The primary resource of Seriland is raised to the first place in
realized importance only by its rarity, viz., potable water—a commodity
so abundant in most regions as to divert conscious attention from
its paramount role in physiologic function as well as in industrial
economy. The overwhelming importance of this food-source is worthy of
closer attention than it usually receives. Classed by function, human
foods are (1) nutrients, including animal and vegetal substances which
are largely assimilated and absorbed into the system; (2) assimilants,
including condiments, etc., which promote alimentation and apparently
aid metabolism; (3) paratriptics, or waste preventers, including
alcohol and other stimulants, which in some little-understood way
retard the waste of tissue and consequent dissipation of vital energy;
and (4) diluents, which modify the consistency of solid foods and
thereby facilitate assimilation, besides maintaining the water of the
system. Classed by chemic constitution, the foods may be divided into
(1) proteids, or nitrogenous substances, including the more complex
animal and vegetal compounds; (2) fats, or nonnitrogenous substances
in which the ratio of hydrogen and oxygen is unlike that of water, and
which are second in complexity among animal and vegetal compounds; (3)
carbohydrates, or nonnitrogenous compounds of carbon with hydrogen
and oxygen in the proportions required to form water, which are among
the simpler vegetal and animal compounds; and (4) minerals, chiefly
water, with relatively minute quantities of various salts. Both
classifications are somewhat indefinite, largely because most articles
of food combine two or more of the classes; yet they are useful in
that they indicate the high place of the simple mineral water among
food substances. Quantitatively this constituent stands far in the
lead among foods; the human adult consumes a daily mean of about 4½
pounds of simple liquids and 2½ pounds of nominally solid, but actually
more than half watery, food; so that the average man daily ingests
nearly 6 pounds of water and but little over 1 pound of actually
solid nutrients. Thus the ratio of the consumption of liquid food to
that of solids is (naturally, in view of that readier elimination of
the liquid constituent so characteristic especially of arid regions)
somewhat larger than the ratio of water to solids in the human system,
the ratios being nearly 6:1 and 4:1, respectively.[267] This analysis
serves measurably to explain the peculiarly developed water-sense of
all desert peoples, a sense finding expression in the first tenets of
faith among the Pueblos, in the fundamental law of the Papago, and in
the strongest instinct of the Seri; for among folk habituated to thirst
through terrible (albeit occasional) experience, water is the central
nucleus of thought about which all other ideas revolve in appropriate
orbits—it is an ultimate standard of things incomparably more stable
and exalted than the gold of civilized commerce, the constantly
remembered basis of life itself.
[267] The place of water among food substances is more fully discussed
in The Potable Waters of Eastern United States, 14th Ann. Rep. of the
U. S. Geol. Survey, 1894, pp. 5-8; the physiologic consequences of
deprivation of water are outlined in The Thirst of the Desert, Atlantic
Monthly, April 1898, pp. 483-488.
The potable water of Seriland is scanty in the extreme. The aggregate
daily quantity available during ten months of the average year
(excluding the eight wettest weeks of the two moist seasons) can hardly
exceed 0.1 or 0.2 of a second-foot, or 60,000 to 125,000 gallons
per day, of living water, i. e., less than the mean supply for each
thousand residents of a modern city, or about that consumed in a single
hotel or apartment house. Probably two-thirds of this meager supply
is confined to a single rivulet (Arroyo Carrizal) in the interior of
Tiburon, far from the food-yielding coasts, while the remainder is
distributed over the 1,500 square miles of Seriland in a few widely
separated aguajes, of which only two or three can be considered
permanent; and this normal supply is supplemented by the brackish
seepage in storm-cut runnels, as at Barranca Salina, or in shallow
wells, as at Pozo Escalante and Pozo Hardy, which is fairly fresh and
abundant for a few weeks after each moist season, but bitterly briny
if not entirely gone before the beginning of the next. The scanty
aggregate serves not only for the human but for the bestial residents
of the Seri principality; and its distribution is such that the mean
distance to the nearest aguaje throughout the entire region is 8 or 10
miles, while the extreme distances are thrice greater.
The paucity of potable water and the remoteness of its sources
naturally affect the habits of the folk; and the effect is intensified
by a curious custom, not fully understood, though doubtless connected
with militant instincts fixed (like the habits of primitive men
generally) by abounding faith and persistent ritualistic practice—i.
e., the avoidance of living waters in selecting sites for habitations
or even temporary camps. Thus the principal rancherias on Tiburon
island, about Rada Ballena, are some 4 miles from Tinaja Anita, the
nearest aguaje; the extensive rancherias near Punta Narragansett
measure 10 miles by trail from the same aguaje; the half dozen jacales
about Campo Navidad are separated by some 15 miles of stony and hilly
pathway from the alternative watering places of Tinaja Anita and Arroyo
Carrizal;[268] and the huts crowning the great shell-heap of Punta
Antigualla—one of the most striking records of immemorial occupancy
in America—are nearly or quite 10 miles by trail from Pozo Escalante,
and still further from Aguaje Parilla, the nearest sources of potable
water. These are but typical instances; and while there are ruined huts
(evidently regarded as temporales) near the dead waters of Barranca
Salina and Pozo Escalante, they tell the tribal policy of locating
habitations in places surprisingly remote from running water. Like
other desert folk, the Seri have learned to economize in water-carrying
by swigging incredible quantities on their occasional visits to the
aguajes; it is probable, too, that their systems are inured, somewhat
as are those of the desert animals that survive deprivation of water
for days or months, to prolonged abstinence from liquid food; yet
it seems safe to assume that at least half of the water required in
their vital economy (say 2 or 3 pounds apiece daily, on an average) is
consumed after transportation over distances ordinarily ranging from 4
to 12 miles. Under these conditions the Seri have naturally produced
a highly developed water industry; they are essentially and primarily
water-carriers, and all their other industries are subordinated to this
function.
[268] The preciousness of water in this hard province was impressed in
the 1895 expedition, during which the cost of the commodity, reckoned
on the basis of the time and labor involved in obtaining it, was
estimated at, $10 or $12 per gallon, or about the wholesale price of
the finest champagnes.
Concordantly with their customs, the Seri have a highly differentiated
aquarian device in the form of a distinctive type of olla, which is
remarkable for the thinness and fragility of the ware, i. e., for
largeness of capacity in proportion to weight. Representative specimens
are illustrated in plates XXXII and XXXIII (the former painted, as
already described). The dimensions of the two vessels are as follows:
painted olla, height 34 cm. (13⅜ inches), mean diameter 32.5 cm. (12¾
inches); plain olla, height 32 cm. (12⅝ inches), mean diameter 32
cm. In both specimens the walls are slightly thickened at the brim,
those of the painted vessel measuring about 4 mm. and those of the
plain vessel about 4.5 to 5 mm. in thickness. Below the brim the walls
are thinned to about 3 mm., as is shown in the fractured neck of the
painted specimen. The capacity of these Seri vessels in proportion to
their weight, compared with that of typical examples of ware produced
by other desert peoples, is shown in the accompanying table.
Comparison of the mean ratios indicates that the Seri ware is almost
exactly twice as economical as that of the Pueblos—i. e., that
its capacity is twice as great in proportion to the weight of the
vessel; and that even the ware of the wide-wandering Papago is more
extravagant than that of the Seri in the ratio of 100 to 54. It is
noteworthy, too, that the typical Seri ware is much more uniform than
that of the other tribes; the various specimens seen in use at Costa
Rica, and nearly entire in various parts of Seriland, were closely
similar in form and nearly alike in dimensions; while the innumerable
smaller fragments scattered over Seriland and the neighboring
“despoblado” or buried amid the shells of Punta Antigualla correspond
precisely in thickness, in curvature, in material, and in finish with
the ware observed in use.
_Ratio of capacity to weight among Indian ollas_[269]
[269] In this table the ratio is expressed by the weight in kilograms
for each liter in capacity. The Papago and Pueblo specimens were
selected from typical material in the National Museum and at
random, save that in the Pueblo ollas choice was made of specimens
corresponding approximately in size with those of the Seri.
----------------+--------------+----------------+--------+------------
| Capacity | Weight | Ratio | Mean ratio
----------------+--------------+----------------+--------+------------
Seri: | _Liters_ | _Kilograms_ | |
Plain | 15.14 | 1.91 | 0.126 }
| | | } 0.137
Painted | 15.61 | 2.30 | .147 }
| | | |
Papago: | | | |
No. 1 | 17.03 | 4.08 | .239 }
| | | } .253
No. 2 | 8.51 | 2.38 | .279 }
| | | |
Sia | 15.14 | 3.82 | .252 }
Zuñi | 12.30 | 3.18 | .258 } .271
Acoma | 15.61 | 4.31 | .276 }
Hopi | 13.72 | 4.06 | .295 }
Neither the manufacture of the ware nor the sources of material have
been observed by Caucasians. Examination of the specimens indicates
that the material is a fine and somewhat micaceous clay, apparently an
adobe derived from granitoid rocks; and such material might be obtained
in various parts of Seriland. The structure of the ware reveals no
trace of coiling or other building process, nor does the texture
clearly attest the beating process employed by the Papago potters;
but there is a well-defined lamellar structure, and the surfaces
(especially inner) are striated circumferentially or spirally in such
manner as to suggest a process of rubbing under considerable pressure.
All the specimens are so asymmetric as to indicate the absence of
mechanical devices approaching the potter’s wheel, while the necks
are of such size as to admit the hand and forearm of an adult female
but not of a warrior. Some suggestion of the manufacturing process
is afforded by miniature fetishistic and mortuary specimens, such as
those depicted in figures 17 and 18, and the larger specimens shown
in figure 39, which were evidently shaped from lumps of suitable clay
first hollowed and then gradually expanded by manipulation with the
fingers, with little if any aid from implements of any sort. On putting
the various indications together it would seem probable that the ware
is made by the women, and that each piece is shaped from a lump of
tempered and well-kneaded clay of suitable size, first hollowed and
rudely shaped over one hand, and gradually expanded by spiral rubbing,
kneading, and pressure between the hands of the maker. The burning is
incomplete and variable, suggesting a little outdoor fire in a shallow
pit adapted to a single vessel. The ware is without glaze or slip
or other surficial treatment save that the lamellar texture is best
developed toward the surfaces; hence it is so porous that the filled
vessel is moist even in the sun.
[Illustration: FIG. 15—Seri olla ring.]
Ordinarily women are the water-bearers, each carrying an olla balanced
on the head with the aid of a slightly elastic annular cushion, usually
fashioned of yucca fiber (plate XXXII and figure 15), though in some
cases two ollas are slung in nets at the ends of a yoke (figure
16) after the Chinese coolie fashion (this device being apparently
accultural).
[Illustration: FIG. 16—Water-bearer’s yoke.]
The function of the conventional Seri olla is exclusively that of
a canteen or water-carrying vessel, and its form is suited to no
other use; while its lines, like its thinness of wall, are adapted
to the stresses of internal and external pressure in such wise as to
give maximum strength with minimum weight. It is by reason of this
remarkably delicate adaptation of materials to purposes that the plain
olla figured in plate XXXIII, weighing an ounce or two more than 10
pounds in dry air, holds and safely carries three and one-third times
its weight of water. When such ollas are broken, the larger pieces may
be used as cups or dishes, or even as kettles, in the rare culinary
operations of the tribe (as shown in plate X); but the entire vessels
appear to be religiously devoted to their primary purpose.
[Illustration: FIG. 17—Symbolic mortuary olla.]
While some three-fourths of the observed fictile ware of the Seri
and a still larger proportion of the scattered sherds represent
conventional ollas, there are a few erratic forms. The most conspicuous
of these is a smaller, thicker-walled, and larger-necked type, of
which three or four examples were observed; two of these were in use
(one is represented lying at the left of the jacal in plate X), and
another was found cracked and abandoned on the desert east of Playa
Noriega. The vessels of this type are used primarily as kettles and
only incidentally as canteens. In both form and function they suggest
accultural origin; but the ware is much like that of the conventional
type. Another erratic type takes the form of a deep dish or shallow
bowl, of rather thick walls and clumsy form, which may be accultural;
a single example was observed in use (it is shown in plate XIV). There
are also mortuary forms, including a miniature olla (figure 39) and
bowl (figure 41), and such still smaller examples as those illustrated
in figures 17 and 18. In addition to the utensils a few fictile
figurines were found. Most of these were crude or distorted animal
effigies, and one (broken) was a rudely shaped and strongly caricatured
female figure some 2 inches high, with exaggerated breasts and pudenda.
Analogy with neighboring tribes suggests that the very small vessels
and the figurines are fetishistic appurtenances to the manufacture
of the pottery; e. g., that the fetish is molded at the same time
and from the same material as the olla, and is then burned with it,
theoretically as an invocation against cracking or other injury, but
practically as a “draw-piece” for testing the progress of the firing.
[Illustration: FIG. 18—Symbolic mortuary dish.]
By far the most numerous of the utensils connected with potable water
are drinking-cups and small bowls or dishes; but these are merely
molluscan shells of convenient size, picked up alongshore, used once
or oftener, and either discarded or carried habitually without other
treatment than the natural wear of use (an example is illustrated in
figure 19). Larger bowls or trays are improvised from entire carapaces
of the tortoise (probably _Gopherus agassizii_), which are carried
considerable distances; and still larger emergency water-vessels
consist of carapaces of the green turtle (_Chelonia agassizii_),
laid inverted in the jacales; these shells also being used in natural
condition. No wrought shells, molluscan or chelonian, were observed
in use or found either in the jacales or on the hundreds of abandoned
sites; but the vicinage of the rancherias, the abandoned camps and
house sites, and the more frequented paths are bestrewn with slightly
worn shells, evidently used for a time and then lost or discarded. The
relative abundance of the fictile ware and this natural shell ware in
actual use is about 1:3; i. e., each adult female usually possesses
a single olla of the conventional type, and there may be one or two
extra ollas and two or three clay dishes in each band or clan, while
each matron or marriageable maid is usually supplied with two to four
shell-cups and each little girl with one or two; and there are twice
as many carapace trays as clay dishes. The disproportion of pottery
and shell about the abandoned sites is naturally much greater; for the
former is the most highly prized industrial possession of the women,
while the shells are easily gained and lightly lost.
[Illustration: FIG. 19—Shell-cup.]
* * * * *
With respect to solid food the Seri may be deemed omnivorous though
their adjustment to habitat is such that they are practically
carnivorous.
The most conspicuous single article in the dietary of the tribe is the
local green turtle. This chelonian is remarkably abundant throughout
Gulf of California; but its optimum habitat and breeding-place
would appear to be El Infiernillo, whose sandy beaches are probably
better adapted to egg laying and hatching than any other part of
the coast. Here it has been followed by the Seri; perhaps half of
the aggregate life of the tribe is spent within easy reach of its
feeding and breeding grounds, and tribesman and turtle have entered
into an inimical commonalty something like that of Siouan Indian and
buffalo in olden time, whereby both may benefit and whereby the more
intelligent communal certainly profits greatly. The flesh of the turtle
yields food; some of its bones yield implements; its carapace yields
a house covering, a convenient substitute for umbrella or dog-tent,
a temporary buckler, and an emergency tray or cistern, as well as a
comfortable cradle at the beginning of life and the conventional coffin
at its end; while the only native foot-gear known is a sandal made from
the integument of a turtle-flipper.
[Illustration: FIG. 20—Turtle-harpoon.]
Doubtless the eggs and newly hatched young of the turtle are eaten, and
analogy with other peoples indicates that the females are sometimes
captured at the laying grounds or on their way back to water; but
observation is limited to the taking of the adult animal at sea by
means of a specialized harpoon. A typical specimen of this apparatus,
as constructed since the introduction of flotsam iron, is illustrated
in figure 20. It comprises a point 3 or 4 inches long, made from a nail
or bit of stout wire, rudely sharpened by hammering the tip (cold)
between cobbles, and dislodging the loosened scales and splinters by
thrusts and twirlings in the ground; this is set firmly and cemented
with mesquite gum into a foreshaft of hard wood, usually 4 or 5
inches long, notched to receive a cord and rounded at the proximal
end; the rounded end of this foreshaft fits into a socket of the main
shaft, which may be either a cane-stalk (as shown in the figure) or a
section of mesquite root; while a stout cord is firmly knotted about
the foreshaft and either attached to the distal portion of the main
shaft or carried along it to the hand of the user. The main shaft is
usually 10 or 12 feet long, with the harpoon socket in the larger
end, and is manipulated by a fisherman sitting or standing on his
balsa. On catching sight of a turtle lying in the water, he approaches
stealthily, preferably from the rear yet in such wise as not to cast a
frightening shadow, sets the foreshaft in place, guides the point close
to the carapace, and then by a quick thrust drives the metal through
the shell. The frictional resistance between the chitin and the metal
holds the point in place, and although the foreshaft is jerked out at
the first movement of the transfixed animal the cord prevents escape;
and after partial tiring the turtle is either drowned or driven
ashore, or else lifted on the craft.[270] Immediately on landing the
quarry, the plastron is broken loose by blows of the hupf[271] and
torn off by vigorous wrenches of the warriors and their strong-taloned
spouses in the impetuous fury of a fierce blood-craze like that of
carnivorous beasts; the blood and entrails and all soft parts are at
once devoured, and the firmer flesh follows at a rate depending on the
antecedent hunger, both men and women crushing integument and tendon
and bone with the hupf, tearing other tissues with teeth and nails,
mouthing shreds from the shells, and gorging the whole ravenously if
well ahungered, but stopping to singe and smoke or even half roast
the larger pieces if nearer satiety. If the quarry is too large for
immediate consumption and not too far from a rancheria the remnants
(including head and flippers and shells) are hoisted to the top of the
jacal immediately over the open end—the conventional Seri larder—to
soften in the sun for hours or days; and on these tough and gamey
tidbits the home-stayers, especially the youths, chew luxuriously
whenever other occupations fail. In times of plenty, such sun-ripened
fragments of reeking feasts are rather generally appropriated first to
the children and afterward to the coyote-dogs; and it is a favorite
pastime of the toddlers to gather about an inverted carapace on hands
and knees, crowding their heads into its noisome depths, displacing the
rare scavenger beetles and blowflies of this arid province, mumbling at
the cartilaginous processes, and sucking and swallowing again and again
the tendonous strings from the muscular attachments, until, overcome
by fulness and rank effluvias, they fall asleep with their heads in
the trough—to be stealthily nudged aside by the cringing curs attached
to the rancheria. Commonly the carapace and the longer bones from
the flippers of the larger specimens are preserved entire for other
uses, and are cleaned only by teeth and talons and tongues, aided by
time but not by fire; but the plastron, unless broken up and consumed
immediately, is subjected to a cooking process in which it serves at
once as skillet and cutlet—it is laid on the fire, flesh side up, and
at intervals the shriveling tissues are clawed off and devoured, while
at last the scorched or charred scutes themselves are carried away to
be eaten at leisure.[272]
[270] A lively and explicit account of Seri turtle-fishing appears in
Hardy’s Travels in the Interior of Mexico, 1829, pp. 286-297: “Bruja’s
bay is of considerable extent, and there are from five to three fathoms
water close to Arnold’s island, in the neighborhood of which the
Indians catch abundance of turtle in a singular manner. I have already
described their canoes, which in Spanish are called ‘balsas’. An Indian
paddles himself from the shore on one of these by means of a long,
elastic pole of about 12 or 14 feet in length, the wood of which is the
root of a thorn called mesquite, growing near the coast; and although
the branches of this tree are extremely brittle, the underground roots
are as pliable as whalebone and nearly as dark in color. At one end
of this pole there is a hole an inch deep, into which is inserted
another bit of wood, in shape like an acorn, having a square bit of
iron 4 inches long fastened to it, the other end of the iron being
pointed. Both the _ball_ and _cup_ are first moistened and then tightly
inserted one within the other. Fastened to the iron is a cord of very
considerable length, which is brought up along the pole, and both are
held in the left hand of the Indian. So securely is the nail thus fixed
in the pole that although the latter is used as a paddle it does not
fall out.
“A turtle is a very lethargic animal, and may frequently be surprised
in its watery slumbers. The balsa is placed nearly perpendicularly over
one of these unsuspecting sleepers, when the fisherman, softly sliding
the pole through the water in the direction of the animal till within
a foot or two of it, he suddenly plunges the iron into its back. No
sooner does the creature feel itself transfixed than it swims hastily
forward and endeavors to liberate itself. The slightest motion of
the turtle displaces the iron point from the long pole, which would
otherwise be inevitably broken and the turtle would as certainly be
lost; but in the manner here described it is held by the cord fastened
on to the iron which has penetrated its back till, after it has
sufficiently exhausted its strength, it is hoisted on board the canoe
by the fisherman, who proceeds to the shore in order to dispose of his
prize.”
[271] The universal stone implement of the Seri, improvised from a
cobblestone and used in nearly every industrial occupation (see postea,
p. 235); the designation is mimetic, or onomatopoetic, from the sound
of the stroke, particularly on animal tissue.
[272] These details were furnished largely by Mashém and Señor
Encinas, but were verified in essentials by personal observation of
dietetic customs at Costa Rica in 1894; and they were corroborated by
observations on both shores of El Infiernillo and Bahia Kunkaak in
1895. Especially significant were the remnants of a turtle feast on
the southern beach of Punta Miguel interrupted by the approach of the
exploring party. The indications were clear that the turtle had been
landed and largely consumed before the fire was kindled, and that the
cooking of the firmer portions had hardly been commenced before the
camp was abandoned so hurriedly that not only the nearly eaten turtle
and the glowing embers, but the harpoon (the specimen illustrated in
figure 20), the still bloody and greasy hupf (that represented in plate
LIV), and the fire-sticks were left behind. Gnawed fragments of charred
plastrons are common relics about hastily abandoned camps generally.
Perhaps the most significant fact connected with the Seri
turtle-fishing is the excellent adaptation of means to ends. The
graceful and effective balsa is in large measure an appurtenance of
the industry; the harpoon is hardly heavier and is much simpler than a
trout-fishing tackle, yet serves for the certain capture of a 200-pound
turtle; and the art of fishing for a quarry so shy and elusive that
Caucasians may spend weeks on the shores without seeing a specimen is
reduced to a perfection even transcending that of such artifacts as
the light harpoon and fragile olla. Hardly less significant is the
nonuse of that nearly universal implement, the knife, in every stage
of the taking and consumption of the characteristic tribal prey; for
it may fairly be inferred that the comparative inutility of the knife
in dissevering the hard and horny chelonian derm, and the comparative
effectiveness of the shell-breaking and bone-crushing hupf, have
reacted cumulatively on the instincts of the tribe to retard the
adoption of cutting devices. Of much significance, too, is the limited
cooking process; for the habitual consumption of raw flesh betokens a
fireless ancestry at no remote stage, while the crude cooking of (and
in) that portion of the shell not consecrated to other uses might well
form the germ of broiling or boiling on the one hand and of culinary
utensils on the other hand. On the whole, the Seri turtle industry
indicates a delicate adjustment of both vital and activital processes
to a distinctive environment, in which the abundant chelonian fauna
ranks as a prime factor.
Analogy with other primitive peoples would indicate that the flesh of
the turtle is probably tabu to the Turtle clan, that the consumption
of the quarry is preceded by an oblation, and that there are seasonal
or other ceremonial rites connected with turtle-fishing; but no
information has been obtained on any of these points save a few vague
and unwilling suggestions from Mashém tending to establish the analogy.
Flotsam and stolen metal have played a rôle in the industries
of Seriland so long that it is difficult to learn much of the
turtle-fishing during premetal times; but an intimation from Mashém
that the old men thought it much better to take the turtle with the
teeth of an “animal that goes in the water”, and the similarity in
terms for “harpoon” (or arrow) and “teeth” both suggest that the
aboriginal point may have been a sea-lion tooth, and that the foreshaft
itself may have been a larger tooth of seal or cetacean. While the
modern harpoon is shaped with the aid of metal (hoop-iron, etc.),
the forms are quite evidently vestigial of knifeless manufacture, in
which a naturally rounded or abraded or fire-shaped foreshaft was
fitted into the natural socket afforded by a cane-stalk broken at its
weakest point—i. e., just below the joint; and both function and socket
arrangement (as well as the linguistic evidence) strongly suggest the
cylindrical tooth as the germ of the apparatus.
* * * * *
It is probable that water-fowl, considered collectively, stand second
in importance as Seri prey; and the foremost fowl is undoubtedly the
pelican, which serves not only as a fruitful food-supply but as the
chief source of apparel.
The principal haunt and only known breeding ground of the pelican in
the Gulf of California is Isla Tassne, an integral part of Seriland;
and while the great birds are doubtless taken occasionally in Bahia
Kunkaak, El Infiernillo, Bahia Tepoka, and other Seri waters, this
island is the principal pelican hunting ground. According to Mashém’s
account, the chase of the pelican here is a well-organized collective
process: at certain seasons, or at least at times deemed propitious
by the shamans, pelican harvests are planned; and after some days
of preparation a large party assemble at a certain convenient point
(presumably Punta Antigualla) and await a still evening in the dark
of the moon. When all conditions are favorable they set out for the
island at late twilight, in order that it may be reached after dark;
on approaching the shore the balsas are left in charge of the women,
while the warriors and the larger boys, armed only with clubs, rush on
the roosting fowls and slaughter them in great numbers—the favorite
coup de grâce being a blow on the neck. The butchery is followed by
a gluttonous feast, in which the half-famished families gorge the
tenderer parts in the darkness, and noisily carouse in the carnage
until overcome by slumber. Next day the matrons select the carcasses
of least injured plumage and carefully remove the skins, the requisite
incisions being made either with the edge of a shell-cup or with a
sharp sliver of cane-stalk taken from an injured arrow or a broken
balsa-cane. The feast holds for several days, or until the last bones
are picked and the whole party sated, when the clans scatter at will,
laden with skins and lethargic from the fortnight’s food with which
each maw is crammed.
Mashém’s recital gave no indication as to whether the Pelican clan
participate in the hunting orgies, though it clearly implies that the
chase and feast are at least measurably ceremonial in character; and
this implication was strengthened by the interest and comparative
vivacity awakened in the Seri bystanders by their spokesman’s frequent
interlocutions with them during the recital. Unfortunately the account
was not clear as to the seasons selected, though the expressions
indicated that the feasts are fixed for times at which the young are
fully fledged. It would seem inconceivable that the Seri, with their
insatiate appetite for eggs and tender young, should consciously
respect a breeding time or establish a closed season to perpetuate
any game; yet it is probable that the pelican is somehow protected in
such wise that it is not only not exterminated or exiled, but actually
fostered and cultivated. It is certain that the mythical Ancient of
Pelicans is the chief creative deity of Seri legend, and its living
representative the chief tutelary of one of the clans; it is certain,
too, that this fleshly fowl, sluggish and defenseless as it is on its
sleeping grounds, would be the easiest source of Seri food if it were
hunted indiscriminately; and it is no less certain that the omnivorous
tribesmen would quickly extinguish the local stock if they were to
make its kind, including eggs and young, their chief diet; yet it
survives in literal thousands to patrol the waters of all Seriland in
far-stretching files and vees seldom out of sight in suitable weather.
On the whole, it would seem evident that an interadjustment has grown
up between the tribesmen and their fish-eating tutelary during the
centuries, whereby the fowl is protected, albeit subconsciously only,
during the breeding seasons; and in view of other characteristics of
the tribe it would seem equally evident that the protection is in some
way effected by means of ceremonies and tabus.
Somewhat analogous, though apparently less ceremonial, expeditions are
made to Isla Patos and other points in search of ducks, and to Isla San
Esteban, and still more distant islands in search of eggs (preferably
near the hatching point) and nestlings; while the abundant waterfowl
of the region are sought in Rada Ballena and other sheltered bays, as
well as in such landlocked lagoons as those of Punta Miguel and Punta
Arena. This hunting involves the use of bows and arrows, though the
archery of the tribe pertains rather to the chase of larger land game,
and apparently attains its highest development in connection with
warfare. No specialized fowling devices have been observed among the
Seri; and their autonomous recitals, the facies of their artifacts, and
the observed habits of the tribe (especially the youth) with respect
to birds, all indicate that ordinary fowling holds a subordinate place
in Seri craft—i. e., that it is a fortuitous and emergency avocation,
rather than an organized art like turtle-fishing and water-carrying.
Concordantly, culinary processes are not normally employed in
connection with waterfowl, and the customary implements used for
incising the skin and severing other tissues are the shell-cup, which
is carried habitually for other purposes, the cane-splint, which
appears to be improvised on occasion, and never carried habitually, and
the ubiquitous hupf.
Probably second in importance among Seri prey, as a food-source merely,
stand the multifarious fishes with which the waters of Seriland teem,
particularly if the class be held to comprise the cetaceans and seals
and selachians ranked as leaders of the fish fauna in Seri lore.
Naturally, whales lie outside the ordinary range of Seri game, yet
they are not without place in the tribal economy. During the visit to
the Seri rancheria near Costa Rica in 1894, it was noted that various
events—births, deaths, journeys, etc.—were referred to “The Time of
the Big Fish”; and it was estimated from apparent ages of children
and the like that this chronologic datum might be correlated roughly
with the year 1887. The era-marking event was memorable to Mashém, to
the elderwomen of the Turtle clan, and to other mature members of the
group, because they had been enabled thereby to dispense with hunting
and fishing for an agreeably long time, and because they had moved
their houses; but the providential occurrence was not interpreted
at the time. On visiting Isla Tiburon in 1895, the interpretation
became clear; along the western shore of Rada Ballena, near the
first sand-spit north of the bight, lay the larger bones of a whale,
estimated from the length of the mandibles and the dimensions of the
vertebræ to have been 75 or 80 feet long. It was evident that the
animal had gone into the shoal water at exceptionally high tide and had
stranded during the ebb; while the condition of the bones suggested
an exposure to the weather of perhaps half a dozen years. On the
shrubby bank above the beach, hard by the bleaching skeleton, stood
the new rancheria, the most extensive seen in Seriland, comprising
some fifteen or twenty habitable jacales; and fragments of ribs and
other huge bones about and within the huts[273] attested transportation
thither after the building, while the shallowness of the trails and
the limited trampling of the fog shrubbery gave an air of freshness
to the site and surroundings. The traditions and the relics together
made it manifest that “The Time of the Big Fish” had indeed marked an
epoch in Seri life; that when the leviathan landed (whether through
accident or partly through efforts of balsa-men) it was quickly
recognized as a vast contribution to the Seri larder; and that some of
the clans, if not the entire tribe, gathered to gorge first flesh and
blubber, next sun-softened cartilage and chitin, and then epiphyses
and the fatter bones. Some of the ribs were splintered and crushed,
evidently by blows of the hupf, in order to give access to the
cancellate interiors; several of the vertebræ were battered and split,
and nearly all of the bones bore marks of hupf blows, aimed to loosen
cartilaginous attachments, start epiphyses, or remove spongy and greasy
processes. Little trace of fire was found; in one case a mandible was
partly scorched, though the burning appeared to be fortuitous and
long subsequent to the removal of the flesh; and a bit of charred and
gnawed epiphysis, much resembling the fragments of half-cooked turtle
plastron scattered over Seriland, was picked up in one of the huts.
The condition of the remains and the various indications connected
with the rancheria corroborated the tradition that the great creature
had afforded unlimited and acceptable food for many moons; and various
expressions of the tradition indicated that the event, though the most
memorable of its class, was not unique in Seri lore.
[273] One of the smaller vertebræ and part of a rib are shown in the
upper figure of plate vi.
A few bones and fragments of skin of the seal were found in and about
the rancherias on Isla Tiburon, and an old basket rebottomed with
sealskin was picked up in a recently abandoned jacal on Rada Ballena;
a few bones provisionally identified with the porpoise (which haunts
Boco Infierno in shoals) were also found amid the refuse about the
old rancheria at the base of the long sand-spit terminating in Punta
Tormenta; but nothing was learned specifically concerning the chase
and consumption either of these animals or of the abundant sharks from
which the island is named.
[Illustration: FIG. 21—Fish-spearhead.]
Among the exceedingly limited food supplies brought from the coast by
the Seri group at Costa Rica in 1894, were rank remnants of partly
desiccated fish, usually gnawed down to heads and tails; and Mashém and
others spoke of fish as a habitual food, while Señor Encinas regarded
it as the principal element of the tribal dietary. The harder bones and
heavier scales of several varieties of fish were also found abundantly
among the middens of both mainland and Tiburon shores in 1895. None
of the remains bore noticeable traces of fire; and all observations,
including those of Señor Encinas, indicate that the smaller varieties
of fish are habitually eaten raw, either fresh or partially dried,
according to the state of appetite at the time of taking—or the
condition of finding when picked up as beach flotsam. But a single
piscatorial device was observed, i. e., the barbed point and foreshaft,
shown in figure 21—the iron point being, of course, accultural, and
probably obtained surreptitiously. This harpoon, which measures 6
inches in length over all, is designed for use in connection with the
main shaft of a turtle-catching tackle; and it is evidently intended
for the larger varieties, perhaps porpoises or sharks. In 1827 Hardy
observed a related device:
They have a curious weapon which they employ for catching fish.
It is a spear with a double point, forming an angle of about
5°. The insides of these two points, which are 6 inches long,
are jagged, so that when the body of a fish is forced between
them, it can not get away on account of the teeth.[274]
[274] Travels, p. 290*.
Don Andrés Noriega, of Costa Rica, described repeatedly and
circumstantially a method of obtaining fish by aid of pelicans, in
which a young or crippled fowl was roped to a shrub or stone, to be
fed by his fellows; when at intervals a youth stole out to rob the
captive’s pouch. At first blush this device would seem to rise above
the normal industrial plane of the Seri and to lie within the lower
stages of zooculture, like the cormorant fishing of China if not the
hawking of medieval Europe; yet on the whole it may be deemed fairly
consistent with that cruel yet mutually beneficial toleration between
tribesmen and pelicans attested by the preservation of the avian
communal, as already noted. Moreover, Don Andrés observations are
in accord with early notes of the exceedingly primitive aborigines
of California, from whom the Seri have undoubtedly borrowed various
cultural suggestions; thus Venegas quotes Padre Torquemada as saying:
I accidentally found a gull tied with a string and one of his
wings broke. Around this maimed bird lay heaps of excellent
pilchards, brought thither by its companions; and this, I
found, was a stratagem practiced by the Indians to procure
themselves a dish of fish; for they lie concealed while the
gulls bring these charitable supplies, and when they think that
little more is to be expected they seize upon the contributions.
The padre says also of these gulls that “they have a vast craw, which
in some hangs down like the leather bottles used in Peru for carrying
water, and in it they put their captures to carry them to their young
ones”—from which it is evident that he refers to the pelican. Venegas
adds, “Such are the mysterious ways of Providence for the support of
his creatures!”[275] And in the margin of his accompanying “Mapa de la
California”, he introduces a vigorous picture of a captive fowl, its
free fellow, and the mess of fish, the cut being headed “Alcatrazes”
(pelicans).
[275] History of California, 1789, vol. I, p. 41.
Despite these devices, the dearth of fishing-tackle among the Seri
is evidently extreme. Save in the single specimen figured, no
piscatorial apparatus of any sort was found among the squalid but
protean possessions at the Costa Rica rancheria; neither nets nor
hooks nor rods nor lines nor any other device suitable for taking
the finny game were found in the scores of jacales containing other
artifacts on Tiburon; while Señor Encinas was conversant only with
the simple method of taking fish by hand from the pools and shallows
left by receding breakers or ebbing tides. This dearth of devices is
significantly harmonious with other Seri characteristics: it accords
with the leading place assigned the turtle in their industry and their
lore; it is in harmony with that primitive and nonmechanical instinct
which leads them to rely on bodily strength and skill and swiftness
rather than on extra-corporeal artifacts in their crude and incomplete
conquest of nature; and it is a manifest expression of relation with
their distinctive physical environment—for the ever-thundering breakers
of their gale-swept coast are abundant, albeit capricious, bringers of
living grist, while the offshore gales at low tide lay bare hundreds of
acres of shoaler bottoms literally writhing with fishes stranded among
beds of mollusks and slimy with the abounding plankton of a fecund
coast. The region is one of ample, albeit lowly, food supply, where
every experience tends toward inert reliance on providential chance,
and where the stimulus of consistently conscious necessity seldom stirs
the inventive faculty.
* * * * *
Closely connected with fish as a Seri food-source are the various
molluscan and crustacean forms collectively called shellfish; and these
contribute a considerable share of the sustenance of the tribe.
Apparently the most important constituent of this class of foods is
the Pacific coast clam, which abounds in the broad mud-flats bordering
Laguna La Cruz and other lagoons of Seriland, and which was still more
abundant during a subrecent geologic epoch, to judge from the immense
accumulation of the shells in Punta Antigualla. The clams are usually
taken at low tide, without specialized apparatus. They are located by
feeling with the feet in shallow water, and caught either with toes or
with fingers, to be tossed into any convenient receptacle. When the
water is entirely withdrawn from the flats, they are located by means
of their holes, and are extricated either with a shell-cup or with some
other improvised implement. Frequently the entire mess is thrown into
a fire until the shells open, when they are withdrawn and the mollusks
devoured practically raw; perhaps more commonly the shells are opened
by blows of the hupf, and eaten without semblance of cooking; and,
except on the surface, no trace of roasting was found among the vast
accumulations of shells in Punta Antigualla.
Perhaps second to the clam in frequency of use is the local oyster,
which abounds about the more sheltered shores of Tiburon. It is
gathered with the hands, aided perhaps by a stone or stick for
dislodging the shells either from the extended offshore beds at extreme
low water, or from the roots of a mangrove-like shrub at a medium
stage. The shells, like those of the clam, are frequently opened by
partial roasting; and shells, sometimes scorched, are extensively
scattered over the interior, indicating that the oyster is a favorite
portable food. The popularity of this bivalve is shared by the
Noah’s-ark (_Arca_), to which some mystical significance is apparently
ascribed; and the abundant limpets and bivalves and other mollusks are
eaten indiscriminately, to judge from the abundance of their shells in
the middens. The ordinary crab, too, is a favorite article of food, and
its claws are numerous in camp and house refuse; while the lobster-like
deep-water crab is introduced into the menu whenever brought to the
surface by storms, as shown by its massive remains in the middens.
On the whole, shellfish form a conspicuous factor in Seri economy
by reason of the considerable consumption of this class of food;
but, viewed in the broader industrial aspect, the produce is notably
primitive, and significant chiefly as indicating the dearth of
mechanical and culinary devices.
While by far the larger share of Seri sustenance is drawn from the sea,
a not inconsiderable portion is derived from the land; for the warriors
and striplings and even the women are more skilful hunters than fishers.
The larger objects of the feral chase are deer of two or three species
(the bura, or mule-deer, being most conspicuous and easiest taken),
antelope, and mountain sheep; to which the puma, the jaguar, and
perhaps two or three other carnivores might be added. The conventional
method of taking the bura and other deer is a combination of stalking
and coursing, usually conducted by five of the younger warriors,
though three or four may serve in emergency; any excess over five
being regarded as superfluous, or as a confession of inferiority. The
chase is conducted in a distinctly ceremonial and probably ritualistic
fashion, even when the finding of the game is casual, or incidental to
a journey: at sight of the quarry, the five huntsmen scatter stealthily
in such manner as partially to surround it; when it takes fright one
after the other strives to show himself above the shrubbery or dunes
in order to break its line of flight into a series of zigzags; and
whether successful in this effort or not they keep approximate pace
with it until it tires, then gradually surround it, and finally rush
in to either seize it in their hands or cripple it with clubs—though
the latter procedure is deemed undignified, if not wrong, and hardly
less disreputable than complete failure. When practicable the course is
laid toward the rancheria or camp; and in any event the ideal finish
is to bring the animal alive into the family group, where it maybe
dissected by the women, and where the weaklings may receive due share
of the much-prized blood and entrails. The dissection is merely a
ravenous rending of skin and flesh, primarily with the teeth (perhaps
after oblique bruising or tearing by blows with the hupf over strongly
flexed joints), largely with hands and fingers aided anon by a foot
planted on the carcass, and partly with some improvised device, such as
a horn or tooth of the victim itself, the serrated edge of a shell-cup,
or perhaps a sharp-edged cane-splint from a broken arrow carried for
emergency’s sake. Commonly the entire animal, save skin and harder
bones, is gulped at a sitting in which the zeal of the devotee and the
frenzy of the carnivore blend; but in case the group is small and the
quarry large, the sitting is extended by naps or prolonged slumberings,
and the more energetic squaws may even trouble to kindle a fire and
partially cook the larger joints, thereby inciting palled appetite to
new efforts. Finally the leg bones are split for the marrow and their
ends preserved for awls; the horns are retained by the successful
huntsmen as talisman-trophies; while the skin is stretched in the
desert sun, scratched and gnawed free of superfluous tissue, rubbed
into partial pliability, and kept for bedding or robe or kilt.
The chase of the hare is closely parallel to that of the deer save
that it is conducted by striplings, who thereby serve apprenticeship
in hunting and at the same time enrich the tribal larder with a game
beneath the dignity of the warriors; while still smaller boys similarly
chase the rabbit, which is commonly scorned by the striplings. The
conventional hare-hunting party is three, and it is deemed disreputable
to increase this number greatly. The youths spread at sight of the game
and seek to surround it, taking ingenious and constant advantage of the
habit of the hare to run obliquely or in zigzags to survey more readily
the source of its fright; for some time they startle it but slightly
by successive appearances at a distance, but gradually increase its
harassment until it bounds hither and thither in terror, when they
rapidly close in and seize it, the entire chase commonly lasting but a
few minutes. The quarry is customarily taken alive to camp, where it is
quickly rent to fragments and the entrails and flesh and most of the
bones consumed; the skin usually passes into possession of a matron for
use as infantile clothing or cradle bedding, while the ears are kept by
the youth who first seized the game until his feat is eclipsed by some
other event—unless chance hunger sooner tempts him to transmute his
trophy into pottage.
While the collective, semiceremonial style of chase alone is thoroughly
good form in Seri custom, it is often rendered impracticable by the
scattering of the tribe in separate families or small bands, in
which case the bura and its associates, like the larger carnivores
customarily, are taken by strategy rather than by strength. This form
of chase is largely individual; in it archery plays a leading rôle;
and in it, too, ambuscade, stealthy lying in wait, and covert assault
attain high development. It is closely analogous with the warfare
typical of the tribe; and it is especially noteworthy as one of the
most effective stimuli to intellectual activity, and hence to the
development of invention—if the term may be applied to industrial
products so lowly as those of the Seri.
The chief artifact produced by the strategic chase on land would seem
to be the analogue of the harpoon used at sea, i. e., the arrow. This
weapon is one of the three or four most highly differentiated and
thoroughly perfected of the Seri artifacts, ranking with canteen-olla
and balsa, and perhaps outranking the turtle-harpoon. It is fabricated
with great care and high skill, and with striking uniformity in
details of material and construction. A typical example is 25 inches
in length and consists of three pieces—point, foreshaft, and main
shaft (feathered toward the nock). The foreshaft is 8½ inches long,
of hard wood carefully ground by rubbing with quartzite or pumice
into cylindrical form, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter at
the larger end and tapering slightly toward the point; the larger
end is extended by careful grinding into a tang which is fitted into
the main shaft, the joint being neatly wrapped with sinew. This main
shaft is a cane-stalk (_Phragmites communis?_) 15 or 16 inches long,
carefully selected for size and well straightened and smoothed; it is
feathered with three equidistantly-placed wing-feathers of hawk or
falcon, neatly prepared by removing a thin strip of the rachis bearing
the wider vexillum and attaching it by sinew wrappings at both ends,
the feathers being about 5½ inches in length. The nock is a simple
rounded notch, placed just below a joint and supported by the sinew
ferrule; there is no foot-plug. The favorite point is a bit of flotsam
hoop-iron, ground into elongate triangular shape with projecting barbs,
and a short tang or shank fitted into a shallow notch in the foreshaft,
cemented there with mesquite gum, and finally fixed firmly with sinew
wrappings. A typical iron-point arrow, with bow and quiver, is depicted
in plate XXX. Alternative points are of rudely chipped stone (two
examples are illustrated in figure 37) somewhat clumsily attached to
the foreshaft by mesquite gum and sinew wrapping; while the arrows used
by boys and hunters of small game are usually pointless, the tip of
the foreshaft being sharpened and hardened by slight charring. In some
of the arrows, especially those designed for use in war, the foreshaft
is notched, or else loosely attached to the main shaft, in order that
it may be detached from the main shaft and remain in the body of enemy
or prey. The foreshaft is commonly painted some bright color (red
is prevalent), while the points and attachments of the “poisoned”
specimens are smeared with some greasy substance.
The aboriginal Seri arrow has undoubtedly been modified during the
centuries since the coming of Cortés and Mendoza with their metal-armed
troopers; yet certain inferences as to the indigenous form of the
weapon are easily drawn from its construction and the homologies of its
parts.
The first feature of the artifact to attract attention is the
relative clumsiness of attachment and frequent absence of points. The
chipped-stone points are so rude as to be quite out of harmony with the
otherwise delicately wrought and graceful arrow, while the attachment
is strikingly rude; and it is still more noteworthy that the very name
for stone arrowpoint was little understood at Costa Rica, and was
obtained only after extended inquiry and repeated conferences among
the older informants. Even the attachment of the effective points made
from hoop-iron is bad constructionally; the sinew wrapping is carried
around the entire blade in such manner as to sheathe the sharply ground
edges and itself be cut on contact with firm tissue; and the fitting
and wrapping are so rude as to be incongruous with the rest of the
apparatus. On the whole the suggestion is strong that the arrowpoint
is accultural—and this suggestion is further strengthened by the
very existence of the practically functionless, and hence manifestly
vestigial, hard-wood foreshaft. Turning to the structural homologies,
the observer is at once struck with the parallelism running through
the three most conspicuous compound artifacts found among the Seri,
i. e., the harpoon, the fire-drill, and the arrow. All of these alike
consist of two essential parts, main shaft and foreshaft; all are akin
in function even in the superficial view of the Caucasian, and are
much more closely related in primitive thought—indeed the fire-drill
is but a featherless and nockless arrow, with the foreshaft charred at
its fire-giving tip; and all are closely linked in language and allied
with other terms in such wise as practically to establish identity
among them in the thinking of their lowly makers (though unfortunately
the incomplete vocabularies extant are insufficient for full study
of the linguistic homologies). Briefly the indications are that the
harpoon was the primary device, and that its foreshaft was a tooth of
an aquatic fish-eater like the seal, or perchance in some cases an os
penis; that its lineal successor was a loose-head lance for use on sea
and land, at first with the unaided hand and later with the atlatl, or
throwing-stick (the lance being now extinct, though recorded by early
visitors to Seriland); that the next artifact-generation in the direct
line was represented by the arrow, foreshafted with hard wood or tooth,
made light and graceful and loose-headed or not, according to needs,
and by the substitution of bow for atlatl; and that a somewhat aberrant
line was marked by the taming of fire, its reproduction by the modified
arrow, and the differentiation of fire-stick from arrow and either
atlatl or bow.
In tracing these stages in technologic growth, it is to be remembered
that the Seri are so primitive as to betray some of the very beginnings
of activital concepts; that to them zoic potencies are the paramount
powers of the cosmos; that in their simple thought fire is a bestial
rather than a physical phenomenon; that in their naive philosophy the
production of devouring flame is of a kind with vital birth and a
similitude of sexual reproduction; and that according to their notions
the conquest of quarry, including fire, is made practicable only by
aid of the mystical potencies of beasts and flames gained through
invocatory use of symbols or actual organs.
In the Seri tongue the term “fire-drill” is _kaak_, an indefinite
generic meaning “kind” or “strong kind”, with an egocentric connotation
(“Our-Strong-Kind”), as in the proper tribal designation _Kun-kaak_
or _Km-kaak;_ while the term for the nether fire-stick or hearth is
either _maam_ (“woman”, or more properly “mother”), or else (and
more commonly) _kaak-maam_, which may be rendered “Kind-Mother”—the
“Kind”, as among primitive folk generally, comprising both men and
tutelary beasts, and in this case fire as the most mysterious of the
beasts; there is thus a suggestive analogy between the designation
for the fire-producing apparatus and that for the tribe itself. It
should be noted that the zoic concept of fire is widespread among the
more primitive peoples of various provinces, and sometimes persists in
recognizable form in higher culture (witness the fire-breathing dragons
of various mythologies, the “Red Flower” notion gathered in India by
Kipling, etc.); also that the ascription of sex to the fire-sticks is
prevalent among North American tribes, and at once helps to interpret
the development of the fire-drill, fire-syringe, and other primitive
devices, such, for example, as those so fully described by Hough,[276]
and serves to explain the otherwise obscure genesis of the fire-sense,
which must have accompanied and shaped that most significant of all
steps in human progress, the conquest of fire.
[276] Fire-making apparatus in the U. S. National Museum; Smithsonian
Report for 1888, pt II, 1890, pp. 531-587, and elsewhere.
The modern coordinate of the Seri arrow is the bow, made preferably
from a straight and slender branch of the palo blanco. A typical
specimen is illustrated in plate XXX; it is 4 feet 9½ inches long,
with the outer face convex and the inner face flat; greatest width
1¾ inches, narrowed to 1⅛ inches at the hand-hold; thickness at the
hand-hold 1 inch, thinning to five-eighths inch at 8 inches from this
point; tapering gradually in both dimensions toward the extremities,
which are rudely notched to receive the cord (of mesquite-root fiber).
The specimen illustrated has been cracked and repaired in two places;
in one place the repair was effected by a rough wrapping of sinew, and
in the other by slipping over the wood a natural sheath of rawhide
from the leg of a deer. The specimen is of added interest in that it
combines bow and nether fire-stick (“Strong-Kind-Mother”), one of the
friction holes being worn out to the notched margin, and the other
remaining in usable condition, as shown in the enlarged marginal
drawing.[277]
[277] Ordinarily the nether fire-stick is of soft and porous wood,
flotsam palm-wood and water-logged pine being preferred.
Compared with the delicately finished and graceful arrow, the typical
bow is a rude and clumsy device; it displays little skill in the
selection and shaping of material, and evidently involves little labor
in manufacture—indeed, the indications are that more actual labor is
spent in the construction of a single arrow than in the making of a
bow, while the arrow-making is expert work, betokening craft of a high
order, and the bow-making little more than simple handiwork of the
lowest order. The comparison affords some indication of the genesis
of Seri archery, and at the same time corroborates the independent
suggestion that the arrow is of so much greater antiquity than the bow
as to represent a distinct stage in cultural development—though the
precise cultural significance of the bow is not easily ascertained.
Efforts were made to have different Seri warriors at Costa Rica in
1894 assume the normal archery attitude, with but moderate success,
the best pose obtained (illustrated in plate XXVIII) being manifestly
unnatural and a mere reflection of the attitude in the mind of the
Caucasian poser; while the results of inquiries served only to indicate
that the normal archery attitude was purposely avoided for reasons not
ascertained. Fortunately another observer was more successful: in the
course of the United States hydrographic surveys in 1873, Commander
(now Admiral) Dewey received several visits from Seri warriors on board
the _Narragansett_; and on the occasion of one of these visits, Mr
Hector von Bayer, of the hydrographic party, caught a photograph of an
archer in the act of drawing his bow. The negative was accidentally
shattered, and no prints are known to have been made from it; but the
fragments were carefully joined, and were kindly transferred to the
Bureau by Mr Von Bayer in 1897, and from them plate XXIX was carefully
drawn. The posture (partly concealed by the drapery) is extraordinary,
being quite beyond the reach of the average human, and impossible of
maintenance for any considerable interval even by the well-wonted
Seri. The posture itself partly explains the difficulty of inducing
the warriors at Costa Rica to assume it, since it is essentially a
fleeting one, and indeed but a part of a continuous and stressful
action—it is no less difficult to assume, or to catch in the camera,
than the typical attitude of a baseball pitcher in action. The posture
thus fortunately caught is quite in accord with the accounts of Seri
archery from the esoteric side given by Mashém, and with the exoteric
observations of Señor Encinas, Don Andrés, and others; for all accounts
agree in indicating that the archer commonly rests inert and moveless
as the watching feline up to a critical instant, then springs into
movement as swiftly as the leaping jaguar, and hurls, rather than
shoots, one, two, or three arrows before rushing in to the death or
skulking to cover as the issue may require.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY