Evueví Indians

The conflict between the Spanish conquistadors and the Evueví Indians, a Chaco tribe located along the Paraguay River in eastern Paraguay, lasted for over a hundred years in the 15th and 16th centuries and eventually resulted in a significant decrease in the Evueví population that finally forced them to comply with Spanish settlement. The real reasons for this conflict are not known but from the evidence of Evueví culture one could see why they would pose such a resistance to the Spanish conquistadors.

The first evidence for the conflict between the Spanish and the Evueví would be religion. The Evueví practiced a form of religion called totemism which is the belief that a group of objects, plants or animals, share a common blood relationship. The Spanish practice of conversion of natives in the region they conquered would have been much tougher to do with a group like the Evueví because they didn't believe in any god or diety. The shaman was the most influential person in the tribe of Evueví who believed in nature and the relationship everything in nature has to one another. The Guaraní Indians west of the Paraguay River were much more susceptible to conversion because they believed in gods and diety and the transition would have been a much easier one to Catholicism and their belief in the holy trinity.

The second peice of evidence that shows why the Evueví would have been hostile is because they are located in the Chaco region east of the Paraguay River. The native tribes in this area are notorious for being war-like compared to the Guaraní in the west who were much more peaceful tribes. Once the conflict between the Spanish and the Evueví started, it didn't stop until a lack of population forced the Evueví into getting along with the Spanish. The elders of the Evueví tribe would pass down in oral tradition stories of the conflicts with the Spanish in order for the younger natives of the tribe to continue with the resistance against the Spanish. The Evueví would also raid Spanish settlements, steal their small children, and raise them as their own in order to supplement their population to continue the resistance. This explains why the conflict continued for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

Due to the fact that there was no written word from the Evueví explaining their perceptions of the Spanish conquest one can see from the evidence why they resisted the Spanish attempts to conquer and convert them for nearly a hundred and fifty years. In reverse, it is why the Spanish had a much easier time conquering and converting the Guaraní tribes on the western side of the Paraguay River who were much more peaceful tribes that already believed in gods and dieties.

Ganson, Barbara. "The Evueví of Paraguay: Adaptive Strategies and Responses to Colonialism, 1528-1811." The Americas 45, no. 4 (1989): 461-488.