The Guarani are a group of culturally-related Indigenous peoples of South America. They are distinguished from the related Tupi by their use of the Guarani language. The traditional range of the Guarani people is in what is now Paraguay between the Paraná River and lower Paraguay River, the Misiones Province of Argentina, southern Brazil once as far east as Rio de Janeiro, and parts of Uruguay and Bolivia.
Although their demographic dominance of the region has been reduced by European colonisation and the commensurate rise of mestizos, there are contemporary Guarani populations in Paraguay and parts of Argentina and Bolivia. Most notably, the Guarani language, still widely spoken across traditional Guarani homelands, is one of the two official languages in Paraguay, the other one being Spanish. The Paraguayan population learns Guarani both informally from social interaction and formally in public schools. In modern Spanish, Guaraní also refers to any Paraguayan national in the same way that the French are sometimes called Gauls.
Name
The history and meaning of the name Guaraní are subject to dispute. Before they encountered Europeans, the Guarani referred to themselves simply as Abá, meaning "men" or "people". The term Guarani was originally applied by early Jesuit missionaries to refer to natives who had accepted conversion to the Christian religion; Cayua or Caingua (ka'aguygua) was used to refer to those who had refused it. Cayua is roughly translated as "the ones from the jungle". While the term Cayua is sometimes still used to refer to settlements of Indigenous peoples who have not well integrated into the dominant society, the modern usage of the name Guarani is generally extended to include all people of native origin regardless of societal status. Barbara Ganson writes that the name Guaraní was given by the Spanish since it means "warrior" in the Tupi-Guaraní dialect spoken there. Guarinĩ is attested in 16th-century Old Tupi, by Jesuit sources, as "war, warrior, to wage war, warlord".
History, myth and legend
thumb|280px|Guarani ceramics.
thumb|280px|Guarani incised ceramics bowls, Museum Farroupilha, in [[Triunfo, Rio Grande do Sul|Triunfo.]]
Early Guarani villages often consisted of communal houses (malocas, or ocas), with each house housing several families under the leadership of a chief. Communities were united by common interest and language, and tended to form tribal groups by dialect. It is estimated that the Guarani numbered some 400,000 people when they were first encountered by Europeans. At that time, they were sedentary and agricultural, subsisting largely on manioc, maize, wild game, and honey.
Polygamy was practiced. The Laws of the Indies forbade slavery in Hispanic America. However, the conquistadors and settlers of Asunción continued to act without respecting the new legislation, as denounced by the priest Francisco González de Paniagua in a letter written on 3 March 1545: