4097 - Venezuela

Venezuela Photographer unknown. Piaroa people thatching a roof, Orinoco River basin, Venezuela. 1880s. Albumen print, mounted to an album board with 4 smaller albumen prints of Normandy on the verso. 23 x 17,3 cm. Inscribed in ink below the image on the mount: “Atures, indiens Piaroas.” The Piaroa people, known among themselves as the Huottüja or De'aruhua, are an Indigenous people of South America, who primarily live in the middle Orinoco Basin in present-day Colombia and Venezuela. Since the Piaroa first encountered missionaries and European explorers around 1780, they have maintained an autonomous society with many small, self-governed villages built over a very wide area. Ethnologists and linguists from the 18th century misidentified the Huottuja as three different tribes belonging to the Saliban family, the Ature, Piaroa, and Quàqua, in actuality were three different regional dialects of the same Piaroa ethnic group from the north, center and south. – Mount time-stained in edges, print with some surface scuffing, otherwise a strong print in good condition.