THE SERI INDIANS
By W J McGEE
INTRODUCTION
Salient Features
Something has been known of the Seri Indians (Seris, Ceris, Ceres, Heris, Tiburones) since the time of Coronado, yet they remain one of the least-studied tribes of North America. The first systematic investigation of the tribe was made in the course of expeditions by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894 and 1895; it was far from complete.
The Seri Indians are a distinctive tribe in habits, customs, and language, inhabiting Tiburon island in Gulf of California and a limited adjacent area on the mainland of Sonora (Mexico). They call themselves Kun-kaak or Kmike: their common appellation is from the Opata, and may be translated “spry”. Their habitat is arid and rugged, consisting chiefly of desert sands and naked mountain rocks, with permanent fresh water in only two or three places; it is barred from settled Sonora by a nearly impassable desert. Two centuries ago the population of the tribe was estimated at several thousands, but it has been gradually reduced by almost constant warfare to barely three hundred and fifty, of whom not more than seventy-five are adult males, or warriors.
The Seri men and women are of splendid physique; they have fine chests, with slender but sinewy limbs, though the hands and especially the feet are large; their heads, while small in relation to stature, approach the average in size; the hair is luxuriant and coarse, ranging from typical black to tawny in color, and is worn long. They are notably vigorous in movement, erect in carriage, and remarkable for fleetness and endurance.
The Seri subsist chiefly on turtles, fish, mollusks, water-fowl, and other food of the sea; they also take land game, and consume cactus fruits, mesquite beans, and a few other vegetal products of their sterile domain. Most of their food is eaten raw. They neither plant nor cultivate, and are without domestic animals, save dogs which are largely of coyote blood.
The habitations of the Seri are flimsy bowers of cactus and shrubbery, sometimes shingled rudely with turtle-shells and sponges; in some cases these are in clusters pertaining to matronymic family groups; in other cases they are isolated, and are then often abandoned and reoccupied repeatedly, and are apparently common property of the tribe. The habitations afford some protection from sun and wind, but not from cold and wet, which are hardly known in winterless and nearly rainless Seriland.