Something has been known of the Seri Indians (Seris, Ceris, Ceres,
Heris, Tiburones) since the time of Coronado, yet they remain one
of the least-studied tribes of North America. The first systematic
investigation of the tribe was made in the course of expeditions by the
Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894 and 1895; it was far from complete.
The Seri Indians are a distinctive tribe in habits, customs, and
language, inhabiting Tiburon island in Gulf of California and a limited
adjacent area on the mainland of Sonora (Mexico). They call themselves
_Kun-kaak_ or _Kmike_: their common appellation is from the Opata, and
may be translated “spry”. Their habitat is arid and rugged, consisting
chiefly of desert sands and naked mountain rocks, with permanent fresh
water in only two or three places; it is barred from settled Sonora by
a nearly impassable desert. Two centuries ago the population of the
tribe was estimated at several thousands, but it has been gradually
reduced by almost constant warfare to barely three hundred and fifty,
of whom not more than seventy-five are adult males, or warriors.
The Seri men and women are of splendid physique; they have fine chests,
with slender but sinewy limbs, though the hands and especially the feet
are large; their heads, while small in relation to stature, approach
the average in size; the hair is luxuriant and coarse, ranging from
typical black to tawny in color, and is worn long. They are notably
vigorous in movement, erect in carriage, and remarkable for fleetness
and endurance.
The Seri subsist chiefly on turtles, fish, mollusks, water-fowl, and
other food of the sea; they also take land game, and consume cactus
fruits, mesquite beans, and a few other vegetal products of their
sterile domain. Most of their food is eaten raw. They neither plant
nor cultivate, and are without domestic animals, save dogs which are
largely of coyote blood.
The habitations of the Seri are flimsy bowers of cactus and shrubbery,
sometimes shingled rudely with turtle-shells and sponges; in some
cases these are in clusters pertaining to matronymic family groups;
in other cases they are isolated, and are then often abandoned and
reoccupied repeatedly, and are apparently common property of the tribe.
The habitations afford some protection from sun and wind, but not from
cold and wet, which are hardly known in winterless and nearly rainless
Seriland.
The Seri clothing consists essentially of a kilt or skirt extending
from waist to knees; sometimes a pelican-skin robe is worn as a blanket
or mantle, and used also as bedding; the head and feet, as well as
the bust and arms, are habitually bare, though a loose-sleeved wammus
reaching not quite to the waist is sometimes worn. These garments were
formerly woven of coarse threads or cords made from native vegetal
fibers; the belt is generally of twisted human hair, of horse hair, of
dressed deerskin, or of snake skin; the robe consists of four, six, or
eight pelican skins sewed together with sinew. The pelican-skin robes
are still used, though the aboriginal fabric is commonly replaced by
cotton stuffs obtained through barter or plunder. Cords of human hair
and skins of serpents are used for necklaces.
The sports and games of the Seri Indians include racing and dancing,
and there are ceremonial dances at the girls’ puberty feasts,
accompanying the rude music of improvised drums. Decoration is
ordinarily limited to symbolic face-painting, which is seen especially
among the females, and to crude ornamentation of the scanty apparel.
A peculiar pottery is manufactured, and the pieces are sometimes
decorated with simple designs in plain colors.
The bow and arrow are habitually used, especially in warfare, and
turtles and fish are taken by means of harpoons, shafted with cane and
usually tipped with bone, charred wood, or flotsam metal. The arrows
are sometimes provided with chipped stone points, though the art of
chipping seems to be accultural and shamanistic. The ordinary stone
implements are used for crushing bone and severing sinew or flesh,
and also for mulling seeds and other food substances; they are mere
cobbles, selected for fitness, and retained only if their fitness is
increased by the wear of use, after the manner of protolithic culture.
Graceful balsas are made from canes, bound together with mesquite-fiber
cords; and on these the people freely navigate the narrow but stormy
strait separating Tiburon and the neighboring islets from the mainland.
They make a distinctive pottery, which is remarkably light and fragile.
Its chief use is carrying water to habitations (always located miles
from the spring or tinaja) or on desultory wanderings. Shells are used
for cups, and to some extent for implements. They have a few baskets,
which are not greatly different from those made by neighboring tribes.
The modern Seri are loosely organized in a number of maternal groups
or clans, which are notable for the prominence given to mother-right
in marriage and for some other customs; and there are indications
that the clan organization was more definite before the tribe was so
greatly reduced. The leading clans are those of the Pelican, the chief
tribal tutelary, and the Turtle, a minor tutelary. At present polygyny
prevails, professedly and evidently because of the preponderance of
females due to the decimation of warriors in battle; but both custom
and tradition tell of former monogamy, with a suggestion of polyandry.
The primary marriage is negotiated between the mothers of the would-be
groom and the prospective bride; if the mother and daughter in the
latter family look with favor on the proposal, the candidate is
subjected to rigorous tests of material and moral character; and if
these are successfully passed the marriage is considered complete,
and the husband becomes a privileged and permanent guest in the
wife’s household. Family feeling, especially maternal affection, is
strong; but petty dissensions are common save when internal peace is
constrained by external strife. The strongest tribal characteristic
is implacable animosity toward aliens, whether Indian or Caucasian;
certainly for three and a half centuries, and probably for many more,
the Seri have been almost constantly on the warpath against one alien
group or another, and have successfully stayed Spanish, Mexican, and
American invasion. In their estimation the brightest virtue is the
shedding of alien blood, while the blackest crime in their calendar is
alien conjugal union.
The Seri vocabulary is meager and essentially local; the kinship terms
are strikingly scanty, and there are fairly full designations for
food materials and other local things, while abstract terms are few.
Two or three recorded vocables seem to resemble those of the Yuman
languages, while the numerals and all other known terms are distinct.
The grammatic construction of Seri speech appears not to differ greatly
from that of other tongues of Sonora and Arizona; it is highly complex
and associative. The speech is fairly euphonious, much more so than
that of the neighboring Papago and Yaqui Indians.
The Seri Indians appear to recognize a wide variety of mystical
potencies and a number of zoic deities, all of rather limited powers.
The Pelican, Turtle, Moon, and Sun seem to lead their thearchy.
Creation is ascribed to the Ancient of Pelicans—a mythical bird of
marvelous wisdom and melodious song—who first raised Isla Tassne,
and afterward Tiburon and the rest of the world, above the primeval
waters. Individual fetishes are used, and there is some annual ceremony
at the time of ripening of cactus fruits, and certain observances at
the time of the new moon. The most conspicuous ceremony is the girls’
puberty feast. The dead are clothed in their finest raiment, folded
and fastened in small compass like Peruvian mummies, placed in shallow
graves, and covered with turtle-shells, when the graves are filled with
earth and heaped with stones or thorny brambles for protection against
beasts of prey. Fetishes, weapons, and other personal belongings are
buried with the body, as well as a dish of food and an olla of water,
and there are curious customs connected with the place of sepulture.
There is a weird, formal mourning for dead matrons, and suggestions of
fear of or veneration for the manes.
Seriland is surrounded with prehistoric works, telling of a numerous
population who successfully controlled the scant waters for irrigation,
built villages and temples and fortresses, cultivated crops, kept
domestic animals, and manufactured superior fictile and textile wares;
but (save possibly in one spot) these records of aboriginal culture
cease at the borders of Seriland. In their stead a few slightly worn
pebbles and bits of pottery are found here and there, deeply embedded
in the soil and weathered as by the suns of ages. There are also a few
cairns of cobbles marking the burial places, and at least one cobble
mound of striking dimensions but of unknown meaning; and there are
a few shell-mounds, one so broad and high as to form a cape in the
slowly transgressing shoreline (Punta Antigualla), and in which the
protolithic implements and other relics are alike from the house-dotted
surface to the tide level, 90 feet below.
The absence of relics of a superior culture, and the presence of Seri
relics throughout deposits of high antiquity, suggest that the tribe
is indigenous to Seriland; and this indication harmonizes with the
peculiar isolation of the territory, the lowly culture and warlike
habits of the people, the essentially distinct language, the singular
marriage custom, and the local character of the beast-gods. And all
these features combine to mark the Seri as children of the soil, or
autochthones.