[48] Canadian Indians painted their
faces in winter as a protection against frost-bite. In Patagonia
"both sexes smear their faces, and occasionally their bodies
with paint, the Indians alleging as the reasons for using
this cosmetic that it is a protection against the effects of
the wind; and I found from personal experience that it
proved a complete preservative from excoriation or chapped
skin."[49]
C. Bock notes that in Sumatra rice powder is lavishly employed by many
of the women, but "not with the object of preserving the complexion or
reducing the color, but to prevent perspiration by closing the pores
of the skin."[50] Baumann says of the African Bakongo that many of
their peculiar ways of arranging the hair "seem to be intended less as
ornamental head-dresses than as a bolster for the burdens they carry
on their heads;"[51] and Squier says that the reason given by the
Nicaraguans for flattening the heads of their children is that they
may be better fitted in adult life to bear burdens.[52]
WAR "DECORATIONS"
Equally remote as the foregoing from all ideas of personal beauty or
of courtship and the desire to inspire sexual passion is the custom so
widely prevalent of painting and otherwise "adorning" the body for
war. The Australians diversely made use of red and yellow ochre, or of
white pigment for war paint.
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