totocke

Updated: June 7, 2025

Laet calls the tree totocke, and mentions the drupe of the size of the human head, which contains the almonds. The weight of these fruits, he says, is so enormous, that the savages dare not enter the forests without covering their heads and shoulders with a buckler of very hard wood.

Alexander von Humboldt - Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2

Any one who has hammered at a Bertholletia fruit will be ready to believe the story that the Indians, fond as they are of the nuts, avoid the 'totocke' trees till the fruit has all fallen, for fear of fractured skulls; and the older story which Humboldt gives out of old Laet, that the Indians dared not enter the forests, when the trees were fruiting, without having their heads and shoulders covered with bucklers of hard wood.

Charles Kingsley - At Last