Maskoy

The Maskoy group is made up of the Lengua-Maskoy peoples of the Paraguayan Gran Chaco: the Enlhet, or Northern Lengua, the Enxet, or Southern Lengua, and the Guaná. They were hunter-gatherers of the dry Chaco forest, moving in small kin bands in search of game, wild fruit and honey.

The Guaná were subjugated by the horse-riding Mbayá. In 1760 the Jesuit Manuel Durán gathered Guaná fleeing Mbayá rule into the San Juan Nepomuceno reduction, which held six hundred people when the Jesuits were expelled in 1768. A second reduction was founded in 1797 at Caazapá, where mixing with Guaraní women soon Guaranized the community.