* * * * *
As suggested by widespread primitive customs, and as illustrated
specifically by the arrow-charming, the warfare of the Seri is largely
sortilegic, this feature being but an extension and magnification of a
corresponding feature of their hunting customs. The economic object of
the chase is, of course, the flesh of the quarry; but the hunt normally
begins with invocatory or other fiducial ceremonies, culminates in a
feast opened with oblations, and ends in the use of horns or hoofs,
teeth or bones, mane or tail, as talisman-trophies—primarily pledges of
fealty to the favorable potencies, only secondarily symbols of success.
The observances illumine the ever-present esoteric object of the chase,
which is to gain the favor or overcome the power of the beast-god
represented by the animal hunted; in general, this is sought to be
effected through mimetic movements, or symbolic objects, associated
with that animal-kind, and the retained charm-trophy is valued as
a symbol of the placation or outwitting of a particular deity.
Similarly, the Seri warrior strives for the supposed deific symbols
of the enemy—the scalp or headdress or arrow of the alien tribesman,
the fire-breathing and echo-waking (as well as death-dealing) wand of
the Caucasian; and the Papago arrows, Yaqui scalps, and white man’s
firearms are sought avidly, treasured as fetishes, and often carried
conspicuously as badges of borrowed prowess.[309] So the Seri are never
without alien insignia in the form of weapons. The day before the 1895
expedition entered their stronghold, a band of warriors and women
were frightened from a freshly slaughtered cow by a party of vaqueros
so suddenly that their arms were left behind—and these included a
heavy Springfield “remodeled” rifle, lacking not only ammunition but
breechblock and firing pin; while Don Andrés Noriega, of Costa Rica,
and L. K. Thompson, of Hermosillo, described a rifle of modern make
captured similarly two years before, which was in good working order
and charged with a counterfeit cartridge ingeniously fashioned from
raw buckskin in imitation of a center-fire brass shell and loaded with
a polished stone bullet.[310] The finders opined that the rifles were
carried to bluff the enemy, and even that the counterfeit cartridge
was designed to do deadly execution; but it would better accord with
Seri customs, and with the law of piratical acculturation which they
typify,[311] to infer that the weapons were regarded rather as symbols
of mystical potencies than as simple scarecrows. Of related import
were two or three pseudomachetes made from rust-pitted cask hoops,
reported by the majordomo and several vaqueros at Costa Rica; and of
still greater significance was a machete picked up in a just-abandoned
jacal by Don Ygnacio Lozania—veteran of the Andrade expedition and
the Encinas conquest—which was laboriously rasped and scraped out of
paloblanco wood, colored in imitation of iron blade and mahogany handle
by means of face-paints, and even furnished with “eyes” replacing the
handle-rivets, in the form of embedded iron scales. Some of the Seri
are familiar with the normal use of firearms, as was demonstrated by
the Robinson and other episodes, and many of them modernly make some
use of machetes or other knives, as shown by various rudely whittled
wooden artifacts; yet the burden of proof indicates that the chief use
of the Caucasian’s weapons in the heat of actual warfare is shamanistic
and symbolic. This interpretation is, in fact, practically established
by the experience of the frontier; for the vaqueros and local soldiery
have little fear of the ill-understood firearms and clumsily handled
machetes occasionally seen in Seri hands, though they dread unspeakably
the necromantic arrows and flesh-rending teeth with which the agile
foes are credited.
[309] These motives on the part of the Seri were reciprocated by their
tribal enemies; a Papago fetish in the form of an Apache arrowpoint,
long worn by an aged warrior as a protection from Apache arrows, was
among the spoil of the 1894 expedition; and a “poisoned” Seri arrowhead
and foreshaft, worn by a superannuated Papago “doctor” as a badge of
invulnerability to similar missiles, was cautiously shown to the 1895
expedition, but was held above price by its wearer—and this despite the
fact that he had been christianized for decades, and retained no other
pagan symbols.
[310] The imitative still of the Seri was illustrated at Costa Rica
some years ago, when the petty accounts for labor, etc., were kept
by means of tokens stamped from sheet brass. While a Seri rancheria
was maintained near the rancho, the storekeeper detected a number of
counterfeits of his tokens, so well executed as to pass readily over
the counter in ordinary exchange—and after extended detective work the
counterfeiting was traced to the rancheria.
[311] American Anthropologist, vol. XI. August, 1898, pp. 243-249.
The mystical potency ascribed to Caucasian firearms and cutlery by
the zoomimic tribesmen is of interest as a reflection of motives
and methods pervading the entire range of their activities; at the
same time it suggests the genesis of the aberrant technolithic craft
displayed in arrow-chipping. The information obtained from Mashém and
his mates concerning chipped arrowpoints implied that the process was
hieratic and little understood by the body of the tribe, its place in
the tribal knowledge, indeed, being similar to that of the brewing of
the arrow “poison”, which is the special work of shamans; and this
information, comporting as it does with the rarity of the chipped
points and the crudeness of the work, strongly supports the inference
that the stone arrow-making of the Seri was originally a fetishistic
mimicry of alien devices—a plane, indeed, above which the craft has
hardly risen even in recent decades.
* * * * *
While the Seri are devoid of military tactics in the strict sense
of the term, they have certain customs of warfare which seem to be
scrupulously observed. These customs are closely akin to those followed
in hunting the larger land animals—indeed, the warfare of the tribe is
merely an intensified counterpart of their chase.
The favorite tactical device of the warriors, as indicated by the great
majority of their battles, is the ambuscade, laid and sprung either
with or without the aid of decoys (usually aged women). Sometimes
a considerable body act in concert under a prearranged plan; more
commonly a few warriors only are involved at the outset, though these
may be joined as the crisis approaches by companions lurking behind
rocks and shrubs to be either on hand at the finish or in the way of
ready flight, according to the turn of the battle-tide; and it is
probable that the greater part of the ambuscades prove stillborn by
reason of the oozing courage of leaders and the shirking of their
supporters if the prospective victims present a bold front, or if the
final omens are otherwise adverse. The ambuscade, with its flying
contingent, grades into the device of stalking a stationary or slowly
moving enemy, the stealthy approach terminating either in covert attack
at close range or in sudden rush by a superior force. The theory, or
rather the instinctive plan, of the campaign is to seek advantage in
both position and numbers, to keep under cover until the instant of
attack, to have sure and ample lines of retreat, and in every way to
minimize individual risk.
There is a widespread notion toward the Seri frontier that the savages
are given to sorties and surprises by night; but both specific
testimony and the records indicate, when carefully analyzed, that
this tactical device is much less common in practice than in repute,
and is not, indeed, characteristic of the tribe. A few known battles
began in attacks by night; but the war parties, like the hunting and
fishing parties (save in the semiceremonial pelican pilgrimages),
display decided preference for daylight in their forays—indeed, there
are various indications that the folk are much more timid and oppressed
with superstitious fears by night than by day.
In rare cases small parties of aliens have been half openly surrounded
and done to death by considerably larger parties of the savage folk;
but this method, too, is incongruous with the fixed habits of the tribe
and with the deep-planted instinct of avoiding personal exposure.
A considerable number of the long list of homicides charged against
the Seri, and marking the beginning of many of their battles, were
individual rather than collective, the consummation of inimical impulse
sometimes treacherously concealed for favorable opportunity, as in the
pitiful case of Fray Crisóstomo Gil, and othertimes rising explosively
beyond the feeble control of the untrained mind; for the impulse of
enmity toward aliens is an ever-present possession—or obsession—of
the tribe, and a reflection of that race-sense which is their most
distinctive attribute.
Of open warfare and face-to-face fighting there is hardly a germ among
the Seri. When themselves ambushed or surrounded, some of their stouter
warriors have in a few instances faced the foe for a few minutes at a
time, as is shown by the annals of Cerro Prieto; yet this accidental
attitude but betokens the play of chance rather than the plan of
choice. Concordantly, the folk avoid the method of warfare (so common
among other Amerind tribes as to be properly considered characteristic)
involving open duel between chiefs and other warriors; they seem to be
devoid of that sense of fairness in fighting which finds expression in
the duel; and despite the individual advantages growing out of gigantic
stature, immense strength, and superior swiftness, they habitually
seek to combine in numbers against panicked or baffled enemies, just
as their hunters throw themselves mercilessly on surrounded quarry. Of
open boldness or confident prowess no trace appears; and the body of
facts seems to justify the prevailing Sonoran opinion that the warfare
of the Seri is treacherous and cowardly in design, craven and cruel in
execution.
Once begun, the conduct of the fray by the Seri fighters is fairly
uniform; the warriors either discharge clouds of arrows from their
coigns of vantage, or rush to brain their victims with stones, or
to break their necks and limbs and crush in their chests, as in the
slaughtering of quarry; and according to the tale of the occasional
survivors—Señor Pascual Encinas and his son Manuel, Don Ygnacio
Lozania, Don Andrés Noriega, Don Jesus Omada of Bacuachito, and Don
Ramon Noriega of Pozo Noriega, are among the survivors and informants;
also the sturdy Papago fighters, Mariana, Anton, Miguel, and Anton
Castillo (whose sister died of dread while he was on the 1895
expedition)—the rushing warriors are transfigured with frenzy; their
eyes blaze purple and green, their teeth glisten through snarling
lips, their hair half rises in bristling mane, while their huge
chests swell and their lithe limbs quiver in a fury sudden and blind
and overpowering as that of springing puma or charging peccary. Of
the successful assaults the ghastly end is rarely recorded, though
whispered large in the lore of Sonora; in the unsuccessful assaults
recounted by survivors the blood-frenzy burned but briefly and died
swiftly as the disappointed warriors skulked silently behind rocks and
shrubs, or fled across the sands with inconceivable fleetness. These
details of battle precisely parallel the details of butchery of beastly
quarry, as recounted by local observers and corroborated by Mashém’s
recitals.
So far as can be ascertained the parallelism between frenzied battling
and furious butchery in the chase affords the chief basis for the firm
Sonoran belief that the similarity extends one step farther, and that
the human victims are rent and consumed, like the beasts. There is a
lamentable lack of data concerning the alleged anthropophagy of the
Seri; on the one hand there is the deep-seated local opinion, generally
growing stronger as the tribal territory is approached, and agreeing
so well with the hunting customs, the thaumaturgic arrow-poisoning,
the zoomimic handicraft, and zootheistic faith, and especially with
the pervading fetish-piracy of the folk, that its validity would seem
inherently probable; on the other hand, there is not only a dearth of
specific positive testimony, but haciendero Encinas (best informed
among Caucasians concerning Seri customs) and several of his yeomen
reject the prevailing belief, while Mashém consistently repudiated the
custom, both in general and in particular, and in ceremonial as well
as in economic aspects, whenever and in whatever way the subject was
approached during his intercourse with the 1894 expedition. On the
whole, the much-mooted question of Seri cannibalism must be left open
pending further inquiry, with some preponderance of evidence against
the existence of the custom.
The war-frenzy of the Seri fighters is significant in its parallelism
with the blood-craze of the chase, and even more so in its analogy
with the warpath customs and ceremonies of most Amerind tribes and
many other primitive peoples. In typical tribes the warpath custom is
a most distinctive one, standing for an abnormal state of mind and
an unaccustomed habit of body, perhaps to the extent of an extreme
exaltation or obsession akin to intoxication, in which the ordinary
ideas of justice and humanity are inhibited; among most tribes the
condition is sought voluntarily and deliberately when occasion is
thought to demand, and is superinduced by fasts and vigils, exciting
songs and ceremonies, and related means; while among certain tribes
the aid of symbolic “medicines”, which may be actual intoxicants, is
invoked. Thus the savage on the warpath is a different being from the
same man in times of peace; viewed from his own standpoint, he is
possessed of an alien and violent demon, usually that of a fantastic
and furious beast-god whose rage he must symbolize and enact; viewed
from the standpoint of higher culture, he is a raving and ruthless
maniac whose craze is none the less complete by reason of its voluntary
origin. The warpath frenzy is one of the fundamental, even if little
understood, facts of primitive life, and the character of the savage
tribe can not properly be weighed without appreciation of it. Now, the
Seri blood-craze seems measurably distinct in two ways: in the first
place, it expresses a more profound and bitter enmity toward aliens
than is found among most savage tribes—i. e., it is instinctive and
persistent in exceptional degree; in the second place, it is more
spontaneous and explosive in its culmination when conditions favor than
among tribesmen who induce the condition by elaborate preparation—i.
e., it is dependent on the swift-changing hazard of warfare in
exceptional measure; so that the Seri frenzy is at once more
instinctive and more fortuitous, or in general terms more inchoate,
than the corresponding condition among most of their contemporaries.
Accordingly the war customs, like several other features of the
tribe, seem to afford a connecting link between the habits normal to
carnivorous beasts and the well-organized war customs of somewhat
higher culture-grades; and thus they contribute toward outlining the
course of human development through some of its darker stages.
* * * * *
Conformably with their poverty in offensive devices, the Seri are
exceedingly poor in devices for defense. It is an impressive fact that
a restricted motherland which has been successfully protected against
invasion for nearly four centuries of history should be destitute of
earthworks, fortifications, barricades, palisades, or other protective
structures; yet no such structures exist on any of the natural lines
of approach, and none are known anywhere in Seriland save in a single
spot—Tinaja Trinchera—where there are a few walls of loose-laid
stone, so unlike anything else in Seriland and so like the structures
characteristic of Papagueria as to strongly indicate (if not to
demonstrate) invasion and temporary occupancy by aliens. The jacales
are not fortified in the slightest degree, unless the turtle-shells
with which they are sometimes shingled be regarded as armor; even the
most ancient rancherias are absolutely devoid of contravallations of
earth, stone, or other material; and both the structures themselves and
the expressions of the folk concerning them indicate that the jacales
are not regarded as fortresses or places of refuge against enemies, but
only as comfortable lodges for use in times of peace. Nor are walls
like those of the borderland Tinaja Trinchera known in the interior of
the tribal territory—e. g., the similarly conditioned Tinaja Anita,
which differs only in the greater abundance and permanence of the
water-supply, is entirely devoid of artificial structures, not even
a pebble or bowlder being artificially placed save perchance by the
casual trampling of the pathways. As already noted, the Seri seem to
be practically devoid of knife-sense; they are still more completely
devoid of fort-sense, although (and evidently because) they rely so
fully on natural things, including tutelaries and their own fleetness,
for safety.
Although devoid of even the germ of fortification-sense, so far as
can be discovered, the Seri are not without a sort of shield-sense,
which is of much significance partly by reason of its inchoate
character. The ordinary shield is a pelican pelt, or a robe or kilt
comprising several skins; it is employed either for confusing the
enemy by swift brandishing, something after the fashion of the capa
of the banderillero in the bull ring, or for actual protection of the
body against arrows and other missiles or weapons. So far as known
it is not backed or otherwise strengthened, the user relying solely
on the stout integument and thick feathers—or rather on the mystical
properties imputed to the pelt as the mystery-tinged investiture of
their chief creative tutelary. On the coast bucklers are improvised
from turtle-shells, though, according to Mashém (confirmed by direct
observation), these are not carried inland for the purpose; but the
protective function imputed to the turtle was well represented in the
rancheria at Costa Rica by several fetishes made from phalanges of
turtle-flippers tricked out in rags in imitation of Caucasian dress
(somewhat like the mortuary fetishes illustrated in figure 40_a_ and
_b_). On the whole, the most conspicuous feature of the individual
shields or protectors is their emblematic character; they are
sortilegic rather than practical, and express imputation of mystical
potencies rather than recognition of actual properties; and in this as
in other respects they correspond closely with the offensive devices,
and aid in defining the ideas and motives of the primitive warriors.
The actually effective protection of the Seri in warfare is their
fleetness, coupled with their habitual and constitutional timidity,
i. e., their wildness—for they are verily, as their Mexican neighbors
say, “gente muy bronco”. Moreover, they are adepts in concealing their
persons and their movements behind shrubbery and rocks, and in finding
cover on the barest plains; and suggestions are not wanting that the
protecting shrub-clumps and rocks of their wonted ranges are credited
with occult powers and elevated to the lower places of their zoic
pantheon, after the customary way of that overpowering zootheism, or
animism, which the Seri so well exemplify in many of their habits.
* * * * *
Summarily, the warfare of the Seri complements the pacific industries
of the tribe in every essential respect. It is notable for
improvidence, i. e., for reliance on chance; the dearth of devices for
offense and defense parallels the poverty in industrial artifacts;
and the disregard of fortifications is of a kind with the squandering
of present food supplies and the utter neglect of provision for the
future. A striking correspondence between workfare and warfare is
found in the fierce blood-lust displayed alike in chase and battle, a
feature manifestly borrowed from beasts and intensified by besetting
beast-faith; and more striking still is the correspondence in motive,
as revealed by the overlapping functions of the protective kilt, by
the borrowing of animal symbols alike in peace and war, and by the
imitation of animal movements on the warpath as in the chase.
In the last synthesis the warfare of the Seri may be considered as
characterized by two attributes: (1) The motives, so far as developed,
are zoomimic in even greater degree than the prevailing motives of
the pacific industries; and (2) the methods are shaped largely by
mechanical chance, like those normal to protolithic industry.