This process was specifically carried out to pacify them, and to remove them from their ancestral homeland, so that absentee investors (mainly Brazilian) could move in and develop the lands that once belonged only to the Aché.

The fact that Aché inhabitants were present and living in the forests of Canindeyu and Alto Paraná on the very lands being titled in Hernandarias seems to have been dismissed by cities such as Coronel Oviedo.

About 500 CE Guarani horticulturists migrated into the area and began to persecute the Aché hunting peoples, perhaps causing them to move into forested hills, away from open country and navigable rivers, and adopt a more nomadic lifestyle.

For example, Techo (1897)[5] describes them as hunter-gatherers who ate only palm pith and fruits, venison and roots, and fastened little stones to their lips, which made them look ferocious, and he states that they worshipped only thunder.

This is congruous with the Aché, whose economy is indeed based on palm pith and meat, and whose spiritual beliefs place "Berendy" (associated with booming meteors) in a central position.

A high percentage of those taken to the Cerro Moroti government sponsored reservation (named officially the "Colonia Nacional Guayaki") died from respiratory epidemics within two years after first peaceful contact.

[2] The post-contact history of the Northern Aché begins with chaos at Cerro Moroti following the arrest of Manuel Pereira, and the newly appointed administration of the New Tribes missionaries in September 1972.

The situation changed dramatically in 1974–75, when Father Nicolas de Cunha began to systematically bring the surviving Aché refugees to the Catholic Mission San Agustín.

For the next 20 years, the Chupa Pou mission grew into the largest Aché settlement in Paraguay, while the Colonia Nacional in Cerro Moroti decreased in size, lost most of its original land holdings, and increasingly intermixed and intermarried with the neighboring Paraguayans.

Next, in the early 1980s a dozen families from the Chupa Pou reservation left to join the Aché band that had been contacted in the Refugio Mbaracayú (Mbaracayu Biological Sanctuary) in April 1978, and was living at a German Mission for Guarani Indians.

The most recent Northern Aché community is that of Kuetuvy, which had 205 residents (about 55 families) in January 2006, and is located directly south of the Mbaracayu Reserve, on the property designated as "Finca 470".

13527) Initially the Fundacion Moises Bertoni (FMB) intended to purchase Finca #470 from its Taiwanese owner with funds raised in the US, Taiwan, and other foreign countries and then transfer the title of the property to the Kuetuvy Aché as an "Indigenous Forest Reserve".

But, in the months following the initial agreement between the FMB and the Kuetuvy Aché, the Paraguayan Ministry of Public Works (Ministerio de Obras Públicas) and the Secretary of the Environment (Secretaría del Ambiente) began negotiating independently with the property owner to purchase Finca #470 as part of a conservation land quota required by the Interamerican Development Bank (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo – BID) in order to meet conditions for a BID loan for the route 10 project in Canindeyu.

In January 2001 clandestine loggers working for Brazilian sawmills began a massive invasion of Finca #470 aided by "landless peasants" who promised to protect them if they cleared roads and allowed for subsequent settlement on the property.

An Aché resource management team trained by Kim Hill performed partial forest inventory and animal density counts on Finca #470 using random transect methodology.

In this way we hope to establish mechanisms to guarantee the joint process of transferring land rights of the Finca 470 to the native peoples located in that place, and in observance with the National Constitution and laws 352/94, 904/94, and 234/93".

This letter stated that the aforementioned property "..was acquired by the Secretary of the Environment for conservation purposes in the area of influence of National Highway 10 "Las Residentas" through the loan number 933/OC-PR from the International Development Bank within the framework of the "Natural Corridors" program of the Public Works and Communications Ministry, as stated in the transfer of title document registered by the Escribanía Mayor de Gobierno in 2003, under the registry n° 30 archive 195 and those that follow."

The document sent to the President of the Republic goes on to repeat SEAM's commitment to the terms of the 2004 Interinstitutional Cooperation Agreement with the ultimate goal of maintaining a forest reserve and transferring title to the indigenous inhabitants of the property in observance with the National Constitution and aforementioned laws N° 352/94, N° 904/94, N° 234/93.

Continuing, the document states that ".. taking into account that the aforementioned property functions as permanent location of the native Aché community Kuetuvy, and according to the principles of national law 234/93, which endorses article 14 of ILO Convention 169 (this refers to the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 formulated by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations) stating that "The rights of ownership and possession of the peoples concerned over the lands which they traditionally occupy shall be recognised.

The request for executive action on the Kue Tuvy land title was submitted again to the President on March 6, 2006 (SEAM note 177/06) by the Secretary of the Environment, Alfredo Molinas.

Margarita Mbywangi, the chief of the Kuetuvy community was arrested and imprisoned in Curuguaty in December 2005 along with members of the forestry patrol team who had tried to stop illegal loggers from extracting valuable hardwood trees from the property.

Eastern Paraguay is characterized by gently rolling hills covered with subtropical, semideciduous forest, and low flat valleys filled with tall grasses.

[20] The Aché economy was traditionally centered on hunting vertebrate game with bow and arrow, extracting wild honey, and exploiting palm starch and insect larvae.

[22] In the last half century before pacification, Aché groups occasionally raided their settled neighbors for manioc root (a starchy staple), domestic animals, and metal tools.

Systematic recording of dietary intake while living in the forest entirely off wild foods suggests that about 80% of the energy in the diet comes from meat, 10% from palm starch and hearts, 10% from insect larvae and honey, and 1% from fruits.

[25][26][27] Results generally support the notion that Aché hunters pursue only those prey types that would increase their energy return rates, and pass by some species (many small birds, rodents, reptiles, etc.)

Despite the plant diversity and dietary variety introduced by the various collected species, only palm hearts, starch, and bee honey contribute significant energy to the Aché diet.

Cooperative activities during foraging time included the following: cutting trails for others to follow; making bridges for others to cross a river; carrying another's child; climbing a tree to flush a monkey for another hunter; allowing another to shoot at prey when one has the first (or best) shot; allowing another to dig armadillo, or to extract honey or larvae when one has encountered it; yelling the whereabouts of prey escaping; calling the location of a resource for another individual to exploit while one continues searching; calling another to come to a pursuit of peccary, paca, monkey, or coati; waiting for others to join a pursuit, thus lowering one's own return rate; tracking peccaries with no arrows (for other men with arrows to kill); carrying game shot by another hunter; climbing fruit trees to knock down fruit for others to collect; cutting down palms (for others to take heart or fiber); opening a window to test for kraku (for others to come take); carrying the palm fiber others have taken; cutting down fruit trees for others to collect; bringing a bow, arrow, ax or other tool to another in a pursuit; spending time instructing another on how to take a resource; lending a bow or ax when it could be used; helping to look for another's arrows; preparing or repairing another man's bow and arrows in the middle of a pursuit; going back on the trail to warn others of a wasp nest; walking toward other hunters to warn of fresh jaguar tracks or poisonous snakes; removing dangerous obstacles from the trail before others arrive.

Children were especially terrified of the killers who made a grand display of noise or growling, bluff and bluster (shaking tree branches and swaggering) when entering a residential camp after a day of hunting.

[2] Major causes of death in the forest period were in-group homicides (especially of infants and children), external warfare, respiratory disease, tropical fevers, and accidents.