<P> Yanomami is the Indians' self - denomination...the term refers to communities disseminated to the south of the Orinoco, (whereas) the variant Yanomawi is used to refer to communities north of the Orinoco . The term Sanumá corresponds to a dialect reserved for a cultural subgroup, much influenced by the neighboring Ye'kuana people . Other denominations applied to the Yanomami include Waika or Waica, Guiaca, Shiriana, Shirishana, Guaharibo or Guajaribo, Yanoama, Ninam, and Xamatari or Shamatari . </P> <P> The first report of the Yanomami to the Western world is from 1759, when a Spanish expedition under Apolinar Diez de la Fuente visited some Ye'kuana people living on the Padamo River . Diez wrote: </P> <P> By interlocution of an Uramanavi Indian, I asked Chief Yoni if he had navigated by the Orinoco to its headwaters; he replied yes, and that he had gone to make war against the Guaharibo (Yanomami) Indians, who were not very brave...and who will not be friends with any kind of Indian . </P> <P> From approximately 1630 to 1720 the complex river - based societies, previously noted all around them, were wiped out or reduced as a result of slave - hunting expeditions by the conquistadors and bandeirantes . Whether this affected the Yanomami, and how, are matters of pure speculation . </P>

Yanomami live in villages that consist of separate huts that do not open into one another