Apócaaranã

Apócaaranã rises to about 840 metres on the uplands of northern Paraná in southern Brazil, in a rolling forested country between the valleys of the Ivaí and the Tibagi. Before colonization this land was held by Indigenous peoples, the Guayaná, the Kaingang and the Guarani. One account derives the place-name from a Kaingang phrase, apó-caarã-nã, which can be read as “like the base of the great forest”.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Spanish province of Guairá lay in the same river country, with towns such as Villa Rica del Espíritu Santo founded in 1570, but raids by slave-hunting bandeirantes from São Paulo emptied it in the 1630s, and the forests of northern Paraná were left to the Kaingang and Guarani.

The later city of Maringá lies here.