tapir-hide

Updated: July 11, 2026

Both men and women are tattooed, the pattern being sometimes a scroll on each cheek, but generally rows of short straight lines on the face. Most of the older people wear bracelets, anklets, and garters of tapir-hide or tough bark; in their homes they wear no other dress except on festival days, when they ornament themselves with feathers or masked cloaks made of the inner bark of a tree.

Henry Walter Bates - The Naturalist on the River Amazons