The Ipupiara of São Vicente

São Vicente was the first Portuguese settlement on the São Paulo coast. In 1564 it was a village in the Captaincy of São Vicente. What came out of its waters that year survives through one writer. Pero de Magalhães Gândavo told the story in Chapter 9 of História da Província Santa Cruz, printed in Lisbon in 1576, with a woodcut of the creature.

It was night. An enslaved Indigenous woman of the captain's household saw a strange creature on the shore. It moved with "passos e meneos desusados", unusual steps and movements. Every now and then it let out frightening howls. She thought it might be a diabolical vision.

She went to Baltasar Ferreira, the captain's son. He went out armed only with a sword and found the creature heading back toward the sea. He stabbed it. It rose up on its fins and tried to attack him, striking him in the face with a gush of blood. A further blow to the head weakened it. Enslaved Indigenous men came running and helped finish it off.

Ferreira was so shaken that he stayed silent for a long time. The next day, the body was shown in the village.

Gândavo gives its length as "quinze palmos de comprido". Fifteen palms. About 3.3 metres. It was "semeado de cabellos pelo corpo", hair scattered over its body, and its snout carried very large bristles, like whiskers. It had fins. The Indigenous people, he wrote, called it Hipupiàra, a "demonio d´agua". A water demon. Such creatures are rarely seen, Gândavo reflected, and the sea probably holds many other unknown monsters.

The story crossed the ocean. It appeared in Italian and German illustrated broadsheets, including one by Nicolò Nelli. Adriaen Coenen drew a 17-foot monster on the Brazilian coast in 1564, standing on its hind flippers. Ulisse Aldrovandi pictured it too. Gândavo, Nelli and Mattheo Francken all presented it as a real event. It became one of the earliest New World monster encounters to circulate in print in Europe.

In 1957 Gustavo Barroso suggested in O Cruzeiro that the creature was probably a sea lion or fur seal carried north by currents. Such an animal rarely appears that far north and would have been little known and frightening to the Indigenous people of the coast. Historian Cristina Brito calls it a "monstrous sea lion". The hair, whiskers, flippers, rearing posture and roars all fit a large pinniped.

Historians Camenietzki and Zeron see a myth that grew with each retelling. They also note a shift. In 1560 Anchieta described the Igpupiára as diabolical. Gândavo described a natural creature.

The retellings kept growing. Later blogs named the woman Irecê. Modern accounts set the fight on today's Praia do Gonzaguinha, a beach Gândavo never names. A statue of the Ipupiara stood at Praça 22 de Janeiro, and Diário do Litoral reports it burned in 2016. The Mangueira samba school honoured the creature in 2002, and the dinosaur Ypupiara lopai carries its name. In 1733, another Ipupiara was killed at Cananéia.