Abstract
The French colonial experience in Maranhão at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Equinocial France, led to two important accounts by the Capuchin missionaries Claude d’Abbeville and Yves d’Évreux. These French accounts are characterised by transcriptions in the Tupi language, in particular the speeches of indigenous chiefs. The Tupinamba Indian who appears as a speaker in these missionary narratives is also the result of the “heritage” of the account of the Calvinist Jean de Léry, who is legitimately attributed with the “invention of the Savage”. However, far from Léry’s dogmatic pessimism about the possibilities of converting the Indians, characterised by primitivism, the missionary writing of the Capuchins also contributed utopically to the “invention of the Savage” in France within the mystical experience that is depicted in their reports.
Keywords:
Sixteenth-century mission accounts; French Capuchins; representation of the Savage; Tupinamba Indians