Barawana

Barawana, or Baré, is the Arawakan language of the Baré people, also called Hanera, who lived along the upper Rio Negro from the site of present-day Manaus to the Casiquiare canal, on the borderland of Brazil and Venezuela. It was divided into Ihini and Arihini dialects and formed a cluster with Guinau, Mandawaca and Marawá.

Through the eighteenth century Baré was among the dominant languages of the upper Rio Negro, and from the early 1800s its name was used as a term for all the Indigenous peoples of the river.

The decline of Baré followed the spread of Nheengatu, the Tupi-based Amazonian general language that was the official tongue of the colony of Grão-Pará and Maranhão from 1689 to 1727 and was carried up the Rio Negro by Carmelite missionaries; the Baré gradually adopted it, together with Spanish and Portuguese, in place of their own speech.