book chapter

Letter of Pedro Vaz de Caminha to King Manuel written from Porto Seguro of Vera Cruz the first of May 1500

voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India (81)Published In 1938 • Pages: 3-33 [incomplete]

By: Caminha, Pero Vaz de, 15th cent., Greenlee, William Brooks.

AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
The report of Pedro Vaz de Caminha is the basic eyewitness account of the discovery of Brazil. 'In this letter Caminha carefully wrote down each day what appeared to him to be new and curious, as well as almost every act of the members of the fleet in their dealings with the inhabitants. It is very important as the first account of the natives of that country. Later investigations have shown nothing to discredit the narrative from the standpoint of ethnology, and few subsequent writers have given us a better idea of the customs of the people inhabiting the coast of Brazil… The manuscript was found by the Spanish historian Juan Bautista Muñoz, in the Archivo da Torre do Tombo at Lisbon prior to 1790, and was first published in 1817 by Father Manuel Aires de Casal in COROGRAFIA BRASILEIRA from an inexact copy found to exist in the Real Arquivo da Marinha at Rio de Janeiro. …The best text is that given in ALGUNS DOCUMENTOS DO ARCHIVO NACIONAL (Lisbon, 1892, pp. 108-21), and it is from this that the translation has been made.' --Editor's introduction, pp. 3-5.
SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
History
Behavior toward non-relatives
cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
Tupinamba
HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
2003
RegionThe area the document pertains to
South America
Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
Eastern South America
Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
book chapter
Evaluation
Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
Traveler
Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
3: Good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent
AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
AW ; 1971
Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
1500
Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
1500
Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
Bahia, Brazil
NotesAdditional notes
Pedro Vaz de Caminha ; translated by William Brooks Greenlee
This document consists of excerpts
LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
39018871
LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
Tupinamba Indians