Pume

Pumé, long known to outsiders as Yaruro, is a language isolate of the Llanos grasslands west of the Orinoco in Venezuela, spoken along the Meta, Apure, Cinaruco and Arauca rivers. The people call themselves Pumé, meaning real human; Yaruro was the name used by neighbours and adopted by Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century, and carries a mocking undertone.

Pumé society splits between river villagers who garden, fish and hunt, and the nomadic Savanna Pumé, who move with the seasons and live by hunting and gathering wild tubers. Missions and ranch settlements remained thin on the floodplains, so most Pumé bands kept their language and mobile way of life throughout the colonial period.

Filippo Salvatore Gilii treated the language as an isolate in 1782, and later linguists have only tentatively suggested distant links to Esmeraldeño or Chocoan.