By KALERVO OBERG

This brief monograph has grown out of an
attempt to outline the cultural changes resulting
from the contact and interaction of two culturally
different Indian tribes and their eventual adjust-
ment to the impact of European civilization. It
must be stated at the outset that no continuous
record of change can be given. We see the his-
torical process rather in discontinuous flashes as
it is revealed to us by writers who observed the life
of these two tribes in the past. Even with the
documentary evidence on hand the story of any
given period of time is incomplete, for the ob-
servers did not record all those details of culture
which we now consider so essential. Yet, with
all these shortcomings, we do see the general out-
lines of development, the major turning points in
the sequence of changes initiated by the outstand-
ing forces of contact and interaction. It must be
added, furthermore, that this monograph is con-
sidered more in the nature of a preliminary out
line of a project which, it is hoped, will be com-
pleted by the Brazilian students who have partici-
pated in the work so far.

Discussion of the historical literature referring
to the Terena and Caduveo is not considered neces-
sary here, for this has been ably done by Alfred
Métraux in Volume 1 of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion's Handbook of South American Indians. In
tracing the early history of these two tribes re-
course has been made to the ideas and docu-
mented evidence set forth in the Handbook. Quo-
tations from early writers, Spanish, Portuguese,
and French, have been used where they refer di-
rectly to cultural characteristics or changes re-
sulting from contact. These quotations have been
translated into English, the writer being respon-
sible for the translations. Admittedly, the early
phases, covering a period of nearly four centuries,
are vague. In fact, direct field methods can reach
back with certainty for only the life span of a
mature informant.

During some period in pre-Columbian times,
the Terena, as a subtribe of the Arawak-speaking
Guaná, moved southward into the northern Chaco
from the Amazon Basin. From the earliest writ-
ten records and from what we know of the Ara-
wak-speaking peoples, in the Amazon Basin, the
Guaná were a relatively peace and predomi-
nantly agricultural people. In the Chaco the
Guaná came into contact with the Guaicurú-speak-
ing Mbayá of which the Caduveo formed a part.
The Mbayá were predominantly hunters and ex-
tremely warlike. In time, the interaction between
the Guaná and Mbayá led to a symbiotic relation-
ship based on intermarriage between Mbayá chiefs
and Guaná women of chiefly rank, exchange of
goods, and the rendering of services by the Guaná
for military protection provided by the Mbayá.
In this system of accommodation the Mbayá main-
tained a position to ascendancy owing to their
military superiority. This seems to have been the
existing situation when the Spaniards made con-
tact with the Guaná and Mbayá around the middle
of the sixteenth century.

Although we do not know the exact location of
the Guaná tribes at this date, we know from the
account of Sanchez Labrador that in 1767 they
were settled along the Paraguay River from lati-

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