Boe

The Boe, better known as the Bororo, a name meaning village courtyard, are a people of central Mato Grosso whose range once reached Goias and Bolivia. Colonial records call them by local names such as Araes and Coroados; their Boe Wadaru speech forms its own Bororoan branch of the Macro-Ge family.

Jesuit missionaries made first contact in the 1600s; for long afterwards Bororo war parties ranged far on raids, villages binding into wartime alliances. The 1700s Mato Grosso gold rush split them into eastern and western groups that never reunited.

Their society centres on circular villages of clan houses facing a central court, in two exogamous halves of four clans each; descent is matrilineal, and a husband moves into his bride's house. Traditionally hunter-gatherers whose women kept maize and manioc gardens, they hold naming rites, initiations and funerals lasting up to two months.