Pume

The Pume, called Yaruro by the Spanish, are a people of the Venezuelan llanos west of the Orinoco. They call themselves Pume, meaning real human, and speak a language isolate that Filippo Gilii found to be unrelated to other known tongues in 1782.

The River Pume keep manioc gardens in fixed villages, while the Savanna Pume hunt and gather, moving between seasonal camps. Missions and ranches stayed thin on their grasslands, so most bands kept their language and mobile way of life through the colonial centuries.