The most conspicuous and doubtless the most effective war weapon is the arrow projected from the bow in the unusual if not unique fashion already noted (ante, p. 201). There is nothing to indicate that the Seri are especially effective archers; the facts (1) that a large part of the arrows are pointless, save for the hard-wood foreshafts; (2) that stone arrowpoints are not habitually used; and (3) that comparatively slight reference is made to the use of arrows in records and recitals of Seri battles, tend on the contrary to indicate inferior ability in archery. And in the course of the explorations by the 1895 expedition it was noted that the feral fowls and animals of Seriland—pelican, gull, snipe, curlew, cormorant, coyote, hare, bura, mountain sheep, peccary, etc.—displayed little fear of human figures at distances exceeding 75 yards, and seldom stirred until the stranger approached within 50 or 60 yards; whence it may be assumed that these distances fairly indicate the ordinary range of Seri arrows. The few accounts of conflicts in which arrows are mentioned prove, however, that those missiles are discharged with great rapidity and in considerable numbers during the brief interval to which the fighting is customarily limited.
The most notorious feature of the Seri warfare, and that of deepest interest to students, is the reputed use of poisoned arrows. The scattered literature of the tribe, from the days of Coronado onward, abounds in references to this custom; the Jesuit authorities give somewhat varied yet fairly consistent descriptions of the preparation and the effects of these arrows; Hardy added his testimony as to the character of the poison; General Stone gave directly corroborative evidence; haciendero Encinas gives witness to the effects of the envenomed missiles on his own stock; while Mashém recounted to the 1894 expedition the various uses of the “poisoned” arrows and highly extolled their potency, though he was noncommittal—save in casual allusions—as to the details of the poisoning. A part of the arrows acquired by this expedition and now preserved in the National Museum were professedly poisoned; they are easily distinguished by a thin varnish of gummy and greasy substance over the iron tips and wooden foreshafts, and especially about the attachments of mesquite gum and sinew. According to Mashém’s asseverations, such arrows are habitually used in war save when the supply is exhausted by continued demand; they are also used occasionally in hunting, especially for deer and lions (i. e., the swiftest and fiercest game of the region); and the use of the poisoned missile does not destroy the meat of the animal, though the portion immediately about the wound is “thrown away”. Two of the treated arrows brought back from Costa Rica were submitted to Dr S. Weir Mitchell some months afterward for examination, and for identification of any poisonous matter found on them; but no poison was detected. On the whole, the data concerning the reputed arrow poisoning are less definite than might be desired; yet they are sufficient to suggest the nature of the custom with considerable clearness.
In any consideration of Seri customs it is to be realized that the folk are notably primitive in thought, and hence deeply steeped in that overweening mysticism which, dominates all lowly folk—that they still cling to zoomimic motives in their simple handicraft, and are still wholly within zootheism in their lowly faith. In the light of this realization the numerous consistent records of the preparation of the poison are easily interpreted, and are found to be fully in accord with the prevailing motives of the tribe; and the interpretation serves to explain the somewhat discrepant accounts of the effects of the poison, effects ranging from nil to horrible sepsis. According to the more circumstantial recipes, the first constituent of the poison is a portion of lung, preferably human—a selection readily explained by pristine philosophy, in which the breath is life, and the lungs at once the seat and the symbol of vitality. Naturally the fleshly symbol is from a dead body; and just as the lung denotes vitality in life, so (in primitive thought) it denotes an emphasized, as it were an incarnated, antithesis of vitality in death. Next, as the recipes continue, this death-symbol is exposed to the most potent agencies of death—to the bites of maddened rattlesnakes, to the stings of irritated scorpions, to the venomed trailings of harried centipedes. Then the deadly creatures are themselves killed, and the fanged heads of the serpents, the stinging tails of the scorpions, and the fiery feet of the centipedes, together with portions of redolent ordure from the grave-cairns, and other symbols of death and decay are crushed and macerated with the mass in a wizard’s brew, grewsome beyond the emasculated and degraded witch’s broth of medieval times. Finally, the grisly mess is allowed to simmer in a stinkpot[302] shell under the fierce desert sun until its ripeness and putrid potency are attested by the rank fetor of death; when it is ready for its ruthless use. Thus the entire recipe is thaumaturgic in concept, necromantic in detail; it represents merely the malevolent machinations of the medicine man seeking success by spells and enchantments; it stands for no rational system of thought or practice, but pertains wholly to the plane of shamanism and sorcery. So interpreted the recipe is readily understood; the several witnesses who have independently obtained it are justified, and Mashém’s details and unwilling intimations are made clear—especially if the sacrificed flesh about the wound in deer or lion be deemed an oblation, such as primitive folk are given to making.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LV
THE HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO., BOSTON
IMPLEMENT PERFECTED BY USE
While thus the motive of the medicine-man in compounding his loathsome mess is wholly necromantic, serious consequences of its use must occasionally supervene; and though these may be incidental so far as the philosophy is concerned, they may tend reflexly toward the perpetuation of the custom. In the course of the preparation of the charm-poison, and especially in the final ripening process, morbific germs and ptomaines must be developed; these may retain their virulence up to the time of use, particularly when a batch of poison is prepared for a special occasion and the arrows are used while the application is still fresh; and in such cases the wound might initiate septicemia of the sort described in Castañeda’s early narrative and still more clearly displayed by Señor Encinas’ saddle-horse (ante, p. 112). Naturally the incidentally zymotic varnish frequently fails of effect, and can hardly be expected to remain morbific long enough to be detected in laboratory experiments; yet it is probable, as attested by Mashém’s guarded expressions, that the occasionally terrible results of such poisoning are within the ken of the Seri shamans.
It is noteworthy that the various early accounts of the Seri arrow-poisoning are strikingly consistent, though sufficiently diverse to attest independence in origin; it is also noteworthy that several of the accounts are given hesitatingly and half qualifiedly, with alternative references (obviously hypothetical) to vegetal sources of poison. Thus the author of “Rudo Ensayo” qualified a characteristic (though brief) account of the preparation of the poison by adding: “But this is mere guesswork, and no doubt the main ingredient is some root.”[303] So, too, Hardy described the compounding of the brew in much detail, adding the significant statement that “when the whole mass is in a high state of corruption the old women take the arrows and pass their points through it”; yet he could not resist the alternative hypothesis, and added: “Others again say that the poison is obtained from the juice of the yerba de la flécha (arrow-wort).”[304] Bartlett “was told that the Ceris tip their arrows with poison; but how it was effected I [he] could not learn,” and so he contented himself with quoting Hardy’s account.[305] Stone gave the recipe in fairly similar terms, adding that the morbific mass is hung up “to putrefy in a bag, and in the drippings of this bag they soak their arrowheads”; and he gave a characteristic account of the effect of a wound from a poisoned arrow on a human subject (ante, p. 100). Pajeken independently attested the virulence of the poison, and described the consequences of a slight wound suffered by his horse (ante, p. 101), while Pimentel gave independent corroboration, and Orozco y Berra added the further information that the proverbially deadly poison is fortified “by superstitious practices” (ante, p. 103). Bancroft gave currency to the customary recipe, and also to the complementary hypothesis that the “magot” may be the source of the poison; while Dewey merely mentioned the reputed use of poisoned arrows. Like their predecessors, the vaqueros of today are familiar with the tradition of a necromantic brew; but many of them—like Don Jesus Omada, of Bacuachito, and Don Ramon Noriega, of Pozo Noriega—display a much more lively interest in the local yerba mala, or yerba de flécha, of which they stand in such mortal dread that they can hardly be induced to approach a clump of it, and which they conceive must add the final crux to the brew. This plant was described in “Rudo Ensayo”: “Mago, in the Opata language, is a small tree, very green, luxuriant, and beautiful to the eye; but it contains a deadly juice which flows upon making a slight incision in the bark. The natives rub their arrows with it, and for this reason they call it arrow-grass; but at present they use very little.”[306] Elsewhere the anonymous author mentions the use of (presumably) this poison by the Jova, and describes it as “so deadly that it kills not only the wounded person, but also him who undertakes the cure by sucking the wound, as is customary with all the Indians”; the description implying that the infection is irremediable.[307] Yet he apparently discriminated this poison from that of the Seri, for which another plant known as caramatraca is an infallible remedy. On the whole it seems probable that the yerba mala (Sebastiano bilocularis?), or yerba de flécha, or mago, or magot, yielded or formed the standard arrow-poison of the Opata and perhaps of other Indians, and that the ill-repute of the shrub survived and spread throughout Mexicanized Sonora in such frequent repetition and common belief as to affect the ideas of residents and travelers alike; but it seems equally probable that the magic-inspired brew of the Seri is entirely distinct.[308]
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LVI