Taruma people
indigenous people of Brazil, Guyana and Suriname
The Taruma (Saloema in Suriname; Tarənos in the Tiriyó language, Taruma: Hojasu) are an Indigenous people found in the northern Brazil, southern Guyana, and southern Suriname. They used to speak Taruma which is considered critically endangered and is spoken only by three people today. The Taruma in Suriname have merged with the Tiriyó, in Brazil they merged with the Wai-wai. The Wapishana village of Maruranau in Guyana still recognises the tribe.
History
The Taruma used to inhabit the Kutari, Trombetas and the Paru de Oeste Rivers. They used to trade extensively with the Tiriyó people and the Ndyuka and specialised in hunting dogs. The Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch West-Indië of 1917 remarked that they should not be confused with the Taruma on the Essequibo River, because they spoke a different language; however, they are probably the same people, and those living along the Essequibo had lost their language due to contact with the Wai-wai.
In 1843, first contact was made by Robert Schomburgk at the source of the Trombetas. In 1907, Claudius de Goeje led the Tumuk Humak expedition. The Ndyuka guides did not want to pass through the Taruma-held territory because of hostility between the two people, but de Goeje decided to contact the group, because he needed local guides to reach the Sipaliwini River.
“Taruma people” enters the record as indigenous people of Brazil, Guyana and Suriname. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Taruma, people and indigenous can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taruma people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.