These savages have darker skins than most of those in South America. Their complexion is an olive-brown; and among the men composing them we find the tallest stature as well as the most athletic and robust frames. The tribes dwelling furthest south are the tallest, and the height of the others diminishes as the Chaco region is approached.
As has been stated in the introduction to this work, the stature of this people has been heretofore greatly exaggerated. M. Alcide d’Orbigny, who resided for seven months among many distinct divisions of the Patagonians, measured several individuals in each. He assures us that the tallest of all was only five feet eleven inches in height, and that the average is not above five feet four.
M. Victor de Rochas, in the account he has given of his voyage to Magellan’s Straits, has proved in a similar manner that the stature of the Patagonians is by no means extraordinary. He found them possessed of a brown complexion; coarse straight black hair, little beard; serious countenances—those of the men being manly and haughty, and the women’s mild and good—and regular but coarse features. The hands and feet of the females were small.
Broad, robust bodies, stout limbs, and vigorous constitutions characterise all the tribes in question, the women as well as the men. The Patagonians proper have large heads and wide flat faces with prominent cheek-bones.
Among the nations of Chaco, which we shall speak of further on, the eyes are small, horizontal, and sometimes slightly contracted at the outer corner; the nose is short, flat and broad, with open nostrils; the mouth big, the chin short, and the lips thick and prominent; they have arched eyebrows, little beard, long straight black hair, and gloomy countenances, frequently of ferocious aspect.
Though the languages of these races are essentially distinct, they have a certain analogy between themselves; all are harsh, guttural, and difficult of pronunciation.
The details which follow are derived from the narrative of a traveller, M. Guinard, who spent three years in captivity among the Patagonians. Fate threw him into the hands of the tribe of the Poyuches, who wander along the southern bank of the Rio Negro, from the neighbourhood of Pacheco Island.
Whether these nomadic Indians live in the vicinity of the Spanish Americans or in the solitudes of Patagonia, beneath the outlying woody spurs of the Cordilleras, or on the bare, wild soil of the Pampas, they lead identically the same life. Their occupations are the chase, tending their domestic animals, horsemanship, and the use of the lance, the sling, and the lasso.
Their dwellings consist of hide tents, carried by these savages from place to place in their migrations. Their costume is composed of a piece of some sort of stuff with a hole in the middle to pass the head through, and their waist is girt by another fragment of smaller size. A cloth rag is tied round their head, separating the hair in front, and allowing it to fall in long waves over the shoulders. They carefully pluck the hair from every part of their bodies, without even sparing the eyebrows. Their faces are painted with volcanic earths which the Araucanians bring them, the colours varying according to taste, but red, blue, black, and white have the preference. The women wear a frock with holes for their heads, arms, and legs; they pull out their hair and eyebrows like the men, and paint their faces, the strange and hard expression of which is enhanced by ornaments of coarse beads. Bracelets and square ear-rings complete their toilette. They can throw the lance and the lasso with as much ease as the men, and ride on horseback like them. M. Guinard learned how to manage the horses and use the weapons of this people, for they made him join in their nandu and guanaco hunts.