The division of labor which affects proprietary interests is undoubtedly affected in turn by the militant habit of the tribe and by the frequent decimation of the warriors. In general, the adult males limit their work to fighting and fishing, with occasional excursions into the hunting field; though by far the greater part of their time is spent in listless lounging or heedless slumber under the incidental guard of roaming youths and toiling women. The matrons are the real workers in the tribal hive; they are normally alert and active, passing from one simple task to another, gathering flotsam food along the beach or preparing edibles in the shadow of the jacal, with an eye ever on material possessions and children; they frequently join in hunting excursions of considerable extent; they are the chief manufacturers of apparel, utensils, and tools; and the scions of Castilian caballeros are not infrequently staggered at the sight of half a dozen Seri women “milling” a band of horses, and at intervals leaping on one to kill it with their hupfs. The masculine drones are the more petted and courted by reason of their fewness, for during a century or two, at least, the women have far outnumbered their consorts—a disproportion doubtless tending in some respects toward the disintegration of the clan system and, reciprocally, toward the firmer union of the tribe.
One of the most noteworthy extensions of feminine functions among the Seri is toward shamanism. So far as could be ascertained from Mashém and the associated matrons at Costa Rica, it is such beldams as Juana Maria who concoct the arrow “poison”, compound both necromantic medicines and curative simples, cast spells on men and things, and even fabricate the stone arrowpoints and counterfeit cartridges; though unhappily the data are neither so full nor so decisive as desirable.316
Conformably with their prominence in proprietary affairs, the Seri matrons seem to exercise formal legislative and judicative functions; for not only do they hold their own councils for the arrangement of the domestic business of the rancherias, but they also participate prominently in the tribal councils (as explained by Mashém), and play important rôles in carrying out the decisions of such councils—as when they cooperate with war parties as decoys, or journey across their bounding desert to spy out the land of the enemy.
On the whole, it would appear that the clan organization of the Seri conforms closely with that characteristic of savagery elsewhere, especially among the American aborigines. The social unit is the maternal clan, organized in theory and faith in homage of a beast-god, though defined practically by the ocular consanguinity of birth from a common line of mothers; yet the several units are pretty definitely welded into a tribal aggregate by common feelings, identical interests, and conjugal ties. The most distinctive features brought out by the incomplete investigation are the somewhat exceptional manifestation of property-right in the females, the singularly strong sense of maternal relation, and the apparent prominence of females in shamanistic practices as well as in the tribal councils.
The unformulated tribal laws of the Seri are intimately connected with leadership, which is, in turn, largely a reflection of personal characteristics; so that the tribal organization is about as variable as that of the practically autonomous herds of cattle ranging the Sonoran plains adjacent to Seriland. Indeed, just as the stock-clans enjoy a precedence on pasturage and at waterholes, determined by the valor and strength of the bulls by which they are led, so the Seri clans appear to be graded by the prowess of their masculine leaders, combined with the sortilegic success of the leaders’ consorts; while, just as the leadership of the cattle shifts from band to band as the years go by, according to the fairly equal hazard of natural selection, so the clan dynasties of the human group rise, flourish, and decline in an endless succession shaped by the chances of birth and survival under a capricious environment, by the fate of battles internecine and external, and by various other factors. The instability of the Seri organization is demonstrated by the tribal changes recorded in history, as well as by the vicissitudes within the memory of Señor Encinas and others. At the beginning of the records the Upanguayma were already exiled from Seriland proper and apparently suffering from raids of their collinguals; within a century the Guayma, also, were expatriated and nearly annihilated; then, in the early part of the present century, the Tepoka were extruded and (after a series of wars in active progress in Hardy’s time) forced far up the coast to one of the poorest habitats ever occupied by any folk. So, too, throughout the Encinas régime the internal dissensions continued whenever the clans were not combined against aliens; and the veteran pioneer has seen much intratribal strife, attended by the rise and passing of many chiefs, both acknowledged and pretended, and often exercising chiefly prerogatives two or three at a time. This instability grows largely out of the fact that the essential unit is the clan, and that the tribe is nothing more than a lax aggregation; and it is measurably explained by the crude customs accompanying the choice of leaders.
As already noted, the clan organization is maternal, and the clanmother is the central figure of the group; but the executive power resides in her brothers in the order of seniority—i. e., while the personal arrangement of the group is maternal, the appellate administration is fraternal. So far as could be ascertained, the form of government is clearly discriminable from that commonly styled avuncular; for, in the first place, the minor administration accompanying the control of property invests the elderwomen with exceptional legislative and judicative powers, while, in the second place, there are no old men (by reason of the militant habit), so that the reverence for age so assiduously cultivated in primitive life extends to matrons much more than to men. Classed with respect to major administration, therefore, the clan may be regarded as an informal adelphiarchy (ἀδελφὁς and ἄρχος) or adelphocracy (αδελφὁς and κρατὁς). It has none of the elements of the patriarchy, since male lineage is not recognized, and can not be classed as a matriarchy, since the clanmother is administratively subordinate to her brothers; while the avuncular functions are apparently inchoate and indirect, i. e., exercised only through or in conjunction with the clanmother. In short, the clan is ordinated or regimented in ostensible accordance with physical power, though the real faculty is confused (after the fashion of primitive thinking generally) with mystical faculties, imputed largely on magical grounds but partly on grounds of age-reverence, etc. Now, when two or more clans combine, the basis on which the common chiefship is determined is similar to that determining the clan leadership; at the outset three factors enter, viz., (1) the seniority of the clans in the accepted tribal mythology, (2) the prowess of the respective clan leaders (always weighed in conjunction with the shamanistic potency of their consorts), and (3) the numerical strength of the respective clans; but practically, so far as can be judged from all available information, the choice really reflects physical force, since in case of doubt the strongest and bravest man becomes the eldest by virtue of his strength and bravery, while the strongest clan finds fair ground for claiming seniority in the very fact of its strength. Naturally disputes arise in the adjustment of the several relations; and in the actual analysis in council, the dispute is commonly reduced to a contest between gods and men, i. e., between the claims for mystical and magical potencies on the one hand and the claims of brawn and bone on the other hand, so that strength wins, unless omens or prodigies turn the scale—which happens often enough to keep the subjective and the objective elements in fairly equal balance. Sometimes the contests are quickly settled; again they last for months, during which the tribe struggles under its weight of Cerberus heads; and repeatedly the disputes have ended in the annihilation of clans, or even in the tribal fissions attested by the recorded and traditional history of the Serian family.
The chiefship once determined, the leader bends all energies toward maintaining the position by which he is dignified and his clan exalted. He recognizes his responsibility for the welfare of the tribe—not only for success in battle and food-getting, but for stilling storms at sea, protecting the aguajes from the drought-demons, and securing all other benefits, both physical and magical; he must be aggressive yet cautious on the warpath, fleet and enduring in retreat, indomitable in the chase, bold but not reckless on the balsa, and above all panoplied and favored by the shadowy potencies of air and earth and waters; he must be the local and lowly Admirable Crichton, and his never-neglected watchword must be noblesse oblige. His practical devices for maintaining prestige are many and diverse; it is commonly the chief who carries the symbolic weapon, the counterfeit cartridge, the imitation machete, or other charm against alien power; it is usually he who wears the white man’s hat or random garment in lieu of the deer or lion mask of earlier days; and during recent years his most-prized fetish, and one which practically insures the support of his fellows, is a written certificate of his chiefship from Señor Encinas, or, still better, from El Gobernador at Hermosillo. Yet he is a throneless and even homeless potentate, sojourning, like the rest of his fellows, in such jacales as his two or three or four wives may erect, wandering with season and sisterly whim, chased often by rumors of invasion or by fearsome dreams, and restrained by convention even from chiding his own children in his wives’ jacales save through the intercession of female relatives.
In 1894 the head chief was reported to be on Tiburon; the putative chief of the rancheria at Costa Rica was the taciturn giant known as El Mudo (plate XIX); while Mashém (or Juan Estorga) was the head of one of the Pelican clans.
One of the more important factors in demotic development among primitive peoples (probably second only to interclan marriage in extending sympathy and unifying law) is adoption; and special efforts were made to obtain data relating to the subject. Direct inquiries were futile, the responses indicating that the entire subject is foreign to the thought of the tribe; but three sporadic and measurably incongruous examples of quasi adoption are worthy of record.
The most specific case is that of Lieutenant Hardy, who visited Isla Tiburon in 1826, and was fortunate in gaining the confidence of the tribe through successful medical treatment of the wife of the chief. On his second landing he was greeted with many expressions of gratitude, which were especially exuberant on the part of the daughter of the family (always a personage in Seri custom), who insisted on painting his face. He specifies:
Not wishing to deny her the indulgence of this innocent frolic, I quietly suffered her to proceed. She mixed up part of a cake of blue color, which resembles ultramarine (and of which I have a specimen), in a small shell; in another, a white color, obtained by ground talc, and in a third was mixed a color obtained from the red flint-stone of the class which I before stated was to be found on Seal Island, and resembled cinnabar. With the assistance of a pointed stick the tender artist formed perpendicular narrow stripes down my cheeks and nose, at such distances apart as to admit of an equally narrow white line between them. With equal delicacy and skill the tops and bottoms of the white lines were finished off with a white spot. If the cartilage of my nose at the nostrils had been perforated so as to admit a small, round, white bone, five inches in length, tapering off at both ends and rigged something like a cross-jack yard, I might have been mistaken for a native of the island. As soon as the operation was finished, the whole party set up a roar of merry laughter, and called me “Hermano, Capitan Tiburow,” being the very limited extent of their knowledge of Spanish.317
While the lieutenant attached no significance to the painting, the procedure would seem to have been a ceremonial adoption, such as might, for example, be used in connection with a confederate clan. The description of the painting is sufficiently explicit to identify the totem with that of the Turtle clan, represented by the clanmother and the daughter of the clan at Costa Rica in 1894 (plates XVIII and XXIV); but it is noteworthy that the salutation with which the ceremony terminated, and which may be rendered “Captain-Brother of the Sharks”, would seem to identify the totem with the shark rather than the turtle.318
The second case of adoption (if so it may be styled) was that of Señor Encinas, after his bloodiest battle, in which nearly all of the Seri warriors were left on the field. In this case there was no ceremony, or at least none remembered by the beneficiary; he was merely informed by a delegation of aged dames that thenceforth he would be regarded as a stronger and more invulnerable chief (shaman) than any member of the tribe, and hence as the tribal leader.
The third instance is still less definite, though it seems to be trustworthy. There is a widespread tradition throughout Sonora that in the course of a brush between a band of Papago hunters and a marauding bunch of Seri warriors in the mountains southeast of Cieneguilla twenty-five or thirty years ago, a Papago maiden was captured and carried off to Tiburon; and that for some years thereafter—i. e., until the Papago had taken ample blood-vengeance—the intertribal animosity was exceptionally bitter. No wholly satisfactory basis for the traditions could be found among the Papago, though some of the silences of the old men were suggestive; nor was the tradition fully credited by Señor Encinas, despite its deep lodgment in the minds of some of his yeomanry. When Mashém was interrogated on different occasions, he merely shook his head in stolid silence; but when the device was adopted of inquiring the number of Papago children brought into the tribe through this woman, he responded promptly with a snort of scorn, and followed this with the explanation that she never had children, and could not because she was an alien slave. The explanation was corroborated by clanmother Juana Maria and other matrons, with sundry expressions of contemptuous disapproval of the inquiry and scorn of the very idea that aliens could fructify within the tribe. Later, the ice being broken, Mashém intimated that the woman had recently died of old age and its consequences—doubtless as an outcast. On the whole, the direct testimony would seem to substantiate the tradition, and to supplement it with the short and simple annals of a spouseless and childless life (incredible of other tribes, but consistent with the customs of the Seri), endured for many years and ending at last in unpitied death.
Collectively the cases seem to define a germ, rather than a mature custom, of adoption. In the first case a benefactor (by means regarded as magical) was formally inducted into the reigning family; in the second case the conquering hero (through what were again regarded as magical means) was less formally recognized and venerated, even worshiped, as an all-powerful shaman; while in the third case a representative of the doughtiest alien tribe was enslaved, probably with motives akin to those expressed in the carrying of chargeless guns, the making of imitation machetes, and other fetishistic devices. Except in the first instance there is no indication of consistent custom; but since the entire history of the tribe clearly contradicts regulated adoption of aliens (and indeed affords no other example), it must be inferred that any such custom is intratribal rather than intertribal.
The most striking and significant social facts discovered among the Seri relate to marriage customs.
As noted repeatedly elsewhere, the tribal population is preponderantly feminine, so that polygyny naturally prevails; the number of wives reaches three or possibly four, averaging about two, though the younger warriors commonly have but one, and there are always a number of spouseless (widowed) dames but no single men of marriageable age. So far as could be ascertained, no special formalities attend the taking of supernumerary wives, who are usually widowed sisters of the first spouse; it seems to be practically a family affair, governed by considerations of convenience rather than established regulations—an irregularity combining with other facts to suggest that polygyny is incidental, and perhaps of comparatively recent origin.
The primary mating of the Seri is attended by observances so elaborate as to show that marriage is one of the profoundest sacraments of the tribe, penetrating the innermost recesses of tribal thought, and interwoven with the essential fibers of tribal existence. Few if any other peoples devote such anxious care to their mating as do the Seri;319 and among no other known tribe or folk is the moral aspect of conjugal union so rigorously guarded by collective action and individual devotion.
The initial movement toward formal marriage seems to be somewhat indefinite (or perhaps, rather, spontaneous); according to Mashém it may be made either by the prospective groom or else by his father, though not directly by the maiden or her kinswomen. In any event the prerequisites for the union are provisionally determined in the suitor’s family; these relate to the suitability of age, the propriety of the clan relation, etc.; for no stripling may seriously contemplate matrimony until he has entered manhood (apparently corresponding with the warrior class), nor can he mate in his own totem, though all other clans of the tribe are apparently open to him; while the maiden must have passed (apparently by a considerable time) her puberty feast. In any event, too, the proposal is formally conveyed by the elderwoman of the suitor’s family to the maiden’s clanmother, when it is duly pondered, first by this dame and her daughter matrons; and later (if the proposal is entertained) it is deliberated and discussed at length by the matrons of the two clans involved, who commonly hold repeated councils for the purpose. At an undetermined stage and to an undetermined degree the maiden herself is consulted; certainly she holds the power of veto, ostensible if not actual. Pending the deliberations the maiden receives special consideration and enjoys various dignities; if circumstances favor, her kinswomen erect a jacal for her; and even if circumstances are adverse, she is outfitted with a pelican robe of six or eight pelts and other matronly requisites. When all parties concerned are eventually satisfied a probationary marriage is arranged, and the groom leaves his clan and attaches himself to that of the bride. Two essential conditions—one of material character and the other moral—are involved in this probationary union; in the first place, the groom must become the provider for, and the protector of, the entire family of the bride, including the dependent children and such cripples and invalids as may be tolerated by the tribe—i. e., he must display and exercise skill in turtle-fishing, strength in the chase, subtlety in warfare, and all other physical qualities of competent manhood. This relation, with the attendant obligations, holds for a year, i. e., a round of the seasons. During the same period the groom shares the jacal and sleeping robe provided for the prospective matron by her kinswomen, not as privileged spouse, but merely as a protecting companion; and throughout this probationary term he is compelled to maintain continence—i. e., he must display the most indubitable proofs of moral force. During this period the always dignified position occupied by the daughter of the family culminates; she is the observed of all observers, the subject of gossip among matrons and warriors alike, the recipient of frequent tokens from designing sisters with an eye to shares of her spouse’s spoils, and the receiver of material supplies measuring the competence of the would-be husband; through his energy she is enabled to dispense largess with lavish hand, and thus to dignify her clan and honor her spouse in the most effective way known to primitive life; and at the same time she enjoys the immeasurable moral stimulus of realizing that she is the arbiter of the fate of a man who becomes warrior or outcast at her bidding, and through him of the future of two clans—i. e., she is raised to a responsibility in both personal and tribal affairs which, albeit temporary, is hardly lower than that of the warrior-chief. In tribal theory the moral test measures the character of the man; in very fact, it at the same time both measures and makes the character of the woman. Among other privileges bestowed on the bride during the probationary period are those of receiving the most intimate attentions from the clanfellows of the groom; and these are noteworthy as suggestions of a vestigial polyandry or adelphogamy. At the close of the year the probation ends in a feast provided by the probationer, who thereupon enters the bride’s jacal as a perpetual guest of unlimited personal privileges (subject to tribal custom); while the bride passes from a half-wanton heyday into the duller routine of matronly existence.
These details were elicited at Costa Rica in 1894 through methodical inquiries made in connection with the linguistic collection. This collection was made with the cooperation of Señor Alvemar-Leon as Spanish-English interpreter, together with Mashém and (commonly) the clanmother known as Juana Maria. Usually quite a group of Seri matrons with two or three warriors were gathered about, and to these Mashém frequently appealed for advice and verification, while they constantly expressed approval or disapproval of questions and replies, as gathered through Mashém’s words and mien, in such manner as to afford a fair index of their habitual thought—e. g., when the Seri vernacular for “twins” was obtained and the inquiry was extended (by normal association of ideas) to the term for “triplets”, Mashém collapsed into moody silence while the rest of the group decamped incontinently with horror-stricken countenances—thereby suggesting cautious subsequent inquiry, and the discovery that triplets are deemed evil monsters and their production a capital crime. It was in one of the earlier conferences that the first intimations concerning the unusual marital customs were incidentally brought out; the Caucasian interpreter and bystanders were diverted by the naive reference to the moral test, but their expressions were hastily checked lest the native informants might be startled and rendered secretive; then, during two later conferences, when Mashém and several matrons were freely participating in the proceedings, the line of inquiry was so turned as to touch on various aspects of the marriage custom and bring out all essential features; so that much confidence is reposed in the accuracy of the details.320 The confidence in the verity of the customs was such as not to be impaired seriously by the fact that no records of coincident moral tests were known in the voluminous literature of marriage and its concomitants; nor was it shaken by the still weightier fact that none of the experienced ethnologists to whom inquiries were addressed during ensuing months were acquainted with parallel customs—indeed the only shadow of corroboration thus obtained came in the form of references to the widespread requirement of continence in war and ceremonies, and to an affectation of self-restraint for a moon on the part of Zuñi grooms noted by Frank Hamilton Cushing. Accordingly the facts were announced in a preliminary paper,321 and were shown to stand in such relation to the marital customs of other aboriginal tribes as practically to demonstrate their validity, and at the same time to locate the Seri customs on a lower plane of cultural development than any hitherto definitely recognized.
Happily, subsequent researches have resulted in the discovery of records corroborative of the primitive customs observed by the Seri, and also of the assignment of serial place to these customs. The most specific record is that of John Giles (or Gyles), who spent his youth as a captive among the northeastern Algonquian Indians (probably the Maliseet or some closely related Abnaki tribe), from August 2, 1689, to June 28, 1698. Referring to the marital customs of the tribe, he observed:
If parents have a daughter marriageable, they seek a husband for her who is a good hunter. If she has been educated to make monoodah (Indian bags), birch dishes, to lace snowshoes, make Indian shoes, string wampum belts, sew birch canoes, and boil the kettle, she is esteemed a lady of fine accomplishments. If the man sought out for her husband have a gun and ammunition, a canoe, a spear, a hatchet, a monoodah, a crooked knife, looking-glass and paint, a pipe, tobacco, and knot-bowl to toss a kind of dice in, he is accounted a gentleman of a plentiful fortune. Whatever the new married man procures the first year belongs to his wife’s parents. If the young pair have a child within a year and nine months, they are thought to be very forward and libidinous persons.322
This record is of peculiar interest in that it definitely specifies a custom corresponding with the material test of the Seri, and unmistakably implies the existence, at least in vestigial or sentimental form, of a custom corresponding with the moral test of Seriland; and it is particularly noteworthy as coming from a remote tribe occupying a distant part of the continent.
A somewhat less specific corroboration is found in Lawson’s account of the Carolina tribes. He observes:
When any young Indian has a mind for such a girl to his wife, he, or some one for him, goes to the young woman’s parents, if living; if not, to her nearest relations, where they make offers of the match betwixt the couple. The relations reply, they will consider of it; which serves for a sufficient answer, till there be a second meeting about the marriage, which is generally brought into debate before all the relations, that are old people, on both sides, and sometimes the king, with all his great men, give their opinions therein. If it be agreed on, and the young woman approve thereof, for these savages never give their children in marriage without their own consent, the man pays so much for his wife; and the handsomer she is the greater price she bears. Now, it often happens that the man has not so much of their money ready as he is to pay for his wife; but if they know him to be a good hunter, and that he can raise the sum agreed for, in some few moons, or any little time they agree, she shall go along with him as betrothed, but he is not to have any knowledge of her till the utmost payment is discharged; all which is punctually observed. Thus they lie together under one covering for several months, and the woman remains the same as she was when she first came to him.323
This record also is peculiarly pertinent, partly in that it practically corroborates the Seri testimony, but chiefly in that it indicates definite transition toward a higher culture-plane in which the primitive material test is at least partially replaced by a commutation in goods or their equivalents.
On reducing the marital customs of the Seri to conventional terms, the more prominent features are found to be (1) strict clan exogamy and (2) absolute tribal endogamy, together with (3) theoretical or constructive monogamy, coupled with (4) vague traces of polyandry, and (5) an apparently superficial polygyny, as well as (6) total absence of purchase or capture of either spouse.
On reviewing the customs in the light of their influence on the everyday life of the tribe, certain features stand out conspicuously: (1) Perhaps the most striking feature is the collective character of the function; for while the movement originates in personal inclination on the part of the suitor and is shaped by personal inclination on the part of the maiden, all manifestations of inclination are open and public (at least to the elders of the two clans involved), while the personal sentiments on both sides are completely subordinated to the public interests of clans and tribe as weighed and decided by the matronly lawgivers and adelphiarchal administratives. Thus neither man nor maid mates for thonself, but both love and move in the tribal interests and along the lines laid down by the tribal leaders. (2) As a corollary or a complement (according to the viewpoint) to the collectivity of the mating, the next most striking feature is the formal or legal aspect of the union; for the entire affair, from inception to consummation, is rigorously regulated by precedents and usages handed down from an immemorial past. Thus the roots of young affection are not destroyed but rather cultivated, though the burgeoning vine and the outreaching tendrils are trained to a social structure shaped in ages gone and kept in the olden form by unbroken tradition. (3) A collateral feature of the customs is the necessary reaction of the requirements on individual character of both groom and bride; for the would-be warrior-spouse is compelled to display high qualities of physical and moral manhood on pain of ostracism and outlawry, so that his passions of ambition and affection are at once stimulated to the highest degree, while the maiden’s pride of blood and possession and her sense of regnant responsibility are fostered to the utmost. The brief preliminary courtship and the long probationary mating mark an era of intensification in two lives at their most impressionable stage; and if there be aught in the simple yet puissant law of conjugal conation—that law whose motive underlies the world’s song and story and all the pulsing progress of mankind as the inspiration of most men’s work and most women’s hopes—the vital intensity of this era passes down the line of blood-descent to the betterment of later generations. (4) Another collateral feature is the necessary reaction on clan and tribe; for not only does the individual character-making raise the average physique and morale of the group, but the carefully studied restraint of excessive individuality serves to strengthen still further the tribal bonds and to lift still higher the racial bar against aliens. The blackest crime in the Seri calendar is the toleration of alien blood; and no more effective device could be found for keeping alive the race-sense on which this canon depends than that virtually sacramental surveillance of sexual intimacy which Seri usage requires.324
On scanning the conventional classifications of human marriage in the light of the Seri customs, it becomes clear that these customs define a plane not hitherto recognized observationally. For convenience, this plane and the mode of marriage defining it may, in special allusion to the correlative race-sense, be styled ethnogamy; and the more systematic characters of this mode and plane of marriage may be outlined briefly:
1. The most conspicuous character of ethnogamic union, as manifested in the type tribe, is its absolute confinement to the consanguineal group. The breach of this limitation is hardly conceivable in the minds of the group, since aliens are not classed as human, nor even dignified as animals of the kinds deified in their lowly faith, but contemned as unclean and loathsome monsters; yet the infraction has a sort of theoretical place at the head of their calendar as an utterly intolerable crime. In respect to this character, ethnogamy corresponds fairly with the endogamy of McLennan, Spencer, and others, i. e., with the tribal endogamy of Powell.
2. A hardly less conspicuous character of ethnogamic union is the formality, or legality, accompanying and reflecting the collective nature of the function. In this respect ethnogamy is the direct antithesis of that hypothetical promiscuity postulated by Morgan and adopted by Spencer, Lubbock, Tylor, and others; and the customs of the type tribe go farther, perhaps, than any other example in verifying the alternative assumption of Westermarck that the course of conjugal development is rather from monogamy toward promiscuity than in the reverse direction.
3. A noteworthy character of ethnogamic union is the absence of capture of either bride or groom. Any semblance of capture would indeed be wholly incongruous with the rigid confinement of union to members of the group: it would also be incongruous with the exceeding formality and necessary amicability of both preliminary and concomitant arrangements.
4. Another noteworthy character is the total absence of purchase on either part. Although a material condition attends the union, it is essentially a test of character, and is applied in such wise as to dignify the feminine element rather than to degrade it like barbaric wife-purchase; while any semblance of purchase would be incongruous with the economic condition of a tribe practically destitute of accumulated property or even of thrift-sense.
5. A significant character of ethnogamic union, as exemplified in the type tribe, is the ceremonial or constructive monogamy. While there are obscure (and presumptively vestigial) traces of polyandry or adelphogamy, and while an informal polygyny is practiced by the chiefs and older warriors, the formal matings are between one man and one woman, and appear to be permanent.
Now, on comparing these characters with those revealed in the marital customs of other tribes and peoples, they are found to betoken a notably provincial and primitive culture-stage. Perhaps the nearest American approach to the Seri customs is found among certain California aborigines, notably the Yurok and Patawat tribes, who recognize the institution of “half-marriage”;325 but here the material test of Seriland is replaced by purchase, while no trace of the moral test is found (even as among the Carolina Indians, according to Lawson); moreover, while these tribes discourage alien connections, they are not absolutely eschewed and reprobated as among the Seri. Other notably primitive customs, like those so fully described by Spencer and Gillen, have been found among the Australian aborigines;326 but even here a part only of the marriages are regulated by amicable convention, while others are effected by (1) charm, (2) capture, and (3) elopement; and these collateral devices imply intertribal relations of a kind incongruous with the ethnogamic habit and utterly repugnant to the ethnogamic instinct. In both cases, accordingly, the marital customs clearly imply (and actually accompany) a much more highly differentiated socialry and economy than that of the Seri. The same is true of that vestigial custom of the Scottish clans known as handfasting, which is, moreover, a direct antithesis of the Seri custom in that it carries a warrant for, rather than an abridgment of, conjugal prerogatives; and the same might be said also of various South American, African, and southeastern Asian customs.
Certain representative North American customs have already been seriated in connection with the Seri customs, and their relations are of sufficient significance to warrant recapitulation. The series begins with the maternally organized and practically propertyless Seri. Next stand the Zuñi, with an essentially maternal organization, the vestigial moral test of the groom noted by Cushing, and a concomitant material test verging on purchase; so, too, monogamy persists, while the function remains largely collective, and is regulated by the elders, though the bride enjoys special prerogatives; and the fierce tribal endogamy is relaxed, though clan exogamy is enforced. Measurably similar to those of the Zuñi are the marital customs of the peaceful Tarahumari tribe of northern Mexico and the once warlike Seneca tribe of northeastern United States, although among both of these more cosmopolitan peoples the regulations are less closely similar to the Seri customs than are those of the Pueblo tribe named. Next in order of marital differentiation stand the Kwakiutl and Salish tribes of British Columbia, in which the social organization has practically passed into the paternal stage; here the laws of monogamy, clan exogamy, and tribal endogamy are materially relaxed, the moral test is lost among the Kwakiutl and reduced to a curious vestige among the Salish, while the material test is commuted into the making of expensive presents. Still more remote from the initial stage is the marriage of the paternally organized Omaha, among whom tribal endogamy is prevalent but not absolute, while polygyny is customary; among whom the moral test seems wholly obsolete, while the material test is completely replaced by purchase (or at least by the interchange of expensive presents); and among whom, concordantly, the feminine privileges are few and the females are practically degraded to the rank of property of male kindred or spouses. These several customs fall into a natural order or series definitely coordinated with the esthetic, the industrial or economic, and the general institutional or social conditions of the respective tribes; and it is noteworthy that they mark successive stages in that passage from the mechanical to the spontaneous which characterizes demotic activity.327
In brief, ethnogamy, as exemplified by the type tribe, accompanies that strictly maternal organization which marks the lowest known stage of social development; it accompanies also a rudimentary esthetic condition in which decorative symbols are restricted to the expression of maternal relation; it accompanies, in like manner, an inchoate economic condition characterized by absence of property and thrift-sense; while its most essential concomitant is extratribal antipathy too bitter to permit toleration of alien blood, or even of alien presence save under the constraint of superior force.
The prevailing opinion among the better informed Caucasian neighbors of the Seri is that the tribesmen display an inhuman indifference to their dead; and this opinion is one of the factors—combining with current notions as to cannibalism and arrow-poisoning and beastlike toothing in battle—involved in the widespread feeling that the tribesmen are to be accounted as mongrel and uncanny monsters rather than human beings.
The opinion that the Seri neglect their dead on occasion would seem to rest on a considerable body of evidence; Mendoza’s record of the numberless neglected corpses of warriors polluting the air and poisoning the streams of Cerro Prieto in 1757 would seem to be unusual only in its fulness; and Señor Encinas, albeit so conservative as to repudiate the reputed anthropophagy and to recognize better qualities among the folk than any contemporary, declares that they are utterly negligent of their dead, save that when the bodies lie near rancherias heaps of brambles are thrown over them to bar—and thus to lessen the disturbance from—prowling coyotes. Quite indubitable, too, is the specific testimony of vaqueros to the effect that Seri raiders overtaken by the Draconian penalty of the frontier merely lie where they fall, even when this is well within reach of the tribesmen, Don Andrés Noriega’s verification of his boast (ante, p. 113) being an instance in point. On the other hand stands the conspicuous fact (unknown to the frontiersman) that well-marked cemeteries adjoin some of the rancherias of interior Seriland. The sum of the somewhat discrepant evidence accords with a characteristically unsatisfactory statement by Mashém, to the effect that the mourning ceremonies are important only in connection with women—i. e., matrons—because “the woman is just like the family” (“la muger es como la familia”); and this intimation, in turn, is corroborated by the single known instance of inhumation in Seriland, as well as by certain indirect indications connected with the scatophagic customs (ante, p. 213). On the whole it seems certain that the mortuary ceremonies attain their highest development in connection with females, the recognized blood-bearers and legislators of the tribe.
The special dignification of females in respect to funerary rites is without precise parallel among other American aborigines, so far as is known, but is not without analogues in the shape of (presumptive) vestiges of a former magnification of matrons in the mortuary customs of certain tribes. The vestiges are especially clear among the Iroquoian Indians, whose aboriginal socialry coincided with that of the Seri at various points; witness the following passage from the Onondaga mourning ritual, as collected and translated by Hewitt:
Now, moreover, again, another thing, indeed, our voices come forth to utter; and is it not that that we say, that far yonder the Hoyaner [chief of highest grade] who labored for us so well is falling away as falls a tree? So, moreover, it is these things that he bears away with him—this file of mat-carriers, warriors all, visible and present here; also this file of those who customarily dance the corn-dances [the women]—they go prosperously. And alas! How utterly calamitous is that thing that occurs when the body of this woman falls! For, verily, far yonder in the length of the file will the file of our grandchildren be removed! These our grandchildren who run hither and thither in sport, these our grandchildren who by creeping drag themselves about in the dust, these our grandchildren whose bodies are slung to cradle-boards, and even those of them whose faces are looking hitherward as they come under the ground.328
The identifiable cemeteries of Seriland are few and small—much less populous than might be expected of a tribe numbering several hundreds for centuries, and able to maintain well-worn trails threading all parts of their rugged domain. Three graves were noted near the abandoned rancheria at Pozo Escalante; one was observed near a jacal skeleton at Barranca Salina; five or six were made out doubtfully on a low spur adjacent to Punta Antigualla; another was found near the rancheria midway thence to Punta Ygnacio; still another was doubtfully identified hard by a ruinous jacal just where the foothills of Sierra Seri descend to the plain stretching toward Punta Miguel; and this distribution may be deemed representative. A scant half-dozen perceptible graves were observed near the considerable rancheria of Punta Narragansett, which was numerously inhabited during the Dewey surveys of 1873; one was found adjoining the old jacal near Campo Navidad; but none were discovered in connection with the extensive rancheria on Rada Ballena. The largest known cemetery occupies the triangular point of shrub-dotted plain pushing out toward the site of the old rancheria at the base of Punta Tormenta; it comprises perhaps a score of evidently ancient graves, while two newer ones were found on the pebble bar beyond the jacales. When near the pebbly beaches the graves are marked by heaps of pebbles and small cobbles, commonly about the size of those used as hupfs, these cairns being 3 or 4 feet long, two-thirds as wide, and seldom over 12 or 15 inches in height; and most of the cairns are accompanied and enlarged by piles (ranging from a peck to a bushel) of the scatophagic shells already noted. The graves remote from pebbly beaches are marked by heaps of cholla stems and branches, rudely thatched with miscellaneous brambles roughly pinned together by okatilla stems, the shocks being sometimes nearly as high and broad as the jacales. A few of the scatophagic shells were found about the bramble-marked graves at Pozo Escalante, and a single one at Barranca Salina. In general the association of cemeteries and rancherias, or of graves and jacales, indicates that habitations are usually abandoned for a time when a death occurs within or near them.
Fig. 39—Mortuary olla.
The most conspicuous cairn seen in Seriland was well within Tiburon. It stands on the southern side of a little rock-butte about a mile and a half east-southeast of Tinaja Anita, south of the main arroyo, and near where the trail from the tinaja bifurcates toward Arroyo Carrizal and Punta Narragansett, respectively. It is shadowed by a notably large and widespreading paloverde, and is in the form of a cone estimated at 7 feet in height and 18 or 20 feet across the base. The materials, at least on the surface, are rounded pebbles and cobbles, possibly from the adjacent arroyos, though more probably from the beaches, of which the nearest is miles away. It was not determined to be mortuary.329
On the death of the matron, a grave is scooped out by means of shells a few yards from her jacal, preference being given to relatively elevated or commanding points. The excavation is about 30 inches (90 cm.) in depth; within it is placed first the pelican-skin robe of the deceased, so arranged as to fold over the body; then the corpse, dressed in the ordinary costume of life, is compressed into small compass by closely flexing the knees and bringing them against the thorax, extending the arms around and along the lower limbs so that hands and feet are together, and bending the head forward on the chest; when it is deposited in the receptacle in such manner as to lie on the left side, facing northward. Near the face is laid a dish of baked clay or a large shell filled with food, and beside it a small olla of water (an actual example is shown in figure 39), while the hupf, awls, hairbrush, olla-ring, and other domestic paraphernalia are placed near the hands. Next the personal fetishes and votive symbols (in the form of puppets or dolls such as those shown in figure 40 a and b) of the dead mother are slipped beneath the face, and her paint-cup, with a plentiful supply of paint, is added; the poor personal possessions, in the form of shell-beads and miscellaneous trinketry, are then heaped over the face and shoulders, and these are covered with the superfluous garments and miscellaneous property of the deceased. Finally the pelican-pelt bedding is folded over the body, and two turtle-shells are laid over all as a kind of coffin, when the grave is carefully filled, and the ground so smoothed as to leave no mark of the burial. During subsequent hours the stones for the cairn or the cholla-joints and other brambles for the brush-heap are piled over the spot, while the scatophagic shells are added at intervals apparently for weeks or months and perhaps for years after the burial.