Arawak language
The Guaná, (also called Chané and Layaná), speakers of an Arawak language, were vassals of the Mbayá, a relationship that, according to Spanish accounts, existed in 1548, and possibly much earlier. The Guaná were agricultural and pedestrian as opposed to the nomadic Mbayá who became equestrians by the early 17th century. In the early 18th century the Guaná lived in seven large villages of 1,000 or more people on the western side of the Paraguay River between 19 and 22 south latitudes. Later in the 18th century, some of them migrated along with the Mbayá east of the Paraguay River. They were estimated, perhaps generously, in the early 18th century to have numbered 18,000 to 30,000. In 1793 they numbered about 8,200.