essay
The Guarani
Government Printing Office • 3 (143) • Published In 1948 • Pages: 69-94
By: Métraux, Alfred.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
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a summary of Guarani ethnography from the 16th century to the early twentieth century, as obtained mostly from written historical documents.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.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Location
- Prehistory
- History
- Sociocultural trends
- External relations
- Shamans and psychotherapists
- Mythology
- Spirits and gods
- Missions
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Guaraní
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1998
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- South America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Eastern South America
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 1970
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- no date
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- Sixteenth - early twentieth centuries
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Paraguay and southern Brazil
- NotesAdditional notes
- By Alfred Métraux
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 94)
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Guarani Indians