The quantity of stock consumed by the Seri varies greatly with the
policy of rancheros and vaqueros. At different times during the last
two and a half centuries it has been estimated that the chief portion
of the subsistence of the tribe was derived from stolen stock, and it
is probable that during the early period of the Encinas régime this
estimate was fair; but under the Draconian rule of a Seri head for
each head of slaughtered stock, the consumption is reduced to a few
dozen head annually, including superannuated, crippled, and diseased
animals unable to keep up with the herds, those bogged in Playa Noriega
and other basins during freshets, the stallions and bulls slain in
strife for leadership of their bands, and the festering or semimummied
carcasses gladly turned over by idle rancheros on the chance visits
of Seri bands to the frontier (such as the specimen in the photograph
reproduced in figure 23).
[Illustration: FIG. 23—Desiccated pork.]
No special devices have been developed in connection with the chase
for stock, nor has material progress been made in acquiring Caucasian
devices. There are, indeed, indications of a disposition to use knives
in severing the tough integuments and tendons of horses and kine,
although the tendency has not yet resulted (as elsewhere noted, ante,
pp. 152*-154*) in the development of a knife-sense; and although boys
on the frontier play at roping dogs, no effort to use the riata or
any form of rope is made in the actual chase. As naively explained by
Mashém amid approving grunts from his clan-mates, they have no time for
ropes or knives when hungry.
* * * * *
A quantitatively unimportant yet by no means negligible fraction of the
normal diet of Seriland is vegetal; and while the sources of vegetal
food are many and diverse, the chief constituent is a single product
characteristic of American deserts, viz., the tuna, or prickly pear.
All of the cacti of the region yield tunas in considerable quantity.
The pitahaya is perhaps the most abundant producer, and its name is
often given to the fruit; the huge saguaro affords an enormous annual
yield, and the still more gigantic saguesa is even more prolific,
especially in its immense forests along the eastern base of Sierra
Seri; the cina adds materially to the aggregate product, while the
nopal, or common prickly pear, contributes a quota acquiring importance
from the facility with which it may be harvested. The fruits of all
these cacti are sometimes classed as sweet tunas, in contradistinction
from the sour tunas yielded in great abundance by the cholla and
consumed with avidity by stock, though seldom eaten by men. The edible
tunas average about the size of lemons, and resemble figs save that
their skin is beset with prickles. The portion eaten is a luscious
pulp, filled with minute seeds like those of the fig save that they
are too hard for mastication or digestion, its flavor ranging from the
sickly sweet of the overcultivated fig to a pleasant acidity. While
occasional tunas may be found at any time during the year, the normal
harvest occurs about midsummer, or shortly before the July-August
humid season, and lasts for several weeks. During the height of the
season the clans withdraw from the coast and give undivided attention
to the collection and consumption of the fruits, gorging them in such
quantities that, according to the testimony of the vaqueros, they are
fattened beyond recognition. Commonly the tunas are eaten just as
they are gathered, and the families and larger bands move about from
pitahaya to pitahaya and from valley to valley in a slovenly chase of
this natural harvest, until waning supply and cloying appetite drive
them back to the severer chase of turtle and pelican. The fruit is not
cooked, and never preserved save in the noisome way of nature, and
is rarely transported in quantities or over distances of industrial
importance; yet the product may have some connection with the basketry
of the tribe. The devices for collecting the fruits, especially from
the lofty saguaro and saguesa, are mere improvisations of harpoon
shafts, paloblanco branches, or chance cane-stalks carried primarily
for arrow-making or balsa construction. There is no such well-studied
and semiceremonial apparatus for tuna gathering as, for example, the
Papago device made from the ribs of the dead saguaro in accordance with
traditional formula.
Perhaps second in importance among the vegetal constituents of Seri
diet is the mesquite bean, which is gathered in random fashion whenever
a well-loaded tree is found and other conditions favor. The woody
beans and still woodier pods are roughly pulverized by pounding with
the hupf on any convenient stone used as an ahst (metate or mortar),
or, if suitable stones are not at hand, they are carried in baskets or
improvised bags to the nearest shore or other place at which stones
may be found. The half-ground grist is winnowed in the ordinary way
of tossing in a basket; and the grinding and winnowing continue
alternately until a fairly uniform bean meal is obtained. So far as was
actually observed this is eaten raw, either dry in small pinches or,
more commonly, stirred in water to form a thin atole; but expressions
at Costa Rica indicated that the meal is sometimes stirred in boiling
water or pot-liquor, and thus partially cooked, in times of rest and
plenty.
Other vegetal products used as food comprise a variety of seeds
collected from sedges and grasses growing about the mud-flats of Laguna
La Cruz and other portions of the province, as well as the seeds and
nuts of the scant shrubbery of shores and mountains; while a local
seaweed or kelp is eaten in small quantity, apparently as a condiment,
and is sometimes carried on journeys even as far as Costa Rica, where
specimens were obtained in 1894.
It is of interest to note that one of the most distinctive constituents
of the Sonoran flora, and one intimately connected with human life in
the great neighboring province of Papagueria, is of negligible rarity
in Seriland; this is the visnaga (_Echinocactus_, probably of two or
three species), the thorniest of the cacti and the only one containing
consumable pulp and sap. This peculiar plant is of no small interest in
itself as a striking example of the inverse relation between protective
devices of chemical sort (culminating in acrid, offensive, or toxic
juices) and the mechanical armaments so characteristic of desert
plants;[282] it is of still deeper interest economically as the sole
source of water over broad expanses of the desert, and one to which
hundreds of pioneers and travelers have been indebted for their lives;
and it is of interest, too, as a factor of Papago faith, in which the
visnaga ranks among the richer guerdons of the rain gods. Throughout
most of Papagueria this cactus is fairly abundant; usually there are
several specimens to the square mile of suitable soil (it is not found
in playas or on the ruggeder sierras), so that it is always within
reach of the sagacious traveler; but it diminishes in abundance toward
the borders of Seriland, and not more than a dozen examples were found
in the portions of that province traversed by the 1895 expedition. Its
rare occurrence, chiefly in the form of wounded and dwarfed specimens,
seems to indicate that its original range comprised all Seriland; while
its dearth suggests destruction nearly to the verge of extinction by
improvident generations better armed with their hupfs and harpoons and
shell-cups than the subhuman beasts against whom the plant is so well
protected.
[282] Cf. The Beginning of Agriculture; The American Anthropologist,
vol. VIII Oct., 1895, pp. 350-375.
* * * * *
Aside from the universally used hupf and ahst (which may be regarded as
differentiated implements or tools), the only special device used in
connection with vegetal food is the basket, or, rather, basketry tray
(illustrated in figure 24). This ware is of the widespread coil type
so characteristic of southwestern tribes. The coil is a wisp of stems
and splints of a fibrous yet spongy shrub, apparently torote; and the
woof consists of paloblanco (?) splints deftly intertwined by aid of an
awl. The construction is fairly neat and remarkably uniform; the coiled
wisps vary somewhat in size, both intentionally and inadvertently,
ranging from an average of three-eighths of an inch toward the bottoms
of the larger specimens to half that diameter in the smaller specimens
and toward the margins of the larger. The initial coil starts in an
indefinite knot, rather than a button, at the center; and the spiral
is continuous throughout, the final coil being quite deftly worked out
to a single splint smoothly stitched to the next lower spiral with the
woof splints. The ware is practically water-tight, remarkably strong
and resilient, and quite durable in the dry climate of Seriland.
Ordinarily the basket is abandoned when the bottom decays or breaks,
but an ancient specimen obtained on Isla Tiburon was roughly rebottomed
with a patch of sealskin attached by means of sinew. The baskets are
notably uniform in shape, though the size varies from 8 or 9 inches to
fully 17 inches in diameter.
FIG. 24—Seri basket.
The most striking feature of the Seri basketry, as of the pottery,
is extreme lightness in proportion to capacity, a quality due to
the spongy character of the torote coil and to the thinness of
the splints used in the woof. The inside dimensions, weight, and
dry-measure capacity (filled to the level of the brim with rice) of two
typical specimens approaching extremes in size are indicated in the
accompanying table. As noted elsewhere, the ware is absolutely without
decorative devices in weave, paint, or form; it is baldly utilitarian,
a model of economy in material and in the balance between structure and
function, approaching in this respect the thin-walled canteen-olla, the
graceful balsa, and the light but effective harpoon. The structural
correspondence of the ware to a widespread type and its limited use
among the tribe suggest an accultural origin for the Seri basketry; but
the delicate adjustment of means to ends in the manufacture and the
strictly local character of the material quite as strongly suggest an
indigenous development.
--------+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
Museum | Diameter | Depth | Weight | Capacity |
No. | | | | |
--------+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
| | | | |
174528 |38 cm. (15 in.)|9.5 cm. (3¾ in.) |482g. (17oz.)| 6.25 l. (6.6 qt.) |
174528a |23 cm. (9 in.) |5.0cm. (2 in.) |142 g. (5oz.)| 1 l. (1.06 qt.)|
--------+---------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------+
It is impossible to portray justly the food habits of the Seri without
some reference to a systematic scatophagy, which seems to possess
fiducial as well as economic features. In its simplest aspect this
custom is connected with the tuna harvests; the fruits are eaten in
enormous quantity, and are imperfectly digested, the hard-coated
seeds especially passing through the system unchanged; the feces
containing these seeds are preserved with some care, and after the
harvest is passed the hoard (desiccated, of course, in the dry climate)
is ground between hupf and ahst, and winnowed in baskets precisely
as are the mesquite beans; and the product is then eaten either dry
or in the form of atole like the mesquite meal. In superficial view
this food factor is the precise homologue of the “second harvest” of
the California Indians as described by Clavigero, Baegert,[283] and
others; but it gains importance, among the Seri at least, as the
sole method of storing or preserving food-supplies, and hence as the
germ of industrial economy out of which a feeble thrift-sense may be
regarded as emerging. And the rise of thrift in Seriland, like esthetic
and industrial beginnings generally, is shaped by faith and attendant
ceremony; for the doubly consumed food is credited with intensified
powers and virtues, and held to be specially potent in the relief
of hunger and in giving endurance for the hard warpath or prolonged
chase; it is—and makes—very strong (“mucho fuerte”), in the laconic
and confident explanation of Mashém. Incongruous as the custom is to
higher culture, it finds natural suggestion in the everyday habits of
the tribe, who are wonted not only to the eating of animal entrails
in raw and uncleaned condition, but especially to the relief of the
sharpest pangs of hunger by means of the soft structures and their
semiassimilated contents—an association of much influence in primitive
thought. Concordantly with the custom and the faith grown out of it,
the excreta in general take a prominent place in the Seri mind; the
use of urine in ablution, etc., is little understood and may be passed
over; but all bony feces—and it may be noted that the “sign” of the
Seri more resembles that of wolves or snake-eating swine than that of
men—following gorges of large quarry are customarily located and kept
in mind for recourse in time of ensuing shortage, when the mass is
ground on the ahst and reconsumed; and even the ordinary discharge is
preserved during the seasons of less reliable food-supply.
[283] An Account of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Californian
Peninsula, as given by Jacob Baegert, a German Jesuit missionary....
Translated and arranged for the Smithsonian Institution by Charles Rau;
Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Inst. for 1863, pp. 352-369. Baegert’s account of
foods (pp. 363-367) is so apposite as to be worthy of quotation nearly
entire:
“Notwithstanding the barrenness of the country, a Californian hardly
ever dies of hunger, except, perhaps, now and then an individual that
falls sick in the wilderness and at a great distance from the mission,
for those who are in good health trouble themselves very little about
such patients, even if these should happen to be their husbands, wives,
or other relations; and a little child that has lost its mother or both
parents is also occasionally in danger of starving to death, because
in some instances no one will take charge of it, the father being
sometimes inhuman enough to abandon his offspring to its fate.
“The food of the Californians, as will be seen, is certainly of a mean
quality, yet it keeps them in a healthy condition, and they become
strong and grow old in spite of their poor diet. The only period of the
year during which the Californians can satisfy their appetite without
restraint is the season of the pitahayas, which ripen in the middle
of June and abound for more than eight weeks. The gathering of this
fruit may be considered as the harvest of the native inhabitants. They
can eat as much of it as they please, and with some this food agrees
so well that they become corpulent during that period; and for this
reason I was sometimes unable to recognize at first sight individuals,
otherwise perfectly familiar to me, who visited me after having fed
for three or four weeks on these pitahayas. They do not, however,
preserve them, and when the season is over they are put again on short
rations. Among the roots eaten by the Californians may be mentioned
the yuka, which constitutes an important article of food in many parts
of America, as, for instance, in the island of Cuba, but is not very
abundant in California. In some provinces it is made into a kind of
bread or cake, while the Californians, who would find this process too
tedious, simply roast the yukas in a fire like potatoes. Another root
eaten by the natives is that of the aloë plant, of which there are
many kinds in this country. Those species of this vegetable, however,
which afford nourishment—for not all of them are edible—do not grow
as plentifully as the Californians might wish, and very seldom in the
neighborhood of water; the preparations, moreover, which are necessary
to render this plant eatable, require much time and labor.... I saw the
natives also frequently eat the roots of the common reed, just as they
were taken out of the water. Certain seeds, some of them not larger
than those of the mustard, and different sorts in pods that grow on
shrubs and little trees, and of which there are, according to Father
Piccolo, more than sixteen kinds, are likewise diligently sought; yet
they furnish only a small quantity of grain, and all that a person can
collect with much toil during a whole year may scarcely amount to 12
bushels.
“It can be said that the Californians eat, without exception, all
animals they can obtain. Besides the different kinds of larger
indigenous quadrupeds and birds, they live nowadays on dogs and cats;
horses, asses, and mules; _item_, on owls, mice, and rats; lizards and
snakes; bats, grasshoppers, and crickets; a kind of green caterpillar
without hair, about a finger long, and an abominable white worm of
the length and thickness of the thumb, which they find occasionally
in old rotten wood, and consider as a particular delicacy. The chase
of game, such as deer and rabbits, furnishes only a small portion
of a Californian’s provisions. Supposing that for 100 families 300
deer are killed in the course of a year, which is a very favorable
estimate, they would supply each family only with three meals in three
hundred and sixty-five days, and thus relieve but in a very small
degree the hunger and the poverty of these people. The hunting for
snakes, lizards, mice, and field-rats, which they practice with great
diligence, is by far more profitable and supplies them with a much
greater quantity of articles for consumption. Snakes, especially, are a
favorite sort of small game, and thousands of them find annually their
way into the stomachs of the Californians.
“In catching fish, particularly in the Pacific, which is much richer in
that respect than the Gulf of California, the natives use neither nets
nor hooks, but a kind of lance—that is, a long, slender, pointed piece
of hard wood—which they handle very dexterously in spearing and killing
their prey. Sea-turtles are caught in the same manner.
“I have now mentioned the different articles forming the ordinary
food of the Californians; but, besides these, they reject nothing
that their teeth can chew or their stomachs are capable of digesting,
however tasteless or unclean and disgusting it may be. Thus they
will eat the leaves of the Indian fig-tree, the tender shoots of
certain shrubs, tanned or untanned leather, old straps of rawhide,
with which a fence was tied together for years; _item,_ the bones of
poultry, sheep, goats, and calves; putrid meat or fish swarming with
worms, damaged wheat or Indian corn, and many other things of that
sort which may serve to appease the hunger they are almost constantly
suffering. Anything that is thrown to the hogs will be also accepted by
a Californian, and he takes it without feeling offended, or thinking
for a moment that he is treated below his dignity. For this reason no
one took the trouble to clean the wheat or maize, which was cooked for
them in a large kettle, of the black worms and little bugs, even if
the numbers of these vermin had been equal to that of the grains. By a
daily distribution of about 150 bushels of bran (which they are in the
habit of eating without any preparation) I could have induced all my
parishioners to remain permanently in the mission, excepting during the
time when the pitahayas are gathered.
“I saw one day a blind man, 70 years of age, who was busily engaged
in pounding between two stones an old shoe made of raw deerskin, and
whenever he had detached a piece he transferred it promptly to his
mouth and swallowed it; and yet this man had a daughter and grown
grandchildren. As soon as any of the cattle are killed and the hide
is spread out on the ground to dry, half a dozen boys or men will
instantly rush upon it and commence to work with knives, flints,
and their teeth, tearing and scratching off pieces, which they eat
immediately, till the hide is full of holes or scattered in all
directions. In the mission of St. Ignatius and in others further toward
the north there are persons who will attach a piece of meat to a string
and swallow it and pull it out again a dozen times in succession, for
the sake of protracting the enjoyment of its taste.
I must here ask permission of the kind reader to mention something of
an exceedingly disgusting and almost inhuman nature, the like of which
probably never has been recorded of any people in the world, but which
demonstrates better than anything else the whole extent of the poverty,
uncleanness, and voracity of these wretched beings. In describing the
pitahayas I have already stated that they contain a great many small
seeds resembling grains of powder. For some reason unknown to me these
seeds are not consumed in the stomach, but pass off in an undigested
state, and in order to save them the natives collect during the season
of the pitahayas that which is discharged from the human body, separate
the seeds from it, and roast, grind, and eat them, making merry over
their loathsome meals, which the Spaniards therefore call the second
harvest of the Californians. [This statement is corroborated in all
particulars by Clavigero in his Storia della California, Venice, 1789,
vol. I, p. 117.] When I first heard that such a filthy habit existed
among them I was disinclined to believe the report, but to my utter
regret I became afterwards repeatedly a witness to the proceeding,
which they are unwilling to abandon, like many other bad practices
[probably because of the fiducial character of the custom—W J M.].
Yet I must say in their favor that they have always abstained from
human flesh, contrary to the horrible usage of so many other American
nations who can obtain their daily food much easier than these poor
Californians.
“They have no other drink but the water, and heaven be praised that
they are unacquainted with such strong beverages as are distilled in
many American provinces from Indian corn, the aloë, and other plants,
and which the Americans in those parts merely drink for the purpose
of intoxicating themselves. When a Californian encounters during his
wanderings a pond or pool, and feels a desire to quench his thirst, he
lies flat on the ground and applies his mouth directly to the water.
Sometimes the horns of cattle are used as drinking vessels.
“Having thus far given an account of the different articles used as
aliment by the aborigines of the peninsula, I will now proceed to
describe in what manner they prepare their victuals. They do not cook,
boil, or roast like people in civilized countries, because they are
neither acquainted with these methods nor possessed of vessels and
utensils to employ for such purposes; and, besides, their patience
would be taxed beyond endurance if they had to wait till a piece of
meat is well cooked or thoroughly roasted. Their whole process simply
consists in burning, singeing, or roasting in an open fire all such
victuals as are not eaten in a raw state. Without any formalities, the
piece of meat, the fish, bird, snake, field mouse, bat, or whatever it
may be is thrown into the flames or on the glowing embers, and left
there to smoke and to sweat for about a quarter of an hour; after
which the article is withdrawn, in most cases only burned or charred
on the outside, but still raw and bloody within. As soon as it has
become sufficiently cool, they shake it a little in order to remove the
adhering dust or sand, and eat it with great relish. Yet I must add
here, that they do not previously take the trouble to skin the mice or
disembowel the rats, nor deem it necessary to clean the half-emptied
entrails and maws of larger animals, which they have to cut in pieces
before they can roast them. Seeds, kernels, grasshoppers, green
caterpillars, the white worms already mentioned, and similar things
that would be lost, on account of their smallness, in the embers and
flames of an open fire, are parched on hot coals, which they constantly
throw up and shake in a turtle shell or a kind of frying pan woven out
of a certain plant. What they have parched or roasted in this manner is
ground to powder between two stones, and eaten in a dry state. Bones
are treated in like manner.
“They eat everything unsalted, though they might obtain plenty of salt;
but since they cannot dine every day on roast meat and constantly
change their quarters, they would find it too cumbersome to carry
always a supply of salt with them.
“The preparation of the aloë, also called _mescale_ or _maguey_ by
the Spaniards, requires more time and labor. The roots, after being
properly separated from the plants, are roasted for some hours in a
strong fire, and then buried, twelve or twenty together, in the ground,
and well covered with hot stones, hot ashes, and earth. In this state
they have to remain for twelve or fourteen hours, and when dug out
again they are of a fine yellow color, and perfectly tender, making a
very palatable dish, which has served me frequently as food when I had
nothing else to eat, or as dessert after dinner in lieu of fruit. But
they act at first as a purgative on persons who are not accustomed to
them, and leave the throat somewhat rough for a few hours afterwards.
“To light a fire the Californians make no use of steel and flint,
but obtain it by the friction of two pieces of wood. One of them is
cylindrical, and pointed on one end, which fits into a round cavity in
the other, and by turning the cylindrical piece with great rapidity
between their hands, like a twirling stick, they succeed in igniting
the lower piece if they continue the process for a sufficient length of
time.
“The Californians have no fixed time for any sort of business, and
eat, consequently, whenever they have anything, or feel inclined to do
so, which is nearly always the case. I never asked one of them whether
he was hungry who failed to answer in the affirmative, even if his
appearance indicated the contrary. A meal in the middle of the day is
the least in use among them, because they all set out early in the
morning for their foraging expeditions, and return only in the evening
to the place from which they started, if they do not choose some other
locality for their night quarters. The day being thus spent in running
about and searching for food, they have no time left for preparing
a dinner at noon. They start always empty-handed; for if perchance
something remains from their evening repasts they certainly eat it
during the night in waking moments or on the following morning before
leaving. The Californians can endure hunger easier and much longer than
other people; whereas they will eat enormously if a chance is given. I
often tried to buy a piece of venison from them when the skin had but
lately been stripped off the deer, but regularly received the answer
that nothing was left; and I knew well enough that the hunter who
killed the animal needed no assistance to finish it. Twenty-four pounds
of meat in twenty-four hours is not deemed an extraordinary ration for
a single person, and to see anything eatable before him is a temptation
for a Californian which he cannot resist; and not to make away with it
before night would be a victory he is very seldom capable of gaining
over himself.”
Clavigero’s account of the food-habits of the California Indians is
similar, though generally less explicit. According to him the seeds
forming the “second harvest of pitahayas” are extracted carefully while
fresh, and are afterward roasted, ground, and preserved in the form of
meal against the ensuing winter. Of the reswallowing habit, he says:
“The savages living in the northern part of the peninsula have found
the secret, unknown to mortals in general, to eat and re-eat the same
meal repeatedly. They tie a string around a mouthful of meat dried and
hardened in the sun. After chewing it for a while they swallow it,
leaving the string hanging from the mouth. After two or three minutes,
by means of the string they draw the meat up again to be rechewed, and
this they repeat as many times as may be necessary until the morsel is
consumed or so softened that the string will not hold it any longer. In
extracting it from the throat they make such a noise that to one who
has not before heard it it appears that they are choking themselves.
“When many individuals are gathered together to eat in this manner it
is practiced with more ceremony. They seat themselves on the ground,
forming a circle of eight or ten persons. One of them takes the
mouthful and swallows it, and afterwards draws it up again and passes
it to the next one, and this one to another, proceeding thus around
the circle with much enjoyment until the morsel is consumed. This
has astonished the Spaniards who have seen it, and indeed it would
not be credible if it had not been unanimously testified to by all
who have been in that country. Several Jesuits who did not believe
this, notwithstanding that sincere and prominent persons confirmed
it, having afterwards gone to California saw it with their own eyes.
Among those Indians who have embraced Christianity this loathsome and
dangerous method of eating has been abandoned in consequence of the
continual reproofs of the missionaries.” (Historia de la Antigua ó Baja
California, obra postuma del Padre Francisco Javier Clavijero; Mexico,
1852, p. 24.)
The records of Clavigero and Baegert indicate fair correspondence in
the food habits of the California Indians and the Seri, though there
are certain noteworthy differences, e. g., the tabu of the badger among
the former and of the ground-squirrel among the latter; it would also
appear that the Californians were the more largely vegetarian and the
better advanced in culinary processes. The customs of the Seri throw
light on the genesis of “re-eating”, for the process would appear to be
but an extension of the repeated mouthing and swallowing of tendonous
strings still attached to the bones of larger animals.
There is an obscure connection between this curious and repulsive
food custom of the Seri and the mortuary customs of the tribe, which
was not detected until the opportunity for personal inquiry had gone
by. About the rancherias on Isla Tiburon, and especially about the
extensive house-group at the base of Punta Tormenta, there are burial
places marked by cairns of cobbles, or by heaps of thorny brambles
where cobbles are not accessible; and most of these cairns and
bramble-piles are supplemented by hoards of desiccated feces carefully
stored in shells, usually of _Arca_ (a typical specimen is illustrated
in figure 25). The hoards range from 50 to 500 shells in quantity, and
there were fully a score of them at Punta Tormenta alone. About the
newer rancherias, as at Rada Ballena, where there are no cemeteries,
the hoards are simply piled about small clumps of shrubbery. The
meaning of the association of the dietetic residua and death in the
Seri mind is not wholly clear; yet the connection between the “strong
food” for the warpath and the mystical food for the manes in the long
journey to the hereafter is close enough to give some inkling of the
meaning.[284]
[284] Cf. Scatologic Rites of all Nations, by Captain John G. Bourke,
1891, especially chapter LI, pp. 459-460. The Seri custom, resting, as
it does, on an evident economic basis, tends to explain the scatophagy
of the Hopi and other tribes described by Bourke.
[Illustration: FIG. 25—Scatophagic supplies.]
* * * * *
In recapitulating the food supplies of the Seri it is not without
interest to estimate roughly the relative quantities of the several
constituents consumed; and the proportions maybe made the more readily
comprehensible by expression in absolute terms. As a basis for the
quantitative estimate, it may be assumed that the average Seri,
living, as he does, a vigorous outdoor life, consuming, as he does, a
diet of less average nutrition than the selected and cooked foods of
higher culture, and attaining, as he does, an exceptional stature and
strength, eats something more than the average ration; so that his
ration of solid food may be lumped at 2.75 pounds (about 1,250 grams)
daily, or 1,000 pounds (about 455 kilograms) yearly. The aggregate
diet of the tribe may be estimated also by assuming the population to
comprise 300 full eaters, besides, say, 50 nurslings negligible in
the computation; so that the annual consumption of the tribe may be
reckoned at 300,000 pounds (136,000 kilograms), or 150 tons, of solid
food. Accordingly the several constituents may be estimated, as shown
in the accompanying table, in percentages of the total, in pounds
aggregate and apiece for the eaters, and (so far as practicable) in
units both aggregate and apiece; the weights of units being roughly
averaged at 100 pounds (45 kilograms) for turtles, 12½ pounds (5.6
kilograms) for large land game, 450 pounds (about 200 kilograms) for
stock, and 2 ounces (56.7 grams) for tunas.
_Estimated annual dietary of the Seri tribe_
Constituents Per Quantity Units
cent
Aggregate Apiece Aggregate Apiece
_Pounds_ _Pounds_
Turtles 25 75,000 250 750 2½
Pelicans 5 15,000 50 1,200 4
Other water-fowl
and eggs 8 24,000 80
Fish 15 45,000 150
Shellfish (except
turtles) 10 30,000 100
Large land game 7 21,000 70 200 ⅔
Other land game 8 24,000 80
Stock 6 18,000 60 40 2/15
Tunas 9 27,000 90 216,000 720
Other vegetals 5 15,000 50
Miscellaneous 2 6,000 20
Total 100 300,000 1,000
Of course the constituents vary with temporary conditions; during
“The Time of the Big Fish”, practically all other sources of food
were neglected until the providential supply was exhausted; during
the decades of main subsistence on stolen stock it is probable that
the consumption of other constituents, perhaps excepting the tunas,
was proportionately reduced; and it is not improbable that during the
warfare between Seri and Tepoka, described by Hardy, the consumption of
turtles was materially diminished. Judging from the direct and indirect
data and from general analogies, the least variable constituent is
the cactus fruit, which probably fails but rarely and is so easily
harvested as practically to supplant all other supplies during its
season of a month or more. At the best, too, the quantitative estimates
are nothing more than necessarily arbitrary approximations, based on
incomplete inquiries and observations;[285] yet they are better than no
estimates at all, and appear to form a fairly trustworthy basis for
consideration of the Seri food habits.
[285] About 200 turtle-shells were noticed about the rancherias at
Punta Tormenta and Rada Ballena alone in 1895, all being less than two
years old, as judged from the degree of weathering.
On reviewing the constituents it would appear that the Seri must be
regarded as essentially a maritime people, in that about two-thirds
of their food is derived from the sea; also that they must be deemed
essentially carnivorous, since fully five-sixths of their diet (84 per
cent plus a share of the miscellaneous—chiefly scatophagous—category)
is animal. The tabulation does not show the relative proportions of the
several constituents cooked and eaten raw, but the best available data
indicate that fully three-fourths of the ordinary dietary, both animal
and vegetal, is ingested in raw condition, and that the greater part of
the remaining fourth is imperfectly cooked.
* * * * *
In recapitulating the devices for food-getting, it is found that nearly
all of the more distinctive artifacts and crafts are either directly
or indirectly connected with that primary activity of living things,
food-conquest. Foremost among the distinctive artifacts of the Seri,
in its relation to daily life and in its technical perfection, is the
canteen-olla; probably second in importance, and also in technical
perfection, is the balsa—whose functions, however, extend beyond
simple food-getting; next comes the crude and simple, yet economically
perfected, turtle-harpoon, with its variants in the form of arrow (with
a function in warfare as well as in food-getting) and fire-drill; while
the light basket-tray, although capable of carrying ten to twenty-five
times its own weight, is perhaps the least perfect technically of the
artifacts directly connected with sustentation. And it should be noted
that the prevailing tools—hupf, ahst, multifunctional shell, and awl
of mandible or bone or tooth—have either an immediate or a secondary
connection with food-getting.