Ãwa

The Ãwa, better known as the Avá-Canoeiro, are a small Tupi-Guarani people of the Goiás and Tocantins interior, also recorded as Canoeiro. One tradition holds that they descend from Carijó Guaraní brought north from São Paulo between 1724 and 1726 with the gold-seeking bandeira of Bartolomeu Bueno, who used them as miners before the group regained freedom and settled on the upper Tocantins, though their language points to older northern Tupi-Guarani roots.

They first appear in written records in the early nineteenth century, clashing with cattle ranchers and gold prospectors along the Tocantins, whose valley linked Goiás with Porto Real, present-day Porto Nacional.

Pressed by the ranches and garimpos that occupied their lands through the 1800s, part of the people withdrew to the Araguaia and by the end of the century had reached Bananal Island.