Society-BORORO

The Bororo, an ethnolinguistic group of Ge-language speakers, are
found in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, although they extend somewhat
into Bolivia to the west and the Brazilian state of Goyaz to the southeast.
The Bororo are further subdivided into two areal groups: (1) the Western
Bororo, located around the Jauru and Cabacal rivers; and (2) the Eastern
Bororo (Orarimogodoge), who live in the region of the Sao Lorenco,
Garcas, and Vermelho rivers. Occasionally the terms Bororo da Campanha
and Bororo Cabacal are applied to areal units of the Western group
(cf. Levi-Strauss 1936: 1; Lowie 1946: 419).

The Mato Grosso region is marked by large savannah grasslands, with
contrasting areas of gallery forests along the riverine systems. It
is in these forested areas, where the environment offers a diversity
of plants, animals, and fish, that the Bororo have their settlements.

There is not much information on the early contact period. Spanish
and Portuguese explorers entered the Mato Grosso region in the sixteenth
century, and by the eighteenth century there were a few European settlements
in the region. Intensive intrusion by Brazilians did not begin, however,
until the end of the nineteenth century. Authors vary in their depiction
of the nature of Brazilian-Bororo contacts. Some stress the attempts
of the Indian Protection Service to pacify and preserve the Bororo
(cf. Petrullo 1932: 95-96), whereas others mention the more negative
aspects, including killing and driving Bororo from their territory
(cf. Cook 1909: 351). In addition to the Indian agents and settlers,
a third acculturative force in the area was the presence of Salesian
missionaries. By the 1930s, the Western Bororo were so heavily acculturated
and so nearly extinct that Petrullo considered them to be of no interest
to the ethnographer (Petrullo 1932: 99). The Eastern Bororo at that
time apparently still clung to much of their aboriginal life style,
which, given the ethnographer's interest in the unusual, probably
accounts for the fact that there is more known about this group. A
comparison of sources on the Eastern Bororo from the 1930s with Levak's
work in 1965-67, (1973) however, indicates that the Eastern group
has been undergoing rapid deculturation.

While never a very numerous people (earliest estimates suggest that
there were some 1,000 in the late nineteenth century), in 1965 there
were only about 500 Bororo remaining. As Brazilians have settled the
area, not only have the Bororo been constricted to an ever-shrinking
territory but the agricultural and ranching activities of the settlers
have altered the environment so that former subsistence activities
of the Bororo have become less productive. With many of the old cultural
traits no longer practiced or forgotten, and with a dwindling population,
the modern-day Bororo bear little resemblance to those of the earlier
accounts. (The researcher should therefore be careful to note the
dates of fieldwork when using the file materials on the Bororo.)

Traditionally the Bororo lived, and to some extent still do, by hunting,
fishing, collecting, and horticulture. The men hunted with bows and
arrows, and the principal animals sought were peccaries, jaguars,
tapir, rabbits, caimans, and various species of monkeys and birds.
Fishing, too, was mainly a male activity, and several methods were
employed, including shooting with bows and arrows, using weirs and
nets, and poisoning. Both sexes collected wild plant materials, but
the women did the bulk of the collecting and were responsible for
gathering firewood as well. Slash-and-burn, shifting horticulture
was the domain of the women, and crops included maize, manioc, tobacco,
rice, cotton, and gourds.

Bororo social structure--mainly that of the Eastern Bororo, for whom
there are fairly good data--has attracted a great deal of attention.
Communities seem to have numbered about 100-150 people and were divided
into moieties. Each moiety was composed of several matrilineal sibs
(called clans by most authors), which were further subdivided into
matrilineages. Each sib had special rights and privileges, including
rights to particular names, designs, ritual knowledge, and use of
materials for manufacturing. These social divisions were played out
in the physical arrangement of the community. Thatched houses were
arranged in a circular fashion around a central clearing in which
the men's house was located. Households belonging to a given moiety
were located along one-half of the circle, those of the other moiety
occupied the other half. Within the moiety areas, households belonging
to a single sib were arranged together. Households were composed of
a matrilineage, and each family unit within the household did its
own cooking.

Kinship terminology was of the Crow type. Marriage ideals stressed
moiety exogamy and preferences for intermarriage between particular
sibs. These were not necessarily adhered to, however, and there were
few restrictions with regard to nonmarital unions. Levi-Strauss (1936)
indicates that there were plural marriages, but they appear to have
been infrequent. There was no obligatory sororate or levirate. Women
initiated marriages, and if the male accepted, the couple took up
residence in the wife's family's house without much ceremony. Divorces
could be initiated by either sex. Birth involved little ceremony,
although both the husband and wife observed some food taboos for a
few weeks. The wife's lovers (potential fathers of the child) also
observed food taboos and were termed fathers of the child. Infanticide
and abortion were practiced.

Major life events marked by ceremony were naming (which occurred when
the child was about three years old and began playing with toys appropriate
to its sex), male initiation, and death. At the time of initiation,
a boy received a penis sheath (about the only article of clothing
worn by Bororo men and, incidentally, one of the topics acorded the
greatest coverage by the sources), was instructed in secret ritual
knowledge known only to the men, and moved into the men's house, where
he would sleep at night until he married. Funeral ceremonies were
long and complex affairs, lasting for several weeks. The length of
the ceremony was apparently determined by the amount of time it took
for the corpse to decompose, so that the bones could be given a proper
burial (cf. Kozak (1963) for a description of a funeral ceremony).

Men, when not occupied in subsistence tasks, spent a great deal of
time in the men's house, which was off-limits to women and children.
Here they made weapons, plaited cotton and hair, made ornaments, and
visited. Women's nonsubsistence tasks centered around the household,
where they cooked, made pots and baskets, and tended the children.

Two achievable statuses are noted in the literature. One was that
of shaman, which involved contact with the spirit of a dead shaman.
Shamans were both curers and practitioners of witchcraft. The second
special status was that of headman. It is not clear what the mode
of succession to or the powers involved in the office were, but it
appears that each lineage had a head, who was the most knowledgeable
man of the kinship group. Each of these headmen had certain areas
in which he gave orders, for example in deciding when and where to
hunt, fish, or clear land; whether to move the village; and so on.
But it seems that he had no power to enforce his orders.

Intercommunity relations are not clear either. Neighboring villages
were interrelated by kinship, and some movement of families between
villages occurred. At times, villages split, and two new communities
were formed. Communities also shifted their village sites, relieving
pressure on their resource base. The Bororo had no overarching sense
of tribal unity, and the situation reported by Levi-Strauss, where
a headman ruled over three communities, may not have been an aboriginal
trait (Lowie 1946: 426). Aboriginally, warfare was practiced against
other groups, although there is no information on possible conflict
between Bororo communities. The Eastern Bororo traditionally fought
with the neighboring Cayapo, while the Western Bororo were engaged
against the Guana and the Guaycura.

General information on the Bororo can be found in the major work by
Colbacchini and Albisetti (1942).

Culture summary by Eleanor C. Swanson



Colbacchini, Antonio.
 Os Bororos Orientais Orarimogodogue do Planalto Oriental de Mato Grosso [The Eastern Bororo Orarimogodogue of the Eastern Plateau of Mato Grosso].
 By Antonio Colbacchini and Cesar Albisetti.
 Brasiliana, Grande Formato, Serie 5a, vol.
 4.
 Sao Paulo, Companhia Editora Nacional, 1942.
 Cook, William Azel.
 Through the wildernesses of Brazil by horse, canoe and float.
 New York, American Tract Society, 1909.
 4, 487 p. Kozak, Vladimir.
 Ritual of a Bororo funeral.
 Natural History, 72, no.
 1 (1963): 38-49.
 Levak, Zarko David.
 Kinship system and social structure of the Bororo of Pobojari.
 Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, 1973 [1974 copy].
 2, 5, 224 l. tables.
 (University Microfilms Publications, no.
 73-29, 618) Dissertation (Anthropology) -- Yale University, 1971.
 Levi-Strauss, Claude.
 Contribution a l'etude de l'organisation sociale des Indiens Bororo [Contribution to the study of the social organization of the Bororo Indians].
 Societe des Americanistes de Paris, Journal, n.s., 28 (1936): 269-304.
 Lowie, Robert H. The Bororo.
 In Julian H. Steward, ed.
 Handbook of South American Indians.
 V. 1.
 Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1946: 419-434.
 Petrullo, Vincenzo M. Primitive peoples of Matto Grosso, Brazil.
 By Vincent M. Petrullo.
 Museum Journal, 23 (1932): 81-180.


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