574 BOWS AND ARROWS IN CENTRAL BRAZIL. 



region and are, since they were compelled to follow an entirely different 

 route of traffic to the southward-flowing rivers, in a directly opposite 

 condition to the tribes of the Madeira, Tapajo, Shingu, and Araguay. 

 Their ethnographic development must stand in direct association with 

 that of southern tribes, shut off from the tribes of the northward-flowing 

 rivers, which, for the most part, are confined within their own drainage 

 regions, and only along subsidiary lines are they in contact with tribes 

 of a neighboring drainage to bring about ethnographic adjustments. 

 However, that the tribes extending farthest north on the Paraguay 

 region came into frequent touch with the tribes neighboring to them is 

 thereby not excluded, and, on the contrary, it is proved, as was shown 

 in the case of the Cabischi arrow and Cayapo weapons. For that reason 

 there can not be drawn up for the ethnographic development of the 

 whole group a balance sheet respecting this region which would be 

 derived through the coming together of many types from different 

 directions into one or through the radiating expansion of a dominating 

 type. 



Further, a second motive constrains one to deviate from a hard and 

 fast division, namely, that, as was already seen concerning the Bac- 

 cairi, a people can develop along entirely diverse ethnographic lines 

 through divisions and wandering away into remote parts. It is the 

 case here with the Bororo, whose western branch approaches the Shingu 

 tribes in their feathering and has received its bow in commerce with 

 the Paraguay tribes, while the eastern branch has held on to the original 

 common mixed type of eastern feathering and bow throughout. These 

 two tribes, whose development is easily demonstrable, can be considered 

 apart when it comes to the study of the fundamental type. On this 

 ground it is well to discuss the Paraguay tribes of the Mato Grosso in 

 common. 



The Bororo tribe, the special representative of the native southern 

 Mato Grosso populations, who, if not the autochthones, occupied the 

 region of the southern Mato Grosso as far back as any information of 

 the tribe is had, specially the upper Paraguay portion, existed, indeed, 

 since the previous century in two groups, which have gone forth out of 

 the region previously discussed between the Lorenzo and the Para- 

 guay, and from which outward the eastern section pressed forward into 

 the vicinity of the Cayapo, on the upper Araguay, the western half 

 I>assing over the Cuyaba and the Paraguay and halting at the western 

 confluence of the Paraguay. The Bororo are a hunter tribe purely, 

 who, being given to fishing and the chase, held on tenaciously to their 

 manner of living and developed an unrestrained free character and a 

 wild temperament, which can not be said concerning close application 

 to the field and the restful activity of the tiller of the soil. While the 

 Government and the missions have succeeded with great difficulty with 

 others, as for the Bororo, with their hostile indisposition to link their 

 interests with those of the colonists and to settle in permanent aldea- 



