Also known as the 'índios cavaleiros'
or 'horsemen Indians,' the Kadiwéu are members
of a single surviving 'horde' of the Mbayá, a
branch of the Guaikurú. They preserve the memory
of a glorious past.
Organized in a society polarized by nobles
at one extreme and captives at the other, they lived
off war spoils and tribute from their neighbours; in
fact, they depended on the latter for their own biological
reproduction, since their own women did not produce
children or only allowed one child to survive when they
were already towards the end of their fertile life.
These women devoted themselves to body and facial painting,
whose exceptional design of geometric elements was considered
by Lévi-Strauss to be typical to hierarchical
societies. Designs that impress by the richness of their
forms and details. Today, these are made easily accessible
to us through the vast collection collected by Darcy
Ribeiro, reproduced in the book he published on the
Kadiwéu.
Those captured during past warfare, preferentially
children and women, were included in this society within
a specific category, namely as 'captives' or gootagi
(our captives) in Kadiwéu speech. The Guaikurú-Mbayá
took captives from
various other indigenous peoples, above all the Xamakôko,
inhabitants of a region of Paraguay, their most important
source. They also captured Whites - Portuguese or Spanish,
Brazilians or Paraguayans - a practice attested both in
the historical records and Kadiwéu memory. The
Mbayá also maintained another kind of relationship,
such as the one established with the Terêna (a subgroup
of the peoples then called Guaná or Txané),
a society also divided into strata. Here, they allowed
marriage between their own nobility and Terêna women
of the upper strata, thereby acquiring claims to the latter
group's work, particularly their agricultural products.
In the Paraguayan War, they chose to fight
for Brazil; this support later provided a basis for
recognition of their lands, though even today their
possession is not fully guaranteed.
The adoption of a 'country' style of clothing
by today's Kadiwéu men reveals their attachment
to a way of life based on the breeding and use of horses,
stocks of which they still rear, though much smaller
than those of the past.
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