The larger objects of the feral chase are deer of two or three species (the bura, or mule-deer, being most conspicuous and easiest taken), antelope, and mountain sheep; to which the puma, the jaguar, and perhaps two or three other carnivores might be added. The conventional method of taking the bura and other deer is a combination of stalking and coursing, usually conducted by five of the younger warriors, though three or four may serve in emergency; any excess over five being regarded as superfluous, or as a confession of inferiority. The chase is conducted in a distinctly ceremonial and probably ritualistic fashion, even when the finding of the game is casual, or incidental to a journey: at sight of the quarry, the five huntsmen scatter stealthily in such manner as partially to surround it; when it takes fright one after the other strives to show himself above the shrubbery or dunes in order to break its line of flight into a series of zigzags; and whether successful in this effort or not they keep approximate pace with it until it tires, then gradually surround it, and finally rush in to either seize it in their hands or cripple it with clubs—though the latter procedure is deemed undignified, if not wrong, and hardly less disreputable than complete failure. When practicable the course is laid toward the rancheria or camp; and in any event the ideal finish is to bring the animal alive into the family group, where it maybe dissected by the women, and where the weaklings may receive due share of the much-prized blood and entrails. The dissection is merely a ravenous rending of skin and flesh, primarily with the teeth (perhaps after oblique bruising or tearing by blows with the hupf over strongly flexed joints), largely with hands and fingers aided anon by a foot planted on the carcass, and partly with some improvised device, such as a horn or tooth of the victim itself, the serrated edge of a shell-cup, or perhaps a sharp-edged cane-splint from a broken arrow carried for emergency’s sake. Commonly the entire animal, save skin and harder bones, is gulped at a sitting in which the zeal of the devotee and the frenzy of the carnivore blend; but in case the group is small and the quarry large, the sitting is extended by naps or prolonged slumberings, and the more energetic squaws may even trouble to kindle a fire and partially cook the larger joints, thereby inciting palled appetite to new efforts. Finally the leg bones are split for the marrow and their ends preserved for awls; the horns are retained by the successful huntsmen as talisman-trophies; while the skin is stretched in the desert sun, scratched and gnawed free of superfluous tissue, rubbed into partial pliability, and kept for bedding or robe or kilt.
The chase of the hare is closely parallel to that of the deer save that it is conducted by striplings, who thereby serve apprenticeship in hunting and at the same time enrich the tribal larder with a game beneath the dignity of the warriors; while still smaller boys similarly chase the rabbit, which is commonly scorned by the striplings. The conventional hare-hunting party is three, and it is deemed disreputable to increase this number greatly. The youths spread at sight of the game and seek to surround it, taking ingenious and constant advantage of the habit of the hare to run obliquely or in zigzags to survey more readily the source of its fright; for some time they startle it but slightly by successive appearances at a distance, but gradually increase its harassment until it bounds hither and thither in terror, when they rapidly close in and seize it, the entire chase commonly lasting but a few minutes. The quarry is customarily taken alive to camp, where it is quickly rent to fragments and the entrails and flesh and most of the bones consumed; the skin usually passes into possession of a matron for use as infantile clothing or cradle bedding, while the ears are kept by the youth who first seized the game until his feat is eclipsed by some other event—unless chance hunger sooner tempts him to transmute his trophy into pottage.
While the collective, semiceremonial style of chase alone is thoroughly good form in Seri custom, it is often rendered impracticable by the scattering of the tribe in separate families or small bands, in which case the bura and its associates, like the larger carnivores customarily, are taken by strategy rather than by strength. This form of chase is largely individual; in it archery plays a leading rôle; and in it, too, ambuscade, stealthy lying in wait, and covert assault attain high development. It is closely analogous with the warfare typical of the tribe; and it is especially noteworthy as one of the most effective stimuli to intellectual activity, and hence to the development of invention—if the term may be applied to industrial products so lowly as those of the Seri.
The chief artifact produced by the strategic chase on land would seem to be the analogue of the harpoon used at sea, i. e., the arrow. This weapon is one of the three or four most highly differentiated and thoroughly perfected of the Seri artifacts, ranking with canteen-olla and balsa, and perhaps outranking the turtle-harpoon. It is fabricated with great care and high skill, and with striking uniformity in details of material and construction. A typical example is 25 inches in length and consists of three pieces—point, foreshaft, and main shaft (feathered toward the nock). The foreshaft is 8½ inches long, of hard wood carefully ground by rubbing with quartzite or pumice into cylindrical form, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter at the larger end and tapering slightly toward the point; the larger end is extended by careful grinding into a tang which is fitted into the main shaft, the joint being neatly wrapped with sinew. This main shaft is a cane-stalk (Phragmites communis?) 15 or 16 inches long, carefully selected for size and well straightened and smoothed; it is feathered with three equidistantly-placed wing-feathers of hawk or falcon, neatly prepared by removing a thin strip of the rachis bearing the wider vexillum and attaching it by sinew wrappings at both ends, the feathers being about 5½ inches in length. The nock is a simple rounded notch, placed just below a joint and supported by the sinew ferrule; there is no foot-plug. The favorite point is a bit of flotsam hoop-iron, ground into elongate triangular shape with projecting barbs, and a short tang or shank fitted into a shallow notch in the foreshaft, cemented there with mesquite gum, and finally fixed firmly with sinew wrappings. A typical iron-point arrow, with bow and quiver, is depicted in plate XXX. Alternative points are of rudely chipped stone (two examples are illustrated in figure 37) somewhat clumsily attached to the foreshaft by mesquite gum and sinew wrapping; while the arrows used by boys and hunters of small game are usually pointless, the tip of the foreshaft being sharpened and hardened by slight charring. In some of the arrows, especially those designed for use in war, the foreshaft is notched, or else loosely attached to the main shaft, in order that it may be detached from the main shaft and remain in the body of enemy or prey. The foreshaft is commonly painted some bright color (red is prevalent), while the points and attachments of the “poisoned” specimens are smeared with some greasy substance.
The aboriginal Seri arrow has undoubtedly been modified during the centuries since the coming of Cortés and Mendoza with their metal-armed troopers; yet certain inferences as to the indigenous form of the weapon are easily drawn from its construction and the homologies of its parts.
The first feature of the artifact to attract attention is the relative clumsiness of attachment and frequent absence of points. The chipped-stone points are so rude as to be quite out of harmony with the otherwise delicately wrought and graceful arrow, while the attachment is strikingly rude; and it is still more noteworthy that the very name for stone arrowpoint was little understood at Costa Rica, and was obtained only after extended inquiry and repeated conferences among the older informants. Even the attachment of the effective points made from hoop-iron is bad constructionally; the sinew wrapping is carried around the entire blade in such manner as to sheathe the sharply ground edges and itself be cut on contact with firm tissue; and the fitting and wrapping are so rude as to be incongruous with the rest of the apparatus. On the whole the suggestion is strong that the arrowpoint is accultural—and this suggestion is further strengthened by the very existence of the practically functionless, and hence manifestly vestigial, hard-wood foreshaft. Turning to the structural homologies, the observer is at once struck with the parallelism running through the three most conspicuous compound artifacts found among the Seri, i. e., the harpoon, the fire-drill, and the arrow. All of these alike consist of two essential parts, main shaft and foreshaft; all are akin in function even in the superficial view of the Caucasian, and are much more closely related in primitive thought—indeed the fire-drill is but a featherless and nockless arrow, with the foreshaft charred at its fire-giving tip; and all are closely linked in language and allied with other terms in such wise as practically to establish identity among them in the thinking of their lowly makers (though unfortunately the incomplete vocabularies extant are insufficient for full study of the linguistic homologies). Briefly the indications are that the harpoon was the primary device, and that its foreshaft was a tooth of an aquatic fish-eater like the seal, or perchance in some cases an os penis; that its lineal successor was a loose-head lance for use on sea and land, at first with the unaided hand and later with the atlatl, or throwing-stick (the lance being now extinct, though recorded by early visitors to Seriland); that the next artifact-generation in the direct line was represented by the arrow, foreshafted with hard wood or tooth, made light and graceful and loose-headed or not, according to needs, and by the substitution of bow for atlatl; and that a somewhat aberrant line was marked by the taming of fire, its reproduction by the modified arrow, and the differentiation of fire-stick from arrow and either atlatl or bow.
In tracing these stages in technologic growth, it is to be remembered that the Seri are so primitive as to betray some of the very beginnings of activital concepts; that to them zoic potencies are the paramount powers of the cosmos; that in their simple thought fire is a bestial rather than a physical phenomenon; that in their naive philosophy the production of devouring flame is of a kind with vital birth and a similitude of sexual reproduction; and that according to their notions the conquest of quarry, including fire, is made practicable only by aid of the mystical potencies of beasts and flames gained through invocatory use of symbols or actual organs.
In the Seri tongue the term “fire-drill” is kaak, an indefinite generic meaning “kind” or “strong kind”, with an egocentric connotation (“Our-Strong-Kind”), as in the proper tribal designation Kun-kaak or Km-kaak; while the term for the nether fire-stick or hearth is either maam (“woman”, or more properly “mother”), or else (and more commonly) kaak-maam, which may be rendered “Kind-Mother”—the “Kind”, as among primitive folk generally, comprising both men and tutelary beasts, and in this case fire as the most mysterious of the beasts; there is thus a suggestive analogy between the designation for the fire-producing apparatus and that for the tribe itself. It should be noted that the zoic concept of fire is widespread among the more primitive peoples of various provinces, and sometimes persists in recognizable form in higher culture (witness the fire-breathing dragons of various mythologies, the “Red Flower” notion gathered in India by Kipling, etc.); also that the ascription of sex to the fire-sticks is prevalent among North American tribes, and at once helps to interpret the development of the fire-drill, fire-syringe, and other primitive devices, such, for example, as those so fully described by Hough,[276] and serves to explain the otherwise obscure genesis of the fire-sense, which must have accompanied and shaped that most significant of all steps in human progress, the conquest of fire.
The modern coordinate of the Seri arrow is the bow, made preferably from a straight and slender branch of the palo blanco. A typical specimen is illustrated in plate XXX; it is 4 feet 9½ inches long, with the outer face convex and the inner face flat; greatest width 1¾ inches, narrowed to 1⅛ inches at the hand-hold; thickness at the hand-hold 1 inch, thinning to five-eighths inch at 8 inches from this point; tapering gradually in both dimensions toward the extremities, which are rudely notched to receive the cord (of mesquite-root fiber). The specimen illustrated has been cracked and repaired in two places; in one place the repair was effected by a rough wrapping of sinew, and in the other by slipping over the wood a natural sheath of rawhide from the leg of a deer. The specimen is of added interest in that it combines bow and nether fire-stick (“Strong-Kind-Mother”), one of the friction holes being worn out to the notched margin, and the other remaining in usable condition, as shown in the enlarged marginal drawing.[277]
Compared with the delicately finished and graceful arrow, the typical bow is a rude and clumsy device; it displays little skill in the selection and shaping of material, and evidently involves little labor in manufacture—indeed, the indications are that more actual labor is spent in the construction of a single arrow than in the making of a bow, while the arrow-making is expert work, betokening craft of a high order, and the bow-making little more than simple handiwork of the lowest order. The comparison affords some indication of the genesis of Seri archery, and at the same time corroborates the independent suggestion that the arrow is of so much greater antiquity than the bow as to represent a distinct stage in cultural development—though the precise cultural significance of the bow is not easily ascertained.