Chief Tibiriçá (died 1562) baptized as Martim Afonso was an Amerindian leader who converted to Christianity under the auspices of José de Anchieta.

[3] After his conversion to Christianity he became a strategic ally and protector of the Jesuits and the Portuguese; his name appears on letters to Saint Ignatius of Loyola and King João III of Portugal.

The writer Eduardo Bueno, based on Teodoro Sampaio, says that "Tibiriçá" means "watchman of the land" in Tupi,[4] also fitting the expression "sentinel of the mountains".

The current Rua de São Bento was, for this reason, originally called Martim Afonso (the name in which the cacique was baptized).

In the attack known as the Siege of Piratininga, Tibiriçá gave the Jesuits the greatest proof of fidelity on July 9, 1562 (not the 10th as is usually written), when, while raising the flag and a wooden sword painted and decorated in different colors, he bravely repelled the attack on the village of São Paulo carried out by the Tupi, Guaianás and Carijós Indians and led by his nephew Jaguaranho (son of Piquerobi).

Tibiriçá died on December 25, 1562, as José de Anchieta attests in his letter sent to Father Diogo Laínes,[11] due to a plague that devastated the village.