Antis.—The Antis Indians comprise many tribes, namely, the Yuracares, Mocéténès, Tacanas, Maropas, and Apolistas, races which inhabit the Bolivian Andes. Their complexion is lighter than that of the Incas, they have not such bulky bodies, and their features are more effeminate.
The account which M. Paul Marcoy has given in the “Tour du Monde” of his travels across South America from the shores of the Pacific to those of the Atlantic, is accompanied by several sketches representing Antis Indians and some wandering hordes which belong to the same group; and we have reproduced a few of these drawings in our pages, the first two ([figs. 181] and [182]) being types of the heads of these people. We also derive from the same source the following details as to this race.
The Antis is of medium stature and well-proportioned, with rounded limbs. He paints his cheeks and the part round his eyes with a red dye, extracted from the rocou plant, and also colours those parts of his body exposed to the air with the black of genipa. His covering consists of a long, sack-shaped frock, woven by the women, as is also the wallet, in the shape of a hand bag, carried by him across his shoulder, and containing his toilet articles, namely:—a comb made with the thorns of the Chouta palm; some rocou in paste; half a genipa apple; a bit of looking-glass framed in wood; a ball of thread; a scrap of wax; pincers for extracting hairs, formed of two mussel-shells; a snuff-box made from a snail’s shell, and containing very finely ground tobacco gathered green; an apparatus for grating the snuff, made of the ends of reeds or two arm bones of a monkey, soldered together with black wax at an acute angle; sometimes, a knife, scissors, fish-hooks, and needles of European manufacture.
181.—AN ANTIS INDIAN.
Both sexes wear their hair hanging down like a horse’s tail, and cut straight across just over the eyes. The only trinket they carry is a piece of silver money flattened between two stones, which they pierce with a hole and hang from the cartilage of their nostrils. For ornaments they have necklaces of glass beads, cedar and styrax berries, skins of birds of brilliant plumage, tucana’s beaks, tapir’s claws, and even vanilla husks strung upon a thread.
182.—AN ANTIS INDIAN.