* * * * *
There is a final category of Seri artifacts which would be classed
as distinctive by Caucasians on the basis of material, though they
are combined with the stone artifacts by the tribesmen; it comprises
arrowpoints of hoop-iron or other metal, harpoon-points of nails,
spikes, or wire, awls of like materials, and other metallic adjuncts
to ordinary implements. The use of iron is of course post-Columbian,
and its ordinary sources are wreckage and stealage. The date of
introduction is unknown, and probably goes back to the days of Cortés
and Mendoza; certainly the value of metal was so well understood in
1709 that when Padre Salvatierra’s bilander was beached in Seriland
the tribesmen at once began to break her up for the nails (ante, page
67); yet the metal is wrought cold and only with hupf and ahst like
the local materials, and is habitually regarded and designated as a
stone. By reason of the primitive methods of working, the metals are
of course available only when in small pieces or slender shapes. There
is a tradition among the vaqueros of the frontier that a quantity of
hoop-iron designed for use in making casks was carried away from a
rancheria in the vicinity of Bacuachito during a raid in the seventies,
and that this stock has ever since served to supply the Seri with
material for their arrowpoints; but it is probable that the chief
supply is derived from the flotsam swept into the natural drift trap
of Bahia Kunkaak by prevailing winds and tidal currents, and cast up
on the long sandspit of Punta Tormenta after every storm. A surprising
quantity and variety of wreckage was found on this point, and thence
down the coast to Punta Narragansett, by the 1895 expedition: staves
and heads of casks broken up after beaching, a telegraph pole crossbar
which had evidently brought in a cargo of large wire, and a piece of
door-frame with heavy strap-iron hinges attached with screws, were
among the troves of the tribesmen within a few weeks; and it was noted
that while even the hinge screws and the tacks attaching tags to the
cask-heads had been extracted by breaking up the wood, the roughly
forged hinges of 2 by ⅜-inch wrought iron had been abandoned after a
tentative battering with cobbles, and lay among the refuse stones about
the jacales.
* * * * *
A rough census of the stone implements of Seriland is not without
interest, even though it be no more than an approximation. Some 20 or
25 habitable and recently inhabited jacales were visited, with about
twice as many more in various stages of ruin, fully two-thirds of
these being on the island; and at least an equal number of camps or
other houseless sites were noted. About these 150 jacales and sites
there were, say, 50 ahsts, ranging from nearly natural bowlders to the
comparatively well-wrought specimen illustrated in plate XXXIX, and
an equal number of cobbles used interchangeably as ahsts and hupfs;
there were also 200 or 300 pebbles bearing traces of use as hupfs, of
which about a third were worn so decidedly as to attest repeated if not
regular use; while no flaked or spalled implements were observed save
the two doubtful examples illustrated in plates XLVII and L, and only
two chipped arrowpoints. It may be assumed that the sites visited and
the artifacts observed comprise from a tenth to a fifth of those of all
Seriland, in addition to, say, 75 finished hupfs habitually carried by
Seri matrons in their wanderings; and it may be assumed also that 50 or
100 metallic harpoon-points and several hundred hoop-iron arrowpoints
are habitually carried by the warriors and their spouses.
The most impressive fact brought out by this census is the practical
absence of stone artifacts wrought by flaking or chipping in accordance
with preconceived design; excepting the exceedingly rare arrowpoints
there are none of these. And the assemblage of wrought stones
demonstrates not merely that the Seri are practically without flaked or
chipped implements, but that they eschew and discard stones edged by
fracture whether naturally or through accident of use.
* * * * *
Summarily, the Seri artifacts of inorganic material fall into
three groups, viz.: (I) The large and characteristic one comprising
regularly-used hupfs and ahsts, with their little-used and discarded
representatives; (II) the small and aberrant group represented by
chipped arrowpoints, and (III) the considerable group comprising the
cold-wrought metal points for arrows and harpoons and awls—though it is
to be remembered that the Seri themselves combine the second and third
of these groups.
I. On reviewing the artifacts of the larger group it becomes clear
(1) that they immediately reflect environment, in that they are
characteristic natural objects of the territory; (2) that they come
into use as implements through chance demands met by hasty selection
from the abundant material; (3) that the great majority of the
objects so employed are discarded after a use or two; (4) that when
the object proves especially serviceable, and other conditions favor,
it is retained to meet later needs; (5) that the retained objects
are gradually modified in form and surface by repeated use; (6) that
if the modification diminishes the serviceability of the object in
the notion of the user (e. g., by such fracture as to produce sharp
edges), it is discarded; (7) that if the modification enhances the
serviceability of the specimen in the mind of the user it is the more
sedulously preserved; and (8) that through the instinctive desire for
perservation, coupled with the thaumaturgic cast of primitive thinking,
the object acquires at once an artificialized form and a fetishistic
as well as a utilitarian function. The significant feature of the
development is the total absence of foresight or design, save in so
far as the concepts are fiducial rather than technical or directly
industrial.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY