Fig. 24—Seri basket.
The most striking feature of the Seri basketry, as of the pottery, is extreme lightness in proportion to capacity, a quality due to the spongy character of the torote coil and to the thinness of the splints used in the woof. The inside dimensions, weight, and dry-measure capacity (filled to the level of the brim with rice) of two typical specimens approaching extremes in size are indicated in the accompanying table. As noted elsewhere, the ware is absolutely without decorative devices in weave, paint, or form; it is baldly utilitarian, a model of economy in material and in the balance between structure and function, approaching in this respect the thin-walled canteen-olla, the graceful balsa, and the light but effective harpoon. The structural correspondence of the ware to a widespread type and its limited use among the tribe suggest an accultural origin for the Seri basketry; but the delicate adjustment of means to ends in the manufacture and the strictly local character of the material quite as strongly suggest an indigenous development.
| Museum No. | Diameter | Depth | Weight | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 174528 | 38 cm. (15 in.) | 9.5 cm. (3¾ in.) | 482g. (17oz.) | 6.25 l. (6.6 qt.) |
| 174528a | 23 cm. (9 in.) | 5.0cm. (2 in.) | 142 g. (5oz.) | 1 l. (1.06 qt.) |
It is impossible to portray justly the food habits of the Seri without some reference to a systematic scatophagy, which seems to possess fiducial as well as economic features. In its simplest aspect this custom is connected with the tuna harvests; the fruits are eaten in enormous quantity, and are imperfectly digested, the hard-coated seeds especially passing through the system unchanged; the feces containing these seeds are preserved with some care, and after the harvest is passed the hoard (desiccated, of course, in the dry climate) is ground between hupf and ahst, and winnowed in baskets precisely as are the mesquite beans; and the product is then eaten either dry or in the form of atole like the mesquite meal. In superficial view this food factor is the precise homologue of the “second harvest” of the California Indians as described by Clavigero, Baegert,[283] and others; but it gains importance, among the Seri at least, as the sole method of storing or preserving food-supplies, and hence as the germ of industrial economy out of which a feeble thrift-sense may be regarded as emerging. And the rise of thrift in Seriland, like esthetic and industrial beginnings generally, is shaped by faith and attendant ceremony; for the doubly consumed food is credited with intensified powers and virtues, and held to be specially potent in the relief of hunger and in giving endurance for the hard warpath or prolonged chase; it is—and makes—very strong (“mucho fuerte”), in the laconic and confident explanation of Mashém. Incongruous as the custom is to higher culture, it finds natural suggestion in the everyday habits of the tribe, who are wonted not only to the eating of animal entrails in raw and uncleaned condition, but especially to the relief of the sharpest pangs of hunger by means of the soft structures and their semiassimilated contents—an association of much influence in primitive thought. Concordantly with the custom and the faith grown out of it, the excreta in general take a prominent place in the Seri mind; the use of urine in ablution, etc., is little understood and may be passed over; but all bony feces—and it may be noted that the “sign” of the Seri more resembles that of wolves or snake-eating swine than that of men—following gorges of large quarry are customarily located and kept in mind for recourse in time of ensuing shortage, when the mass is ground on the ahst and reconsumed; and even the ordinary discharge is preserved during the seasons of less reliable food-supply.
There is an obscure connection between this curious and repulsive food custom of the Seri and the mortuary customs of the tribe, which was not detected until the opportunity for personal inquiry had gone by. About the rancherias on Isla Tiburon, and especially about the extensive house-group at the base of Punta Tormenta, there are burial places marked by cairns of cobbles, or by heaps of thorny brambles where cobbles are not accessible; and most of these cairns and bramble-piles are supplemented by hoards of desiccated feces carefully stored in shells, usually of Arca (a typical specimen is illustrated in figure 25). The hoards range from 50 to 500 shells in quantity, and there were fully a score of them at Punta Tormenta alone. About the newer rancherias, as at Rada Ballena, where there are no cemeteries, the hoards are simply piled about small clumps of shrubbery. The meaning of the association of the dietetic residua and death in the Seri mind is not wholly clear; yet the connection between the “strong food” for the warpath and the mystical food for the manes in the long journey to the hereafter is close enough to give some inkling of the meaning.[284]
Fig. 25—Scatophagic supplies.
In recapitulating the food supplies of the Seri it is not without interest to estimate roughly the relative quantities of the several constituents consumed; and the proportions maybe made the more readily comprehensible by expression in absolute terms. As a basis for the quantitative estimate, it may be assumed that the average Seri, living, as he does, a vigorous outdoor life, consuming, as he does, a diet of less average nutrition than the selected and cooked foods of higher culture, and attaining, as he does, an exceptional stature and strength, eats something more than the average ration; so that his ration of solid food may be lumped at 2.75 pounds (about 1,250 grams) daily, or 1,000 pounds (about 455 kilograms) yearly. The aggregate diet of the tribe may be estimated also by assuming the population to comprise 300 full eaters, besides, say, 50 nurslings negligible in the computation; so that the annual consumption of the tribe may be reckoned at 300,000 pounds (136,000 kilograms), or 150 tons, of solid food. Accordingly the several constituents may be estimated, as shown in the accompanying table, in percentages of the total, in pounds aggregate and apiece for the eaters, and (so far as practicable) in units both aggregate and apiece; the weights of units being roughly averaged at 100 pounds (45 kilograms) for turtles, 12½ pounds (5.6 kilograms) for large land game, 450 pounds (about 200 kilograms) for stock, and 2 ounces (56.7 grams) for tunas.