The Terena and the Caduveo of 



Southern Mato Grosso, Brazil 



By Kalervo Obekg 



INTRODUCTION 



This brief monograph has grown out of an 

 attempt to outline the cultural changes i-esulting 

 from the contact and interaction of two culturally 

 different Indian tribes and their eventual adjust- 

 ment to the impact of European civilization. It 

 must be stated at the outset that no continuous 

 record of change can be given. We see the his- 

 torical process rather in discontinuous flashes as 

 it is revealed to us by writers who observed the life 

 of these two tribes in the past. Even with the 

 documentary evidence on hand the story of any 

 given period of time is incomplete, for the ob- 

 servers did not record all those details of culture 

 which we now consider so essential. Yet, with 

 all these shortcomings, we do see the general out- 

 lines of development, the major turning points in 

 the sequence of changes initiated by the outstand- 

 ing forces of contact and interaction. It must be 

 added, furthermore, that this monograj^h is con- 

 sidered more in the nature of a preliminary out- 

 line of a project which, it is hoped, will be com- 

 pleted by the Brazilian students who have partici- 

 pated in the work so far. 



Discussion of the historical literature referring 

 to the Terena and Caduveo is not considered neces- 

 sary here, for this has been ably done by Alfred 

 Metraux in Volume 1 of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion's Handbook of South American Indians. In 

 tracing the early history of these two tribes re- 

 course has been made to the ideas and docu- 

 mented evidence set forth in the Handbook. Quo- 

 tations from early writers, Spanish, Portuguese, 

 and French, have been used where they refer di- 

 rectly to cultural characteristics or changes re- 



sulting from contact. These quotations have been 

 translated into English, the writer being respon- 

 sible for the translations. Admittedly, the early 

 phases, covering a period of nearly four centuries, 

 are vague. In fact, direct field methods can reach 

 back with certainty for only the life span of a 

 mature informant. 



During some i^eriod in pre-Columbian times, 

 the Terena, as a subtribe of the Arawak-speaking 

 Guana, moved southward into the northern Chaco 

 from the Amazon Basin. From the earliest writ- 

 ten records and from what we know of the Ara- 

 wak-speaking peoples in the Amazon Basin, the 

 Guana were a relatively peaceful and predomi- 

 nantly agi-icultural people. In the Chaco the 

 Guana came into contact with the Guaicurii-speak- 

 ing Mbaya of which the Caduveo formed a part. 

 The Mbaya were predominantly hunters and ex- 

 tremely warlike. In time, the interaction between 

 the Guana and ]\Ibaya led to a symbiotic relation- 

 ship based on intermarriage between Mbaya chiefs 

 and Guana women of chiefly rank, exchange of 

 goods, and the rendering of services by the Guana 

 for military protection provided by the ilbaya. 

 In this system of accommodation the Mbaya main- 

 tained a position of ascendancy owing to their 

 militai-y superiority. This seems to have been the 

 existing situation when the Spaniards made con- 

 tact with the Guana and Mbaya around the middle 

 of the sixteenth century. 



Although we do not know the exact location of 

 the Guana tribes at this date, we know from the 

 account of Sanchez Labrador that in 1767 they 

 were settled along the Paraguay River from lati- 



