Other travelers mention that on the Amazon among some tribes the women are clothed and the men naked; among others the women naked, and the men clothed.  Thus, among the Guaycurus the men are quite naked, while the women wear a short petticoat; among the Uaupas the men always wear a loin-cloth, while the women are quite naked.

“The feeling of modesty is very developed among the Fuegians, who are accustomed to live naked.  They manifest it in their bearing and in the ease with which they show themselves in a state of nudity, compared with the awkwardness, blushing, and shame which both men and women exhibit if one gazes at certain parts of their bodies.  Among themselves this is never done even between husband and wife.  There is no Fuegian word for modesty, perhaps because the feeling is universal among them.”  The women wear a minute triangular garment of skin suspended between the thighs and never removed, being merely raised during conjugal relations. (Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, pp. 239, 307, and 347.)

Among the Crow Indians of Montana, writes Dr. Holder, who has lived with them for several years, “a sense of modesty forbids the attendance upon the female in labor of any male, white man or Indian, physician or layman.  This antipathy to receiving assistance at the hands of the physician is overcome as the tribes progress toward civilization, and it is especially noticeable that half-breeds almost constantly seek the physician’s aid.”  Dr. Holder mentions the case of a young woman who, although brought near the verge of death in a very difficult first confinement, repeatedly refused to allow him to examine her; at last she consented; “her modest preparation was to take bits of quilt and cover thighs and lips of vulva, leaving only the aperture exposed....  Their modesty would not be so striking were it not that, almost to a woman, the females of this tribe are prostitutes, and for a consideration will admit the connection of any man.” (A.B.  Holder, American Journal of Obstetrics, vol. xxv, No. 6, 1892.)

“In every North American tribe, from the most northern to the most southern, the skirt of the woman is longer than that of the men.  In Esquimau land the parka of deerskin and sealskin reaches to the knees.  Throughout Central North America the buckskin dress of the women reached quite to the ankles.  The West-Coast women, from Oregon to the Gulf of California, wore a petticoat of shredded bark, of plaited grass, or of strings, upon which were strung hundreds of seeds.  Even in the most tropical areas the rule was universal, as anyone can see from the codices or in pictures of the natives.” (Otis T. Mason, Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture, p. 237.)