Pemon - Settlements

Pemon settlements range from a single family to a maximum of six or seven families (i.e., from four to seventy people). They prefer to locate dwellings in open savanna, not far from streams and within a walk of an hour or two to their fields in the nearby gallery forest. In the western valleys and tributaries, Pemon often settle in the forest and put up houses close to their plots. Larger ceremonial centers having a round house ( waipa ) for dances and ceremonies draw large groups for periods of several weeks. Mission sites and Adventist villages have produced larger, nontraditional settlements. Pemon dwellings may be round, oblong, or rectangular and usually house a nuclear or extended family. Houses are of mud or slatted walls with thatch roofs and are open and undivided inside; less frequently, they are mission-type houses with interior rooms patterned on criollo styles.