first settlement in Ceará, and called it Nova Lisboa.

This Pero Coelho was abandoned by his comrades when a certain João Soromenho was sent to him with reinforcements, and was authorised to pay the expenses of the expedition by making captives or slaves. He did not respect even the Indians of the Jaguaribe river, who were friendly to the Portuguese.

This proved the downfall of the growing settlement. The natives resented such tyranny. Pero Coelho, with his wife and young children, was compelled to fly by land to his own province.

In the first expedition was Martim Soares Moreno, a youth from Rio Grande do Norte, another northerly province belonging to the Portuguese. He entered into bonds of friendship with Jacaúna and his brother Poty, who were chiefs of the Indians of the seaboard. In 1608, by order of Dom Diogo Menezes, he returned to establish a colony, and in 1611 he founded the fortified place of Nossa Senhora do Amparo, or “Our Lady of Protection.”

Jacaúna, who lived on the borders of Acáracú―“River of the Heron's nest”—settled near it with his tribe, to protect it from the Indians of the interior, and from the French, who then infested the coast.

Poty eventually became a Christian, and was baptized Antonio Phelipe Camarão. He highly distinguished himself when the Dutch invaded the coast, and his services were richly rewarded by the Portuguese Government.

Martim Soares Moreno became a Field-Marshal, and was one of those brave Portuguese leaders who delivered Brazil from the Hollander invasion. Ceará should honour his memory as that of a good and valiant man, and—the first settlement by Coelho at the mouth of the Jaguaribe having proved a failure—hold him to be her true founder.

My readers will better understand this tale by my explaining that the Pytiguáras were an aboriginal tribe who occupied the shores between Parnahyba and the Jaguaribe, or Rio Grande.

Their chiefs were Jacaúna and Poty (afterwards Camarão, "the Prawn"), two brothers, who were firm allies to the Portuguese. They were at war with the Tabajáras, another tribe occupying the mountains of Ibyapaba, and the interior as far as the province of Piauhy.

The Chiefs of these inland people were also two. The first was Irapúam, which, translated into Portuguese, means Mel Redondo, or "Round Honey," a wild and vicious bee of that name. This famous bloodthirsty chief ruled in Ceará, but Gráo Deabo—Big Devil—was Lord of the Tabajáras in Piauhy. Both were bitter enemies of the Portuguese, and allied themselves with the French of Maranhão—another northerly province—who had penetrated into and taken possession of the lands as far as the mountain range of Ibyapaba.