The men are expert in the making of dug-out canoes and fish traps, while the women are expert potters and net weavers. Their huts are simple structures of willow branches covered with grass, sometimes large enough to have several compartments. Their weapons are the bow, lance, and wooden club, besides which they now have some guns. They bury the dead, the aged being sometimes killed by their own children from a feeling of pity for their helplessness. For the same reason, when a mother dies her infant is buried with her.
Men have only one wife at a time.
There is no head chief, the government resting principally with the old men. Little is known of their religion, which seems to consist chiefly of a special reverence for the sun and the rising moon, and the propitiation of a host of invisible spirits which are held responsible for sickness and other misfortunes. In war they are distinguished for their ferocity and barbarous cruelty, and are dreaded alike by settlers, travellers, and Christianized Indians throughout the whole northern Chaco frontier. In 1854, however, the American expedition up the Paraguay, under Captain Page, held friendly intercourse with them. On one occasion six hundred Toba attacked Dobrizhoffer's mission, but were repelled by the missionary himself single-handed with the aid of his firearms, of which the savages were in deadly terror.