Moreover, in symmetry of shape, the Abipones yield to no other nation of America. I scarce remember to have seen one of them with a nose like what we see in the generality of Negroes, flat, crooked, turned up towards the forehead, or broader than it should be. The commonest shape is aquiline; as long and sharp as is consistent with beauty. An hundred deformities and blemishes, common among Europeans, are foreign to them. You never see an Abipon with a hump on his back, a wen, a hare lip, a monstrous belly, bandy legs, club feet, or an impediment in his speech. They have white teeth, almost all of which they generally carry to the grave quite sound. Paraguay sometimes produces dwarf horses, but never a dwarf Abipon, or any other Indian. Certain it is, that out of so many thousands of Indians, I never saw an individual of that description. Almost all the Abipones are so tall, that they might be enlisted amongst the Austrian musketeers.
The Abipones, as I told you before, are destitute of beard, and have perfectly smooth chins like all the other Indians, both of whose parents are Americans. If you see an Indian with a little beard, you may conclude, without hesitation, that one of his parents, or at any rate his grandfather, must have been of European extraction. I do not deny that a kind of down grows on the chins of the Americans, just as in sandy sterile fields, a straggling ear of corn is seen here and there; but even this they pull up by the roots whenever it grows. The office of barber is performed by an old woman, who sits on the ground by the fire, takes the head of the Abipon into her lap, sprinkles and rubs his face plentifully with hot ashes, which serve instead of soap, and then, with a pair of elastic horn tweezers, carefully plucks up all the hairs; which operation the savages declare to be devoid of pain, and that I might give the more credit to his words, one of them, applying a forceps to my chin, wanted to give me palpable demonstration of the truth. It was with difficulty that I extricated myself from the hands of the unlucky shaver, choosing rather to believe than groan.
The Abipones bear the pain inflicted by the old woman with the forceps, without complaining, that their faces may be smooth and clear; for they cannot endure them to be rough and hairy. For this reason, neither sex will suffer the hairs, with which our eyes are naturally fortified, but have their eye-brows and eye-lashes continually plucked up. This nakedness of the eyes, though it disfigures the handsomest face in a high degree, they deem indispensable to beauty. They ridicule and despise the Europeans for the thick brows which overshadow their eyes, and call them brothers to the ostriches, who have very thick eye-brows. They imagine that the sight of the eye is deadened, and shaded by the adjacent hairs. Whenever they go out to seek honey, and return empty-handed, their constant excuse is, that their eye-brows and eye-lashes have grown, and prevented them from seeing the bees which conduct them to the hives. From the beard, let us proceed to the hair of the head.
All the Abipones have thick, raven-black locks; a child born with red or flaxen hair would be looked upon as a monster amongst them. The manner of dressing the hair differs in different nations, times, and conditions. The Abipones, previously to their entering colonies, shaved their hair like monks, leaving nothing but a circle of hair round the head. But the women of the Mbaya nation, after shaving the rest of their heads, leave some hairs untouched, to grow like the crest of a helmet, from the forehead to the crown. As the savages have neither razors nor scissors, they use a shell sharpened against a stone, or the jaws of the fish palometa, for the purpose of shaving. Most of the Abipones in our colonies let their hair grow long, and twist it into a rope like European soldiers. The same fashion was adopted by the women, but with this difference, that they tie the braid of hair with a little piece of white cotton, as our countrymen do with black.
At church, and in mournings for the dead, they scatter their hair about their shoulders. The Guarany Indians, on the contrary, whilst they live in the woods, without the knowledge of religion, let their hair hang down their backs: now that they have embraced Christianity, and entered various colonies, they crop it like priests. But the women of the Guarany towns wear their hair long, platted, and bound with a piece of white cotton, both in and out of doors, but dishevelled and flowing when they attend divine service. The Spanish peasantry also approach the door of the church with their hair tied in the military fashion, but loosen it on entering. Indeed, all the Americans are persuaded that this is a mark of reverence due to the sacred edifice.
As soon as they wake in the morning, the Abiponian women, sitting on the ground, dress, twist, and tie their husbands' hair. A bundle of boar's bristles, or of hairs out of a tamandua's tail, serves them for a comb. You very seldom see an Indian with natural, never with artificial curling hair. They do not grow grey till very late, and then not unless they are decrepid; very few of them get bald. It is worthwhile to mention a ridiculous custom of the Abipones, Mocobios, Tobas, &c. all of whom, without distinction of age or sex, pluck up the hair from the forehead to the crown of the head, so that the fore part of the head is bald almost for the space of two inches: this baldness they call nalemr̂a, and account a religious mark of their nation. New-born infants have the hair of the fore part of their head cut off by a male or female juggler, these knaves performing the offices both of physicians and priests amongst them. This custom seems to me to have been derived from the Peruvian Indians, who used to cut their children's first hair, at two years of age, with a sharp stone for want of a knife. The ceremony was performed by the relations, one after another, according to the degrees of consanguinity; and at the same time a name was given to the infant.
It is also a custom, amongst the Abipones, to shave the heads of widows, not without much lamentation on the part of the women, and drinking on that of the men; and to cover them with a grey and black hood, made of the threads of the caraquatà, which it is reckoned a crime for her to take off till she marries again. A widower has his hair cropped with many ceremonies, and his head covered with a little net-shaped hat, which is not taken off till the hair grows again. All the men cut off their hair to mourn for the death of a Cacique. Amongst the Christian Guaranies, it is thought a most shameful and ignominious punishment, when any disreputable woman has her hair cut off. I have described the person which liberal nature has bestowed upon the Abipones; it now remains for me to show by what means they disfigure it.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL METHODS OF DISFIGURING
THE PERSON.
Many Europeans spoil their beauty by eagerly imitating foreign customs, and always seeking new methods of adorning their persons. The Abipones disfigure and render themselves terrible to the sight from a too great attachment to the old customs of their ancestors; by whose example they mark their faces in various ways, some of which are common to both sexes, others peculiar to the women. They prick their skin with a sharp thorn, and scatter fresh ashes on the wound, which infuse an ineffaceable black dye. They all wear the form of a cross impressed on their foreheads, and two small lines at the corner of each eye extending towards the ears, besides four transverse lines at the root of the nose between the eye-brows, as national marks. These figures the old women prick with thorns, not only in the skin, but in the live flesh, and ashes sprinkled on them whilst streaming with blood render them of an indelible black. What these figures signify, and what they portend I cannot tell, and the Abipones themselves are no better informed on the subject. They only know that this custom was handed down to them from their ancestors, and that is sufficient.
I saw not only a cross marked on the foreheads of all the Abipones, but likewise black crosses woven in the red woollen garments of many. It is a very surprizing circumstance that they did this before they were acquainted with the religion of Christ, when the signification and merits of the cross were unknown to them. Perhaps they learnt some veneration for the cross, or gained an idea of its possessing great virtues from their Spanish captives, or from those Abipones who had lived in captivity amongst the Spaniards.