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Despite the cold, Tandakora wore little but the breechcloth, and his mighty chest and shoulders were painted with many hideous devices. In the distance and in the glow of the flames his size was exaggerated until he looked like one of the giants of ancient mythology.
One of the bags commonly worn is the fi-chong', the bladder of the hog; the other, cho'-kao, is a cloth bag some 8 inches wide and 15 inches long. These cloth bags are woven in most of the pueblos where the cotton breechcloth is made. Old men now and then wear a blanket, pi'-tay, but the younger men never do. They say a blanket is for the women.
Their legings are most usually formed of the skins of the Antelope dressed without the hair. in the men they are very long and full each leging being formed of a skin nearly entire. the legs, tail and neck are also left on these, and the tail woarn upwards; and the neck deeply fringed and ornimented with porcupine qulls drags or trails on the ground behind the heel. the skin is sewn in such manner as to fit the leg and thye closely; the upper part being left open a sufficient distance to permit the legs of the skin to be dran underneath a girdle both before and behind, and the wide part of the skin to cover the buttock and lap before in such manner that the breechcloth is unnecessary. they are much more decent in concealing those parts than any nation on the Missouri the sides of the legings are also deeply fringed and ornimented. sometimes this part is ornimented with little fassicles of the hair of an enimy whom they have slain in battle.
After the body was cut from its shield a blanket was wrapped about it otherwise it was nude, save for a flayed-bark breechcloth and it was set up in the cramped sepulcher facing Kambulo, and sitting supported away from the earth walls by four short wooden sticks placed upright about it. An old bamboo-headed spear was broken in the shaft and the two sections placed with the corpse.
At one end of the plat two, and part of the time three, women are transplanting rice. Four men are bringing fertilizer for the soil. Strange to say, each of the men in the group of three is "clothed" one wears his breechcloth as a breechcloth, and the other two wear theirs simply as aprons, hanging loose in front.
The breast and arms were covered by deerskin, a fringe running down in front to the belt, which held his tomahawk. The frightful horn-handled knife was tightly grasped in his right hand. Below the belt was breechcloth, followed by leggins and moccasins, but it was noticeable that he carried no rifle with him.
With frightened shrieks they wheeled once more and plunged on in their efforts to escape. Tarzan dispatched his prisoner quickly and silently; removed the weapons and ornaments, and oh, the greatest joy of all a handsome deerskin breechcloth, which he quickly transferred to his own person. Now indeed was he dressed as a man should be. None there was who could now doubt his high origin.
He was naked save for a breechcloth and boot moccasins and his face was daubed with ocher and vermilion. Across his lean chest, too, was a smear of paint just under the necklace of bear claws that gave him his name. He was armed with a .50-caliber Sharps single-shot rifle and with the only revolver in the tribe an old-fashioned cap-and-ball six-shooter, taken from some murdered prospector.
A fourth girdle, called "ka'-ching," is a chain, frequently a dog chain of iron purchased on the coast, oftener a chain manufactured by the men, and consisting of large, open links of commercial brass wire about one-sixth of an inch in diameter. At about the age of puberty, say at 15, it is usual for the boy to possess a breechcloth, or wa'-nis.
Here and there, slowly revealing themselves through the diminishing darkness, like horrible waifs left uncovered by a falling river, appeared the bodies of four Apaches, naked to the breechcloth and painted black, all quiet except one which twitched convulsively. The clay floor was marked by black pools and stains which were undoubtedly blood.
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