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Abipón

A proud Guaycuruan horse nation of the lower Bermejo and Paraná, immortalized by the Jesuit Dobrizhoffer, who within fifty years of contact built a mounted warrior culture like the Plains nations of the north.

Numbering some 5,000 by 1750, the Abipón accepted the Jesuit reduction of San Jerónimo del Rey (1748, later Reconquista); ground down by war with the Toba and Mocoví, disease and absorption into the Argentine population, they ceased to exist as a distinct people in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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Borders over time

The atlas holds 2 border frames for Abipón — the shape you scrub through changes in 1641 · 1748.

Moments from the Chronicle

• 1641 Guaycurú horse nations are born Within two generations of the Spanish founding of Asunción, the Mbayá, Abipón, Mocoví and Toba had captured horses from Spanish ranches and Guaraní missions, transforming themselves from foot-going hunters into mounted raiders who would dominate the open Chaco for two centuries; by 1661 the Mbayá crossed the Paraguay to threaten Asunción itself.
• 1743 Jesuits gather the horse nations into reductions Pressed by disease, drought and the loss of grazing cattle, thousands of Mocoví and Abipón accepted Jesuit missions in the 1740s; San Javier for the Mocoví (1743) and San Jerónimo del Rey for the Abipón (1748) ringed the southern edge of the Chaco.

Further reading

• An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay Martin Dobrizhoffer · 1822

  The classic firsthand 18th-century account of the Abipón mounted warrior nation by the Jesuit missionary who lived among them.

• Peoples of the Gran Chaco Elmer S. Miller · 1999

  Sets the Abipón among the Guaycuruan horse nations of the lower Bermejo and Paraná (broad context).

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Sources

• Abipón — Wikipedia