A famous exponent of this group is Cândido Rondon, a Brazilian army official and founder of Fundação Nacional do Índio (or FUNAI).
Bororo's culture was closely studied by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss during his expedition to Amazonia and Mato Grosso (1935–1936), described in his famous book Tristes Tropiques (1955).
The Bororo, whose name means "village court" in their language, are also known as the Araés, Araripoconé, Boe, Coroados, Coxiponé, Cuiabá, and Porrudos people.
Due to the pressure of the garimpeiros, the gold seekers, Bororo divided into two groups, those of the East (Coroados) and those of the West (Campanhas), which once separated never returned to be united.
The Eastern Bororo, however, remained isolated from the world until the middle of the nineteenth century when a road was built connecting the Mato Grosso region to São Paulo and Minas Gerais.
After fifty years of war, Bororo surrendered to the state and after that apparent truce came the diamond seekers who also exploited and severely damaged the territory.
While searching for missing explorer Percy Fawcett in 1930, a wayward party including Aloha Wanderwell filmed the daily activities of the Bororo.
[4] Marshal Cândido Rondon (1865–1956), who was to become the first director of Brazil's Indians Protection Bureau (SPI/FUNAI) and creator of the Xingu National Park, was the son of a Bororo woman.
[6] This language is spoken by about a thousand individuals who constitute a small ethnic group of the Amazon named Bororo people; Its diffusion area is mainly found in the Brazilian region of Mato Grosso.
In 1976, there was recorded a very low native number (four people) in the Bolivian district of Santa Cruz, in the province of Angel Sandoval, near the border with Brazil.
Today the Bororo language is spoken in Brazil in the state of Mato Grosso, mainly in the villages of Meruri, Sangradouro and Perigera.
Towards the end of the 1960s the use of the Bororo language was forbidden in the towns of Merai and Sangradouro where the Salesian mission was operating, but with the passing of time it was restored, and the bilingual education was put into practice.
In the complex social organization of Bororo, the classification of individuals is governed by several number of factors including clan membership, blood descent, and group of residence (referring to where a family lives in the village).
A curious aspect for a people that may sometimes seem primitive is that woman has a very particular role in the concept of Bororo society, and indeed the rule of the offspring predicts that this is matriarchal, and that the infant then receives a name that Join the mother clan.
[7] Lucien Lévy-Bruhl quotes Karl von den Steinen (1894) and comments: "The Trumai (a tribe of northern Brazil) say that they are aquatic animals.