Note 61 — PRIMO VIAGGIO INTORNO AL MONDO

MS. 5,650 reads: “You must know that a family of one hundred persons, who make a great racket, lives in each of those houses called boii.” One of these houses (called Oca, in Tupi) is described by Wilson (Transactions of Ethnological Society, new series, vol. i) as being “60 or 70 feet long, divided into rooms for several families by rush mats, and provided with a central fire whose smoke passed through the roof. Some of them contained 200 head.” See Burton’s Captivity of Hans Stade, pp. 59, 60, note. The Indians described by Pigafetta are probably the Tamoyos of the Tupi or Guarani stock (Mosto, p. 56, note 1; see also Burton, ut supra, pp. lxi-lxxvi).