Fig. 12—Wooden beads.
The presumptively decorative costumery observed is limited to necklaces, usually of strung seeds, shells, and beads of wood or bone (figures 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13), though animal appendages, such as hoofs, teeth, etc., are sometimes worn. The most highly prized necklace found at Costa Rica was a human-hair cord with nine crotalus rattles attached (figure 14), worn by a young warrior of the Rattlesnake (?) clan. Not the slightest indication of headdresses was seen (though deer and lion masks are said by Hardy to have been worn on occasions); there were no bracelets, leg-bands, or rings of any description, and the cheap jewelry given to many of the women and youths at Costa Rica was either strung about the neck or concealed; while it is significant that even the showiest jewelry was less appreciated than bits of manta or lumps of sugar. When it is remembered that the Seri have been in occasional contact with Caucasians for over three and a half centuries, the fact that not a single glass bead was found among them becomes significant; and the significance of the simple fact is increased by the virtual absence of that persistent desire and protean use for beads—or bead-sense—so prominent among most primitive tribes.
Fig. 13—Necklace of wooden beads.
Naturally the conditions at Costa Rica were unfavorable to the study of native ideas concerning apparel. The women and some of the children were arrayed chiefly in cast-off habiliments of the rancheras or in nondescript rags, while the men either aped Mexican fashions, like Mashém, or shamefacedly sweltered under the unaccustomed burden of tatterdemalion gear; yet there was a meaningful absence of that desire for finery so prominent among primitive peoples—a fact quite as eloquent in itself as the absence of bracelets and bangles, tassels and trappings. It is probable that the shamans and mystery-hedged crones in the depths of Seriland enhance their influence by the aid of symbolic paraphernalia (indeed, some inkling of such customs is found in the meager records of earlier visitors);[263] yet the conspicuous feature of Seri costumery is the dearth of decorative devices.
The habitations of the tribe are the simplest of jacales—mere bowers, affording partial protection from sun and wind, but not designed to shed rain or bar cold. Half a dozen of these were examined at Costa Rica in 1894 and probably a hundred more, in various stages of habitability, in Seriland proper in 1895, yet not the slightest trace of decoration was observed—the structures are plainly and barrenly utilitarian in every feature. The same may be said of the balsas in which the Seri navigate their stormy waters; for the peculiarly graceful curves of the craft evidently stand for nothing more than the mechanical solution of a complex problem in balanced forces, wrought out through the experience of generations, while the simple reed bundles are absolutely devoid of paint, of superfluous cord, of fetishistic appendages or markings, of tritons, nereids, or other votive symbols at bow or stern, and of industrially superfluous features or attachments in general—indeed, the only appendages discovered were one or two simple wooden marlinspikes (shown in figure 26), thrust among the reeds to be at hand in case of need for repairs.
Fig. 14—Rattlesnake necklace.
Among the utensils employed in the primitive householdry of the Seri the most conspicuous and at the same time the most essential is the olla, or water-jar. Its technical features are described elsewhere; but it may here be noted that the olla is the central artifact about which the very life of the tribe rotates: since the clans never reside and rarely camp nearer than 3 to 15 miles from the aguaje, a large part of the water consumed must be transported great distances in these vessels; since the region is one of extreme aridity, the lives of small parties often depend on the integrity of the olla and on the care with which the fragile vessel is protected from shock or overturning; and hence the utensil must occupy a large if not a dominant place in everyday thought—indeed, the fact that it does so is attested by constant custom and also by its employment as the most conspicuous among the mortuary sacrifices. Thus, the relation of the Seri olla to its makers and users is parallel with that of the ever-present earthen pot to the Pueblo people, or that of the cooking basket to the acorn-eaters of California, save that its relative importance is enhanced by the fewness of activital lines and motives in Seri life. Moreover, this most characteristic utensil is established and hallowed in Seri thought by immemorial associations: its sherds are sown over the hundred thousand square miles of ancient “despoblado” from Tiburon to Caborca, Magdalena, Rio Opodepe, and Cerro Prieto, and are scattered through the 90 feet of shells forming Punta Antigualla (perhaps the oldest shell mound of America); and all the sherds from the range and the shell-strata are so like and so different from any other fictile ware as to be distinguished at a glance. Hence it would seem manifest that the Seri olla must constitute a normal nucleus for the Seri esthetic; yet even here the field is practically barren, as is shown by the study of a score of usable and mortuary specimens and of thousands of sherds. The most ornate specimen seen is that depicted in plate XXXII. Its form, like that of the balsa, is a mechanical equation of forces and materials; its body-color is that of the clay, blotched and blackened irregularly by the smoke of the firing; and its decoration is limited to 17 faint lines or bands radiating downward from the ill-shaped neck. The radial bands were evidently drawn by a finger dipped in clayey water after the vessel was otherwise finished for the firing; they are irregular in placement, width, length, and direction; they generally run in pairs, two straight lines alternating with two zigzag lines, though the circuit is completed by two zigzags drawn wide apart and separated by a single straight line. The meaning of the device (if meaning there be) was not directly ascertained; but it is suggestive that its maker and owner was the mother of the youthful warrior from whom the rattlesnake necklace was obtained (her face-symbol is that shown in the lower left figure of plate XXVI), and that the vessel was surrendered more reluctantly than any other article obtained from the tribe.
Another utensil of some importance to the tribe is a basket of the type illustrated in figure 24. It is manufactured with much skill and is used for various domestic purposes, being practically water-tight and unbreakable, and materially lighter than even the unparalleledly light fictile ware of the Seri. In form and size and weave the half dozen examples seen correspond with widespread southwestern types; yet it is noteworthy that while otherwise similar baskets are habitually decorated by other basket-making tribes, the Seri specimens were absolutely devoid of decorative devices.