Their dress, owing to its indecency, is more a subject for keeping silence upon and for concealing than for talking of and describing. But as the truth of history obliges me to tell everything correctly, I must beseech modest ears to close themselves, that they may not hear me in this part; and should they punish me with this disfavour, I shall hold them to be well employed. In this first epoch the Indians dressed like animals, for they wore no more clothing than the skin which nature had given them. Many of them, either for love of adorning themselves or out of peculiarity, had a thick string girded round their bodies, which served them as clothing, but we must say no more on this head, as it is not proper. In the year 1560, on my way to Spain, I encountered five Indians in a street of Carthagena, without any clothes, and they did not walk abreast, but one behind the other, like cranes, it having been so many years since they had had intercourse with Spaniards.

The women went about in the same dress, that is, naked. Those who were married had a thread girded round the body, to which was fastened a sort of apron consisting of a rag of cotton a yard square. In places where they could not or would not weave, they used bark of trees or leaves, which served as a covering for the sake of decency. Virgins also wore a girdle of thread, and in place of an apron they wore a different sort of thing as a sign that they were virgins.