COLECCIÓN ORINOCO

YANOMAMI

Children of the Moon

The moon dwelled in the body of a grand shaman. When he died, she was free to wander in space, but instead she returned to the earth to eat his incinerated bones. When the shaman’s relatives discovered this outrage, they attacked the moon with arrows but they fell harmlessly to the earth. The moon tried to evade the arrows by hiding in the clouds, but at last one of them penetrated, and her blood spilled to the earth. From the drops of her blood the Yanomami were born.

YANOMAMI

Children of the Moon

History

Of all of the indigenous groups of the Amazon, the Yanomami are without a doubt one of the most studied and well known.

The name Yanomami means man, people or species. Those who are not Yanomami are “napë,” which roughly translates to “people who are foreign, urban, or dangerous.” This is how the Yanomami refer to everyone who is not Yanomami. Their language is unrelated to any other of the South American language families.

In the foreground, a puy (Eperua purpurea) flowers high above the general tree canopy in February. Beyond is the Auyantepui mountain, site of Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world.

The Yanomami are still one of the most populous groups in the northern Amazon lowlands. They inhabited the Parima mountain range and the upper Orinoco as early as 1758.

A group of armed Yanomami raiders from the Bisaasa-teri village in the Orinoco river.

At the moment of their earliest contacts with Europeans, the Yanomami had been in the middle of a significant demographic and geographic expansion, exploring new territories along the shores of the Orinoco, Padamo, and Mayaca rivers. In the northern and western zones of their territory, the Yanomami may have clashed with the Ye'kuana, who successfully resisted their advances.

Environment

Most of Yanomami territory, with the exception of some northern savannahs, is covered by tropical rainforest.

Today, the geographic center of the Yanomami in Venezuela is the territory between the Parima mountains and the Orinoco, particularly the basins of the Ocamo, Manaviche, and Mavaca rivers. Groups of Yanamomi also live in the outskirts of Brazil.

Aerial view of a shabono.
The circular design of shabonos protects against surprise attacks by invaders.
Building a shabono takes several weeks, and both men and women participate in the construction.
Thatching a shabono with the leaves of the Karai-henak, a small palm.
Inside, a series of simple sheds arranged in a circle form a central communal courtyard.

The word "yano" means house, and reflects the central importance of shelter as a distinguishing feature of Yanomami culture. With materials from the forest, the Yanomami build communal houses called shabonos. They are circular, with an outer wall and overlapping lean-to roofs around a central clearing.

Sustenance

The Yanomami rely on produce from their gardens and food gathered from the forest.

A Yanomami father taking care of his young child in the Konapuma-teri village at the Siapa river, Venezuela.
These hairy, venomous caterpillars are a delicacy and taste like pistachio nuts.

People cook, eat, sleep, and perform rituals within the protection of their shabono homes. Yanomami sleep in hammocks, and children sleep with their mothers until they are four. Each family has a central hearth for cooking, around which they suspend the hammocks. Yanomami eat a wide variety of foods, from snakes, pigs, monkeys, deer, and jaguars to insects, fish, plantain, sweet potato, and palm fruits.

A boy grates bitter manioc.
Families hang their bananas, tobacco and other necessities from the roof of the shabono. Men and women both participate in gathering food from the forest.

The Yanomami communities cultivate simple conuco gardens near their shabonos where they grow food crops, like plantains, sweet bananas, and tropical tubers; and cotton, tobacco, and plants used for rituals and as dyes. Men clear and burn the land in preparation for the garden, and both men and women plant and harvest crops.

Although agriculture is important to the Yanomami, hunting and fishing are also significant sources of food. The Yanomami distinguish between two types of hunting. One is known as ramï, which provides them with meat for everyday use, and the other is heniyomou, which is performed collectively by all the men of a community for celebrations and special guests.

Heniyomou, a hunt that lasts for several days, is practiced for special feasts. Almost all of the men of the community participate in the heniyomou, while the women and girls remain in the village to perform the ritual hëri, in which they sing and dance to placate the game and entice it to surrender to the hunters.

Almost every day, men will set out either alone or in small groups to hunt. They carry with them bows made of palmwood, and arrows with light, flexible shafts.

Women and children also do some of the hunting, going after smaller animals, fish, and crawfish.

Ritual and Tradition

The Yanomami structure their society with rituals and traditions that guide every aspect of their lives.

Ritual Mortar

One of the occasions that requires the type of hunting known as heniyomou is the funeral of a member of the group. When a Yanomami dies, the entire community weeps violently. Very soon after the death, a funeral pyre is erected in the shabono to burn the body. In the ritual known as reahu, the ashes of the dead are ground in a mortar and ingested by the community.

Yanomami frequently consume yopo, a hallucinogen, during ritual ceremonies. From around the age of seven, Yanomami habitually tuck wads of tobacco between their lower teeth and lip. Stimulants allow the Yanomami to get in touch with the world of the supernatural, to cure illnesses, and pass on their collective memory.

Each village has at least one shaman, who is the spiritual leader and healer. At some stage in their lives, almost all men undergo the initiation rite to become a shaman. The initiation period takes months, or even years. Under the influence of the drug yopo, the novice submits to the instructions of the teacher.

In mourning, a Yanomami woman wears black paint on her cheeks for a year before she can use red again. When men go to war, they wear black body paint to symbolize night and death. For some festivals, the Yanomami apply white clay over their bodies. Body painting with a variety of dyes is common; in addition to black and white, they generally use anoto for red, and for purple, they combine the onoto with a resin called caraña.

Yanomami man and woman.
A Yanomami boy with ear rings made from toucan feathers.
A group of Yanomami women.
The face paint of this indigenous man from the Erebato river represents a fierce tiger (Jaguar).
Left, a visiting Yanomami warrior wears the white feathers that show his peaceful intentions, and right, a man cuts a child's hair.

The Yanomami decorate their bodies with colors, patterns, and materials that vary according to the occasion, but traditionally wear no clothing. Men bind their foreskin with a cotton string tied around the waist in order to keep their penis upright and against the stomach. Women tie string around their upper arms and calves, and use cotton ornaments to decorate their hips and breasts.

Fabrication

Women make textiles, baskets, and, in the past, pottery; men make hunting and fishing implements.

Loin Cloth

In addition to the guayuco, Yanomami textiles include the chinchorro or hammock that Yanomami women weave on rustic frames of wood nailed into the ground. During trips into the jungle, the Yanomami use mamure fiber to weave provisional hammocks, marakami-toku, which are often discarded after the trip.

Yanomami women spin cotton (shináni), using spindles made of wood or a round seed.

This cotton fiber is used to make hammocks and personal ornaments.

A Yanomami woman from the village of Konapuma-teri at the Siapa river weaves a basket.

Women use mamure fiber in basketry as well. They make guataras, guapas, and manares. They use different shapes and techniques according to the function of the basket.

Guatura

The guatara, a basket most often used for carrying loads, is woven in a dense braid.

Vessel

In the past, pottery was an important artisan craft in Yanomami culture, but today it has almost completely disappeared. Few communities still make the typical hapoka, a plain bell-shaped pot made with white clay. Since metal pots became available, the Yanomami have discontinued their tradition of pottery.

On the left, a Yanomami warrior shows how he moistens the fibers from the bark of the tree Cecropia sciadophylla to make the bowstring. On the right, the figure-eight knot made to hold the bowstring in place.
Yanomami man from the village of Bisaasa-teri, in the Upper Orinoco river, with a variety of arrows.
The Yanomami use a very strong palm wood they call "joko" (Jessenis bataua) to make their bows.
The feather and the notched end of the arrow are attached with shinani, a thread made of cotton or the fiber of a bromeliad leaf.
The nock end of the arrow, where it is notched.

The Yanomami have kept the tradition of making bows and arrows alive, although firearms have been introduced, and acculturation has changed many other aspects of their lives, as well.

Sanemá Indians learning how to handle a curiara (canoe) built by the Ye´kwana, while traveling in shallow waters of the Cuchime River, Venezuela.

YE'KUANA

Masters of the River

In earlier times, men did not know fire. A woman named Kawao owned the fire. She would hide it in her stomach and would not show it to anyone, not even her husband. When she was alone, Kawao would turn herself into a frog, open her mouth, and spit the fire under her cooking pots. When her husband arrived, food was always ready. He would ask: How did you do it? And she would answer: I cooked the food under the sun. She tricked him, and he believed her. What she did not know was that when he left, he turned himself into a jaguar.

YE'KUANA

Masters of the River

History

Although variously called Makiritare, De’cuana, Mainongkong and Mayongong, members of this group describe themselves as "Ye’kuana," which means "people of the curiara." Their name is made up of the words ye: wood; cu: water; and ana: people.

The Ye'kwana always travel by river but in some instances they must use a land trail to avoid waterfalls and rapids. Here they are pushing their very heavy dugout curiara through a trail lined with pieces of logs so their large canoe will slide more easily.

Environment

The development of navigation skills allowed the Ye’kuana to settle a wide river territory. As a result, they inhabit the banks and surrounding areas of a number of the Orinoco's tributaries, covering approximately 30,000 square kilometers of the present-day Venezuelan states of Amazonas and Bolivar.

Ritual and Tradition

For the Ye’kuana, material culture is tightly bound to the realm of the sacred. Thus, the objects they use for navigation, hunting and fishing, farming, and ritual can be seen as an expression of their spiritual and social lives.

For example, the construction of the communal home, known as the atta, has religious significance. In the past, it was a ritual experience that was celebrated with food, drinks and music.

The atta are circular; from afar they appear to be big baskets covered with braided palm leaves.

To build an atta is to symbolically reproduce the great cosmic home, just as the Creator Wanadi did. The atta’s construction is based on the structure of the cosmos. The central pillar is considered the tree of life that unites the earth to the world above and the world below. The circular beams supporting the roof are called "celestial beams," and the girder that supports the beams is always oriented in relation to the Milky Way.

Each atta has a central space with a door that faces the rising sun. This position reflects the belief that each new day is a triumph for the deity of the sun.

The morning ceremony to welcome the dawn – which today only lives in the memories of the very old – was accompanied with dances and the melody of the sacred trumpets.

Although it is apparent in every aspect of their lives, the aesthetic sense of the Ye’kuana is particularly striking in the way they adorn their bodies. In the past, both men and women removed their eyebrows and eyelashes as well as underarm, pubic and facial hair, often with bamboo knives. They also decorated their earlobes with metal earrings and large cylinders of bamboo with colorful feathers.

Sacred Bat (Ansa)

One important male ceremonial adornment is the ansa, a wooden carving of a sacred bat. It is arrayed with stuffed toucans and worn over the back, along with a necklace of peccary teeth strung on cotton threads.

Other ritual objects include the benches, maracas, and the sonorous walking sticks of the shamans. Once exclusively used to signal shamanic power, today these objects are made for commercial sale.

For the initiation rite that marks a girl’s passage into adolescence, the women weave a guayuco, or loincloth, using cotton threads and red, blue, and white crystal beads called muwaaju.

They also weave hammocks and guanepes, woven bands of fabric used to carry infants, using a rudimentary loom or simple wooden frame.

Fabrication

The Ye’kuana are known for their basket weaving. Guapa baskets, like the atta, are designed from the center toward the edge. The designs, which vary with each maker, convey a complex geometry. Some designs represent the sacred animals that figure prominently in their myths such as anacondas, monkeys, picures, báquiros, and frogs.

The Ye'kuana weave baskets using hands and feet.

The Ye’kuana have traded baskets, among other goods, since the eighteenth century. Today they directly distribute and sell their own products.

Baskets are generally woven by men. However, Ye’kuana women have turned the weaving of the wuwa, a basket for heavy loads that is shaped like an hourglass, into a successful commercial practice.

Other baskets include box-shaped petacas, nasas used to trap fish, and fans to stoke fires or flip cassava bread.

Ye´kuana man weaving a long basket or “Tenke” (sebucán), used to squeeze out the poisonous sap of the bitter yucca, a staple crop.

Children learn basket weaving through observation rather than through formal schooling. First, they learn to recognize the raw materials, then how to prepare the dyes. They weave their first baskets as if playing a game but under close adult supervision. Techniques and designs for baskets that require more experience are learned throughout their lives.

Sustenance

The Ye'kuana's diet is quite varied. Besides the mainstay of yucca, the Ye'kuana trap birds like the paují and the toucan, whose feathers are also used as adornments. They hunt a large variety of mammals, and fish using bows and arrows and blowguns. They also use barbasco, a plant whose toxin stuns fish so that they float to the surface of the water. Fruits and vegetables, honey, and insect larvae are gathered from the forest.

In addition to those made for trade, many types of baskets are made for the preparation and consumption of bitter yucca, a staple of the Ye’kuana diet. For example, women carry the yucca from the canucos in catumares. After grating, they put the pulp of the yucca in sebucanes to extract the poisonous liquid. Finally, they sift the flour in the manare.

Another object linked to the preparation of bitter yucca is the grater. The traditional method for making a grater is time consuming and labor intensive. Hundreds of small, pointed stone splinters are arranged into a subtle geometric design, then attached to a prepared board with peramán, a black resin. The ends of the board are then painted with red and black drawings.

Work tasks are divided according to gender. Ritual customs and everything that pertains to that which is sacred is assigned to the men. In addition, men hunt, fish, and clear out the conucos. They are also in charge of building curarias, homes, baskets, and ceremonial objects.

Women, responsible for all tasks associated with fertility, play an important economic and symbolic role. Their work often demands intense physical labor as the women maintain the productivity of the conucos, sowing the land as well as carrying the large, heavy baskets filled with the products of the harvest.

Dependent on the river systems they so ably navigate, the building of the curiara is central to the Ye’kuana identity and way of life. A curiara is made from the trunk of one gigantic tree, which is cut down then hollowed out into the shape of an oval.

The outside is sanded and polished with metal axes and machetes until the shell is completely smooth and even. The interior of the curiara is then widened with fire. In a slow and painstaking process, small portions are burned. As the fire opens up the spaces, crosspieces are inserted to prevent shrinkage.

Afterwards, boards are positioned inside to be used as seats, and the curiara is ready to launch in the river. The paddles are heart-shaped, sculpted out of hard wood and then painted with red and black designs.

When the curarias have outlived their usefulness as boats, they are used to store the pulp of freshly shredded yucca, to wash clothes, or to store the fermented beverages consumed at parties and rituals. Over time, the curiara returns to nature, and completes the cycle of life.

HOTÏ

Hunters of the Maigualida

It is said that the Hotï shamans can kill with a single breath. When provoked, they blow a magic powder, called madúa, into the air that causes sickness. The powder also protects them from the dangerous animals of the jungle. Yet the Hotï shamans also cure. They do this in curing sessions performed in complete silence, without singing, without playing maracas, or using tobacco or other substances.

HOTÏ

Hunters of the Maigualida

History

Little is known even now about the history of this group, in part because of their geographic seclusion. Protected by dense forest and rivers which are difficult to navigate, the Hotï have been insulated from the invasion and exploitation that affected the region during the first half of the twentieth century.

The word closest in meaning to Hotï is "man." Although the origin of the Hotï language is unknown, some believe it is related to the languages of the De'aruwa and Sáliva. Others find similarities in vocalization and nasalization to the Yanomami.

Environment

The Hotï live within the middle-superior basin of the Orinoco, northeast of the Escudo Guayanés. They occupy jungle regions bounded by the Kaima River in the north, the Maigualida mountain range in the east, the Asita River and Majagua channel to the south, and the Parucito and Cuchivero rivers to the west.

One to four related family groups live in temporary settlements. They move often, particularly during the dry season. A house may include one family or be shared communally, in which case, each family has its own area for sleeping, cooking, and personal belongings.

The Hotï have domesticated several types of animals as pets: monkeys, agouti, chiguire, turkeys, parrots, toucans, owls, pheasants, cranes, and woodpeckers among them.

Sustenance

Plaintains are the most important plant food of the Hotï, who plant small gardens in addition to gathering food from the forest. During the dry season, the Hotï hunt tapir and peccaries as well as smaller game. The game is shared, with the head, breast and front legs going to the hunter, and the remainder divided among relatives.

Blowgun

To hunt small animals, the Hotï employ a variety of techniques. They make lures; set traps, or build blinds out of vegetation from which they can kill their prey with blowguns and curare-treated darts.

Fabrication

In the northern area of their territory, near the Kaima and Cuchivero rivers, the Hotï have ties with their neighbors, the E’ñepa. The two ethnic groups produce similar housing, cotton hammocks, cooking utensils, musical instruments, basketry, clothing, and body decorations.

Panpipe

Necklace

Unlike the E’ñepa and other ethnic groups, the Hotï do not use bird feathers as adornment. They do, however, make necklaces from seeds, bird beaks and bones, and danta hooves. They also pierce their ears with bamboo shoots, báquiro teeth, or slivers of monkey bone, and use vegetable dyes for body painting

Through E’ñepa influence, the Hotï have begun to wear guayucos, or loincloths, which they also fasten with belts of human hair. Usually woven in cotton, men wear a rectangular strip tied around the waist; women just cover their pubic area. In addition to wearing loincloths, adults tie strips of cloth or human hair around their wrists, legs, and ankles. Boys tie cotton string around their bodies.

Vessel

Hotï ceramic artistry also reveals an affinity to that of the E’ñepa. Vessels are formed from rings of clay that are smoothed together with a piece of a gourd. Once dried, they are baked over an open fire. Gourds also are used as containers to store and serve food and water.

E'ÑEPA

Decorators of the Body

Mareoka created everything for the E’ñepa: fire, water, the sun, day, night, plants, and animals. He taught the E’ñepa how to make hammocks, blowpipes, bows and arrows, weave baskets, and how to play flutes and sing. One day, Mareoka asked each person: What do you want to be? Do you want to be a person? Do you want to be a deer, an alligator, an armadillo, a monkey, a turtle, or a bird? Each had to choose. Those who chose to become animals were still E’ñepa, only in an animal incarnation. For this reason, the E’ñepa do not eat the animals they consider to be their ancestors.

E'ÑEPA

Decorators of the Body

History

The E’ñepa were first described to the outside world in the mid-nineteenth century, in the travel journals of Augustín Codazzo, who encountered them in 1841.

Necklace

Although known most commonly as the Panare, these original inhabitants of the Alto Cuchivero region call themselves E’ñepa, meaning "indigenous people." Their language, which has no word for "chief", belongs to the Caribbean linguistic family. They govern themselves collectively, and because of their deep respect for community rule, they have few conflicts.

Environment

It seems that the original ethnic group split into two, with one branch establishing itself in the mountains west of El Tigre, and the other, in the mountains separating the Guaniamo from the plains of the Orinoco.

The Orinoco River is widest where it crosses the savannah regions in Venezuela and Colombia.

The E’ñepa now live at the edge of the middle Orinoco region in the Cedeño district of the state of Bolívar. E’ñepa populations also cluster in the south, near the border of the state of Amazonas. Their territory extends across an almost treeless strip of savannah to swampy palm groves lining riverbanks.

Sustenance

Everyday life for the E’ñepa revolves around farming and hunting, with a sexual division of labor. Men hunt, fish, and clear land for cultivation, and women sow and harvest crops, cut firewood, cook, and raise children.

Blowgun

The E’ñepa harvest crops, particularly the bitter yucca. Hunting and fishing are also fundamental to their economy. They use blowguns to hunt birds and smaller game. Until recently, they used spears to hunt large animals, like danta and deer; now they hunt with guns.

Bactris gasipae,known in Venezuela as the pijiguao palm, is a major source of food and has been cultivated by the indigenous people for 4000 years.

They fish with barbasco, a toxin that stuns fish, as well as nylon fishing lines and hooks they buy from the criollos. They gather honey and palm fruit like moriche and pijiguao, as well as some varieties of ants and edible worms.

Ritual and Tradition

The shaman of the E’ñepa, the I'yan, is a healer and performs the necessary rituals to observe rites of passage and to protect his people. Many of the motifs found in the stamps the E’ñepa use to decorate their bodies and in the baskets they weave have magical significance.

Seals to paint the body

The E’ñepa express their highly refined aesthetic through body painting, which they practice throughout their lives. Using wooden stamps in various sizes, shapes, and designs, parents paint the hands and feet of their children.

This rattle is made from red-howler monkeys' throats (Alouatta), a howler monkey common in Venezuela. The male howler monkeys' throats are developed to emit a powerful grunt, and is used by the E'ñepa as an amulet for children that are learning to speak.

Red-howler monkey (Alouatta).

Necklace

Young people decorate themselves with bands of woven cotton. In contrast to other ethnic groups within the region who prefer to wear European-style clothing when visiting criollo towns, the E’ñepa will just as readily wear traditional garb.

Seals to paint the body

Young men and women paint their entire bodies with geometric designs. To produce a reddish color, they impregnate the wooden stamps with dye made from anatto and animal fat.

Fabrication

The E’ñepa weave oval hammocks on simple looms, and make loincloths and decorations from cotton. In the 1960s, they learned the Ye'kuana techniques of basketry, and developed new designs that became highly prized and an important source of income.

Pectoral

The E’ñepa usually wear guayucos, loincloths made of cotton and dyed red with anatto. The woven fabric is crossed between the legs and tied around the waist with a belt made from human hair. Decorative tassels dangle at each end, hanging over the back of the body.

Guapa

Although basket weaving has long been a traditional E’ñepa craft, the practice changed radically when the E’ñepa adopted basket-weaving techniques from the Ye’kuana, allowing them to develop new approaches and designs.

From this period of Ye’kuana influence emerged a brand new and original E’ñepa aesthetic. Although signaling a clear break with tradition, the new E’ñepa designs – highly detailed and artistically innovative – are considered one of their most valued means of artistic expression.

HíWI

People of the Savannah

Though the world was created all at once, it took the hero Kúwai several attempts to make the Híwi people. First he made them out of clay, but the clay crumbled in the rain. He then tried wax, but the wax melted in the sun. Finally he made them out of hard wood, and a mythical rat gave them genitalia and the power of procreation. The Híwi were given two souls – Yéthis and Húmpe. The first is invisible and leaves the body during sleep to appear in others’ dreams. The second soul travels to the home of Kúwai after death, where it lives amongst wealth and an abundance of food.

HíWI

People of the Savannah

History

One of the first reported encounters with the Híwi, in the 16th century, described them as hostile nomads living in the llanos (savannahs) and the region of the River Meta. Although some Híwi managed to elude European colonizers by moving into rough terrain, others were enslaved or exterminated.

Crown

The Híwi call themselves the “people of the savannah” for the vast flatlands they inhabit between the Meta and Vichada rivers in Columbia. In Venezuela, the Híwi live in the states of Apure, Guarico, Bolivar, and Amazonas. They are also known as Guahibo.

Bow and Arrows

Seventeenth and eighteenth century historians described the Híwi as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Their long history of violent conflict and the incremental loss of their traditional lands, extending well into the twentieth century, has meant dramatic changes in their way of life.

Sustenance

Although some Hiwi still maintain a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, within the past 100 years, more have taken up slash-and-burn farming, growing manioc, sweet potatoes, yams, peppers, plaintains, sugar cane, tobacco, barbasco, and medicinal plants; the care of livestock on the large estates of the savannahs; commercial trading of traditional crafts; and day labor to sustain themselves.

Many of the Híwi have become settled farmers or agricultural workers. When those families who farm can leave their crops for a while, they sometimes retreat to a palm grove to relax, living off the fruit of the palms and whatever else they can gather from nature.

Ritual and Tradition

The Híwi believe that all people and animals have two souls. The invisible Yethi leaves the body during sleep to appear in others' dreams. Húmpe only leaves at death, when it travels to the celestial dwelling place of Kuwai, the creator for the Híwi. The shaman's húmpe goes to live with a great snake in the bottom of a river.

Today, when the Híwi visit criollo towns, they wear European-style clothing rather than the traditional loincloths made of cloth or of a vegetable bark called marima. Traditional clothing also includes body ornamentation. The Híwi make necklaces of glass beads as well as shamanic amulet necklaces for ceremonial use.

The shaman is the Híwi's highest spirtiual authority, able to work white and black magic. His maraca, traditionally used for healing, is made from a dried gourd painted with geometric patterns, and often decorated with a tuft of curassow feathers. Special maracas have crystals inside rather than seeds; the sound the shaken crystals make brings the power of ancestor shamans to life.

The Híwi make wind and percussion instruments to use in festivities and ceremonial rituals. Some examples are large deer bone flutes with three holes; and pan flutes, made with five or six tubes of caña amarga, that often are played with another musical instrument made from the skull and antlers of the deer.

Fabrication

The Hiwi believe that the world was created by supernatural beings, with a number of "culture-bearers" who taught the Híwi how to make the things they need: among them, Iwanai taught the Híwi how to build huts; Matsúáludani, who showed them how to use bows and arrows; and Madúa, who invented language and taught the Híwi how to build canoes.

Hammock

Textiles are an important part of their material culture. The Híwi weave high-quality chinchorros (hammocks) with moriche or cumare fibers, using looms with double horizontal weaves.

Guapa

Historically, basketry has been a male occupation among the Híwi, and the baskets they weave for transporting and storing foodstuffs are decorated with red and black geometric designs. Recently, women have begun to make baskets for commercial sale.

Some Híwi still make pottery, although far fewer do since the introduction of aluminum pots and plastic containers. Traditionally an activity of the dry season, vessels are made by rolling rings of clay over a base. After they dry, they are burned over an open fire and then decorated with vegetable dyes such as cumare and caruto.

Vessel

A consequence of the introduction of aluminum and plastic vessels, pottery has lately decreased, including commercial ones that were sold to criollos, such as pitchers with femenine shapes and geometric patterns.

DE'ÁRUWA

Lords of the Jungle

After death, the soul of the De’áruwa shaman travels to the place of the winds on top of the mountain. There he inhales yopo and sings. The shaman’s throat becomes a flute that preserves his songs. A jaguar is born from his breath, and bees, from his eyes. The souls of the common people return to their original sphere. There they copulate with siblings of the opposite sex in a barren, incestuous encounter.

DE'ÁRUWA

Lords of the Jungle

History

Because the territories occupied by the De’áruwa were isolated and nearly impossible to penetrate, contact with the outside world was sporadic until the mid-twentieth century.

The De’áruwa speak a language in the Sáliva family, although some words are borrowed from Arawak and Caribe languages. They call all creatures that are born, live, and die in the jungle "De'áruwa", and refer to themselves as the “lords of the jungle.” In ethnological literature, they are also called Piaroa.

Environment

The De’áruwa have traditionally inhabited areas of tropical rain forest on the right bank of the Orinoco in which occasional bare sandstone formations rise through the canopy. Contact with missionaries and government officials in the 1950s caused epidemics. In the aftermath, many De’áruwa moved closer to criollo villages in order to be near medical treatment.

The De’áruwa inhabit areas surrounding the tributaries and sub-tributaries of the Puruname, Sipapo, Autana, Cuao, Guayapo, Samariapo, Cataniapo, Paria, Pargau, and Upper Suapure rivers. They also inhabit the lower basin of the Ventauri and the valley of Manapiare, the surroundings of Puerto Ayacucho and the Colombian margins of the Orinoco.

De’áruwa settlements consist of a group of communal family homes called churuatas. Although rudimentary in appearance, the churuata is a synthesis of symmetry and utility.

The De'áruwa build their traditional communal churuata with a short dome shape, with a conical roof made of palm leaves. It may measure as much as 18.5 yards across and 13 yards high, and house between 5 to 100 people. Inside the churuata, dimly lit by torches, is a network of beams and girders mounted in concentric rings.

Although there are no physical structures to divide families within a churuata, each family has its own area for storing belongings, sleeping in hammocks, and cooking. All of the churuata's inhabitants are free to use the central area, where they can gather to perform rituals, make crafts, and entertain guests.

Ritual and Tradition

The De’áruwa adorn their bodies with dyes and decorations infused with symbolism. They create musical instruments on which they play magic ritual songs that relate myths of the animal world. The complex Warime ritual is a reenactment of the creation of the world involving music, dance, masks, and the passage of ritual knowledge.

Traditionally, De’áruwa men and women wear loincloths woven of cotton harvested from their own conucos. They adorn their bodies with feathers as well as crowns, bracelets, and necklaces. They create necklaces with alligator or báquiro teeth threaded together with multicolored feathers.

The more experienced of the De’áruwa men construct the masks used in the Warime ritual. No one person creates a particular mask; rather, it is a communal effort. The symbolic significance of each mask comes about in the process of construction.

The men use various materials to give the masks shape, and, in the final step of the process, the masks are painted and attains a status identical the animal spirit it represents.

De’áruwa musical instruments imitate the sounds of ancestral animals. The wora, for example, is a bamboo flute that when played mimics the sound of a jaguar's growl. Other flutes imitate the sound of the toucan or the screech of the howler monkey. Although considered sacred objects, today many of these instruments are also made for commercial sale.

Hishu Mask

The most important De’áruwa ritual is the warime, a fertility ceremony practiced every three years. For this ceremony, the De’áruwa summon their mythical ancestors, the báquiros (peccaries). For the warime ceremony, the De'áruwa make sacred objects like masks, musical instruments, and special garments. The masks represent the báquiro; the white monkey; and Re’yo, the evil spirit of the bee.

Sustenance

As is common in the Amazonas region, the De’áruwa clear plots near their dwellings for farming; hunt; fish; and gather food from the forest. They have a sophisticated botanical knowledge that allows them to select and prepare plants for food, rituals, medicine and poison for hunting.

The De'áruwa, like the Ye'kuana people pictured here, grate bitter yucca as part of the process that makes it edible.

Everyday life involves farming in conucos during the rainy season. These conucos, or farm plots, are tended near the churuatas. De’áruwa grow plantains, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, pineapples, cotton, and, especially, bitter yucca, their main staple.

The De’áruwa also gather wild fruit, insects, and snakes from the forest for consumption. Small expeditions consisting of men, women, and children forage together. Upon their return, the goods they have gathered are shared with everyone in the communal home.

Fabrication

Men fabricate the objects needed for the Warime ritual in secret, in a structure off limits to the women, but other artisanal activities take place in the communal churuata's central area.

Some large De’áruwa settlements have a high level of cooperation that allows individuals to choose which activities to pursue. A De’áruwa man is not, for example, forced to go hunting if he would rather weave baskets. The craft of basketry for the De’áruwa is principally utilitarian. Among the baskets they weave are catumares, mapires, sebucanes, and guapas.

As is the case with other indigenous groups, pottery making has virtually disappeared since the introduction of aluminum and plastic containers. In the region of Alto Cuao, however, the De’áruwa do make pots and other clay containers that they use to store food and drink.

PUINAVE

Renewers of the World

Túpana, the Creator, descended from the world of the sky, reached into a hole
at the center of the earth, and pulled men into being. When he saw
that they were midgets, he blew through a tobacco leaf and made them big.
Then, he taught them the ways of the world. Instead of thanking him,
the men tried to kill him. So Túpana created the goddess Yopinai,
who gave women the power to enslave men.

PUINAVE

Renewers of the World

History

The Puinave are a minority ethnic group of Colombian origins. Although little is known about how and when they arrived in Venezuela from the Inirida region of Colombia, they now live in settlements in the vicinity of Guasuripana and San Fernando de Atabapo.

Handbag

Although some scholars believe their language is independent, others think that it is part of a subgroup of various languages, including the Tucano and the Macú.

In the past, the Puinave moved often, living in villages for short periods of time. Contact with the criollo population, however, has altered this nomadic way of life, and they now tend to live in permanent houses. Each village and its surrounding territory are owned collectively by the inhabitants.

Ritual and Tradition

The Puinave have a rich ritual and religious life. The celebration of the Yurupary ceremony, for example, is an important rite that restores equilibrium to all beings and to re-establish ancestral connections. It is a rite of passage marking the occasion when a young man leaves the realm of women and children and takes on his adult responsibities.

Necklace

During the Yurupary cermony, youth are initiated into the ways of the sacred flute, and are lashed with whips to strengthen their willpower. Elaborate food preparations are made for the ritual, including yaraque, a beverage made with cassava and water, and pai, made with fermented cassava and ñame.

Sustenance

Subsistence activities like hunting and fishing are collective efforts and the surpluses are traditionally shared among the group. However, an increasing dependence on a non-traditional criollo economy has altered this basic sense of reciprocity and solidarity among the Puinave.

Bag net

The Puinave fish all year. During the dry season, when water levels are low, they use bait, harpoons, and bows and arrows. During the rainy season, when they must be more efficient, they use ingeniously devised woven fishing traps, called nasas, as well as woven cacures. Fishing with barbasco and other toxic plants is a festive activity in which the women and children participate.

Blowgun

They trap limpets and picures on the riverside, and hunt with blowguns equipped with sighting beads made from animal teeth. The blowguns shoot darts that are covered in curare, a poison. The Puinave also hunt with rifles, which makes them dependent on ammunition supplied to them by criollos.

Petate Basket

In a trade system of "advances", the Puinave receive goods on credit from criollos. These goods, which have come to be seen as necessities, include boat motors, gasoline, radios, sewing machines, and canned foods. The criollos profit twice: from inexpensive labor and from the sale of indigenous goods such as fibers, rubber, pendare, hides, and feathers. This system has collapsed the traditional indigenous economy.

Fabrication

The Puinave who live in the Apure, Bolivar, and Amazonas regions of Venezuela have become acculturated with the criollo population, and share their language and style of dress. All men wear shirts and pants, and the women wear cotton dresses.

Needle and Thread

Many of their domestic goods also are of criollo origin. The hammock is perhaps the most important traditional domestic artifact. It is woven of moriche or cumare fibers on rustic looms that also are used to make child carriers.

BANIWA

Craftsmen of Bamboo

In the beginning there was no light and only Nápiruli, the Creator, could see through the darkness. First he made Dzuuli, his younger brother. The creation of men and women came next, followed by that of the world, light, land, water, plants, and animals. Nápiruli made the seeds of each plant: one of yucca, one of pineapple, one of sugarcane, and one of plantain. Then he taught the women to plant, to harvest, and to weave the catumare, the magical basket used for collecting and transporting food.

BANIWA

Craftsmen of Bamboo

History

Like other ethnic groups of the Río Negro region, the Baniwa suffered greatly from exploitation by the rubber industry during the early 20th century. Their numbers were diminished and their culture transformed.

Union of the Casiquiare estuary with the Orinoco at Tama-Tama. It was explore in 1880 by Alexander Von Humboldt.

Despite acculturation and assimilation, the Baniwa have retained some of their ancient mythology. Their Creator Nápiruli (Iñápirrikúli) is a deity also honored by other Arawak groups of Southern Venezuela and Colombia. The Baniwa belief system has much in common with the Tsase, Warekena, Wakuénai, and Baré peoples.

Drum with Drumstick

The Baniwa, also known as the Curripaco, speak a language belonging to the Arawak linguistic family. Like their belief system, their language is closely related to that of the Baré, Tsase, Warekena, and the Wakuénai. It is spoken by approximately two thousand people scattered throughout Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil.

Environment

The Baniwa live on riverbank villages and in some urban centers.

The Alligator (Caiman crocodilus) lives in the vast region of the Venezuelan “llanos“ or grass lands.

Today the remaining Baniwa live in Maroa, capital of the department of Casiquiare in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas, and in Colombia, near the Caño Aquio and the Isana River. The region’s history of violence also spurred migration toward San Fernando de Atabapo, San Carlos de Río Negro, Santa Rosa, Puerto Ayacucho and the Xié River in Brazil.

Armadillo

The progressive abandonment of their ancestral ways of life has made the Baniwa increasingly dependent on industrial products, including food. The Baniwa still do seasonal hunting and gathering, but as their children attend criollo schools, it is difficult to coordinate collective activities with the school calendar.

Fabrication

As all indigenous peoples of the Amazonas region, the Baniwa fabricated the things they needed for their rituals and daily life from the natural materials around them.

The few families who still work in basketry make esteras, guapas, sebucanes, mapires, catumares, and sopladores, the ventilators used to stoke fires. These crafts are made with the tirite, mamure, moriche, and cucurito fibers.

Ritual and Tradition

Among the traditions the Baniwa still practice are music-making, dance, and the generational transferrence of their legends and beliefs.

Like the Baré, the Baniwa attribute the weather to the Áparo. They are Mawali, or malignant spirits, who navigate the turbulent and dark waters of the Guainía and Río Negro in tiny curiaras bringing rain, wind, and fog. If seen, they knock over the humans’ curiaras, sinking their fishing tools. The Baniwa nonetheless venture out into the rivers, like their forebears, in search of sustenance.

WAREKENA

Grandchildren of the Picure

Before Nápiruli created the world, the bee-men and the bird-men fought for control. Kuwai, the Creator, came to the human realm to bring order to chaos. He expanded the territories and gave light to the world. With the help of his relatives, he taught the Warekena about food, music, technology, daily life, religion, and the customs that distinguish the sexes.

WAREKENA

Grandchildren of the Picure

History

A long history of harmful contact with missionaries, rubber traders, merchants, slaveholders, and colonizers has had devastating effects on Warekena culture. Among those enslaved for rubber extraction were shamans, the men charged with keeping the tradition and memory of the past alive. As these holy men died, they took with them the secret practices and sacred ceremonies of their culture.

Warekena means "grandchildren of the picure," their sacred animal. The Warekena once belonged to a larger social and linguistic group made up of the Tariana, Baré, Tsase, and Wakuénai, whose root language is Arawak. As a result, there are extraordinary similarities among those groups.

Ritual and Tradition

Today, the Warekena visit neighboring Wakuénai shamans in the Guainía in an effort to revive some of the traditions. One such revival is the ceremony in which youths are initiated into the teachings of the Creator Nápiruli, who taught the people the essence of being Warekena. Young men prepare for this rite of passage by painting their bodies with a red vegetable resin called chica, which symbolizes the blood of Nápiruli.

Among the shared beliefs of these groups is the creation of the world by Nápiruli.

Nápiruli gave the Warekena their essence, and taught them techniques, designs, and colors for basket making and pottery.

Pot

According to tradition, the cultural hero, Mjumpe Numana, deposited clay for their pottery into the rivers. For this reason, the pottery of the Warekena is intimately linked to magical-religious beliefs that govern its production. The introduction of metal pots and aluminum utensils has caused the gradual disappearance of the craft.

Fabrication

Traditionally, the Warekena utilised available materials such as clay from the river, wood, and plant fibers, dyes and resins to make the things they needed, though many artisanal practices have been discontinued.

Catumare

The Warekena do maintain the tradition of making guapa and manare baskets, the latter used for processing bitter yucca into edible food. They also make baskets used for carrying goods called catumares.

Sustenance

In order to survive, Warekena dedicate their free time to slash-and-burn agriculture. Their lands, similar to other groups in the region, are located in the San Miguel channel region.

Paddles

In addition to small-scale farming during the dry season, the Warekena fish using cacures, fishing traps, and nets woven with cumare fiber. Although less known for their nautical skills than the Ye'kuana, the Warekena are nonetheless able navigators and manufacturers.

Environment

Many Warekena families migrated toward the Orinoco, the Atabapo, and Puerto Ayacucho as a result of colonization and violent exploitation by rubber traders between 1913 and 1948.

Streams in the middle Orinoco, at the mouth of the Ventuari River.

The Warekena still live in river communities, mostly in the Wayanapi and Guzmán Blanco communities, near the Guanía-Río Negro, and along the San Miguel or Itini-Wini channel.

WAKUÉNAI

Ancestors of the Jaguar

In the land of the Wakuénai, there was a hole that contained every seed in existence. From this hole, the Creator Iñapirrikuli pulled out all living beings, including Indians and white men. He showed the Indians books and asked them if they wanted them. They answered no. He then showed them bows, arrows, canoes, and blowpipes, and immediately, they said yes. When he pulled out the white men and showed them books, they said yes. It was in this way that he brought each being into the world, asking them what they wanted to be. He gave the animals their colors and songs and thus created the world.

WAKUÉNAI

Ancestors of the Jaguar

History

Evidence suggests that the upper Rio Negro/upper Orinoco was occupied from at least 3500 years ago, with the first European contact in the mid-16th century. Fairly continuous contact was made from the mid-18th century, when the Portuguese and Spanish slave trade penetrated the region.

Wakuénai means Wakú-speaking people; their language is of the Arawak family. They are also known as Curripaco. Wakuénai territories extend into the Amazonian regions of Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. In Venezuela, they are concentrated in the Casiquiare district of the state of Amazonas, near the Atabapo, Guainía, and Orinoco rivers.

Fabrication

The Wakuénai continue to produce traditional crafts for which there is a market demand, like baskets, mats, and criollo-style woven hats.

Guapa

Basket weaving used to be practiced exclusively by men. Now, due to its commercial success, women not only produce ornamental and commercial baskets, but have evolved new forms and techniques.

Chiquichique fiber

Today, the collection and sale of chiquichique fiber has become economically important to the Wakuénai. In order to collect the fiber, which grows on the banks of rivers like the Inírida or the Guainía, the Wakuénai organize expeditions that last several months.

Broom

The Wakuénai use chiquichique fibers to craft the brooms with which they spread yucca flour over the budare in the preparation of manioc or cassava.

Sustenance

Agriculture is not as important as it once was to the economy of the Wakuénai. They have developed a market for the chiquichique fibers that grow on riverbanks, requiring a continuous effort that precludes tending crops, but they do still hunt and fish.

Grater

Like other ethnic groups of the region, the Wakuénai practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. Cultivation began at the start of the brief dry season. During this time, known as Makwapidania, men selected and cleared the new conucos (farm plots) according to the mythical calendar of Káali, creator of yucca.

According to tradition, yucca was planted at the end of the dry season when the small frog Molitú, son of Káali, began to sing. His croaking signaled the moment when a clearing was to be made and planting was to begin.

Sieve

The work of the Wakuénai women centers around the processing of food. They carry, peel, grate, and press the bitter yucca; gather wood for fire; and toast the yucca pancakes, known as cassava, over enormous budares.

Net

Although the Wakuénai at times were forced to take refuge in the forest to escape outside pressures or illness, they are most at home on the river. Fishing remains an important and fundamentally male activity, even as blowguns, arrows, and spears have been replaced by modern means. They do, however, continue to use woven nets and traps.

Bag net

Men still fish using the cacure, a woven fishing trap placed near the banks of rivers and channels. For large-scale fishing, the cacure is used in conjunction with barbasco, a toxin placed in the water to stun fish. Surplus fish are often salted or smoked, then sold in the local commercial market.

Quiver

Hunting, also a male activity, requires guile, silence, patience, and absolute control over one's body. The Wakuénai hunter, hidden in the foliage, tries to imitate the sound of the animal he wishes to attract.

TSASE

People of the Toucan

When the world began, the Creator, Kúwai-Séiri, lived in the region of the torrents of Ayarí with his wife and relatives. The Tsase fished, gathered wild fruit, and hunted. Kúwai-Séiri introduced them to agriculture and, above all, the bitter yucca. The Creator taught them how to plant this sacred food and how to turn it into cassava and manioc.

TSASE

People of the Toucan

History

Early European chronicles indicate that the Tsase, like other indigenous groups of the plains and the Orinoco basin, participated in a wide network of commercial exchange connecting the Guianas, the Andes, and the Upper Orinoco. Conquest and colonization, however, destroyed interethnic trade. A long history of outside invasions and displacements reduced Tsase territory, changing traditional patterns of settlement.

The Tsase, or "people of the toucan," are one of the smaller groups of the region that descend from ancient Arawak culture. They are also known by the name Piapoco. At one time, they were one of the most important societies on the continent.

Environment

Adaption to different ecosystems created two distinct groups: the Tsase of the savannahs, known as the Manakuári, and those of the jungle, known as Análima.

Political and cultural changes within the ancient Arawak group gave rise to new groups, among them, the Tsase's direct ancestors. Today, there are Tsase in eastern Colombia and in Venezuela's Amazonas state; some of those, in the more populated areas.

Through acculturation, the Tsase have abandoned communal housing in favor of criollo-style single family homes with a family garden. They have also changed their traditional dress, and purchase clothing at criollo markets.

Fabrication

As with other acculturated ethnic groups in South America, artisanal skills that have proven marketable have continued to be practiced.

Assimilation notwithstanding, the Tsase continue to practice the craft of basketry.

They weave sebucanes, manares, and guapas, using various plant fibers such as curagua, cucurito, tirite, chiquichique, and cumare.

Ritual and Tradition

Tsase marriage is sometimes polygamous. In those cases, the first wife has more authority that the others, although generally there is not much dispute among the wives.

Necklace

All members of the family live in a single house and they distribute chores according to age. The youngest woman is responsible for agricultural tasks that require physical strength, while the oldest takes on domestic work such as cooking and caring for children.

Tobacco Holder

In their social structure, the nuclear family is the basic unit within a larger extended family. Each extended family has a male chief who exercises paternal authority over the clan, making women and children completely dependent on their husbands or fathers.

BARÉ

Weavers of the Rio Negro

When the world began, everything in nature was asexual, including the stars. Yamádu, an evil spirit, governed nature with the help of his assistants, long-armed dwarves with flowing hair. The Baré feared them and defended themselves shrewdly, but the dwarves were not as evil as they seemed, and often were more mocking than menacing.

BARÉ

Weavers of the Rio Negro

History

Our knowledge of the Baré is limited because a violent history of conquest all but erased their culture. The natural abundance of rubber in their region was exploited by ruthless traders who arrived in the first half of the twentieth century.

Hyla crepitans, a common frog from the forest perched on the flower of a Heliconia rostrata.

After a long process of colonization and acculturation, few still speak the Baré language, which belongs to the Arawak family. It is therefore unclear whether, as some scholars think, the word Baré means companion or colleague; or if, as others maintain, it is derived from the word “bari,” which means “white men.”

Spilotes pullatus, a non poisonus snake that swells to intimidate.

For over a century after Venezuelan independence, political administration in the Río Negro region existed only as a formality. In practice, local political bosses, or caudillos, took charge, using their power to profit from the rubber trade.

Environment

Disputes over their land, beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese empires, engendered a long history of migration and conflict.

The Negro River, the Amazon's main tributary, begins at the border between Venezuela and Colombia. It is the greatest dark-water river in the world.

The Baré have seen their territory diminished as a result of exploitation: once they occupied land from Manaos, along the Río Negro and the Brazo Casiquiare, up to the Pacimoni River.

Zygosepalum tatei, an orchid named after the explorer G.H.H.Tatewho led important expeditions to the summits of the tepuis Duida, Roraima and Auyantepui.

Today, the remaining Baré are dispersed along the Casiquiare region, with small concentrations in Puerto Ayacucho, San Fernando de Atabapo, Solano, San Carlos de Río Negro, Santa Rosa de Amanadon, and Santa Lucía.

Ritual and Tradition

Only a few artifacts of the Baré culture have been preserved.

This robust basket made of mamure fibers is another example of the beautiful Baré basketmaking.

Little is now known about the traditional economic, social, and political life of the Baré. Most likely, they lived like other related groups of the Río Negro region – farming conucos with the slash-and-burn method; practicing hunting, gathering, and fishing; and crafting the tools and objects they used.

Sustenance

Large game was not plentiful in the territory occupied by the Baré, but they farmed, hunted smaller game, and fished.

Basket

Men fished using many different methods: barbasco, harpoons, lances, arrows, hooks, traps, and nets. In the absence of large mammals, they also sometimes hunted small game such as dantas, picures, and lapas, and birds such as turkeys, curassows, and woodcocks. They used blowpipes, and bows and arrows, and later, firearms introduced by Europeans.

Fabrication

The Baré wove textiles, and made baskets and pottery, and carved boats and paddles out of wood.

Bag

The Baré made textiles other than loincloths, with a variety of fibers. Among the crafts they produced, woven hammocks were of primary importance. They were made with cumare, curagua, and moriche fibers, dried in the sun, and then dyed red, purple, and yellow. The Baré also produced the cords they used for fishing, using chiquichique fiber.