Warao

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A Warao family in their canoe(Photo: Roar Johansen)
A Warao family in their canoe
(Photo: Roar Johansen)

The Warao are an indigenous people inhabiting eastern Venezuela and western Guyana. Alternate common spellings of Warao are Waroa, Guarauno, Guarao, and Warrau. The term Warao translates as "the boat people", styling after the Warao's lifelong and intimate connection to water. Most of the approximately,Warao tribesmen inhabit Venezuela's Orinoco Delta region, with smaller numbers in neighboring Guyana and Suriname.

They speak an agglutinative language, also called Warao. See the Timucuan-Warao proposal

[edit] Lifestyle

On the wide Orinoco River and its fertile delta composed of islands and marshes, Warao people inhabit thatched-roof huts (lacking walls) built upon stilts (for protection against floods). These houses were usually built on the highest ground to avoid the annual floods. Sometimes a group of houses would be built upon a single large platform of trees. The huts each possess a clay cooking pit or oven located in the center, with sleeping hammocks encircling it. Besides the hammocks the only other furniture sometimes present are wooden stools sometimes carved in the shapes of animals.

Warao use canoes as their main form of transportation other modes (walking, et cetera) are hampered by the hundreds of streams, rivulets, marshes, and high waters created by the Orinoco. Thus, Warao babies, toddlers, and small children are famed for their ability to hold tight to their mother's neck as well as to paddle; learning these often before they walk. They use two types of canoes usually the first being the distinctive bongo, Bongos carry up to 50 people usually. Bongos were built in an arduous process, that starts with the people looking for large trees suitable for making a bongo. At the time when the old bongo was no longer usable a consensus is reached by the male leaders of each household on what tree would be the best. At the start of the dry season they would then find the tree they killed it before returning to the same tree at the end of the dry season when it was cut down. It was then hollowed out and flattened with stone tools traded from the mountains (or local shell tools) along with fire. The other type of canoe was a small 3 seater used for daily travel to and from food sources.

the Warao diet was varied with an emphasis on the products of the delta, mostly fish. By 1500 they had acquired basic horticulture, although much of their daily fruits and vegetables came from the wild orchards of the delta. In July and August Warao feasted on crabs when they came to the delta from the beach. Besides fishing hunting was generally avoided due to cultural taboos.

[edit] First contact with Europeans

The Warao of eastern Venezuela's Orinoco first had contact with Europeans when, soon after Christopher Columbus came upon Orinoco river delta, Alonso de Ojeda decided to navigate the river upstream. There, in the delta, Ojeda saw the distinctively stilted Warao huts, balanced over the water. Similar architecture in Sinamaica far to the west, had been likened to Venice, with its famous canals below and buildings above; this new encounter propagated the name of Venezuela, or little Venice, for the whole land.


The Warao are, according to their own reports, descended from an adventurous heavenly figure — the primordial hunter. This man originally dwelt in a sky world which had men, but was completely devoid of animals — except birds. Hunting these heavenly birds, the founding man used his bow and arrow to strike a bird in mid-air. The bird fell from the sky and eventually hit the heavenly floor. The birds burst through the floor and proceeded through the clouds and towards terrestrial land (Earth) below. The hunter went to the hole in the floor made by the bird and looked through. He saw lush and fertile land (Venezuela) and resolved to descend to it to partake of its pleasures — beauty, abundant game, fruits, et cetera. The hunter thus took a long rope of heavenly cotton, tied it to a tree, and threw it through the hole and lowered himself through the clouds to what is now Venezuela, forsaking his sky world.

[edit] References