No special devices have been developed in connection with the chase for stock, nor has material progress been made in acquiring Caucasian devices. There are, indeed, indications of a disposition to use knives in severing the tough integuments and tendons of horses and kine, although the tendency has not yet resulted (as elsewhere noted, ante, pp. 152*-154*) in the development of a knife-sense; and although boys on the frontier play at roping dogs, no effort to use the riata or any form of rope is made in the actual chase. As naively explained by Mashém amid approving grunts from his clan-mates, they have no time for ropes or knives when hungry.
A quantitatively unimportant yet by no means negligible fraction of the normal diet of Seriland is vegetal; and while the sources of vegetal food are many and diverse, the chief constituent is a single product characteristic of American deserts, viz., the tuna, or prickly pear.
All of the cacti of the region yield tunas in considerable quantity. The pitahaya is perhaps the most abundant producer, and its name is often given to the fruit; the huge saguaro affords an enormous annual yield, and the still more gigantic saguesa is even more prolific, especially in its immense forests along the eastern base of Sierra Seri; the cina adds materially to the aggregate product, while the nopal, or common prickly pear, contributes a quota acquiring importance from the facility with which it may be harvested. The fruits of all these cacti are sometimes classed as sweet tunas, in contradistinction from the sour tunas yielded in great abundance by the cholla and consumed with avidity by stock, though seldom eaten by men. The edible tunas average about the size of lemons, and resemble figs save that their skin is beset with prickles. The portion eaten is a luscious pulp, filled with minute seeds like those of the fig save that they are too hard for mastication or digestion, its flavor ranging from the sickly sweet of the overcultivated fig to a pleasant acidity. While occasional tunas may be found at any time during the year, the normal harvest occurs about midsummer, or shortly before the July-August humid season, and lasts for several weeks. During the height of the season the clans withdraw from the coast and give undivided attention to the collection and consumption of the fruits, gorging them in such quantities that, according to the testimony of the vaqueros, they are fattened beyond recognition. Commonly the tunas are eaten just as they are gathered, and the families and larger bands move about from pitahaya to pitahaya and from valley to valley in a slovenly chase of this natural harvest, until waning supply and cloying appetite drive them back to the severer chase of turtle and pelican. The fruit is not cooked, and never preserved save in the noisome way of nature, and is rarely transported in quantities or over distances of industrial importance; yet the product may have some connection with the basketry of the tribe. The devices for collecting the fruits, especially from the lofty saguaro and saguesa, are mere improvisations of harpoon shafts, paloblanco branches, or chance cane-stalks carried primarily for arrow-making or balsa construction. There is no such well-studied and semiceremonial apparatus for tuna gathering as, for example, the Papago device made from the ribs of the dead saguaro in accordance with traditional formula.
Perhaps second in importance among the vegetal constituents of Seri diet is the mesquite bean, which is gathered in random fashion whenever a well-loaded tree is found and other conditions favor. The woody beans and still woodier pods are roughly pulverized by pounding with the hupf on any convenient stone used as an ahst (metate or mortar), or, if suitable stones are not at hand, they are carried in baskets or improvised bags to the nearest shore or other place at which stones may be found. The half-ground grist is winnowed in the ordinary way of tossing in a basket; and the grinding and winnowing continue alternately until a fairly uniform bean meal is obtained. So far as was actually observed this is eaten raw, either dry in small pinches or, more commonly, stirred in water to form a thin atole; but expressions at Costa Rica indicated that the meal is sometimes stirred in boiling water or pot-liquor, and thus partially cooked, in times of rest and plenty.
Other vegetal products used as food comprise a variety of seeds collected from sedges and grasses growing about the mud-flats of Laguna La Cruz and other portions of the province, as well as the seeds and nuts of the scant shrubbery of shores and mountains; while a local seaweed or kelp is eaten in small quantity, apparently as a condiment, and is sometimes carried on journeys even as far as Costa Rica, where specimens were obtained in 1894.
It is of interest to note that one of the most distinctive constituents of the Sonoran flora, and one intimately connected with human life in the great neighboring province of Papagueria, is of negligible rarity in Seriland; this is the visnaga (Echinocactus, probably of two or three species), the thorniest of the cacti and the only one containing consumable pulp and sap. This peculiar plant is of no small interest in itself as a striking example of the inverse relation between protective devices of chemical sort (culminating in acrid, offensive, or toxic juices) and the mechanical armaments so characteristic of desert plants;[282] it is of still deeper interest economically as the sole source of water over broad expanses of the desert, and one to which hundreds of pioneers and travelers have been indebted for their lives; and it is of interest, too, as a factor of Papago faith, in which the visnaga ranks among the richer guerdons of the rain gods. Throughout most of Papagueria this cactus is fairly abundant; usually there are several specimens to the square mile of suitable soil (it is not found in playas or on the ruggeder sierras), so that it is always within reach of the sagacious traveler; but it diminishes in abundance toward the borders of Seriland, and not more than a dozen examples were found in the portions of that province traversed by the 1895 expedition. Its rare occurrence, chiefly in the form of wounded and dwarfed specimens, seems to indicate that its original range comprised all Seriland; while its dearth suggests destruction nearly to the verge of extinction by improvident generations better armed with their hupfs and harpoons and shell-cups than the subhuman beasts against whom the plant is so well protected.
Aside from the universally used hupf and ahst (which may be regarded as differentiated implements or tools), the only special device used in connection with vegetal food is the basket, or, rather, basketry tray (illustrated in figure 24). This ware is of the widespread coil type so characteristic of southwestern tribes. The coil is a wisp of stems and splints of a fibrous yet spongy shrub, apparently torote; and the woof consists of paloblanco (?) splints deftly intertwined by aid of an awl. The construction is fairly neat and remarkably uniform; the coiled wisps vary somewhat in size, both intentionally and inadvertently, ranging from an average of three-eighths of an inch toward the bottoms of the larger specimens to half that diameter in the smaller specimens and toward the margins of the larger. The initial coil starts in an indefinite knot, rather than a button, at the center; and the spiral is continuous throughout, the final coil being quite deftly worked out to a single splint smoothly stitched to the next lower spiral with the woof splints. The ware is practically water-tight, remarkably strong and resilient, and quite durable in the dry climate of Seriland. Ordinarily the basket is abandoned when the bottom decays or breaks, but an ancient specimen obtained on Isla Tiburon was roughly rebottomed with a patch of sealskin attached by means of sinew. The baskets are notably uniform in shape, though the size varies from 8 or 9 inches to fully 17 inches in diameter.
