The most striking trait of the Seri is the pedestrian habit. The warriors and women and children alike are habitual rovers; their jacales and even their largest rancherias are only temporary domiciles, evidently vacant oftener than occupied; the principal rancherias are separated by a hard day’s journey or more; and none of the known rancherias or jacales of more persistent use are nearer than 4 to 10 miles from the fresh water by which their occupants are supplied. Probably the most persistently occupied rancherias of the last half century have been those located from time to time near Costa Rica, yet even these were seldom occupied by the same group for more than a fortnight or possibly a month, and were often vacated within a day or two after erection. Still more temporary camps intervene between jacales, and their sites may be seen in numbers in the neighborhood of the better-beaten paths, or along the shores, or even over the trackless spall-strewn plains; they may be merely trampled spots, sparsely strewn with oyster shells and large bones gnawed at the ends, usually in the lea of a shrub or rock; in places of small shrubbery or exceptionally abundant grass there may be two or three or perhaps half a dozen “forms” (suggesting the temporary resting places of rabbits), in which robust bodies nestled and shrugged themselves into the warm earth and under the meager vegetation. Rarely there are ashes and cinders hard by, to mark the site of a tiny fire, and more frequently battered and stained or greasy bowlders record their own use as meat-blocks or metates, though it is manifest that most of the camps were fireless and many foodless. It is particularly noteworthy that even the more temporary resting-places are seldom if ever less than a mile or two from the nearest fresh water. In short, the Seri are not a domiciliary folk, but rather homeless wanderers, customarily roving from place to place, frequently if not commonly sleeping where overtaken by exhaustion or storm, ordinarily slumbering through a part of the day and watching by night, habitually avoiding fresh waters save in hurried and stealthy visits, and apparently gathering in their flimsy huts only on special occasions.
In conformity with their rovingness the Seri are notable burden-bearers. They habitually carry their entire stock of personal belongings (arms, implements, utensils, and bedding), as well as their stock of food and—weightiest burden of all—the water requisite for prolonged sustenance amid scorching deserts, in all their wanderings, the water being borne chiefly by women, in ollas, either balanced on the head singly or slung in pairs on rude yokes like those of Chinese coolies. And they have never grasped the idea of imposing their burdens on their bestial associates; their coyote-curs are not harnessed or even led; when they surround and capture horses, burros, and kine they make no use of ropes, never think of mounting even when pursued by vaqueros, but immediately break the necks or club out the brains of the beasts, perchance to tear the writhing body into quarters and flee for their lives with the reeking flesh still quivering on their sturdy heads and brawny shoulders—and scores of vaqueros agree in the affirmation (wholly incredible as it would be if supported by fewer witnesses) that even when so burdened the Seri skim the sand wastes of Desierto Encinas more rapidly than avenging horsemen can follow.
The hardly conceivable fleetness of the Seri is conformable with their habitual rovingness and their ability as burden-bearers; and this faculty is established by cumulative evidence so voluminous and consistent as to outweigh the presumption arising from the standards attained among other peoples. A few minutes after they were photographed, the group of boys shown in plate XVI, with several others of about the same size, provided themselves with a stock of their favorite human-hair cords, “rounded up” a dozen mongrel coyote-dogs haunting the rancheria at Costa Rica, and herded the unwilling animals toward a shrubbery-free space a quarter of a mile away, in order to rope them in imitation of the work of the Mexican cowboys earlier in the morning. From time to time as they went a frightened cur sneaked or broke through the cordon of boys, and made for distant shrub-tufts at top speed; yet in every case a boy darted from the ring, headed off the animal within one or two hundred yards, and lashed it back to its place. On arriving at their miniature rodeo the boys widened their ring, and at a signal scattered and frightened the dogs; then, when the fleeing animals had a fair start, each selected his victim and followed it, yelling and swinging his light lasso, until, after much doubling and dodging and many unsuccessful casts, he caught and dragged the howling beast back to the open; and it was only after half a dozen repetitions that enough dogs had escaped to spoil the sport. As the boys lounged chattering back toward the rancheria their course lay between two clumps of the usual desert shrubbery, so placed that when the first was obliquely left and 40 or 50 feet distant from them, the other was obliquely right and 100 feet away. At this point a bevy of small birds (perhaps blackbirds—at any rate corresponding to blackbirds in size and flight) fluttered suddenly out of the nearer clump toward the more distant one, when, too instantaneously for the untrained eye to catch exchange of signal or beginning of movement, the boys lunged forward in a common effort to seize the birds; and though none were entirely successful, one exultantly displayed a tuft of feathers clutched by his fingers as the bird darted into and through the thorny harbor. When the distances were paced it was found that, although the birds had the advantage of the start, the boys covered at least 90 per cent of their distance in the same time; while the spontaneity of the impulse demonstrated habitual chase of flying game under fit conditions.
While obtaining the Seri vocabulary with Mashém’s aid, advantage was taken of every opportunity to secure collateral information concerning the actual use of the terms, and thereby of gaining insight into the tribal habits. Through his naive explanations, usually repeated and corroborated by the elderwoman of the Turtle clan (Juana Maria) and others of the tribe, it was learned that half-grown Seri boys are fond of hunting hares (jack-rabbits); that they usually go out for this purpose in threes or fours; that when a hare is started they scatter, one following it slowly while the others set off obliquely in such manner as to head it off and keep it in a zigzag or doubling course until it tires; and that they then close in and take the animal in their hands, frequently bringing it in alive to show that it was fairly caught—for it is deemed discreditable, if not actually wrong, to take game animals without giving them opportunity for escape or defense by exercise of their natural powers. Similarly, Mashém described the chase of the bura and other deer as ordinarily conducted by five persons (of whom one or two may be youths), who scatter at sight of the quarry, gradually surround it, bewilder it by confronting it at all points, and finally close in either to seize it with their hands, or perhaps to brain it with a stone or short club; the former being held the proper way and the latter a partial failure. This hunting custom, described as a commonplace by Mashém, is established by the vaqueros who had frequently witnessed it from a distance; and the same extra-tribal observers described still more striking feats of individual Seri hunters: Don Manuel, son of Señor Encinas, and Don Ygnacio Lozania were endeavoring to train to work a robust Seri (one of a band sojourning temporarily at Costa Rica) noted for his prowess in hunting. One hot afternoon he begged relief from his tasks, saying the spirit of catching a deer had hold on him; and he was excused on condition that the deer be brought entire to the rancho. Two hours later he was seen driving in a full-grown buck; on approaching the rancho the terrified animal turned this way and that, describing long arcs in wild efforts to avoid the human habitation; yet the hunter kept beyond it, heading it off at every turn and gradually working it nearer, until, at a sudden turn, he was able to rush on it; whereupon he caught it, threw it over his shoulders, and ran in to the rancho with the animal still struggling and kicking off its overheated hoofs.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XVIII
“JUANA MARIA,” SERI ELDERWOMAN
Señor Encinas himself, with Don Andrés Noriega and several other attachés, vouch for the catching of a horse by a Seri hunter in still more expeditious fashion: one of the horses belonging to the rancho was exceptionally fat, and hence exceptionally tempting to the Seri band (and at the same time worthless to the vaqueros); the chief begged for it persistently until, wearied by his importunities, the ranchero offered the horse to the band on condition that a single one of them should catch it within a fixed distance (about 200 yards) from the gateway of the corral—and the offer was promptly accepted. With the view of making the test of fleetness fair, a vaquero was called in to frighten the horse and start him running around the interior of the corral, while a boy stood by to drop the bars at the proper moment, the Indian standing ready outside the gateway; when the animal had gained its best speed the bars were dropped and it bolted for the open plains—but before the 200-yard limit was reached the hunter had overtaken it, leaped on its withers, caught it by the jaw in one hand and the foretop in the other, and thereby thrown it in such manner as to break its neck. Knowing of these and other instances, L. K. Thompson, of Hermosillo, undertook arrangements for publicly exhibiting Seri runners as deer catchers at different expositions during the nineties; but his arrangements failed, chiefly because of the anticipated (and probably underestimated) difficulty of taming the Seri sufficiently for the purpose.
About 1893, Señor Encinas and several attendants left Costa Rica one morning for Hermosillo, leaving at the rancho, among others, a Seri matron with a sick child nearly a year old; in the evening (as they learned later) the child was worse, and the matron took the trail about dusk, in the hope of finding a cure in the white man’s touch or other medicine—and at dawn next morning she was at Molino del Encinas, 17 leagues (nearly 45 miles) away, with her helpless child and a peace offering in the form of a hare, which she had run down and caught in the course of the journey. And the matrons, with children astride their hips and water-filled ollas balanced on their heads, and all their goods and chattels piled on their backs, habitually traverse Desierto Encinas from the sea to Costa Rica (some 30 miles), or from Costa Rica to the sea, in a night.