Piaroas

Piaroas, South American aborigines, whose territory lies on both banks of the Orinoco between San Fernando de Atabapo and the Sipapo confluence, Venezuela; a few are also met in the Sipapo Valley, and about the head-waters of the Orinoco. They" are a timid, superstitious people, carefully avoiding all the settled districts and keeping entirely to the recesses of their trackless woodlands. They build large and carefully constructed conic houses 30 to 40 feet in diameter, 20 to 25 feet high, and roofed with palm-thatch which resists the torrential tropical rains for years. The Piaroas, who are a stout, vigorous people, of very dark brown complexion, believe in a kind of metempsychosis, according to which all members of the tribe descend from tapirs and after death revert to the tapir state, while other peoples are similarly related to other animals. (Crevaux, Chaffanjon.)