BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XLIX
THE HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO., BOSTON
NATURAL PEBBLE CONSIDERABLY WORN IN USE AS GRINDER
II. On reviewing the almost insignificantly small group of chipped stone artifacts, it seems clear that while the material is local the design is so incongruous with custom and characteristic thought as to raise the presumption that stone-chipping is an alien and imperfectly assimilated craft. The conspicuous and significant feature of the chipped stone artifact is the shapement in accordance with preconceived design.
III. On reviewing the arbitrarily separated group of metallic artifacts it is found clear (1) that the material is foreign; (2) that it is avidly sought and sedulously saved and utilized; (3) that it is wrought only by the crude methods used for fashioning the most primitive of implements and tools; and (4) that it is used chiefly as a substitute for organic substances employed in symbolic imitation of the natural organs and functions of animals. The significant features of the use of iron artifacts are (a) the absence of either alien or specialized designs, and (b) the mimicry of bestial characters as conceived in primitive philosophy.
Classed by material and motive jointly, the three groups are diverse in important respects: The first is local in material, local in motive; the second is local in material, foreign in design; the third is foreign in material, local in motive.
On recapitulating the several phases of Seri handicraft, the devices are found to fall into genetic classes of such sort as to illumine certain notable stages of primitive technic.
The initial class comprises teeth, beaks and mandibles, claws, hoofs, and horns, used in imitation or symbolic mimicry of either actual or imputed function of animals, chiefly those to which the organs pertain, together with vegetal spines and stalks or splints, used similarly under the zootheistic imputation of animal powers to plants; also carapaces and pelts, used as shields combining actual and symbolic protective functions. While this class of devices is well displayed by the Seri, it is by no means peculiar to them; clear vestiges of the devices have been noted among many Amerind tribes. Now the essential basis of the industrial motive has been recognized by all profounder students in zootheism, animism, or hylozoism—indeed, the industrial stage is but the reflex and expression of the zootheistic or hylozoic plane in the development of philosophy; while both the devices and the cultural stage which they represent have already been outlined by the late Frank Hamilton Cushing, on the basis of surviving vestiges and prehistoric relics, and characterized as “prelithic”.[298] Cushing’s designation for the initial stage of technic has the merit of euphony, and of suggesting the serial place of the stage in industrial development; but since it denotes a most important class of artifacts only by exclusion and negation it would seem desirable to supplement it by a positive term. The class of devices (considered in both material and functional aspects) and the cultural stage in general might appropriately be styled hylozoic, though it would seem preferable to emphasize the actual objective basis of the class and stage by a specific designation—and for this purpose the term zoomimetic (from ζω̢̃ον, τὁ and μιμητικὁς), or its simplified equivalent, zoomimic, would seem acceptable.