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Piaroa (Huottüja)

The 'knowledgeable people of the forest' of the middle Orinoco, a peaceable, fiercely autonomous people of small self-governing villages who built their religion on Wahari, the master of the wild.

Long misread by outsiders as three separate tribes, the Saliban-speaking Huottüja kept their scattered villages and autonomy through missions and the rubber era; some 15,000-19,000 remain in the Venezuelan Amazonas and across the Colombian border.

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Moments from the Chronicle

• 1780 Missionaries reach the middle Orinoco peoples Catholic missionaries and explorers make first sustained contact with the Piaroa (Huottüja) of the middle Orinoco, who maintain their autonomous, dispersed villages; the same era brings Portuguese slave-descents that push the Vaupés Tukanoan peoples up to the headwaters.

Further reading

• The Piaroa: A People of the Orinoco Basin Joanna Overing · 1975

  Overing's ethnography of the Piaroa (Huottüja) of the middle Orinoco and their religion of Wahari.

• Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon John Hemming · 2008

  Broad regional history for context.

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Sources

• Piaroa people — Wikipedia