Eine Familie der Botocudos auf der Reise. Pl. 10

Title

Eine Familie der Botocudos auf der Reise. Pl. 10

Botocuden Indian family traveling in Brazil.Brazil's indigenous population includes a variety of different ethnic groups that inhabited the area that is now Brazil before the Portuguese conquest in the 1500s. Brazil is the country with the most uncontacted peoples in the world.The Aimoré are one of several South American peoples in eastern Brazil, called Botocudo in Portuguese. Some called themselves Nac-nanuk or Nac-poruk, meaning "sons of the soil." The Botocudos were nomadic hunter-gatherers who roamed the forests naked and lived off the forest. Their tools and household utensils were all made of wood, and their only weapons were reed spears and bows and arrows. The most distinctive feature of the Botocudos was the tembeitera, a wooden plug or disc worn in the lower lip and earlobe. The operation to prepare the lip often begins as early as age eight, when a hard, pointed stick is used to make an initial hole that is gradually enlarged by inserting larger and larger discs or plugs that can eventually reach a diameter of up to 10 cm. Earplugs are also worn that are so large that they extend the earlobe to the shoulders. Ear jewelry of this type is common in South and even Central America, at least as far as Honduras, as Christopher Columbus described when he discovered that country on his fourth voyage (1502).

ca. 1815

Artist

Wied-Neuwied