{{Short description|Ethnic group in Brazil}} {{More citations needed|date=January 2026}} {{Infobox ethnic group | group = Tamoio | image = 250px | caption = | popplace = | languages = Old Tupi | religions = Indigenous Religion | related = Tupinambá people }} [[File:Ultimo_tamoio_1883.jpg|right|thumb|240x240px|Rodolfo Amoedo's 1883 painting "O Último Tamoio" (The last Tamoio).]] The '''Tamoio''' were a Tupi-speaking indigenous group that inhabited the coast of the present-day states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Their territory included the Bay of Guanabara, extending from what is now Rio de Janeiro to the northern coast of São Paulo, near the city of Bertioga. The group’s population is estimated at approximately 70,000 people at the time of European contact.<ref name="BUENO">{{Cite book |last=Bueno |first=Eduardo |title=Capitães do Brasil: a saga dos primeiros colonizadores |publisher=Estação Brasil |year=2016 |pages=264 |language=pt |id={{ISBN|9788556080066}}}}</ref>
The Tamoios are also called Tupinambás. In fact, they were nothing more than the Tupinambás of the south. The others are those from Bahia and Maranhão.
The ethnonym "Tamoio" comes from "ta'mõi," which, in the Tupi language, means "grandparents," indicating that they were the Tupi group that had been established on the Brazilian coast for the longest time.<ref name="BUENO" />
Anthropologists Beatriz Perrone-Moysés and Renato Sztutman argue that the term "Tamoio" did not refer to a homogeneous indigenous people, but rather to a "collective of leaders" from different tribes who formed an alliance among themselves and with the French against the Portuguese colonizers.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Perrone-Moisés |first=Beatriz |last2=Sztutman |first2=Renato |date= |title=Notícias de uma certa confederação Tamoio |url=https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-93132010000200007 |access-date=2020-06-11 |publisher= |language=pt}}</ref>
== Presence in daily life ==
* In the state of São Paulo, the highway that connects São José dos Campos to Caraguatatuba, on the north coast, the former lands of the Tamoio was named Rodovia dos Tamoios (Tamoio Highway). * The current 2nd district of the city of Cabo Frio is called Tamoios because it was one of the last strongholds of the Tamoio Confederation. * Several cities have also named streets and avenues after the Tamoios, including São Paulo, Itanhaém, Tupã, Lins, Diadema, and Praia Grande, among others.
== References == <references />
Category:Tupí people Category:Indigenous people of South America