The stones used in battle, as described by the survivors and as
intimated by Mashém, are cobbles as large as a fist, i. e., hupfs
of typical form and size. So far as is known they are never hurled,
slung, nor projected in any other manner, nor are they hafted or
attached to cords after widespread aboriginal customs; they are merely
held in the hand, as in the slaughter of quarry. Hardy made note of a
war-club—“They use likewise a sort of wooden mallet called Macána, for
close quarters in war”;[301] but nothing of the kind was found at Costa
Rica in 1894, and no woodwork suggesting such use was found in the
depths of Seriland in 1895.
[301] Travels, p. 290.
The most conspicuous and doubtless the most effective war weapon is
the arrow projected from the bow in the unusual if not unique fashion
already noted (ante, p. 201). There is nothing to indicate that the
Seri are especially effective archers; the facts (1) that a large
part of the arrows are pointless, save for the hard-wood foreshafts;
(2) that stone arrowpoints are not habitually used; and (3) that
comparatively slight reference is made to the use of arrows in records
and recitals of Seri battles, tend on the contrary to indicate
inferior ability in archery. And in the course of the explorations
by the 1895 expedition it was noted that the feral fowls and animals
of Seriland—pelican, gull, snipe, curlew, cormorant, coyote, hare,
bura, mountain sheep, peccary, etc.—displayed little fear of human
figures at distances exceeding 75 yards, and seldom stirred until the
stranger approached within 50 or 60 yards; whence it may be assumed
that these distances fairly indicate the ordinary range of Seri arrows.
The few accounts of conflicts in which arrows are mentioned prove,
however, that those missiles are discharged with great rapidity and in
considerable numbers during the brief interval to which the fighting is
customarily limited.
The most notorious feature of the Seri warfare, and that of deepest
interest to students, is the reputed use of poisoned arrows. The
scattered literature of the tribe, from the days of Coronado onward,
abounds in references to this custom; the Jesuit authorities give
somewhat varied yet fairly consistent descriptions of the preparation
and the effects of these arrows; Hardy added his testimony as to the
character of the poison; General Stone gave directly corroborative
evidence; haciendero Encinas gives witness to the effects of the
envenomed missiles on his own stock; while Mashém recounted to the
1894 expedition the various uses of the “poisoned” arrows and highly
extolled their potency, though he was noncommittal—save in casual
allusions—as to the details of the poisoning. A part of the arrows
acquired by this expedition and now preserved in the National Museum
were professedly poisoned; they are easily distinguished by a thin
varnish of gummy and greasy substance over the iron tips and wooden
foreshafts, and especially about the attachments of mesquite gum and
sinew. According to Mashém’s asseverations, such arrows are habitually
used in war save when the supply is exhausted by continued demand;
they are also used occasionally in hunting, especially for deer and
lions (i. e., the swiftest and fiercest game of the region); and the
use of the poisoned missile does not destroy the meat of the animal,
though the portion immediately about the wound is “thrown away”. Two
of the treated arrows brought back from Costa Rica were submitted to
Dr S. Weir Mitchell some months afterward for examination, and for
identification of any poisonous matter found on them; but no poison was
detected. On the whole, the data concerning the reputed arrow poisoning
are less definite than might be desired; yet they are sufficient to
suggest the nature of the custom with considerable clearness.
In any consideration of Seri customs it is to be realized that the
folk are notably primitive in thought, and hence deeply steeped in
that overweening mysticism which, dominates all lowly folk—that they
still cling to zoomimic motives in their simple handicraft, and are
still wholly within zootheism in their lowly faith. In the light of
this realization the numerous consistent records of the preparation
of the poison are easily interpreted, and are found to be fully in
accord with the prevailing motives of the tribe; and the interpretation
serves to explain the somewhat discrepant accounts of the effects of
the poison, effects ranging from nil to horrible sepsis. According to
the more circumstantial recipes, the first constituent of the poison is
a portion of lung, preferably human—a selection readily explained by
pristine philosophy, in which the breath is life, and the lungs
at once the seat and the symbol of vitality. Naturally the fleshly
symbol is from a dead body; and just as the lung denotes vitality in
life, so (in primitive thought) it denotes an emphasized, as it were
an incarnated, antithesis of vitality in death. Next, as the recipes
continue, this death-symbol is exposed to the most potent agencies
of death—to the bites of maddened rattlesnakes, to the stings of
irritated scorpions, to the venomed trailings of harried centipedes.
Then the deadly creatures are themselves killed, and the fanged heads
of the serpents, the stinging tails of the scorpions, and the fiery
feet of the centipedes, together with portions of redolent ordure from
the grave-cairns, and other symbols of death and decay are crushed
and macerated with the mass in a wizard’s brew, grewsome beyond the
emasculated and degraded witch’s broth of medieval times. Finally,
the grisly mess is allowed to simmer in a stinkpot[302] shell under
the fierce desert sun until its ripeness and putrid potency are
attested by the rank fetor of death; when it is ready for its ruthless
use. Thus the entire recipe is thaumaturgic in concept, necromantic
in detail; it represents merely the malevolent machinations of the
medicine man seeking success by spells and enchantments; it stands for
no rational system of thought or practice, but pertains wholly to the
plane of shamanism and sorcery. So interpreted the recipe is readily
understood; the several witnesses who have independently obtained it
are justified, and Mashém’s details and unwilling intimations are made
clear—especially if the sacrificed flesh about the wound in deer or
lion be deemed an oblation, such as primitive folk are given to making.
[302] Cinosternum sonorense (?).
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY