In both the collective and the strategic chase, constant advantage
is taken of weakness and incapacity, whether temporary or permanent,
of the prospective quarry; so that diseased and wounded as well as
sluggish and stupid animals are eliminated. The effect of this policy
on the fauna is undoubtedly to extinguish the less capable species
and to stimulate and improve the more capable; i. e., the presence of
the human factor merely intensifies the bitter struggle for existence
in which the subhuman things of this desert province are engaged.
At the same time, the entrance of the human folk into the struggle
characteristic of subhuman species serves to bar them from one of the
most helpful ways to the advancement of their kind—i. e., the way
leading through cotoleration with animals to perfected zooculture. The
most avidly sought weaklings in the Seri chase are the helpless young,
and the heavily gravid dams which are pursued and rent to fragments
with a horrid fury doubtless reflecting the practical certainty of
capture and the exceptionally succulent tidbits afforded by the
fetal flesh; naturally the cruel custom reacts on habitual thought
in such wise that the very sight of pregnancy or travail or newborn
helplessness awakens slumbering blood-thirst and impels to ferocious
slaughter. To such custom and deep-planted mental habit may be
ascribed some of the most shocking barbarities in the history of Seri
rapine, tragedies too terrible for repetition save in bated breath of
survivors, yet explaining the utter horror in which the Seri marauder
is held on his own frontier. At the same time the hunting custom and
the mental habit explain the blindness of the Seri to the rudiments of
zooculture, and clarify their intolerance of all animal associates,
save the sly coyote that habitually hides its travail and suckling in
the wilderness, and perhaps the deified pelican.[280]
[280] A single incident expressing the Seri sentiment toward travailing
animals must be noted: a few minutes after the group shown in plate
XI was photographed, a starveling cur—a female apparently of nearly
pure coyote blood and within a week of term—slunk toward the broken
olla-kettle in the left center of the picture, in which a rank
horse-foot was simmering; the woman bending over the kettle suddenly
straightened and shot out her foot with such force and directness that
the cur was lifted entirely over the corner of the nearest jacal,
and the poor beast fell stunned and moaning, a prematurely born pup
protruding from her two-thirds of its length. The sound of the stroke
and fall attracted attention throughout the group; the women smiled and
grunted approval of the well-aimed kick, and a dozen children gathered
to continue the assault. Partially recovering, the cur struggled to its
feet and started for the chapparal, followed by the jeering throng; at
first the chase seemed sportive only, but suddenly one of the smaller
boys (the third from the left in the group shown in plate XVI) took on
a new aspect—his figure stiffened, his jaws set, his eyes shot purple
and green, and he plunged into the lead, and just before the harried
beast reached cover he seized the protruding embryo, jerked it away,
and ran off in triumph. Three minutes afterward he was seen in the
shelter of a jacal greedily gorging his spoil in successive bites, just
as the Caucasian boy devours a peeled banana. Meanwhile, two or three
mates who had struck his trail stood around begging bites and sucking
at chance blood spatters on earth, skin, or tattered rags; and as the
victor came forth later, licking his chops, he was met by half jocular
but admiring plaudits for his prowess from the dozen matrons lounging
about the neighboring jacales. Parallel instances, both observed and
gathered at second hand, might be added in numbers; but this may
suffice as the sole specific basis for the generalization which places
the Seri below the plane of possible zooculture—a generalization so
broad as to demand some record of data which it would be more agreeable
to ignore.
Parallel to the chase of the larger land game is the hunting of horses
and other imported stock; for the animals are regarded in no other
light than that of easy quarry. The horses of the Seri frontier, like
those of wild ranges generally, are strongly gregarious, and the herds
are well regimented under recognized leaders, so that the chase of
their kind is necessarily collective on the part of both hunters and
game; and the favorite method is for a considerable group of either
warriors or women to surround the entire herd, or a band cut out from
it, “mill” them (i. e., set them running in a gradually contracting
circle) and occasionally dash on an animal, promising by reason of
exceptional fatness or gravidness. The warrior’s customary clutch is
by the mane or foretop with one hand and the muzzle with the other,
with his weight thrown largely on the neck, when a quick wrench throws
the animal, and, if all goes well, breaks its neck;[281] while the
huntress commonly aims to stun the animal with a blow from her hupf.
In either case the disposition of the carcass is similar to that of
other large quarry, save that thought is given to the danger of ensuing
attack by vaqueros; so that it is customary to consume at once only
the blood and pluck, and if time permits the paunch and intestines
with their contents, and then to rend the remainder into quarters,
which warriors or even women shoulder and rush toward their stronghold.
Burros (which, next to the green turtle, afford the favorite Seri
food) and horned cattle are commonly stalked and slain, or, at least,
wounded with arrows, so that it is commonly the stragglers that are
picked off; though sometimes several animals are either milled or
rushed, and thrown by a strong wrench on the horns or stunned with
a blow of war-club or hupf, as conditions may demand. Straggling swine
and wandering dogs are occasionally ambushed or stalked and transfixed
with arrows, torn hurriedly into fragments, or shouldered and carried
off struggling, as exigency may require; while sheep and goats are
practically barred from the entire Seri frontier because of their utter
helplessness in the face of so hardy huntsmen.
[281] This warrior’s clutch, and the notion that it is discreditable
if not criminal for the masculine adult to take recourse to weapons in
hand-to-hand slaughter, are strongly suggestive of zoomimic motives and
of studied mimicry of the larger carnivores, such as the jaguar—the
“neck-twister” of the Maya.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY