WHOLE VOL. 



ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER 49 



Still want a small girl to have long hair." Older girls have it cut 

 shoulder length or longer. To keep the hair from the face, an older 

 girl, today, as formerly, takes a strand of yarn or a narrow band of 

 cloth, passes it under the hair at the back, brings it forward either 

 behind or in front of the ears, and then ties the ends in a knot on top 

 of the head; or, as formerly, she twists the hair that is over the 

 temples, ties the ends of the twists together and lets them hang down 

 the back. Today, some girls wear barrettes to confine the hair and 

 keep it out of their eyes. Schoolchildren were rarely infested with 

 lice ; teachers in all areas remarked about this. 



Beauty was recognized. When a man and his wife were compli- 

 mented on their beautiful, dark-eyed children, the man replied, "They 

 have inherited their beauty and eyes from my side— my mother had 

 dark eyes ; all my wife's sisters had green eyes." 



Most girls seen wore earrings made of flattened circular pieces of 

 silver ; a few boys also did. Both boys and girls wore one or several 

 rings. A ring was either a copper or a silver band incised with a 

 repeated design, or a flattened 20-centavo Chilean coin. Rings were 

 worn on any finger. No one wore a necklace. It is not an old custom 

 for girls to wear hair ornaments ; but occasionally today at fiestas an 

 adolescent girl has her hair so adorned. 



An occasional boy in early adolescence showed interest in his per- 

 sonal appearance, but none wore ornaments, unless rings are so con- 

 sidered. A 12-year-old boy ran home from school the day the Chilean 

 Government school examiner arrived ; his clothes, he said, were not 

 good enough for such an occasion. A 13-year-old boy leaned sullen 

 and abashed against a school wall, complaining that the picture that 

 had just been taken of him by surprise would disgrace him; that he 

 wanted to dress up and have another one taken. Girls seemed less 

 finicky about their appearance ; none, however, was seen, at any time, 

 carelessly or slovenly dressed or dirty. 



FRIENDSHIPS, LEADERSHIP, JOVIALITY 



Intimate friendship between two boys or two girls was not insti- 

 tutional ; an occasional boy, however, had a "chum" ; so did a girl. 

 "Those two boys [14 and 15 years of age] are always together ; when 

 anything is going on anywhere they go there together ; they have been 

 that way since they were little boys." Two 12-year-old boys asked to 

 be photographed together: "We are friends; we have always been 



friends." 



Games on school grounds were generally played together by children 



