BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 495 



of them were compelled, by Jose Dias Soares, to acknow- 

 ledge the supremacy of the Portugueze Crown, but the 

 greater number still ramble about in savage independance, 

 and are occasionally captured by the Fazendeiros, who are 

 empowered to make them work as slaves, or to sell them. 

 A similar mode of treatment has been pursued with the Can- 

 nibal Botocudos, who, in the province of Minas Geraes, 

 cruelly attacked the neighbouring settlers, and were in then- 

 turn vanquished, and either reduced to slavery or sent to 

 work in the mines. These people are of a warlike disposi- 

 tion and distinguished by their custom of boring the under 

 lip and ears. 



At Oeiras we saw several Pimenteira prisoners. They 

 were more active and stronger built than the generality 

 of Indians whom we had observed, and showed greater 

 animation in their ccountenances and manner of speech, 

 than belonged to their brethren settled in Aldeas. They 

 were of the tribes Gogues and Acroas, and it was only 

 through the medium of their superintendant, Marcellino — 

 a very aged man, who appeared to have some mixture of 

 the Ethiopian blood in his Indian veins — that we could 

 obtain any communication with them. The Gogues lived 

 (and some still reside,) near the southern parts of the Rio 

 Parnahyba; and, so late as the year 1765, four hundred 

 of them assembled at an Aldea, nine leagues north of Oeiras. 

 The Acroas again inhabit a district north of the Gogues, 

 between the Rio das Balsas and the Tocantins; while the 

 Timbiras are a nation widely diffused in the Sertao of 

 Maranhao. According to the aged Marcellino's statement, 

 & U these Indians use the bow and arrow for their weapons, 

 °ften poisoning the latter; and they support themselves 

 b y hunting and fishing, being much averse to agriculture. 

 When they cross the Rio Tocantius, it is not in canoes, 

 of which they hardly know the use, but on rafts, which 

 tn ey construct of the stems of the Buriti Palm. They 

 are not Anthropophagi, but employ their prisoners as slaves. 

 According to an old tradition of these Indians, God, at 



