GUARANIS, a group of South American Indian tribes, forming an important subdivision of the Tupian (q.v.) linguistic stock. At the time of the first arrival of Europeans, the Guarani tribes were spread over the region east of the Paraguay river in what is now Paraguay and the adjacent Argentine states of Cor rientes and Missiones, and extended eastwards along the upper Uruguay river some distance into the Brazilian states of Santa Caterina and Rio Grande do Sul. In the early portion of the sixteenth century, in part at least owing to Spanish attacks, a considerable body left their homes and migrated westward to Bolivia, where, as the Chiriguanos and Guarayos, they settled in the Andean foothills and edge of the Chaco, expelling the older Chane and other Arawakan tribes.
The Guaranis, originally a very numerous people, were seden tary agriculturists, living in large palisaded villages of wood and thatch houses, and presented a strong contrast to the nomad hunting tribes to the west and south. The Guaranis became widely known as a result of the activities of the Jesuit missions —the Doctrinas de Guaranies—founded among them in the early years of the seventeenth century. The Missions comprised in all some thirty settlements, where the Jesuits, in spite of attacks by slave-raiders from the Portuguese territories (who in 1628-30 alone carried off 6o,000 Indians) built up a community of great interest, which lasted until the expulsion of the Order in 1768. In their primitive state the Guaranis of ten went entirely naked, and wore as their most characteristic ornament a long pendant labret in the lower lip. Although essentially agricultural, raising corn, manioc and sweet potatoes, they had a bad reputation for killing and eating prisoners taken in war. They appear to have had trade with the border regions of the Inca empire, whence they secured small quantities of gold ornaments and metal objects, which through them reached the Atlantic coast, where a few examples were found in the possession of the people by the earliest European explorers.
See P. de Charlevoix, The History of Paraguay (176g) ; P. Her nandez, Organization Social de las Doctrinas Guaranies de la Compania de Jesus (Barcelona, 1913) ; M. S. Bertoni, La Civilization Guarani (Puerto Bertoni, 1922) .