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The historiography of indigenous women in the Jesuit missions of Paraguay has been considerably enriched since the early 2000s. However, its sources do not allow us to reconstruct the perspective of the indigenous women in the missions, still less to identify traces of their speech or to reconstruct the gender system. The thirty-eighth chapter of a monolingual Guarani “labor catechism”, a manual produced in the eighteenth century, presents a dialogue between two indigenous women engaged in a verbal dispute. The insults exchanged reveal both standards of feminine beauty and moral standards of behavior. While it is realistic in its details and length, this dialogue nevertheless reflects numerous stereotypes. Given the conditions in which the manuscript was produced, on the initiative of Jesuits for a Guaraní-speaking indigenous readership and audience, we will examine the language practices found in this dialogue, before putting them into perspective, with reference to the condition of indigenous women in the missions. Finally, we will examine the reasons why they were written down in a labour administration manual.