The Aimoré (Aymore, Aimboré) are one of several South American peoples of eastern Brazil called Botocudo in Portuguese (from botoque, a plug), in allusion to the wooden disks or tembetás worn in their lips and ears.

[3] The Brazilian chief who was presented to King Henry VIII in 1532 wore small bones hung from his cheeks and from the lower lip a semi-precious stone the size of a pea.

When the Portuguese adventurer Vasco Fernando Coutinho reached the east coast of Brazil in 1535, he erected a fort at the head of Espírito Santo Bay to defend himself against the Aimorés and other tribes.

[2] The tribe's original territory was in Espírito Santo, and reached inland to the headwaters of the Rio Grande (Belmonte) and Doce River on the eastern slopes of the Espinhaço Mountains.

Smallpox was deliberately spread among them; poisoned food was scattered in the forests; by such infamous means, the coast districts about Rio Doce and Belmonte were cleared, and one Portuguese commander boasted that he had either slain with his own hands or ordered to be butchered many hundreds of them.

At the graves of the dead, they kept fires burning for some days to scare away evil spirits, and, during storms and eclipses, arrows were shot into the sky to drive away demons.

This disk, made of the especially light and carefully dried wood of the barriguda tree (Chorisia ventricosa), which the natives called embur, whence Augustin Saint-Hilaire suggested as the probable derivation of their name, Aimboré.

Similar ear ornaments are common in South and even Central America, at least as far north as Honduras, as described by Christopher Columbus when he explored this latter country during his fourth voyage (1502).