293 In this writing the conclusion reached in an unpublished discussion of the beginning of clothing is assumed—i. e., that the primal apparel was purely protective, and that the habitual concealment of portions of the body incidental to its wearing gradually planted the pudency sense. The germ of clothing, without attendant pudency, is well illustrated in Karl von den Steinen’s observations and discussions of the Brazilian natives (Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, Berlin, 1894, pp. 190-199). It is noteworthy that the Seri, more primitive as they are in so many respects than any other American aborigines known, are much farther advanced than the Brazilian natives in appareling and its effects on character. The similarities and the differences are alike interesting; yet in both cases the costumes reflect environmental conditions and needs with remarkable fidelity.

294 The failure to discriminate natural objects from artificialized implements produced from such objects by wear of use is a noteworthy trait of primitive folk. It is conspicuous among the acorn Indians of California, who fail to apperceive the manufacture of their own mills and who conceive that their bowlder mortars and creek-pebble pestles, even when completely artificialized by a generation’s use, are merely found and appropriated; and a similar state of mind persists among the well-advanced Papago, who have no conception of making their well-finished mortars and pestles, or even the stone tomahawks occasionally surviving, but regard the implements as fruits of discovery or treasures-trove only.

295 It should be noted that the terms used in the titles of the accompanying plates are not denotive, but merely descriptive.

296 This, like the other illustrations of the series (except plate LVI, which is a lithograph, partly process and partly handwork), are photo-mechanical reproductions made directly from the objects; all are natural size unless otherwise specified.

297 The most specific reference is that of Hardy: “The men use bows and stone-pointed arrows; but whether they are poisoned, I do not know.” Travels, p. 290.

298 The Development of Form and Function in Implements; an unpublished paper presented before the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the Toronto meeting in 1897. A brief abstract, revised by the author of the paper, was printed in the American Anthropologist, vol. X, 1897, pp. 325-326; and in the absence of full authorial publication, the more strictly germane passages of the abstract are worthy of quotation: “Beginning with the semiarboreal [human] progenitor indicated jointly by projecting forward the lines of biotic development and projecting backward the lines of human development, Mr Cushing undertook to trace hypothetically, yet by constant reference to known facts, (1) the genesis of artificial devices, and (2) the concurrent differentiation of the human brain and body in the directions set forth by Sir William Turner; and he gave special force to his exposition by frequent reference to commonly neglected characteristics, physical and psychic, of young infants. He pointed out that the prototype of man, whether infantile or primitive, is a clumsy ambidexter, the differentiation of hand and brain remaining inchoate; that one of the earliest artificial processes is a sawing movement, in which, however, the object to be severed is moved over the cutting edge or surface, and that the infant or savage at first selects sharp objects (teeth, shells, etc.) as cutting implements, and only after long cultivation learns to make cutting implements of stone; this early stage in development he called prelithic. Passing, then, to the age of stone, he showed that this substance is first in the form of natural pebbles or other pieces for hammering, crushing, bruising, and as a missile. That in time the user learns that the stone is made more effective for severing tissues by fracturing it in such way as to give a sharp edge, the fracture being originally accidental and afterward designed; yet that for a long time it is the hammerstone that is fractured and not the object against which the blows are directed. In this stage of development (called protolithic, after McGee) stone implements come into more or less extended use in connection with implements of shell, tooth, etc.; yet the implements are obtained by choice among natural pieces and by undesigned improvement of these through use. The next stage is that of designed shaping through fracture by blows from a hammerstone, followed by intentional chipping. This may be regarded as the beginning of paleolithic art, and also marks the beginning of dexterity and the activital differentiation of the hands. Incidentally the author brought out the importance of that concept of mysticism which is found of so great potency among infantile and primitive minds, in such manner as to suggest the genesis, and the obscure reasons for the persistence of this phase of intellectuality; for the inchoate imagination is able to expand only in the direction of mystical explanation, so that fertility in primitive invention seems to be dependent on appeal to the mysterious powers of nature. At first the mystery pervades all things, but in time it is largely concentrated in animate things; then animate powers are imputed, e. g., to physical phenomena. So to the infant or race-child fire is a mystical animal or demon which, in prelithic or protolithic times, must have been at first tolerated, then fed with fuel and punished with water and eventually subjugated and tamed, much as the real animals were afterward brought into domestication.”

299 American Anthropologist, vol. IX, 1896, pp. 317-318.

300 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1898, pp. 42-43. The long extant and well-known classification of stone artifacts as “paleolithic” and “neolithic” may not be overlooked. This classification was based originally on prehistoric relics of Europe, and it served excellent purpose in distinguishing finely finished stone implements from those of rudely chipped stone; but both classes of artifacts were shaped in accordance with preconceived design, and hence both belong to the technolithic class as herein defined. It may be added that the classification was made with little if any reference to primitive thought, was not based on observation among primitive peoples, and has not been found to apply usefully to the aborigines and aboriginal artifacts of America, where the representative tribe or prehistoric village site is characterized by implements of both “paleolithic” and “neolithic” types which intergrade in such manner as to prove contemporaneous manufacture and interchangeable use; while the preponderance of polished-stone implements is generally indicative of simpler rather than of more advanced culture.

301 Travels, p. 290.

302 Cinosternum sonorense (?).

303 Op. cit., p. 198; cf. ante, p. 78.

304 Travels, p. 299; cf. ante, p. 87.

305 Personal Narrative, p. 465.

306 Op. cit., p. 161.

307 Op. cit., pp. 187, 188.

308 It should be noted that the actuality of the poisonous property ascribed to the yerba mala is in some degree questionable; the plant is the only one of southern Papagueria yielding suitable material for arrow-shafts, and it is possible (if not probable) that it was consecrated to this purpose by the aboriginal Opata and protected by tabu in such wise as to become a sacred and fearsome thing. It is accordingly by no means improbable that the reputed poisonous property is but the product of generations of association, and that the plant is really harmless—an inference supported by experiments on the part of the leader of the 1895 expedition, who swallowed the juice of stem and leaves in two or three minute but increasing doses without perceptible effect. On the other hand, it should be observed that the region is one abounding in toxic juices, and that this shrub is so luxuriant and so free from thorny armament and other protective devices of a mechanical sort as to raise the presumption that it must be protected against herbivorous animals, at least, by chemical constituents of some kind (cf. ante, p. 35).

309 These motives on the part of the Seri were reciprocated by their tribal enemies; a Papago fetish in the form of an Apache arrowpoint, long worn by an aged warrior as a protection from Apache arrows, was among the spoil of the 1894 expedition; and a “poisoned” Seri arrowhead and foreshaft, worn by a superannuated Papago “doctor” as a badge of invulnerability to similar missiles, was cautiously shown to the 1895 expedition, but was held above price by its wearer—and this despite the fact that he had been christianized for decades, and retained no other pagan symbols.

310 The imitative still of the Seri was illustrated at Costa Rica some years ago, when the petty accounts for labor, etc., were kept by means of tokens stamped from sheet brass. While a Seri rancheria was maintained near the rancho, the storekeeper detected a number of counterfeits of his tokens, so well executed as to pass readily over the counter in ordinary exchange—and after extended detective work the counterfeiting was traced to the rancheria.

311 American Anthropologist, vol. XI. August, 1898, pp. 243-249.

312 The responsivity of mind has been defined elsewhere as the basis of knowledge, and as one of five fundamental principles of science (The Cardinal Principles of Science, Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. II, 1900, pp. 1-12).

313 A convenient term proposed by Patton.

314 This man was one of those involved in the Robinson butchery on Tiburon island a few months before the picture was taken; and he was one of those executed or transported for the affair during the interval between the 1894 and 1895 expeditions.

315 The chief object of the 1895 expedition was to pursue the inquiries concerning social organization, totems, etc.; but, as mentioned elsewhere, this object was defeated by the troublous history of the tribe during the earlier part of 1895, and the consequent revival and intensification of their animosity toward aliens.

316 The agency of the women in applying the arrow “poison” was noted by Hardy; cf. p. 258.

317 Travels, p. 286.

318 This identification may possibly be correct; the collocation of the totem with the turtle was shaped through unwilling and perhaps misleading responses made by Mashém to inquiries in 1894—these responses denoting a sea monster which in the beginning helped the Ancient of Pelicans to make the world by pushing from below, and which is now very good food—a description apparently fitting the turtle more closely than the other animal.

319 Perhaps the closest parallel in this respect is that found in the elaborate marriage regulations prevailing among the Australian aborigines, as described by Spencer and Gillen, Walter E. Roth, and other modern observers.

320 It may be observed that Kolusio, when visited in January, 1896, failed to corroborate the descriptions of Mashém and the matrons; but his failure occasioned little surprise for the reason that he has not lived with his tribe since early boyhood, and is equally uninformed (or uncommunicative) concerning the myths, ceremonies, and even the totems of the tribe.

321 The Beginning of Marriage, American Anthropologist, vol. IX, 1896, pp. 371-383.

322 Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, etc. in the Captivity of John Giles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on Saint George river, in the District of Maine. Written by Himself. Originally published at Boston, 1736. Printed for William Dodge. Cincinnati: Spiller & Gates, printers, 168 Vine street. 1869.—P. 45.

323 The History of Carolina, etc., by John Lawson (1714), reprint of 1860, pp. 302-303. Attention was called to this passage by Mr James Mooney.

324 The remarkable race-sense of the tribe, with the conjugal conation in which it seems to root, are discussed ante, pp. 160*-163*. There is nothing to indicate, and much to contraindicate, that the Seri are consciously engaged in stirpiculture; yet their social and fiducial devices would seem to be no less effective in developing race-sense, with its concomitants, than were those of prehistoric men in developing the physical attributes of animal associates, such as the wool-bearing of the sheep, the egg-laying of the fowl, and the milk-giving of the cow; or the still more striking mental attributes, such as the servility of the horse, the fidelity of the dog, and the domesticity of the cat. All these attributes are artificial, though not consciously so to their producers, hardly even to modern users; they are by-products of long-continued breeding and exercise, commonly directed toward collateral ends (as when the horse was bred for speed, the dog for hunting, and the fowl and cat for beauty); and, similarly, the Seri race-sense would seem to be largely a by-product of faith-shaped customs designed primarily to propitiate or invoke mystical potencies—yet the collateral effect is not diminished because overlooked in the primary motive.

325 Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. III, 1877 (Tribes of California, by Stephen Powers), pp. 56, 98.

326 The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899, pp. 554-560 and elsewhere.

327 Cf. The Beginning of Marriage, op. cit. The conclusion from the details discussed in this paper is as follows: “Summarizing the tendencies revealed in this history, it would appear that the course of evolution [of conjugal institutions] has been from the simple to the complex, from the definite to the indefinite, from the general to the special, from the fixed to the variable, from the involuntary to the voluntary, from the mechanical to the spontaneous, from the provincial to the cosmopolitan, or, in brief, from the chiefly biotic to the wholly demotic” (p. 283).

328 MS in the archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology. A somewhat more obscure version was recorded by Hale in “The Iroquois Book Rites”: “Now, there is another thing we say, we younger brothers. He who has worked for us has gone afar off; and he also will in time take with him all these—the whole body of warriors and also the whole body of women—they will go with him. But it is still harder when the woman shall die, because with her the line is lost. And also the grandchildren and the little ones who are running around—these he will take away; and also those that are creeping on the ground, and also those that are on the cradle-boards; all these he will take away with him.” (Brinton’s Library of Aboriginal American Literature, number ii, 1883, pp. 141-143.)

329 As an indication of the conditions for observation in Seriland, this cairn is fairly typical: it was seen but once (on December 25, 1895), and the observation was limited to a few minutes by the attendant circumstances. On the evening before the party landed at Campo Navidad, with the hope of working up the coast nearly or quite to Punta Tormenta on the following day; but before morning a downbay gale was whitening the waters of Bahia Kunkaak so fiercely as to prohibit embarkation. Meantime the supply of water—that standard commodity of arid regions—was too nearly exhausted to permit inaction; so while Mr Johnson with three guards ascended the Sierra to establish a new topographic station, the leader of the party with the remaining seven men set out in search of water. The nearest known aguaje was that of Arroyo Carrizal; but under the hypothesis that some of the better-beaten trails turning northward might lead to nearer water, one of them was taken; and after turning back from half a dozen false scents, the principal trail was followed to the well-known Tinaja Anita, 15 miles by the trail from Campo Navidad; and here the party watered. It was on the return trip that the cairn was discovered; but the party were laden with filled canteens and saucepans and coffeepots, the day was well spent, and the camp more than a dozen miles distant even over the air line traversing spall-sprinkled taluses and sharp-edged rocks; moreover, the men were naturally and necessarily heavily armed and on constant guard. Accordingly even the short stay and cursory notes involved an additional mile of darkness on a trail so rough as to cut through shoe-soles and sandals and catch scents of blood to tempt coyotes to the camp site. Thus it was that the cairn was not more critically examined and is not more fully described.

330 “In all stages of development belief runs a close race against cupidity, and is sometimes distanced; so the sages learn that even a buried weapon may be a source of contention, which they thenceforward forestall by breaking or burning it.” (Primitive Trephining in Peru; Sixteenth Ann. Rep., Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897, p. 22.)

331 Tribes of California, pp. 160-161.

332 Language and the Study of Language, New York, 1874, pp. 194-195.

333 This form was not recorded by the collector, but has been formed by analogy by the writer.

334 “De este número en adelante los mas incultos se confunden y no saben decir mas que: muchos y muchísimos; pero los que tienen algun ingenio siguen la numeracion diciendo: una mano y uno, una mano y dos, etc. Para espresar diez, dicen: Naganná ignimbal demuejueg, esto es, todas las manos: para quince dicen las manos y un pié, y para veinte las manos y los piés, cuyo número es el término de la aritmética cochimí. Los que han aprendido el español saben nuestro modo de contar.”

“From this number onward the most ignorant are confused and are only able to say many and very many; but those who have some ingenuity continue the numeration by saying one hand and one, one hand and two, etc. To express ten they say, naganná ignimbal demuejueg, that is, all the hands; for fifteen they say the hands and a foot, and for twenty the hands and the feet, at which number ends the Cochimi arithmetic. Those who have learned Spanish know our method of counting.” (Clavigero, Historia, etc., p. 22.)

In this citation Padre Clavigero succinctly portrays the cumbersome number series of the Cochimi and other Amerinds of the Californian peninsula. Moreover, the Cochimi terms of Clavijero and those cited from Hervas by Herr Buschmann seemingly suggest a common source of information.

Ducrue (in Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, Nürnberg, 1787, vol. XII, pp. 294) expresses doubt as to the nauwi of the Laymon column, not knowing whether it is Nahuatlan or vernacular to the Laymon language. It certainly has an alien aspect. Of Laymonic number names Ducrue says that the Laymon can count singly to five, and then they repeat themselves.

The following citation may be of interest here:

“The Californians know very little of arithmetic, some of them being unable to count further than six, while others can not number beyond three, insomuch that none of them can say how many fingers he has. They do not possess anything that is worth counting, and hence their indifference. It is all the same to them whether the year has six or twelve months, and the month three or thirty days, for every day is a holiday with them. They care not whether they have one or two or twelve children, or none at all, since twelve cause them no more expense or trouble than one, and the inheritance is not lessened by a plurality of heirs. Any number beyond six they express in their language by much, leaving it to their confessor to make out whether that number amounts to seven, seventy, or seven hundred.”—Jacob Baegert, in Smithsonian Report, 1864, p. 388.

335 In Dr Gabb’s alphabet, an underscored c̲h̲ occurs, which, he states, sounds “like soft German ‘ch’ as in ‘ich’”, and also an underscored ẖ, which is, he says, “heavily aspirated”. For convenience the character χ has been substituted for both these sounds, except that for the former it is accented thus χ´.

336 This signifies, “let us see”; Dr Loew also writes, iyó-ok, “to see you”.

337 Mr Bartlett wrote schek-aipch, “bird’s egg”, and ahano-hraîk, “a duck”, literally, “water bird”, thus showing that hrek in the term “feather” signifies “bird”. M Pinart wrote shiik-immen, “bird’s nest”, and ipχ´`, “egg “. In both, the spellings here differ somewhat from the terms in the list. In the term for “duck” and “feather”, Mr Bartlett substitutes hr for the sch in his spelling of the name for a “bird”.

338 In 20 etsiyerre signifies “bird”.

339 From Bartlett’s Kutchan or Yuma Vocabulary, MS.

340 From Parker’s San Tomas Mission Vocabulary, MS. 1876.

341 This was rendered, “A white feather worn in the scalp”; in Parker’s San Tomas record tŭschalaiemiss is given for “feather”, but it is literally, “bird’s hair”.

342 The American Race, p. 335.

343 Loc. cit.