After a brief bibliographical review of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, the paper discusses some works of the late 19th century that contain information on the Ethnoastronomy of Brazilian Indians. These accounts were written by the Canadian naturalist Charles Frederick Hartt (1840-1878) and by the Brazilian polymath José Vieira Couto de Magalhães (1837-1898). Although shaped by the worldviews of their authors and the scientific ethnological theories of that time, they record a small fraction of the indigenous knowledge systems about nature, celestial myths, constellations and calendars. The authors were contemporaries, and corresponded to each other; nevertheless they independently recorded some common knowledge from peoples who spoke a tupi language.
Ethnoastronomy; Indians; Charles Frederick Hartt; José Vieira Couto de Magalhães; History of Science
