The prevailing opinion among the better informed Caucasian neighbors of
the Seri is that the tribesmen display an inhuman indifference to their
dead; and this opinion is one of the factors—combining with current
notions as to cannibalism and arrow-poisoning and beastlike toothing in
battle—involved in the widespread feeling that the tribesmen are to be
accounted as mongrel and uncanny monsters rather than human beings.
The opinion that the Seri neglect their dead on occasion would seem
to rest on a considerable body of evidence; Mendoza’s record of
the numberless neglected corpses of warriors polluting the air and
poisoning the streams of Cerro Prieto in 1757 would seem to be unusual
only in its fulness; and Señor Encinas, albeit so conservative as to
repudiate the reputed anthropophagy and to recognize better qualities
among the folk than any contemporary, declares that they are utterly
negligent of their dead, save that when the bodies lie near rancherias
heaps of brambles are thrown over them to bar—and thus to lessen
the disturbance from—prowling coyotes. Quite indubitable, too, is
the specific testimony of vaqueros to the effect that Seri raiders
overtaken by the Draconian penalty of the frontier merely lie where
they fall, even when this is well within reach of the tribesmen,
Don Andrés Noriega’s verification of his boast (ante, p. 113) being
an instance in point. On the other hand stands the conspicuous fact
(unknown to the frontiersman) that well-marked cemeteries adjoin
some of the rancherias of interior Seriland. The sum of the somewhat
discrepant evidence accords with a characteristically unsatisfactory
statement by Mashém, to the effect that the mourning ceremonies are
important only in connection with women—i. e., matrons—because “the
woman is just like the family” (“la muger es como la familia”); and
this intimation, in turn, is corroborated by the single known instance
of inhumation in Seriland, as well as by certain indirect indications
connected with the scatophagic customs (ante, p. 213). On the whole
it seems certain that the mortuary ceremonies attain their highest
development in connection with females, the recognized blood-bearers
and legislators of the tribe.
The special dignification of females in respect to funerary rites is
without precise parallel among other American aborigines, so far as
is known, but is not without analogues in the shape of (presumptive)
vestiges of a former magnification of matrons in the mortuary customs
of certain tribes. The vestiges are especially clear among the
Iroquoian Indians, whose aboriginal socialry coincided with that of
the Seri at various points; witness the following passage from the
Onondaga mourning ritual, as collected and translated by Hewitt:
Now, moreover, again, another thing, indeed, our voices come
forth to utter; and is it not that that we say, that far
yonder the Hoyaner [chief of highest grade] who labored for
us so well is falling away as falls a tree? So, moreover,
it is these things that he bears away with him—this file of
mat-carriers, warriors all, visible and present here; also
this file of those who customarily dance the corn-dances [the
women]—they go prosperously. And alas! How utterly calamitous
is that thing that occurs when the body of this woman falls!
For, verily, far yonder in the length of the file will the
file of our grandchildren be removed! These our grandchildren
who run hither and thither in sport, these our grandchildren
who by creeping drag themselves about in the dust, these our
grandchildren whose bodies are slung to cradle-boards, and even
those of them whose faces are looking hitherward as they come
under the ground.[328]
[328] MS in the archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology. A
somewhat more obscure version was recorded by Hale in “The Iroquois
Book Rites”: “Now, there is another thing we say, we younger brothers.
He who has worked for us has gone afar off; and he also will in time
take with him all these—the whole body of warriors and also the whole
body of women—they will go with him. But it is still harder when the
woman shall die, because with her the line is lost. And also the
grandchildren and the little ones who are running around—these he will
take away; and also those that are creeping on the ground, and also
those that are on the cradle-boards; all these he will take away with
him.” (Brinton’s Library of Aboriginal American Literature, number ii,
1883, pp. 141-143.)
The identifiable cemeteries of Seriland are few and small—much less
populous than might be expected of a tribe numbering several hundreds
for centuries, and able to maintain well-worn trails threading all
parts of their rugged domain. Three graves were noted near the
abandoned rancheria at Pozo Escalante; one was observed near a jacal
skeleton at Barranca Salina; five or six were made out doubtfully on
a low spur adjacent to Punta Antigualla; another was found near the
rancheria midway thence to Punta Ygnacio; still another was doubtfully
identified hard by a ruinous jacal just where the foothills of
Sierra Seri descend to the plain stretching toward Punta Miguel; and
this distribution may be deemed representative. A scant half-dozen
perceptible graves were observed near the considerable rancheria of
Punta Narragansett, which was numerously inhabited during the Dewey
surveys of 1873; one was found adjoining the old jacal near Campo
Navidad; but none were discovered in connection with the extensive
rancheria on Rada Ballena. The largest known cemetery occupies the
triangular point of shrub-dotted plain pushing out toward the site of
the old rancheria at the base of Punta Tormenta; it comprises perhaps
a score of evidently ancient graves, while two newer ones were found
on the pebble bar beyond the jacales. When near the pebbly beaches
the graves are marked by heaps of pebbles and small cobbles, commonly
about the size of those used as hupfs, these cairns being 3 or 4 feet
long, two-thirds as wide, and seldom over 12 or 15 inches in height;
and most of the cairns are accompanied and enlarged by piles (ranging
from a peck to a bushel) of the scatophagic shells already noted. The
graves remote from pebbly beaches are marked by heaps of cholla stems
and branches, rudely thatched with miscellaneous brambles roughly
pinned together by okatilla stems, the shocks being sometimes nearly
as high and broad as the jacales. A few of the scatophagic shells were
found about the bramble-marked graves at Pozo Escalante, and a single
one at Barranca Salina. In general the association of cemeteries and
rancherias, or of graves and jacales, indicates that habitations are
usually abandoned for a time when a death occurs within or near them.
[Illustration: FIG. 39—Mortuary olla.]
The most conspicuous cairn seen in Seriland was well within Tiburon.
It stands on the southern side of a little rock-butte about a mile and
a half east-southeast of Tinaja Anita, south of the main arroyo, and
near where the trail from the tinaja bifurcates toward Arroyo Carrizal
and Punta Narragansett, respectively. It is shadowed by a notably large
and widespreading paloverde, and is in the form of a cone estimated at
7 feet in height and 18 or 20 feet across the base. The materials, at
least on the surface, are rounded pebbles and cobbles, possibly from
the adjacent arroyos, though more probably from the beaches, of which
the nearest is miles away. It was not determined to be mortuary.[329]
[329] As an indication of the conditions for observation in Seriland,
this cairn is fairly typical: it was seen but once (on December
25, 1895), and the observation was limited to a few minutes by the
attendant circumstances. On the evening before the party landed at
Campo Navidad, with the hope of working up the coast nearly or quite
to Punta Tormenta on the following day; but before morning a downbay
gale was whitening the waters of Bahia Kunkaak so fiercely as to
prohibit embarkation. Meantime the supply of water—that standard
commodity of arid regions—was too nearly exhausted to permit inaction;
so while Mr Johnson with three guards ascended the Sierra to establish
a new topographic station, the leader of the party with the remaining
seven men set out in search of water. The nearest known aguaje was
that of Arroyo Carrizal; but under the hypothesis that some of the
better-beaten trails turning northward might lead to nearer water,
one of them was taken; and after turning back from half a dozen false
scents, the principal trail was followed to the well-known Tinaja
Anita, 15 miles by the trail from Campo Navidad; and here the party
watered. It was on the return trip that the cairn was discovered;
but the party were laden with filled canteens and saucepans and
coffeepots, the day was well spent, and the camp more than a dozen
miles distant even over the air line traversing spall-sprinkled taluses
and sharp-edged rocks; moreover, the men were naturally and necessarily
heavily armed and on constant guard. Accordingly even the short stay
and cursory notes involved an additional mile of darkness on a trail
so rough as to cut through shoe-soles and sandals and catch scents of
blood to tempt coyotes to the camp site. Thus it was that the cairn was
not more critically examined and is not more fully described.
On the death of the matron, a grave is scooped out by means of shells
a few yards from her jacal, preference being given to relatively
elevated or commanding points. The excavation is about 30 inches (90
cm.) in depth; within it is placed first the pelican-skin robe of
the deceased, so arranged as to fold over the body; then the corpse,
dressed in the ordinary costume of life, is compressed into small
compass by closely flexing the knees and bringing them against the
thorax, extending the arms around and along the lower limbs so that
hands and feet are together, and bending the head forward on the chest;
when it is deposited in the receptacle in such manner as to lie on the
left side, facing northward. Near the face is laid a dish of baked
clay or a large shell filled with food, and beside it a small olla of
water (an actual example is shown in figure 39), while the hupf, awls,
hairbrush, olla-ring, and other domestic paraphernalia are placed near
the hands. Next the personal fetishes and votive symbols (in the form
of puppets or dolls such as those shown in figure 40 _a_ and _b_) of
the dead mother are slipped beneath the face, and her paint-cup, with
a plentiful supply of paint, is added; the poor personal possessions,
in the form of shell-beads and miscellaneous trinketry, are then heaped
over the face and shoulders, and these are covered with the superfluous
garments and miscellaneous property of the deceased. Finally the
pelican-pelt bedding is folded over the body, and two turtle-shells
are laid over all as a kind of coffin, when the grave is carefully
filled, and the ground so smoothed as to leave no mark of the burial.
During subsequent hours the stones for the cairn or the cholla-joints
and other brambles for the brush-heap are piled over the spot, while
the scatophagic shells are added at intervals apparently for weeks or
months and perhaps for years after the burial.
[Illustration: FIG. 40—Woman’s fetishes.]
[Illustration: Fig. 41—Food for the long journey.]
The mortuary food is carefully selected for appropriate qualities
(i. e., for “strength” in the notion of the mourners). It comprises
portions of turtle-flippers, and, if practicable, a chunk of charred
plastron—the food substance especially associated with long and hard
journeys—with a few fresh mollusks, and, judging from a single good
example as well as from analogy, one or two scatophagic shells. The
remains of a funerary feast are illustrated in figures 41 and 42, the
latter being the scatophagic receptacle utilized apparently in the
absence of the customary Noah’s ark. It may be significant that this
shell is perforated at the apex, evidently by long wave-wear before
utilization, and that the accompanying olla bears marks of having been
broken, then repaired, and afterward perforated, as illustrated in the
photo-mechanical reproduction (figure 39); for these features perhaps
express that idea of “killing” mortuary sacrifices, ostensibly to fit
them to the condition of the deceased, though really (in subconscious
practicality) to protect the sepulcher from predation.[330]
[330] “In all stages of development belief runs a close race against
cupidity, and is sometimes distanced; so the sages learn that even a
buried weapon may be a source of contention, which they thenceforward
forestall by breaking or burning it.” (Primitive Trephining in Peru;
Sixteenth Ann. Rep., Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897, p. 22.)
[Illustration: FIG. 42—Mortuary cup.]
Soon after the death (immediately after the burial, so nearly as
could be ascertained) there is an apparently ceremonial mourning,
in which the matrons of the clan, and, at least to some extent, the
warriors also, participate. The mourners wail loudly, throw earth and
ashes or ordure on their heads, and beat and bruise (but apparently
avoid scarifying) their breasts, faces, and arms. This is continued,
culminating daily about the hour of interment, for several days—unless
the rancheria is sooner abandoned, in which case the period of formal
mourning is shortened.
In addition to the formal mourning of matrons there is a custom
of nocturnal wailing after the death of warriors in battle, and,
apparently, also, following the death of matrons or nubile maidens,
which attracts the notice of frontier rancheros and vaqueros. According
to their accounts the first note of lamentation may be sounded at any
hour of the night by any of the group to which the deceased belonged;
it is successively taken up by other members of the party until all
voices are united in a resounding chorus of inarticulate moans,
wails, shriller cries, and wild howls, likened by the auditors to the
blood-bellowing of cattle; if other groups of the tribesmen are within
hearing, they, too, take up the cry, so that the lamentation may extend
to the entire tribe and echo throughout practically all Seriland at the
same moment. The fierce howling and attendant excitement may rise so
high in the group in which the wailing begins that all seem bereft of
customary caution; and sometimes they suddenly seize ollas and weapons,
and decamp incontinently, perhaps scattering widely and racing for
miles before settling again for sleep or watchful guard.
* * * * *
The ideas of the folk concerning death and concerning the relations
between the living and the dead are largely esoteric, and are,
moreover, veiled by the nonequivalence of Seri expressions with the
terms of alien languages.
At least an inchoate belief in a life beyond the grave was intimated
by Mashém and his companions at Costa Rica, and their circumspection
of speech and mien indicated a strong veneration for, or dread of,
the manes; though the specific expressions were connected with
deceased matrons, who alone seemed to be prominent in the minds of the
clanmates. So far as could be gathered the belief seems to be that the
dead find their way back to the primordial underworld, whence Earth and
Beings were brought up by Pelican and Turtle (or Shark) respectively,
and are liable to return by night with mischievous intent.
The direct expressions of the Seri informants are fully corroborated by
the association of things in interior Seriland. The burial of water and
food, of the personal fetishes and votive objects, and of the highly
prized face-paint belonging to the dead matron, attests anticipation
of a post-mortuary journey; while the temporary abandonment of jacales
and rancherias and the nocturnal fears and flights alike betoken dread
of sepulchral visitants. The most suggestive of the associations, i.
e., between the scatophagic stores and the sepulchers, awaits full
explanation.