Terena

The Terena are the principal surviving branch of the Guaná, the eastern group of the Chané, the southernmost Arawakan-speaking peoples of South America.

Arawakan farmers spread south from northern South America more than two thousand years ago, and the Guaná settled the northern Gran Chaco west of the Paraguay River, where by the early 1700s Spanish sources describe seven large villages of a thousand people or more. They grew crops and made ceramics and woven cloth.

The Guaná became subjects of the horse-riding Mbayá, a Guaycuruan people who raided them for tribute and captives yet adopted Guaná agriculture and weaving. In the early nineteenth century the Terena still lived in farming villages along the upper Paraguay, caught between Mbayá raiders and the Spanish and Portuguese frontier.