Note 672 — Chapter XIII

It is in the vicinity of the Cainguas, between the Parana and the central chain of Paraguay, south of the sources of the Acaray, that the five or six hundred Guayakis dwell, primitive hunters, still in the stone age, of whom Bove (Bull. Soc. Geogr. Ital., 1884, p. 939) had caught a glimpse, and whom La Hitte and Ten Kate have quite recently described (Ann. Mus. La Plata, vol. ii., Anthrop., 1897). Armed with their enormous bows and their polished stone hatchets, with their caps of jaguar skin, they have rather a grotesque appearance, and their low stature (the only adult subject measured was 1 m. 52, and the skeleton of a woman, 1 m. 42), as well as their legs wide apart, are not such as to improve their appearance. They are sub-brachycephalic, and nevertheless in type remind us of the Fuegians and the Botocudos. Their habitations are tree shelters, sometimes eighty feet long; their principal tool consists of a tooth of the agôuti fastened to the thigh-bone of a monkey. Their household vessels are plaited baskets rendered impermeable by the addition of a layer of wax, etc. The Cainguas are perhaps hybridised Guayakis.