The Guarani

Métraux, Alfred

essay

The Guarani

Government Printing Office • 3 (143) • Published In 1948 • Pages: 69-94

By: Métraux, Alfred.

Abstract
This article is a summary of Guarani ethnography from the 16th century to the early twentieth century, as obtained mostly from written historical documents. In the opening pages of the article Métraux presents detailed information on Guarani tribal identifications, including the geographical locations of each subgroup mentioned. Métraux notes that in the 16th and 17th centuries the tribal group that we know as Guarani were called CARIJO or CARIO -- the term 'guarani' not being used until the end of the 17th century -- and at that time occupied a large stretch of the Atlantic coast from Barra de Cananea to Rio Grande do Sul. Today the Guarani who have preserved their cultural identity form isolated islands in Paraguay and southern Brazil. The subtribes mentioned by the Spanish chroniclers have long since disappeared and the names by which the various subgroups are known today are fairly recent in origin and appear in the literature only in the 18th century. Métraux deals with ancient and modern Guarani as if they were separate entities, and distinguishes between the rural population of Paraguay who speak the Guarani language -- the modern civilized Guarani, and their primitive contemporaries who are referred to here as Caingua. Other data relate to the archaeology of the Guarani area, their culture history, subsistence patterns, foods and food preparation, villages and house types, dress and adornment, transportation, manufacture, social and political organization, life cycle, cannibalism, esthetic and recreational activities, religion, shamanism, mythology and messianic and revivalistic movements.

Shamans and psychotherapists

HRAF PubDate

1998