Guana

The Guaná, who call themselves Enlhet and are also named Kaskihá, are a people of the Paraguayan Chaco Boreal. Their outside name was imposed by the Mbayá, who once subjugated them as the guaná-niyolola. Their tongue, vana peema, belongs to the Lengua-Maskoy family.

In 1760 the Jesuit Manuel Durán gathered Guanás fleeing Mbayá rule into the San Juan Nepomuceno reduction west of the Paraguay River, which held six hundred people by the Jesuit expulsion in 1768. A second reduction was founded in 1797 by Governor Lázaro de Rivera at Caazapá for the Charavaná band, who had settled along the Ipané River to work in Asunción and escape the Mbayá; mixing with Guaraní women soon Guaranized the community.