ABIPONES  , a tribe of

South American Indians of Guaycuran stock recently inhabiting the territory lying between Santa Fe and St lago . They originally occupied the Chaco district of Paraguay, but were driven thence by the hostility of the Spaniards . According to Martin Dobrizhoffer, a Jesuit missionary, who, towards the end of the 18th century, lived among them for a period of seven years, they'then numbered not more than 5000 . They were a well-formed, handsome people, with black eyes and aquiline noses, thick black hair, but no beards . The hair from the forehead to the crown of the head was pulled out, this constituting a tribal mark . The faces, breasts and arms of the women were covered with black figures of various designs made with thorns, the tattooing paint being a mixture of ashes and blood . The lips and ears of both sexes were pierced . The men were brave fighters, their chief weapons being the bow and spear . No child was without bow and arrows; the bow-strings were made of foxes' entrails . In battle the Abipones wore an armour of tapir's hide over which a jaguar's skin was sewn . They were excellent swimmers and good horsemen . For five months in the year when the floods were out they lived on islands or even in shelters built in the trees .

They seldom married before the

age of thirty, and were singularly chaste . " With the Abipones," says Darwin, " when a man chooses a wife, he bargains with the parents about the price . But it frequently happens that the girl rescinds what has been agreed upon between the parents and bridegroom, obstinately rejecting the very mention of marriage . She often runs away and hides herself, and thus eludes the bridegroom." Infanticide was systematic, never more than two children being reared in one family, a custom doubtless originating in the difficulty of subsistence . The young were suckled for two years . The Abipones are now believed to be extinct as a tribe . Martin Dobrizhoffer's Latin Historia de A biponibus (Vienna, 1784) was translated into English by Sara Coleridge, at the suggestion of Southey, in 1822, under the title of An Account of the Abipones (3 vols.) .