4097 - Venezuela

Venezuela Photographer unknown. Piaroa people thatching a roof, Orinoco River basin, Venezuela. 1880s. Albumen print, mounted on an album board with 4 smaller albumen prints of Normandy on the reverse. 23 x 17.3 cm. Inscribed in ink below the image on the mount: “Atures, Piaroa Indians.” 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 spread across a very wide area. Ethnologists and linguists of the 18th century misidentified the Huottuja as three distinct tribes belonging to the Saliban language family—the Ature, Piaroa, and Quàqua—when in fact they were three distinct regional dialects of the same Piaroa ethnic group from the north, center, and south. – The mount is slightly discolored at the edges; the print has some surface scuffing, but is otherwise a sturdy print in good condition.