Their Only Adornment Is A Necklace Of Red Corals And A
Few Inches Of Red Or Blue Ribbon Entwined In Their Long Raven-Black
Hair, Which Hangs Down To The Waist In Two Plaits.
Their houses are
palm-walled, with a roof of palm-leaves, through which the rain pours
and the sun shines.
Their chairs are logs of wood, and their beds are
string hammocks. Their wants are few, as there are no electric-
lighted store windows to tempt them. Let us leave them in their
primitive simplicity. Their little, delicately-shaped feet are
prettier without shoes and stockings, and their plaited hair without
Parisian hats and European tinsel. They neither read nor write, and
therefore cannot discuss politics. Women's rights they have never
heard of. Their bright-eyed, naked little children play in the mud or
dust round the house, and the sun turns their already bronze-colored
bodies into a darker tint; but the Chiquitana woman has never seen a
white baby, and knows nothing of its beauty, so is more than
satisfied with her own. The Indian child does not suffer from
teething, for all have a small wooden image tied round the neck, and
the little one, because of this, is supposed to be saved from all
baby ailments! Their husbands and sons leave them for months while
they go into the interior for rubber or cocoa, and when one comes
back, riding on his bullock or mule, he is affectionately but
silently received. The Chiquitano seldom speaks, and in this respect
he is utterly unlike the Brazilian.
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