The principal haunt and only known breeding ground of the pelican in the Gulf of California is Isla Tassne, an integral part of Seriland; and while the great birds are doubtless taken occasionally in Bahia Kunkaak, El Infiernillo, Bahia Tepoka, and other Seri waters, this island is the principal pelican hunting ground. According to Mashém’s account, the chase of the pelican here is a well-organized collective process: at certain seasons, or at least at times deemed propitious by the shamans, pelican harvests are planned; and after some days of preparation a large party assemble at a certain convenient point (presumably Punta Antigualla) and await a still evening in the dark of the moon. When all conditions are favorable they set out for the island at late twilight, in order that it may be reached after dark; on approaching the shore the balsas are left in charge of the women, while the warriors and the larger boys, armed only with clubs, rush on the roosting fowls and slaughter them in great numbers—the favorite coup de grâce being a blow on the neck. The butchery is followed by a gluttonous feast, in which the half-famished families gorge the tenderer parts in the darkness, and noisily carouse in the carnage until overcome by slumber. Next day the matrons select the carcasses of least injured plumage and carefully remove the skins, the requisite incisions being made either with the edge of a shell-cup or with a sharp sliver of cane-stalk taken from an injured arrow or a broken balsa-cane. The feast holds for several days, or until the last bones are picked and the whole party sated, when the clans scatter at will, laden with skins and lethargic from the fortnight’s food with which each maw is crammed.
Mashém’s recital gave no indication as to whether the Pelican clan participate in the hunting orgies, though it clearly implies that the chase and feast are at least measurably ceremonial in character; and this implication was strengthened by the interest and comparative vivacity awakened in the Seri bystanders by their spokesman’s frequent interlocutions with them during the recital. Unfortunately the account was not clear as to the seasons selected, though the expressions indicated that the feasts are fixed for times at which the young are fully fledged. It would seem inconceivable that the Seri, with their insatiate appetite for eggs and tender young, should consciously respect a breeding time or establish a closed season to perpetuate any game; yet it is probable that the pelican is somehow protected in such wise that it is not only not exterminated or exiled, but actually fostered and cultivated. It is certain that the mythical Ancient of Pelicans is the chief creative deity of Seri legend, and its living representative the chief tutelary of one of the clans; it is certain, too, that this fleshly fowl, sluggish and defenseless as it is on its sleeping grounds, would be the easiest source of Seri food if it were hunted indiscriminately; and it is no less certain that the omnivorous tribesmen would quickly extinguish the local stock if they were to make its kind, including eggs and young, their chief diet; yet it survives in literal thousands to patrol the waters of all Seriland in far-stretching files and vees seldom out of sight in suitable weather. On the whole, it would seem evident that an interadjustment has grown up between the tribesmen and their fish-eating tutelary during the centuries, whereby the fowl is protected, albeit subconsciously only, during the breeding seasons; and in view of other characteristics of the tribe it would seem equally evident that the protection is in some way effected by means of ceremonies and tabus.
Somewhat analogous, though apparently less ceremonial, expeditions are made to Isla Patos and other points in search of ducks, and to Isla San Esteban, and still more distant islands in search of eggs (preferably near the hatching point) and nestlings; while the abundant waterfowl of the region are sought in Rada Ballena and other sheltered bays, as well as in such landlocked lagoons as those of Punta Miguel and Punta Arena. This hunting involves the use of bows and arrows, though the archery of the tribe pertains rather to the chase of larger land game, and apparently attains its highest development in connection with warfare. No specialized fowling devices have been observed among the Seri; and their autonomous recitals, the facies of their artifacts, and the observed habits of the tribe (especially the youth) with respect to birds, all indicate that ordinary fowling holds a subordinate place in Seri craft—i. e., that it is a fortuitous and emergency avocation, rather than an organized art like turtle-fishing and water-carrying. Concordantly, culinary processes are not normally employed in connection with waterfowl, and the customary implements used for incising the skin and severing other tissues are the shell-cup, which is carried habitually for other purposes, the cane-splint, which appears to be improvised on occasion, and never carried habitually, and the ubiquitous hupf.
Probably second in importance among Seri prey, as a food-source merely, stand the multifarious fishes with which the waters of Seriland teem, particularly if the class be held to comprise the cetaceans and seals and selachians ranked as leaders of the fish fauna in Seri lore.
Naturally, whales lie outside the ordinary range of Seri game, yet they are not without place in the tribal economy. During the visit to the Seri rancheria near Costa Rica in 1894, it was noted that various events—births, deaths, journeys, etc.—were referred to “The Time of the Big Fish”; and it was estimated from apparent ages of children and the like that this chronologic datum might be correlated roughly with the year 1887. The era-marking event was memorable to Mashém, to the elderwomen of the Turtle clan, and to other mature members of the group, because they had been enabled thereby to dispense with hunting and fishing for an agreeably long time, and because they had moved their houses; but the providential occurrence was not interpreted at the time. On visiting Isla Tiburon in 1895, the interpretation became clear; along the western shore of Rada Ballena, near the first sand-spit north of the bight, lay the larger bones of a whale, estimated from the length of the mandibles and the dimensions of the vertebræ to have been 75 or 80 feet long. It was evident that the animal had gone into the shoal water at exceptionally high tide and had stranded during the ebb; while the condition of the bones suggested an exposure to the weather of perhaps half a dozen years. On the shrubby bank above the beach, hard by the bleaching skeleton, stood the new rancheria, the most extensive seen in Seriland, comprising some fifteen or twenty habitable jacales; and fragments of ribs and other huge bones about and within the huts[273] attested transportation thither after the building, while the shallowness of the trails and the limited trampling of the fog shrubbery gave an air of freshness to the site and surroundings. The traditions and the relics together made it manifest that “The Time of the Big Fish” had indeed marked an epoch in Seri life; that when the leviathan landed (whether through accident or partly through efforts of balsa-men) it was quickly recognized as a vast contribution to the Seri larder; and that some of the clans, if not the entire tribe, gathered to gorge first flesh and blubber, next sun-softened cartilage and chitin, and then epiphyses and the fatter bones. Some of the ribs were splintered and crushed, evidently by blows of the hupf, in order to give access to the cancellate interiors; several of the vertebræ were battered and split, and nearly all of the bones bore marks of hupf blows, aimed to loosen cartilaginous attachments, start epiphyses, or remove spongy and greasy processes. Little trace of fire was found; in one case a mandible was partly scorched, though the burning appeared to be fortuitous and long subsequent to the removal of the flesh; and a bit of charred and gnawed epiphysis, much resembling the fragments of half-cooked turtle plastron scattered over Seriland, was picked up in one of the huts. The condition of the remains and the various indications connected with the rancheria corroborated the tradition that the great creature had afforded unlimited and acceptable food for many moons; and various expressions of the tradition indicated that the event, though the most memorable of its class, was not unique in Seri lore.
A few bones and fragments of skin of the seal were found in and about the rancherias on Isla Tiburon, and an old basket rebottomed with sealskin was picked up in a recently abandoned jacal on Rada Ballena; a few bones provisionally identified with the porpoise (which haunts Boco Infierno in shoals) were also found amid the refuse about the old rancheria at the base of the long sand-spit terminating in Punta Tormenta; but nothing was learned specifically concerning the chase and consumption either of these animals or of the abundant sharks from which the island is named.
Fig. 21—Fish-spearhead.
Among the exceedingly limited food supplies brought from the coast by the Seri group at Costa Rica in 1894, were rank remnants of partly desiccated fish, usually gnawed down to heads and tails; and Mashém and others spoke of fish as a habitual food, while Señor Encinas regarded it as the principal element of the tribal dietary. The harder bones and heavier scales of several varieties of fish were also found abundantly among the middens of both mainland and Tiburon shores in 1895. None of the remains bore noticeable traces of fire; and all observations, including those of Señor Encinas, indicate that the smaller varieties of fish are habitually eaten raw, either fresh or partially dried, according to the state of appetite at the time of taking—or the condition of finding when picked up as beach flotsam. But a single piscatorial device was observed, i. e., the barbed point and foreshaft, shown in figure 21—the iron point being, of course, accultural, and probably obtained surreptitiously. This harpoon, which measures 6 inches in length over all, is designed for use in connection with the main shaft of a turtle-catching tackle; and it is evidently intended for the larger varieties, perhaps porpoises or sharks. In 1827 Hardy observed a related device:
They have a curious weapon which they employ for catching fish. It is a spear with a double point, forming an angle of about 5°. The insides of these two points, which are 6 inches long, are jagged, so that when the body of a fish is forced between them, it can not get away on account of the teeth.[274]