The unformulated tribal laws of the Seri are intimately connected
with leadership, which is, in turn, largely a reflection of personal
characteristics; so that the tribal organization is about as variable
as that of the practically autonomous herds of cattle ranging the
Sonoran plains adjacent to Seriland. Indeed, just as the stock-clans
enjoy a precedence on pasturage and at waterholes, determined by the
valor and strength of the bulls by which they are led, so the Seri
clans appear to be graded by the prowess of their masculine leaders,
combined with the sortilegic success of the leaders’ consorts; while,
just as the leadership of the cattle shifts from band to band as the
years go by, according to the fairly equal hazard of natural selection,
so the clan dynasties of the human group rise, flourish, and decline
in an endless succession shaped by the chances of birth and survival
under a capricious environment, by the fate of battles internecine
and external, and by various other factors. The instability of the
Seri organization is demonstrated by the tribal changes recorded in
history, as well as by the vicissitudes within the memory of Señor
Encinas and others. At the beginning of the records the Upanguayma
were already exiled from Seriland proper and apparently suffering from
raids of their collinguals; within a century the Guayma, also, were
expatriated and nearly annihilated; then, in the early part of the
present century, the Tepoka were extruded and (after a series of wars
in active progress in Hardy’s time) forced far up the coast to one of
the poorest habitats ever occupied by any folk. So, too, throughout
the Encinas régime the internal dissensions continued whenever the
clans were not combined against aliens; and the veteran pioneer has
seen much intratribal strife, attended by the rise and passing of many
chiefs, both acknowledged and pretended, and often exercising chiefly
prerogatives two or three at a time. This instability grows largely out
of the fact that the essential unit is the clan, and that the tribe is
nothing more than a lax aggregation; and it is measurably explained by
the crude customs accompanying the choice of leaders.
As already noted, the clan organization is maternal, and the clanmother
is the central figure of the group; but the executive power resides
in her brothers in the order of seniority—i. e., while the personal
arrangement of the group is maternal, the appellate administration is
fraternal. So far as could be ascertained, the form of government is
clearly discriminable from that commonly styled avuncular; for, in
the first place, the minor administration accompanying the control
of property invests the elderwomen with exceptional legislative and
judicative powers, while, in the second place, there are no old men
(by reason of the militant habit), so that the reverence for age so
assiduously cultivated in primitive life extends to matrons much more
than to men. Classed with respect to major administration, therefore,
the clan may be regarded as an informal _adelphiarchy_ (ἀδελφὁς and
ἄρχος) or _adelphocracy_ (αδελφὁς and κρατὁς). It has none of the
elements of the patriarchy, since male lineage is not recognized,
and can not be classed as a matriarchy, since the clanmother is
administratively subordinate to her brothers; while the avuncular
functions are apparently inchoate and indirect, i. e., exercised only
through or in conjunction with the clanmother. In short, the clan is
ordinated or regimented in ostensible accordance with physical power,
though the real faculty is confused (after the fashion of primitive
thinking generally) with mystical faculties, imputed largely on magical
grounds but partly on grounds of age-reverence, etc. Now, when two
or more clans combine, the basis on which the common chiefship is
determined is similar to that determining the clan leadership; at the
outset three factors enter, viz., (1) the seniority of the clans in
the accepted tribal mythology, (2) the prowess of the respective clan
leaders (always weighed in conjunction with the shamanistic potency
of their consorts), and (3) the numerical strength of the respective
clans; but practically, so far as can be judged from all available
information, the choice really reflects physical force, since in case
of doubt the strongest and bravest man becomes the eldest by virtue of
his strength and bravery, while the strongest clan finds fair ground
for claiming seniority in the very fact of its strength. Naturally
disputes arise in the adjustment of the several relations; and in
the actual analysis in council, the dispute is commonly reduced to a
contest between gods and men, i. e., between the claims for mystical
and magical potencies on the one hand and the claims of brawn and bone
on the other hand, so that strength wins, unless omens or prodigies
turn the scale—which happens often enough to keep the subjective and
the objective elements in fairly equal balance. Sometimes the contests
are quickly settled; again they last for months, during which the
tribe struggles under its weight of Cerberus heads; and repeatedly the
disputes have ended in the annihilation of clans, or even in the tribal
fissions attested by the recorded and traditional history of the Serian
family.
The chiefship once determined, the leader bends all energies toward
maintaining the position by which he is dignified and his clan exalted.
He recognizes his responsibility for the welfare of the tribe—not only
for success in battle and food-getting, but for stilling storms at
sea, protecting the aguajes from the drought-demons, and securing all
other benefits, both physical and magical; he must be aggressive yet
cautious on the warpath, fleet and enduring in retreat, indomitable in
the chase, bold but not reckless on the balsa, and above all panoplied
and favored by the shadowy potencies of air and earth and waters; he
must be the local and lowly Admirable Crichton, and his never-neglected
watchword must be _noblesse oblige_. His practical devices for
maintaining prestige are many and diverse; it is commonly the chief who
carries the symbolic weapon, the counterfeit cartridge, the imitation
machete, or other charm against alien power; it is usually he who wears
the white man’s hat or random garment in lieu of the deer or lion mask
of earlier days; and during recent years his most-prized fetish, and
one which practically insures the support of his fellows, is a written
certificate of his chiefship from Señor Encinas, or, still better, from
El Gobernador at Hermosillo. Yet he is a throneless and even homeless
potentate, sojourning, like the rest of his fellows, in such jacales
as his two or three or four wives may erect, wandering with season
and sisterly whim, chased often by rumors of invasion or by fearsome
dreams, and restrained by convention even from chiding his own children
in his wives’ jacales save through the intercession of female relatives.
In 1894 the head chief was reported to be on Tiburon; the putative
chief of the rancheria at Costa Rica was the taciturn giant known as El
Mudo (plate XIX); while Mashém (or Juan Estorga) was the head of one of
the Pelican clans.