It may be pointed out finally that the field of spontaneous action is relatively increased with the endless multiplications of action accompanying the passage from the lower realms to the higher—indeed the relations may be likened unto those of exogenous growth, which is largely withdrawn from the irresponsive and stable interior structures and gathered into the responsive and spontaneously active peripheral structures; so that spontaneous activity attending natural development is relatively more important in the higher stages than in the lower.[266]
Now, on combining the several indications it is found clear (1) that the more spontaneous developmental factor in all normal growth corresponds with the esthetic factor in demotic activity; (2) that this is the initiatory factor and the chief determinant of the rate and course of development; (3) that it is of relatively enlarged prominence in the higher stages; and hence (4) that the esthetic activities afford a means of measuring developmental status or the relative positions in terms of development of races and tribes.
On applying these principles to the Seri tribe, in the light of their meager industrial motives and still poorer esthetic motives, it would appear that they stand well at the bottom of the scale in demotic development. Their somatic characteristics are suggestively primitive, as already shown; and the testimony of these characteristics is fully corroborated by that of their esthetic status as interpreted in the light of the laws of growth.
Industries and Industrial Products
The pacific vocations of the Seri are few. They are totally without agriculture, and even devoid of agricultural sense, though they consume certain fruits and seeds in season; they are without domestic animals, though they live in cotoleration with half-wild dogs, and perhaps with pelicans; and they are without commerce, save that primitive and inimical interchange commonly classed as pillage and robbery. Accordingly, their pacific industries are limited to those connected with (1) sustentation, chiefly by means of fishing and the chase; (2) navigation and carrying, (3) house-building, (4) appareling, and (5) manufacturing their simple implements and utensils; and these constructive industries are balanced and conditioned by the destructive avocation of (6) nearly continuous warfare.
FOOD AND FOOD-GETTING
The primary resource of Seriland is raised to the first place in realized importance only by its rarity, viz., potable water—a commodity so abundant in most regions as to divert conscious attention from its paramount role in physiologic function as well as in industrial economy. The overwhelming importance of this food-source is worthy of closer attention than it usually receives. Classed by function, human foods are (1) nutrients, including animal and vegetal substances which are largely assimilated and absorbed into the system; (2) assimilants, including condiments, etc., which promote alimentation and apparently aid metabolism; (3) paratriptics, or waste preventers, including alcohol and other stimulants, which in some little-understood way retard the waste of tissue and consequent dissipation of vital energy; and (4) diluents, which modify the consistency of solid foods and thereby facilitate assimilation, besides maintaining the water of the system. Classed by chemic constitution, the foods may be divided into (1) proteids, or nitrogenous substances, including the more complex animal and vegetal compounds; (2) fats, or nonnitrogenous substances in which the ratio of hydrogen and oxygen is unlike that of water, and which are second in complexity among animal and vegetal compounds; (3) carbohydrates, or nonnitrogenous compounds of carbon with hydrogen and oxygen in the proportions required to form water, which are among the simpler vegetal and animal compounds; and (4) minerals, chiefly water, with relatively minute quantities of various salts. Both classifications are somewhat indefinite, largely because most articles of food combine two or more of the classes; yet they are useful in that they indicate the high place of the simple mineral water among food substances. Quantitatively this constituent stands far in the lead among foods; the human adult consumes a daily mean of about 4½ pounds of simple liquids and 2½ pounds of nominally solid, but actually more than half watery, food; so that the average man daily ingests nearly 6 pounds of water and but little over 1 pound of actually solid nutrients. Thus the ratio of the consumption of liquid food to that of solids is (naturally, in view of that readier elimination of the liquid constituent so characteristic especially of arid regions) somewhat larger than the ratio of water to solids in the human system, the ratios being nearly 6:1 and 4:1, respectively.[267] This analysis serves measurably to explain the peculiarly developed water-sense of all desert peoples, a sense finding expression in the first tenets of faith among the Pueblos, in the fundamental law of the Papago, and in the strongest instinct of the Seri; for among folk habituated to thirst through terrible (albeit occasional) experience, water is the central nucleus of thought about which all other ideas revolve in appropriate orbits—it is an ultimate standard of things incomparably more stable and exalted than the gold of civilized commerce, the constantly remembered basis of life itself.
The potable water of Seriland is scanty in the extreme. The aggregate daily quantity available during ten months of the average year (excluding the eight wettest weeks of the two moist seasons) can hardly exceed 0.1 or 0.2 of a second-foot, or 60,000 to 125,000 gallons per day, of living water, i. e., less than the mean supply for each thousand residents of a modern city, or about that consumed in a single hotel or apartment house. Probably two-thirds of this meager supply is confined to a single rivulet (Arroyo Carrizal) in the interior of Tiburon, far from the food-yielding coasts, while the remainder is distributed over the 1,500 square miles of Seriland in a few widely separated aguajes, of which only two or three can be considered permanent; and this normal supply is supplemented by the brackish seepage in storm-cut runnels, as at Barranca Salina, or in shallow wells, as at Pozo Escalante and Pozo Hardy, which is fairly fresh and abundant for a few weeks after each moist season, but bitterly briny if not entirely gone before the beginning of the next. The scanty aggregate serves not only for the human but for the bestial residents of the Seri principality; and its distribution is such that the mean distance to the nearest aguaje throughout the entire region is 8 or 10 miles, while the extreme distances are thrice greater.
The paucity of potable water and the remoteness of its sources naturally affect the habits of the folk; and the effect is intensified by a curious custom, not fully understood, though doubtless connected with militant instincts fixed (like the habits of primitive men generally) by abounding faith and persistent ritualistic practice—i. e., the avoidance of living waters in selecting sites for habitations or even temporary camps. Thus the principal rancherias on Tiburon island, about Rada Ballena, are some 4 miles from Tinaja Anita, the nearest aguaje; the extensive rancherias near Punta Narragansett measure 10 miles by trail from the same aguaje; the half dozen jacales about Campo Navidad are separated by some 15 miles of stony and hilly pathway from the alternative watering places of Tinaja Anita and Arroyo Carrizal;[268] and the huts crowning the great shell-heap of Punta Antigualla—one of the most striking records of immemorial occupancy in America—are nearly or quite 10 miles by trail from Pozo Escalante, and still further from Aguaje Parilla, the nearest sources of potable water. These are but typical instances; and while there are ruined huts (evidently regarded as temporales) near the dead waters of Barranca Salina and Pozo Escalante, they tell the tribal policy of locating habitations in places surprisingly remote from running water. Like other desert folk, the Seri have learned to economize in water-carrying by swigging incredible quantities on their occasional visits to the aguajes; it is probable, too, that their systems are inured, somewhat as are those of the desert animals that survive deprivation of water for days or months, to prolonged abstinence from liquid food; yet it seems safe to assume that at least half of the water required in their vital economy (say 2 or 3 pounds apiece daily, on an average) is consumed after transportation over distances ordinarily ranging from 4 to 12 miles. Under these conditions the Seri have naturally produced a highly developed water industry; they are essentially and primarily water-carriers, and all their other industries are subordinated to this function.