Botocudos

Botocudos, a large wild tribe of the Brazilian coast range, between the Rio Dolce and Ilheos south and north, known from the earliest period of the discovery, and formerly very numerous, but now greatly reduced by the systematic butcheries of the Portuguese; type remarkably like that of the rude Mongolian people of Siberia - round flat features, small nose and oblique eyes, black lank hair, dirty yellowish complexion; wear round wooden disks as lip and ear ornaments, whence their name from the Portuguese botoque, a barrel plug; call themselves Nac-nanuk (Nacporuk), sons of the soil, i.e. Aborigines. A few have become Mansos, i.e. half-civilised and settled; but the great majority (12,000 to 14,000) are still bravos, i.e." wild," at a very low stage of culture, using stone implements, living in wretched hovels of branches, seldom more than four feet high, treating their women with barbarous cruelty, feeding on berries, grubs, snakes, lizards and human flesh; they are demon-worshippers, and their language, unlike any other known tongue, has no word for any numeral beyond one (mocenam); uruhu, said to mean two, really means "much" or "many." See A. H. Keane, On the Botocudos (1883).