Yshyr

The Yshyr, who call themselves Ishír, meaning “person”, are a Zamuco-speaking people of the Gran Chaco, whose homeland lay along the Paraguay River and in the forests behind it. They were divided into the river-dwelling Ebytoso and the forest Tomáraho, each speaking its own dialect.

They lived as hunter-gatherers, moving with the resources of the Chaco scrub, and the Tomáraho long kept their boys' initiation ceremonies and shamanic traditions. Jesuit missionaries studied and described their language during the 1700s, leaving its earliest written record, while the Yshyr remained in the riverine woods beyond colonial settlements.