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Indigenous peoples in Uruguay or Native Uruguayans, are a very small share of the population.
Scholars do not agree about the first settlers in what is now Uruguay; but there is evidence that there was human presence some 10,000 years BCE. Indigenous Uruguayans disappeared in the 1830s and with the exception of the Guaraní, little is known about these peoples and even less about their genetic characteristics.
The Charrúa peoples were perhaps the most-talked-about indigenous people of the Southern Cone in what was known as the Banda Oriental. During pre-colonial times Uruguayan territory was inhabited by small tribes of nomadic Charrua, Chana, Arachan and Guarani peoples. They were a semi-nomadic people who survived by hunting, fishing and gathering and probably never reached more than 10,000 – 20,000 people.
It is estimated that there were about 9,000 Charrúa and 6,000 Chaná and Guaraní at the time of contact with the Spanish in the 1500s. By the time of independence, some 300 years later, there were only about 500 native peoples remaining in Uruguay. The cause of the decline in native populations was disease, as well as intermarriage. With little immunity to these diseases, native peoples and culture were gradually diminished.