Piaroa people

The De'áruwa (also: Piaroa ) are an indigenous tribe in Venezuela who lives in the Venezuelan- Colombian border area in the Serra Parima near the city of Puerto Ayacucho.

General

Its origins are to be found in the South American Caribbean coast.

Their language is the almost extinct Saliva.

1988 were still about 8,700 of them in the forests and savannas of the Macizo de Cuao - Sipapo in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas to the rivers Cuao, Sipapo, Autana and Manapiare, and a few in the Colombian states Vichada and Guaviare by the Orinoco River.

Your livelihood, they earn by selling handicrafts in the Indian market from Puerto Ayacucho, and by the beginnings existing in tourism. They feed on fish, wild game and fruits that they grow in their fields, the so-called Conucos.

The Piaroa are sensitive in nature and making a dugout canoe for them is a magical act These boats look delicate as if they would break apart.

The egalitarian and anti-authoritarian social order of Piaroa was described as an example of a functioning anarchist society.

Further east along the rivers and Asita Parucito in Venezuela live Hoti Indians, where it apparently is closer relatives of the Piaroa.

Creation myth of De'áruwa

Buoka was the first. He was above all others there. It was dark. He did not see the sun. He did not see the water. He did not see the sky. He did not see the mountains. He did not see the humans. This happened even before Wahari. Buoka has created Wahari from his eye. He took out one of his eyes and looked inside. In it, he saw a man and gave him the name Wahari. Buoka said: "I have torn him, he is my brother. " And he created his brother. He also took his other eye out: Tschecheru, his sister. There were three siblings: a family! You know: in the middle of your eye is a tiny black figure, a little doll; he tore out his eye whose image and then gave her a name. Hiarea haanna, the small figure in the eye of the man in the eye, the human eye. That was the thought Waharis.

The Warime hard

When Warime, the great festival of De'áruwa they remember the prehistoric event, as Wahari and his brother Buoka brought the world into being and all animals created. Among the rites of Warime include preparing and painting the masks, telling the Myths, the songs, the dances and the music. With the creation of the animals and the diseases came into the world. The shaman, the earthly representative of the mythical Wahari can clean the hunting game with its chants of the disease. The main forms of Warime ritual are those of the peccary - the mythical ancestor of the De'áruwa - that capuchin monkeys of and above all the spirit of the bees, which represents the power of the forest.