Bororo people

The Bororo are a Macro -Ge -speaking indigenous people from the south of Mato Grosso, Brazil; Parts of this people also lived in Goias State, Brazil and Bolivia. The first contact with Europeans had the Bororo in the early 18th century. Johann Natterer, the Mato Grosso toured around 1825, the Bororo Campanha described since 1826 in a letter as follows:

" They occupied formerly the steppes along the right bank of Paraguay, by R. Jauru up to the Bahia since Uberaba [ ..] and taught when they were still hostile, here and on the streets of Matogrosso much mischief, until they at last to peace näthigte [ ..] So far they have not been disturbed the peace, they nomadisiren in small hordes of local Fazenda, some have settled in Pau secco five miles west of here. "

The ethnologist Karl von den stones dedicated to them a large part of his work among the primitive peoples of Central Brazil. Travel descriptions and results of the Second Schingú Expedition 1887-1888.

At the end of the 19th century, the Army Engineer Cândido Rondon hit the Bororo; he managed to pacify them and to participate in the construction of a telegraph line to Bolivia and Peru.

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi- Strauss, who mostly resided 1935-1939 in Brazil and in São Paulo from 1935 to 1937 who was a professor, visited during a trip into the interior of Brazil, 1935, the Bororo to operate at their field research. He examined settlement style, rituals, clothing, singing, myths, body painting, dances, tools and language of the Bororo, which he called the crown jewel for every ethnologist, as their social structures are complex and very complicated ( Tristes Tropiques, 1955, The Raw and the Cooked, 1964).

In 1999 there were around 750 Bororos in Brazil, living in seven villages. This low number is explained primarily by the assimilation of immigrants, but also through murder, expulsion and the introduction of diseases by the Europeans. The Bororo are known - as well as other Indians of this area - they wear at ceremonies and ritual dances for their elaborate feathered headdress.