The Akawaio are an American Indian group living along the Guyana-Venezuela border. "Kapon" ('sky', kak; 'people', pon) is the Akawaio name for themselves, and this language is currently be used by approximately 5000 people in Guyana, Brazil and Venezuela. They enjoyed reign over considerable territory along the Mazanuri River. Major John Scott, in 1669, referred to them as one of the "great powerful nations that live in the uplands of Guiana." In the mid-eighteenth-century Spanish Guayana, Capuchin missionaries began to settle them in mission villages and employed these People as guides, boatmen, carriers, hunters, forest workers, and woodcutters. Under the control of the Anglican and Wesleyan missions in the mid 20th century, the Akawaio lost their autonomy. There is no way to determine how long these People occupied these lands.
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