What is "clouts"

Usage examples of "clouts".

Fourteen men dressed in nothing more than breech clouts barefooted, their hair dressed with feathers and their faces painted, pounded up and down over the frozen marsh, steam rising from their sweating bodies.

Elizabeth tried not to stare at the players, at their naked chests or the hard-muscled thighs which flashed from under the breech clouts as they ran.