Kren

The Kren, known to the Portuguese as Aimoré or Botocudo, from the botoque wooden plugs worn in their lips and ears, are a Macro-Jê people of eastern Brazil. Their own name Krenak means heads or sons of the land, and their language belongs to the Jê family.

In 1532 a Botocudo chief was carried to the court of Henry VIII, and a fort raised at Espírito Santo in 1535 was meant to guard against them. Slave-raiding provoked the long Aimoré War from 1555 onward.

Colonists gradually drove them west over the Serra dos Aimorés into Minas Gerais, where diamond strikes at the end of the eighteenth century brought fresh conflict. The frontier wars of 1790 to 1820, fought with deliberate smallpox contagion and poisoned food, nearly destroyed the eastern Botocudo groups and left the Krenak as their principal survivors.