Abstract
Against death, the Tupinamba adopted the best defense: attack. Making a virtue of necessity and a necessity of virtue, they transformed the natural given of death into a social necessity and a personal virtue: warfare vengeance was a method of instituting society. Indeed, vengeance was not made necessary because men die and need to be rescued from the flux of time; rather, it was necessary to die in order that there could be vengeance—and to die, preferably, in enemy hands. This is what Anchieta [a Portuguese missionary] called the “handsome death” …; the stomach of one’s adversary was the “bed of honor.”
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PETERSEN, J.B., CROCK, J.G. (2007). “Handsome Death”. In: CHACON, R.J., Dye, D.H. (eds) The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians. INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-48303-0_21
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