Camarão Indians' letters
Camarão Indians' letters (Portuguese: cartas dos índios Camarões), also known as Tupi letters from Camarão Indians (Portuguese: cartas tupis dos Camarões), are a series of six letters exchanged between Potiguara Indians during 1645, in the first half of the 17th century, in the context of the Dutch invasions of Brazil. They are the only known texts written by Brazilian Indians until the Independence of Brazil. The Camarão Indians' letters are also the only record of Old Tupi writing in Colonial Brazil. Today, the correspondence is stored in the archives of the Royal Library of the Netherlands, and has been preserved there for almost 400 years.
Although the correspondence had been known since 1885 and there have been previous attempts at translation, the complete decipherment of its contents was only published for the first time in October 2022 by philologist Eduardo de Almeida Navarro, who also transcribed and commented on it.
A seventh letter was later found in the National Archive, in the city of Rio de Janeiro.