In the conventional seriation of social development four stages
are clearly recognizable, viz.: (1) Savagery, in which the social
organization is based on blood kinship reckoned in the female line;
(2) barbarism, in which the basis of organization is actual or assumed
consanguinity reckoned in the male line; (3) civilization, in which
the laws are based on property-right, primarily territorial; and (4)
enlightenment, in which the organization is constitutional and rests
on the recognition of equal human rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Now, in terms of this seriation of general
culture-stages, the place of the Seri tribe is clear. Reckoning
consanguinity wholly in the maternal line, as they do, they belong in
the initial stage of savagery. Accordingly they pertain to the lower
or more primitive of the two great stages represented by the American
aborigines.
A still more refined seriation may be effected through conspection of
the several lines of activital development—the esthetic and industrial,
and especially the sophic or fiducial, as well as the strictly social;
for these lines are most intimately intertwined. Thus, in the Old
World, the transition from maternal to patriarchal organization
was accompanied, and evidently superinduced, by the development of
zooculture into extensive herding; in different districts of the New
World, a parallel transition attended the development of agriculture
to a phase involving the protection of acequias and fields by armed
men; while throughout primitive life, laws are formulated and enforced
chiefly through appeals to the superphysical or mythologic. Now,
review of the Seri esthetic indicates that the decorative concepts and
activities are in large measure inchoate and are practically confined
to a single manifestation, i. e., the delineation of totemic symbols
primarily denoting zoic tutelaries and incidentally connoting the
blood-carriers of clans consecrated to these beast-gods; so that the
esthetic motives and devices of the tribe are essentially zoosematic.
In like manner a considerable part of the technic of the tribe is
zoomimic, as already shown, while even the most highly developed
industrial activities occupy the biotic borderland of mechanical
chance rather than the characteristic demotic realm of intellectual
design. So, too, the faith of the folk is exclusively and overweeningly
zootheistic, to the extent that every motion, every thought, every
organized action, every law, every ceremony, is shaped with reference
to mystical potencies vaguely conceived as a pantheon of maleficent
beast-gods; and it is this dark and hopeless faith that gives character
to the tribal esthetic and technic. Concordantly the faith finds
reflection in the very elements of the social organization; the matron
is the blood-carrier and the lawgiver not in and for herself but as
the vicarious and visible exponent of an ever-immanent beast-god—the
clan tutelary; her appeals to her brothers for administrative aid are
precisely parallel to her intuitive passage from zoomimicry into the
field of mechanical chance defined by protolithic implements; and the
appeal, like the execution of the law either by herself or by her
brothers, is controlled and regulated in absolute deference to the zoic
pantheon. Thus, the inchoate tribal laws, expressed in habitual lines
of action and modes of thought, are by no means conscious products of
human wisdom, but are confidently imputed to a superhuman wisdom on the
part of myth-magnified beasts of a mystical olden time; and, similarly,
the power of executing these laws is by no means cognized as conscious
human faculty, but is faithfully imputed to supernal potencies of
mythical monsters. Essentially, therefore, the tribal law is putatively
_zoocratic_; and the social organization may justly be classed as a
putative _zoocracy_.
To prevent possible confusion, it may be desirable to note specifically
that the Seri government is not matriarchal in any proper sense. As
pointed out elsewhere, matriarchy is not (at least among the American
aborigines) an antecedent of patriarchy, but a correlative of that form
of government; and it would be especially erroneous and misleading
to designate as matriarchal a tribe like the Seri, whose chiefs and
subchiefs (i. e., appellate clan-administratives) are invariably
masculine. Neither would it be just, despite the dominance of matrons
in legislative and judicative matters, to regard the tribal government
as a gyneocracy, such as have been noted in various parts of North
America—e. g., in Sonora, according to a current tradition as to the
origin of the name of the province, and among the Pomo Indians of
California, according to Cronise as interpreted by Powers;[331] for
the actual control is exercised by the warrior brothers, while the
ideal control is vested in that zoic pantheon of which the matrons are
putative mouthpieces. Physically and practically the Seri government
is an adelphiarchy, as already indicated; but in the minds of the
tribesmen themselves it is an inchoate theocracy putatively headed by
a pantheon of animate monsters, whose prelates are personified in the
painted clanmothers.
[331] Tribes of California, pp. 160-161.
* * * * *
Summarily, then, the Seri are zoosematic in esthetic, zoomimic in
technic, zootheistic in faith, and putatively zoocratic in government,
while even the Seri tongue is so largely mimetic or onomatopoetic in
form as to accord with the industries and institutions; and in view
of the intimate interrelations between the several lines of activity,
it would seem preferable to determine the culture-status from the
coincident testimony of all the lines, but feasible to measure it in
terms of any one or more of these activital lines.
Now, on comparing the characteristics of the Seri with those of other
known tribes of North America, many resemblances and a few differences
are found; and practically all of the more conspicuous differences
extend in the same direction—i. e., they combine to indicate an
exceptionally primitive, or lowly, or zoic, plane for the simple
savages of Seriland. Thus, few tribes are so poor in esthetic as the
Seri, and in none other are the esthetic devices so clearly and so
exclusively zoic; few if any other known tribes so clearly exemplify
zoomimic culture; none other so well represents protolithic culture,
and no other known tribe is so completely devoid of mechanical devices
reflecting higher culture; in general socialry no other known tribe
better, or indeed so well, exemplifies zoocracy, while in such special
features as those of ethnogamic mating, ceremonial scatophagy, and
mortuary magnification of the blood-carriers, the folk mark the most
primitive known phase of cultural advancement; and although language
and faith yield less definite measure, their testimony is coincident
with that of the other lines of activity. Accordingly the Seri must
be assigned to the initial place in the scale of cultural development
represented by the American aborigines, and hence to the lowest
recognized phase of savagery.
* * * * *
Two or three corollaries of this placement are noteworthy: (1) In
most of the researches concerning human development conducted by the
anthropologists of the world, attention has been given chiefly or
wholly to the somatic or biotic characters of _Homo sapiens_; but
while various physical features of the Seri suggest bestial affinities
(as has been pointed out in an earlier chapter), it is especially
significant that the nearest and clearest indications of bestial
relationship are found in the psychical features of the lowly folk—for
zoic faith in its multifarious manifestations is but a reflection of
burgeoning yet still bestial mind.
(2) While human independence of environment culminates in socialry, the
interdependence of activital lines so well revealed in lowest savagery
demonstrates that institutions and all government necessarily reflect
environment; and, at the same time, that the progressive emancipation
from environment signalized in the higher culture-grades measures the
conquest of Nature through industrial activity—for both the productive
work and the attendant exercise cumulatively elevate sapient Man above
mindless Nature.
(3) An adjunct of progress in every stage of development, as indicated
with especial clearness in the earliest stages, is the annulment or
curtailment of both physical and formal law, and the substitution of
cumulatively growing volition: the development of the esthetic passes
from the intuitive toward the ratiocinative, that of the industrial
from the instinctive toward the inventive, and that of the social from
the merely reflective to the vigorously constructive; with every pulse
of progress the subservience to blind chance and imaginative figment
diminishes; and with each increment of sound confidence the ability to
surmount physical obstruction and to dispense with primitive formality
is cumulatively augmented.