Zweikaempfe der Botocudos, am Rio Grande de Bellmonte. Pl. 11

Title

Zweikaempfe der Botocudos, am Rio Grande de Bellmonte. Pl. 11

The Aimoré (Aymore, Aimboré) are one of several South American peoples of eastern Brazil called Botocudo in Portuguese (from botoque, a plug), in allusion to the wooden disks or tembetás worn in their lips and ears. Some called themselves Nac-nanuk or Nac-poruk, meaning sons of the soil. The last Aimoré group to retain their language are the Krenak. The other peoples called Botocudo were the Xokleng and Xeta. The Botocudos were nomadic hunter-gatherers, wandering naked in the woods and living from the forest. Their implements and domestic utensils were all of wood; their only weapons were reed spears and bows and arrows. The most conspicuous feature of the Botocudos was the tembeitera, a wooden plug or disk which is worn in the lower lip and the lobe of the ear. This disk, made of the specially light and carefully dried wood of the barriguda tree (Chorisia ventricosa), which was called by the natives themselves embur, whence Augustin Saint-Hilaire suggested that this could be the probable derivation of their name Aimboré (1830). It is worn only in the under-lip, now chiefly by women, but formerly by men also. The operation for preparing the lip begins often as early as the eighth year, when an initial boring is made by a hard pointed stick, and gradually extended by the insertion of larger and larger disks or plugs, sometimes at last as much as 10 cm in diameter. Notwithstanding the lightness of the wood the tembeitera weighs down the lip, which at first sticks out horizontally and at last becomes a mere ring of skin around the wood. Ear-plugs are also worn, of such size as to distend the lobe down to the shoulders. Ear-ornaments of like nature are common in south and even Central America, at least as far north as Honduras, as described by Christopher Columbus when he discovered this latter country during his fourth voyage (1502).

ca. 1815

Artist

Wied-Neuwied