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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > M > Mbaya Indians


MBAYA INDIANS

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(Guaycurü)

A predatory tribe formerly ranging on both sides of the Paraguay River, on the
north and northwestern Paraguay frontier, and in the adjacent portion of the
province of Matto Grosso, Brazil. They are one of a group of equestrian warlike
and savage tribes, constituting a distinct linguistic stock, the Guaycuran,
formerly roving over northern Paraguay and the upper Chaco region, and of which
the best known are the Abipon, made famous by the missionary Dobrizhoffer, the
Guaycurü proper, or Mbaya, the Macobí, and the still savage and powerful Toba.
The Lengua, sometimes included under the same name, are now known to be a branch
of the Chiquito of Bolivia. The name, Mbaya, given to them by the more peaceful
Guaraní, signified "terrible", "bad", or "savage". The name, Guaycurü, now most
commonly used, is said to mean "runner". They have also been called Caballeros
by the Spaniards, on account of their fine horsemanship. According to Father
Lozano they had three main divisions: Epicua-yiqui (Epiguayegi) in the North,
Napin-yiqui in the West, and Taqui-yiqui in the South. Iolis, another authority,
gives a different list of six divisions.



The Guaycurü were accustomed to prey upon the more sedentary Guaraní tribes,
making sudden raids with quick retreats into their own country, where tangled
forests and treacherous swamps made pursuit difficult and subjection almost
impossible. In 1542, Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, governor of Buenos Aires, with
a detachment of Spaniards and contingent of Guaraní, inflicted upon them a
signal defeat, chiefly by the terror of his field guns and horses, with both of
which the Guaycurü were still unacquainted. The acquisition of horses soon
transformed them into a race of expert and daring equestrians, and for two
centuries they continued their raids upon the Spanish settlements on the
Paraguay River and the neighbouring missions. As early as 1610 the Jesuits
unsuccessfully attempted their conversion. About the middle of the eighteenth
century a peace was arranged which, according to Dobrizhoffer, was faithfully
kept by the Indians. The Jesuit Joseph Sanchez Labrador was then sent, at his
own request, to work among these Guaycurü, who had been considered the wildest
and most dangerous tribe of the region. Having made good progress in their
difficult language, he established for them, in 1760, the mission of Virgen de
Belen (now Belen), east of the present Concepción, in Paraguay. They were
impatient of restraint, and, although many infants and dying adults received
baptism, according to Dobrizhoffer, "the rest did little else than wander over
the plains". The mission influence, however, effectually tamed their ferocity.
At the expulsion of the Jesuits, in 1767, the Belen mission contained 260
Christian Indians, eight of the nine bands still remaining in the forests.

In this same year was established by Father Manuel Duran the last of the
Paraguay Jesuit foundations, the mission of San Juan Nepomucino, on the east
bank of the river, among the Guana, or Chana, a numerous agricultural or
pedestrian tribe of the same territory, subject to the Mbaya. When the
missionaries were driven out, this station contained 600 Indians. The conversion
of the Guana had been undertaken more than a century before by Father Pedro
Romero, who lost his life in 1645 at the hands of a neighbouring wide tribe.
Among the Guana, infanticide, polygamy, and intoxication were unknown, and the
men and women worked together in the fields. About the close of the eighteenth
century, the Franciscans took up the work begun by the Jesuits, and in the next
fifty years gathered a number of Guaycurü and Guana into missions, which
continued until the tribes themselves diminished or were assimilated. Lieutenant
Page, who commanded a mission sent by the United States Government to explore
the Paraguay river, gives an interesting and extended account of his visit to
one of these mission, Nossa Senhora de Bon Conselho, near Albuquerque, Brazil,
in 1853 (Page, "Report to the Secretary of the Navy", Washington, 1855). Here
the Christian Guanas cultivated vegetables for the market afforded by the
neighbouring white settlements. Under the care, both temporal and spiritual, of
a Franciscan Father, these aborigines who, only a few years earlier, had been
wandering savages, now were a remarkably neat, orderly, and thrifty community of
husbandmen. Fronting upon a public square, there stood the village church, a
school house, and a number of well-constructed thatched dwellings, each dwelling
having a frontage of twenty feet, with interiors partitioned with curtains and
fitted with raised platforms to serve either as tables or beds. Among the
vegetables cultivated was a native rice, which they harvested in canoes. Cotton,
too, was grown, spun, dyed, and woven by the women of the settlement. The men
wore trousers and ponchos; the women, a chemise girdled at the waist; the boys
were exercised in military tactics, and the children in general were not only
taught "the rudiments of a general education, but made some progress in music
and dancing". A few of the Mbaya proper still exist on the western bank of the
Paraguay in the neighbourhood of the town of Concepción. Other bands known as
Guaycurü roam over the adjacent districts of Matto Grosso, Brazil and may number
perhaps 1500 souls as against and estimated 15,000 or 18,000 a century ago. The
Guana, on the Taquari and Miranda Rivers in the same region are now labourers
among the whites, although still claimed as dependents by the Guaycurü.

In their primitive condition the men of the Guaycurü went entirely naked, while
the women wore only a short skirt. The men trimmed their hair in a circular
tuft. Girls had the head closely shaven. The men painted their bodies and wore
rings in the lower lip. Boys were painted black until about fourteen years old,
then red for two years, when they were subjected to a painful ordeal, before
taking their station as warriors. War was their chief business, their weapons
being the bow, club, and bone knife. The children born of captives were sold as
slaves. Their chief tribal ceremony was in honour of the Pleiades, and was
accompanied by a short battle between the men and the women, ending with general
intoxication. They buried their dead in the ground, and voluntary human victims
were sacrificed when a chief died. Polygamy was unknown, but separation was
frequent, and infanticide common. They subsisted by fishing and hunting. Their
villages consisted each of a single communal structure in three large rooms, the
middle of which was reserved for the chief and head men, and for the storage of
weapons. The chief had great authority, and with his head men, seems to have
belonged to a different clan, or gens, from the common warriors. Captives and
their descendants constituted a permanent slave class. As a people they were
tall and strongly built. Those still remaining show the admixture of white
captive blood and are gradually assimilating to the settled population.




SOURCES

BRINTON, American Race (New York, 1891); CHARLEVOIX, Hist. of Paraguay, I
(London, 1796); DOBRIZHOFFER, Account of the Abipones (London, 1822); HERVÁS,
Catálogo de las lenguas. I (Madrid, 1800); LOZANO, Descripcion Chorographica de
la Gran Chaco (Cordoba, 1733); PAGE, La Plata, the Argentine Federation, and
Paraguay (New York, 1859); RECLUS, South America, II: Amazonia and La Plata (New
York, 1897).


ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Mooney, J. (1911). Mbaya Indians. In The Catholic Encyclopedia.
New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10095d.htm

MLA citation. Mooney, James. "Mbaya Indians." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol.
10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10095d.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by M. Donahue.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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