Editing History of Paraguay (section)

===Native peoples===
[[File:Cacique de los Indios Payaguas.jpg|thumbnail|right|A Payagua chief]]
The homeland of the Guarani people was eastward from the [[Paraguay River]], in the [[Misiones Province|Misiones]] Province of [[Argentina]] and southern [[Brazil]] and as far east as the [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]] coast near [[Rio de Janeiro]]. Their pre-Columbian population is estimated at between 300,000 and one million. With the arrival of Europeans, the population rapidly decreased due to epidemics of European diseases. The Guaraní were united only by language and cultural similarities. No political structure existed above the village level. The Guaraní were a semi-sedentary agricultural people.<ref name="Tuer">{{cite web |last1=Tuer |first1=Dot |title=Tigers and Crosses: The Transcultural Dynamics of Spanish-Guaraní relations in the Rio de la Plata |url=http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/1882/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191206221911/http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/1882/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=6 December 2019 |website=Open Research |date=July 2013 |publisher=Thesis, University of Toronto |access-date=20 March 2022 }}</ref><ref name="Livi-Bacci">{{cite journal |last1=Livi-Bacci |first1=Massimo |title=Depopulation of Hispanic America after the Conquest |journal=Population and Development Review |date=June 2006 |volume=32 |issue=2 |page=221 |doi=10.1111/j.1728-4457.2006.00116.x |jstor=230058872 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

Although the Guaraní initially resisted Spanish incursions into their lands, two characteristics influenced their early cooperation with the Spanish and missionaries. First, the Guaraní were themselves warlike, but they were threatened by hostile tribes around them and by slave raiders. The Spanish, especially Christian missionaries, afforded a degree of security to the Guaraní. Secondly, the Guaraní had a custom of exchanging women among themselves and with outsiders to cement alliances. This facilitated a proliferation of sexual relations of Guaraní women with Spanish men who had an average of 10 concubines each. In Paraguay, the [[mestizo]] offspring of Spanish/Guaraní unions had the legal rights of Spaniards. Coupled with the lack of interest by Spain and Spanish entrepreneurs in Paraguay, which produced neither mineral wealth nor agricultural exports, Paraguay became a mestizo society by 1580. Unique to Latin American countries, an indigenous language, Guaraní, is an official language alongside Spanish. The Spanish and mestizos subjected the Guaraní population to the [[encomienda]] system of forced labor after 1556 and the [[reductions]] of Christian missionaries beginning in the 1580s.<ref name="Service">{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Elman R. |title=Spanish-Guarani Relations in Early Colonial Paraguay |date=2020 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |location=Ann Arbor |isbn=9781951519582 |pages=17–24 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/79226}} Originally published in 1954</ref><ref name="Saloman and Schwartz">{{cite book |last1=Saloman |first1=Frank |last2=Schwartz |first2=Stuart B. |title=The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Vol III, South America, Part 2 |date=2008 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=9780521630764 |pages=7–14}}</ref>

The [[Gran Chaco]], a semi-arid flatland west of the Paraguay River, was the home of the [[Guaycuru peoples|Guaycurú]] peoples. The most important of the Guaycurúans in Paraguay were the [[Payaguá people|Payaguá]], a riverine people ranging for {{cvt|1600|km|mile}} up and down the Paraguay River, and the [[Mbayá]] who lived in northwest Paraguay. The Guaycuru tribes were nomadic and warlike. The Mbayá developed a horse culture in the 17th century while the Payaguá made travel up and down the Paraguay River dangerous. These tribes frequently raided the Spanish settlers and Guaraní farmers. They resisted the reductions and Christianity of the missionaries and were a threat to the Spanish and other native peoples for more than 300 years. The name of Paraguay is probably derived from the Payaguás.<ref>Steward, Julian H., ed. (1946), ''Handbook of South American Indians'', Vol. 1, ''The Marginal Tribes'', Smithsonian Institution, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., p. 215</ref><ref>Ganson, Barbara (2017), "The Evueví of Paraguay: Adaptive Strategies and Responses to Colonialism", ''The Americas'', Vol 74, Issue 52, p. 466. Downloaded from [[Project MUSE]].</ref><ref name="Gott">{{cite book |last1=Gott |first1=Richard |title=Land without Evil |date=1993 |publisher=Verso |location=London |isbn=0860913988 |page=48}}</ref>