By INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 4 
remove their single garments (skirts) during a heavy 
rain, and put them under a banana leaf to keep them 
dry until the storm was over.*! 
In Highland Quezaltenango, huipils are so long 
that they serve as petticoats. 
Most Highland huipils are of cotton, woven on 
stick looms by the wearers and, in villages where men 
wear home-woven clothes, they are made of the 
same cloth that goes into a man’s suit. Intricacy and 
elaborateness of design and color are varied in the 
extreme (pls. 7,8). Some have birds, animals, men, 
and geometric patterns worked in on the loom. 
Others are decorated with brocading, as at Chichi- 
castenango. Coins or silk-covered disks are com- 
monly attached by chain stitching, often the work of 
men. Ordinarily huipils are made up of two pieces °? 
with an opening for the head, and the sides are sewn 
up, leaving large, free spaces for the arms. Some- 
times shirts with true sleeves are worn by the women 
as well as the men (Solola; pl. 7, c). 
In the area of the Quezaltenango—Totonicapan 
Valleys, where stick-loom weaving is absent, electric- 
loom or foot-loom cotton cloth is made into huipils 
(p. 127). The factory-made material, usually plain 
white, is often embellished with an embroidered collar 
(Cantel, San Francisco el Alto, San Andrés Xecil, 
San Cristobal Totonicapan) whereas the foot-loom 
cotton is variously striped and figured (Quezalte- 
nango, Olintepeque, Totonicapan). See frontspiece ; 
pls. 39, a; 40, b,c). 
Skirts.—Skirts generally have one thing at least in 
common ; they are almost never woven by the wearer, 
but are the products of foot looms operated by men 
(Indian and more often Ladinos) in the larger towns. 
They are woven in lengths sufficient for three or four 
skirts (15 or 16 ft., as a rule), often being called 
cortes. Looms are narrow, so that cortes usually 
range between 25 and 28 inches wide. Color, length, 
and pattern, as well as style of wearing, are highly 
varied, depending upon municipio custom (pls. 6, 7, 
8, 9). Blue predominates, as a result of the abun- 
dance of indigo, which is still used for dyeing the 
thread that goes into them. Red is next in im- 
portance, but its use is not nearly so widespread as 
formerly, when the dye source was cochineal. This 
scale insect’ is no longer used in dyeing cotton. 
Yellow, least common color for skirts, was for- 
merly obtained from certain dyewoods such as aliso 
*1 Osborne, 1935, p. 33. 
my attention, however, 
* There may be three, as at Coban. 
This is the only such report that has come to 
and palo amavillo, which are still used in dyeing 
wool. Aniline dyes have replaced natural ones for 
cotton and silk of this color, however. 
In villages of the north and east shores of Lake 
Atitlan, women wear solid blue skirts of heavy cotton 
(some with light lines), usually of two pieces joined 
with colored silk embroidery. They are woven by 
Solola Ladinos (pls. 7, c, g;9,a,c). Indians in all of 
the south-shore villages wear skirts from the Quezal- 
tenango area, usually blue and pink (and some green) 
jaspe patterns, except in Santiago, where red is the 
rule. Skirts for these villages are occasionally made 
in Huehuetenango. The common old-style skirt in 
Santiago was a large blue check (pl. 7, k). The 
modern red one is a 20th-century innovation, having 
come in with the broad, red and variegated halolike 
bands which replaced the narrow and less ornate ones 
formerly worn. Jaspe patterns are common not only. 
in the other three south shore villages, but also in 
the Quezaltenango—Totonicapan region, where they 
are made (chiefly at Salcaja, San Cristébal Totoni- 
capan, and Quezaltenango; pl. 40, a, d, e; p. 63). 
Farther west, from San Martin to Huitan, dark-blue 
skirts with various lighter lines or checks are worn 
(pls. 39, c; 41, ¢). Ladino vendors (these are often 
the makers) said all are made on foot looms in the 
western portion of the town of Quezaltenango. Reds 
and some yellows appear in the Huehuetenango 
region. Yellows and some reds (also greens and 
oranges, these shades produced on the loom by com- 
bining threads of different primary colors) predomi- 
nate in the San Marcos (La Unién) area. Silk skirts 
are not uncommon even in everyday wear in the lat- 
ter vicinity, as along much of the piedmont, where 
gaudy combinations of bright greens, pinks, purples, 
and blues, often appear (San Sebastian Retalhuleu, 
e.g., pl. 2, d). 
The shortest skirts, which are worn in Zunil and 
Chichicastenango (pl. 8, c), do nét reach the knee, 
and are dark blue; the longest, touching or almost 
touching the ground, are the bright red skirts of 
Santiago Atitlan (pl. 7, k, m). Obviously here is an 
instance where the climatic factor gives way to cus- 
tom, for the first two of the above-mentioned town- 
ships are in much colder regions than the latter. 
Atitecas take pride in their regal appearance, and the 
contrast between them and the short-skirted women 
is marked, for the latter often appear gnarled and 
ugly, their knees great bumps owing to the frequent 
