The raison d’être of the proprietorship and regimentation reflected in the everyday customs is satisfactorily indicated by that totemic feature of the social organization revealed in the face-painting described in earlier paragraphs (pp. 164*-169*); these symbols evidently represent an exclusively maternal organization into clans consecrated to zoic tutelaries. The tutelaries, or totems, together with the clan names and all personal designations connected with the totems, are highly esoteric, and were not ascertained save in the few cases mentioned above.[315]
It should be observed that, the identification of kindred by the alien observer is difficult and somewhat uncertain, since the relationships recognized in Seri socialry are not equivalent to those customary among Caucasians. It was found especially difficult to identify the husband of the jacal, partly because he is commonly incongruously younger (and hence relatively smaller) than the mistress, and partly because of the undignified position of outer guard into which he is forced by the tribal etiquette. Moreover, his connection with the house is veiled by the absence of authority over both children and domestic affairs, though he exercises such authority freely (within the customary limits) in the jacales of his female relatives. There is, indeed, some question as to the clear recognition of paternity; certainly the females have no term for “my father”, i. e., the term is the same as that for “my mother”, em, though the males distinguish the maternal ancestor by a suffixed syllable (e=“my father”; e-ta or it-tah=“my mother”), which seems to be a magnificative or an intensificative element. It is noteworthy that the kinship terminology is strikingly meager; also that while the records suggest various significant points, the material is hardly rich enough to warrant complete synthesis of the consanguineal system.
While the burden of the more permanent property pertains to the women, there is a decided differentiation of labor with a concomitant vesting of certain property in the warriors—the distinctively masculine chattels comprising arrows, quivers, bows, turtle-harpoons, etc. There are indications that the balsas, too, are regarded as masculine property. The impermanent possessions—water, food, etc.—seem to be the common property of men, women, and children, except in so far as the right is regulated by regimentation; for the privileges of eating and drinking are enjoyed in the order of seniority. In the reckoning of seniority, the chief (who is commonly such in virtue of his position as nominal elder brother of a prolific dame) ranks first, and is followed by other warriors in an order affected in an undetermined way by conjugal relations as well as by their prowess or sagacity (the equivalents of age in primitive philosophy) down to an undetermined point—apparently fixed by puberty; then comes the clanmother, followed by her daughters in the order of nominal age, which is affected by the status of spouses and the number of living offspring; finally come the children, practically in the order of their strength (which also is deemed an equivalent of age), though the girls—especially those approaching nubility—receive some advantage through the connivance of the matrons. To a considerable extent in the matter of sustentation, and to a dominant degree in the matter of appareling, the distribution of values is affected by a highly significant (though by no means peculiar) humanitarian notion of inherent individual rights—i. e., every member of the family or clan is entitled to necessary food and raiment, and it is the duty of every other person to see that the need is supplied. The stress of this duty is graded partly by proximity (so that, other things equal, it begins with the nearest person), but chiefly by standing and responsibility in the group (which again are reckoned as equivalents of age), whereby it becomes the business of the first at the feast to see that enough is left to supply all below him; and this duty passes down the line in such wise as to protect the interests of the helpless infant, and even of the tribal good-for-naught or hanger-on, who may gather crumbs and lick bones within limits fixed by the tribal consensus. Beyond these limits lies outlawry; and this status arises and passes into the tribal recognition in various ways: Kolusio was outlawed for consociating with aliens, and Mashém narrowly missed the same fate at several stages of his career; the would-be grooms who fail in their moral tests are ostracized and at least semioutlawed, and range about like rogue elephants, approved targets for any arrow, until they perish through the multiplied risks of solitude, or until some brilliant opportunity for display of prowess or generosity brings reinstatement; deformed offspring are classed as outside the human pale, even when the deformity is defined rather by occult associations than by physical features; abnormal and persistent indolence, too serious for scorn and ostracism to cure, may also outpass the tribal toleration; and, as indicated by Mashém’s guarded expressions and slight additional data, disease, mental aberration, and decrepitude are allied with indolence and deemed sufficient reason for excluding the persistently helpless from the tribal solidarity, and hence from recognized humanity—and the fate of the outlaw, even if nothing more severe than abandonment in the desert, is usually sure and swift. The entire customs of outlawry among the Seri are singularly like those of gregarious animals, including especially kine and swine in domestication. Now, studied equity in the distribution of necessaries might seem to be allied to thrift; but it is noteworthy that this is not so among the Seri, who take thought for one another but not for the morrow, who seem to have no conception of storage (save an incipient one in connection with water and the repulsive notion underlying the “second harvest”), and who habitually gorge everything in sight until their stomachs and gullets are packed—and then waste the fragments.
The division of labor which affects proprietary interests is undoubtedly affected in turn by the militant habit of the tribe and by the frequent decimation of the warriors. In general, the adult males limit their work to fighting and fishing, with occasional excursions into the hunting field; though by far the greater part of their time is spent in listless lounging or heedless slumber under the incidental guard of roaming youths and toiling women. The matrons are the real workers in the tribal hive; they are normally alert and active, passing from one simple task to another, gathering flotsam food along the beach or preparing edibles in the shadow of the jacal, with an eye ever on material possessions and children; they frequently join in hunting excursions of considerable extent; they are the chief manufacturers of apparel, utensils, and tools; and the scions of Castilian caballeros are not infrequently staggered at the sight of half a dozen Seri women “milling” a band of horses, and at intervals leaping on one to kill it with their hupfs. The masculine drones are the more petted and courted by reason of their fewness, for during a century or two, at least, the women have far outnumbered their consorts—a disproportion doubtless tending in some respects toward the disintegration of the clan system and, reciprocally, toward the firmer union of the tribe.
One of the most noteworthy extensions of feminine functions among the Seri is toward shamanism. So far as could be ascertained from Mashém and the associated matrons at Costa Rica, it is such beldams as Juana Maria who concoct the arrow “poison”, compound both necromantic medicines and curative simples, cast spells on men and things, and even fabricate the stone arrowpoints and counterfeit cartridges; though unhappily the data are neither so full nor so decisive as desirable.[316]
Conformably with their prominence in proprietary affairs, the Seri matrons seem to exercise formal legislative and judicative functions; for not only do they hold their own councils for the arrangement of the domestic business of the rancherias, but they also participate prominently in the tribal councils (as explained by Mashém), and play important rôles in carrying out the decisions of such councils—as when they cooperate with war parties as decoys, or journey across their bounding desert to spy out the land of the enemy.
On the whole, it would appear that the clan organization of the Seri conforms closely with that characteristic of savagery elsewhere, especially among the American aborigines. The social unit is the maternal clan, organized in theory and faith in homage of a beast-god, though defined practically by the ocular consanguinity of birth from a common line of mothers; yet the several units are pretty definitely welded into a tribal aggregate by common feelings, identical interests, and conjugal ties. The most distinctive features brought out by the incomplete investigation are the somewhat exceptional manifestation of property-right in the females, the singularly strong sense of maternal relation, and the apparent prominence of females in shamanistic practices as well as in the tribal councils.
CHIEFSHIP
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.