While the highly developed traits represented by pedestrian habit and hand-and-tooth habit and segregative habit expressing race-sense are conspicuous during exercise, each carries an equally well-marked obverse. Thus, while the Seri are known as runners par excellence in a region of runners, and were named by aboriginal neighbors from their spryness of movement, they have been no less notorious among the Caucasian settlers of two generations for unparalleled laziness—for a lethargic sloth beyond that of sluggish ox and somnolent swine, which was an irritating marvel to the patient padres of the eighteenth century, and is today a byword in the even-tempered Land of Mañana; concordantly the sinewy hands and muscular jaws are noticeably inert during the intervals between intense functionings, are practically free from the spontaneous or nervous movements of habitually busy persons, and contribute by their immobility to the air of indolence or languor which so impressed padres and rancheros; concordantly also, the manifestations of race hate, doubtless culminating among warriors on the warpath, are strongly contrasted with the abject docility of the Seri groups when at peace and in camp near Costa Rica and other ranchos—a docility far exceeding that of the Papago, whose personal dignity is an ever-present possession, or that of Yaqui, whose strong spirit so often breaks the curb of Caucasian control. So the observer of the Seri is impressed by the intensity of functioning along lines defined by their characteristic traits, and equally by the capriciousness of the functioning and the remarkably wide range between activity and inactivity which render them aggregations of extremes—the Seri are at once the swiftest and the laziest, the strongest and the most inert, the most warlike and the most docile of tribesmen; and their transitions from rôle to rôle are singularly capricious and sudden. At the same time the observer is impressed by the relatively long intervals between the periods of activity; true, the intense activity may cover hours, as in the chase of a deer, or days, as in a distant predatory raid, or perhaps even weeks, when the tribe is on the warpath; yet all the known facts indicate that far the greater portion of the time of warriors, women, and children is spent in idle lounging about rancherias and camps, in lolling and slumbering in the sun by day and in huddling under the scanty shelter of jacales or shrubbery by night—i. e., when their activity is measured by hours, their intervals of repose must be measured by days.

Summarizing those somatic traits connected with habitual functioning, the Seri may be considered as characterized by (1) distinctive pedestrian habit, (2) conspicuous hand-and-tooth habit correlated with defective tool-sense, and (3) pronounced segregative habit correlated with a highly specialized race-sense; yet they are characterized no less by extreme alternations from the most intense functioning to complete quiescence—the periods of intensity being relatively short, and the intervals of quiescence notably long.

On reviewing the more conspicuous somatic structures and functions jointly, they are found to throw some light on their own development, and hence on the natural history of the Seri tribe.

Certain characteristics of the tribe strongly suggest lowly condition, i. e., a condition approaching that of lower animals, especially of carnivorous type; among these are the specific color, the centripetally developed body, the tardy adolescence, the defective tool-sense, the distinctive food habits (especially the consumption of raw offal and carrion), the independence of fixed habitations, and the extreme alternations between the rage of chase and war and the quiescence of sluggish repose. But these primitive characteristics are opposed or qualified by such features as the noble stature, the capacious and shapely brain-case, the well-developed hands, and the considerable intelligence revealed in native shrewdness as well as in organization and belief. Collectively the characteristics are in some measure incongruous; yet all are at least fairly compatible with the inference that the tribe is exceptionally (if not incomparably) low in the scale of general human development, yet at the same time highly specialized along certain lines; and the inference in turn is corroborated by the coincidence between the special lines of development and the peculiar conditions of environment characterizing the habitat of the tribe.

A striking correspondence between Seri physique and Seri habitat is revealed in the pedal development, with the attendant development of muscle and bone, lung capacity, and heart power, together with other faculties involved in the pedestrian habit. Seriland is a hard and inhospitable home; sea-food is indeed abundant and easily taken, but water is terribly—often fatally—scarce, and obtainable only by distant journeying from the places of easy food supply; moreover, the monotony of the diet is alleviable only by extensive wandering for the collection of vegetal products or severe chase after land animals; while the warlike spirit, apparently inherited from a still less humane ancestry and fostered by the geographic isolation, combines to keep the tribe afoot, avoiding waters, conducting raids, and moving constantly from place to place in the endless search for safety. There is a widespread Sonoran tradition that the Seri systematically exterminate weaklings and oldsters; and it is beyond doubt that the tradition has a partial foundation in the elimination of the weak and helpless through the literal race for life in which the bands participate on occasion. A parallel eliminative process is common among many American aborigines; the wandering bands frequently undergo hard marches under the leadership of athletic warriors with whom all are expected to keep pace, and this leads both to desertion of the aged and feeble and to increased strength and endurance on the part of the strong and enduring; yet it would appear that this merciless mechanism for improving the fit and eliminating the unfit attains unusual, if not unequaled, perfection among the Seri. Now pedal development is one of the special processes of peripheral (or centrifugal) functioning and growth involved in the general process of cheirization, which, coordinately with cephalization, defines human progress;254 and this developmental process explains the specialization of the Seri along one or more lines, and connects the special development directly with environing conditions.

A notable correspondence between structure and function, of such sort as to reflect the habit and habitat, appears in the conspicuous manual development of the Seri. Enjoying a climate too mild to make houses necessary, finding animal food too plentiful to necessitate elaborate contrivances for the chase or milling or other devices for reducing vegetal food, provided by nature with material (in the form of carrizal) for an ideally suitable water craft, barred by geographic boundaries from neighboring tribes, and having neither material for nor interest in commerce, the denizens of Seriland were never forced into the way of mechanical development; yet their simple industries, involving as they do swift stroke and strong grasp and dexterous digitation, are mainly such as urge manual development more strenuously than would be normal among tribesmen connected with their environment through the medium of tools. The demand for manual strength and skill is intensified among the Seri by both natural and domestic conditions; the ever-ready (and almost the sole) material suitable for simple adjuncts to the hand abounds in the form of wave-worn cobbles; these cobbles are easily usable in such wise as to serve all ordinary purposes, and their abundance discourages the production of more highly differentiated tools; while their habitual use promotes manual strength and deftness, coupled with that digital freedom (required, for example, in grasping a ball) which most clearly distinguishes the human hand from the subhuman paw. Conjoined with these natural conditions are demotic demands tending to cultivate manual fitness and eliminate the manually unfit; for, in addition to the direct industrial premium on dexterity, through which the dexterous survive while the clumsy starve, there is a special premium growing out of the marriage custom, through which only the manually efficient (and at the same time morally acceptable) are put in the way of leaving lines of descendants.255 Naturally, in view of the combination of factors, all traceable directly or indirectly to environmental conditions, the Seri afford a peculiarly striking example of cheirization extended to an entire tribe (if not to a genetic stock of people)—indeed the remarkably developed Seri hands and feet first suggested the importance of this process of human development and led to its formal characterization.

Accordingly, the robust-bodied and slender-limbed yet big-fisted and big-footed Seri seem to be adjusted, so far as several of their more striking somatic characters are concerned, to distinctive habits themselves reflecting a distinctive habitat; and the coincidences appear to reveal and establish the law of interaction between the human organism and its environment—an interaction effected through the habits and hence through, the normal functioning of the individual organisms as constrained through their collective relations. And recognition of the law of interaction opens the way to consideration of other correspondences between structures and functions and environing conditions.

Conspicuous among the more strictly functional traits of the Seri is the intensity of action characteristic especially of the warriors, though in less degree of the entire tribe—an intensity made all the more striking by contrast with the extreme inertness between stresses. Manifestly the capacity for concentrated effort is in harmony with the tribal habits, themselves reflecting habitat. The resource of prime importance in Seriland—that which directly and constantly conditions the very existence of human inhabitants—is potable water. This prime source of life is too heavy to be transported and too unstable to be stored with the facilities of primitive culture, yet it is always within reach of an organism strong enough to journey ten or twenty or fifty miles in search of it, and acute enough to follow trails and indications. Naturally the meager water-supply serves as a mechanism for sorting out and preserving the strong and the acute, and for eliminating the weakly and the dull; and hence the tribe have developed a faculty, or perhaps a potentiality, of distinctive sort—the potentiality of providing against thirst-death by a reserve power in the organism itself rather than in the form of mechanical devices such as characterize higher culture. Quite similar are the relations to the resource of second importance, i. e., ordinary food. Habituated to dispensing with storage and transportation of their primary resource, and accustomed to finding food whenever forced to sufficiently active effort to obtain it, the Seri have never grasped that first principle of thrift expressed in the accumulation of food supplies; and accordingly they intuitively rely on successful fishing or chase or search of vegetal edibles for sustenance, and habitually delay effort until they are stirred into activity by the pangs of hunger. Naturally this improvidence serves as another mechanism for perpetuating families of stored vitality, and especially those able to prevail over swift or strong or cunning quarry by sustained vigor and alertness after prolonged deprivation; and the effect of this mechanism, too, is to develop a reserve power in the organism itself, in lieu of the material reserve made through thrift in higher culture. Similar in their consequences are the relations of the individual organisms to the third industry of Seriland, i. e., navigation of the gale-swept and tide-troubled waters. Even the buoyant balsa can not weather the williwaws or ride the tiderips of El Infiernillo without exercise of the utmost strength and skill on the part of the navigators; while the often persistent storms may delay for days embarkation on voyages in quest of fresh water or food. Naturally, the frequent delays and not infrequent perils of such navigation constitute a mechanism for selecting navigators possessed of reserve powers adequate to meet desperate emergencies with vigor and judgment even after enervating waits for wind and tide, while those not so well endowed are either brought up to standard in their hard training-school or expelled from their class by drowning or dashing on the rocks, as may happen; so that the effect of this mechanism also is to preserve individuals and perpetuate generations characterized by reserve power, and hence to develop latent potentiality in the tribe. Now, the normal product of these and other natural mechanisms immediately reflecting environmental conditions is capacity for spurts, or for intense functioning under severe stress, despite accentuation of the stress by thirst or hunger or exhaustion, or by all combined—i. e., the effect of habitat and habit is to produce precisely such a somatic regimen as that so conspicuously displayed by the Seri folk. So the intensified activity with long intervals of inertness, simulating the habits of carnivorous and some other lower animals, and hence suggesting primitive condition, would appear to be largely a phylogenetically acquired character expressing specific adjustment to environment.

To the actual observer of the Seri in his prime there is an indefinable but none the less impressive harmony between the intense regimen and the trenchant structural development characteristic of the tribe—a harmony like unto that felt by naturalist and artist alike in viewing at once the clean-cut form and vigorously easy mobility of tiger or thoroughbred horse; and simple inspection of the lithe limbs and body-muscles stirs into living realization a half-felt inference from many facts—the obvious and indubitable inference that they are stress-shaped structures. Accordingly, the concentrated and robust bodies, the shapely jaws, the well-chiseled arms, and the statuesque legs of the Seri, no less than their powerful hands and bulky feet, direct special attention to the axiom that somatic structures are the product of exercise, and indicate with convincing clearness that the structures are trenchantly developed because of the supreme intensity of the creative exercise. It may be impracticable to outline in terms of metabolism the precise processes of waste and repair in organs and organisms, or to define the relative periods of action and assimilation (or of catabolism and anabolism) best adapted to the development of motile tissue; yet the external facts of all bodily growth demonstrate the efficiency of alternating effort and repose, while the characteristics of highly developed animal bodies (including those of the Seri) demonstrate that the most beneficial exercise is that of relatively brief but intense stresses alternating with relatively long intervals of sluggish movement or complete repose. Moreover, the facile metabolism involved in the widely alternating regimen implies exceptional somatic plasticity of the sort normally accompanying youth and attending tissue growth; and this persistent bodily plasticity is in harmony with the peculiarly dilatory maturation characteristic of the Seri tribe. So the animal-like bodies of the Seri, no less than their animal-like movements, which at first sight suggest primitive condition, may safely be held in large measure to reflect specific habits of life, themselves reflecting a distinctive habitat.

Still more suggestive to the observer than the well-molded structures and the intense functioning with which they are conjoined are those elusive yet persistent characteristics of the Seri comprised in their distinctive race sense—characteristics ranging from overweening intratribal pride to overpowering extratribal hatred. Even at first blush it would seem obvious that the tribal isolation, itself the reflection of environment, would necessarily tend toward a segregative habit with concomitant hostility toward aliens; yet the race-sense of the Seri so far transcends that of other segregated tribes as to suggest the existence of a specific cause. So, too, it would seem obvious that the race feeling gathers about a corporeal nucleus in the form of the race-type exemplified in the heroic stature, the shapely face, the mighty chest, the luxuriant hair, the well-modeled muscles, the powerful feet and hands, the “collected” carriage, and the stored vitality, which (as already indicated) synthesize the environmental interactions of generations; yet the actual student can not avoid the impression that the race-sense dominates the race-type—that the Seri are farther away from neighboring tribes in feeling than in features, in function than in structure, in mind than in body. Now, in seeking the sources of this distinctive (not to say specific) race-sense, several suggestions arise. Naturally the first suggestion is that of simple sexual selection, the (assumptive) analogue of an important factor in biotic evolution; but the suggestion is at once apparently negatived by the fact that all the mature men and women are married and have families of children proportionate to their ages. True, undesirable fiancés may be expelled from the tribe, or even executed (as intimated by neighboring Sonorenses); yet there is little evidence that either method of selection is employed among the Seri more largely than among other peoples; and, as all recent researches indicate, the higher peoples at least have risen above the plane of sexual selection per se as an effective factor in somatic development. A second suggestion arises in the axiom (vivified by realization of the connection between Seri movements and Seri structures) that perfected organs are the product of stressful functioning—indeed, the suggestion is but the extension of the axiom from the individual to the stirp and the group. In developing the suggestion it is convenient to divide the career of the stirp into periods defined by the successive wax and wane of vitality in its most significant manifestations; and this may be done in terms of successive individual lifetimes in their three successive aspects of (1) youth, (2) maturity, and (3) senility, in which the dominant constructive functions are respectively (1) somatic growth, (2) collective growth (comprising both procreation and the accumulation of artificial possessions), and (3) dissipation of somatic vitality and distribution of extrasomatic accumulations (generational as well as material and intellectual). Now, it is a commonplace in every stage of culture that vital capacity, and also the inherent sense of kind manifested in pairing, culminate in the medial portion, or prime, of individual life; and if this universal recognition is valid, it is just to hold that the career of the stirp is defined by the successive vital climaxes expressing the primes of the series of generations pertaining to the stirp. It follows that each generation must represent, not the average qualities of the entire generation past, but the qualities of the most virile and muliebrile fraction of that generation; whence it follows in turn that in general the generations must develop along the lines most prominent in the lives of each people in their prime. The process may be formulated as the law of periodic conjugation, under which successive generations are initiated, not at random, but at periods of culminant effectiveness in shaping the course of the stirp. The immediate application of this law to the Seri tribe is manifest, for it explains (the initial condition of isolation and the consequent incipient segregative habit being given) how and why the tribal standards have grown more definite from generation to generation, and have interacted cumulatively with the distinctive environment in such manner as continually to widen the chasm between the desert-bound tribe and their alien neighbors. Yet the general application of the law leads only to a more specific application; for, just as the career of the stirp is made up of a succession of vital maxima and minima, so the lifetime of the individual, even in the median stage, is made up of a series of vital climaxes separated by relatively inert intervals; and, as recognized by every naturalist and romancist, every philosopher and poet, in every stage of culture, it is during the periods of conative domination by the master passion that the career of the individual is shaped and that the stirp-sentiment (or susceptibility to kind) culminates in intensity. It follows that the progeny of successive generations represent not merely the optimum median stage of life in which vitality and virility and muliebrity are at flood, but the very climaxes of this stage in which manhood and womanhood attain their ideals, and in which the ideals react on the physical system with unequaled intensity; it follows in turn that each generation must (in so far as intellectual tension can control long series of metabolic interactions after the manner in which short series are controlled by direct volitional exercise) incarnate the ideals of the preceding generation; whence it follows still further that in general isolated race-types tend constantly and cumulatively to increase in definiteness—at least until the somatic factors are counterbalanced by demotic relationships arising with considerable increase in population. It is true that the extent to which the incarnation of ideals is effective or even possible has not been measured; it is also true that the naturalists of the higher culture-stages commonly neglect the process; yet the occasional recognition of its positive aspect, as in Goethe’s “elective affinities” and in Jacob’s getting of “ringstraked, speckled, and spotted” stock (Genesis XXX, 37-41), and the practically universal recognition—more especially among primitive peoples—of its negative aspect in adverse prenatal influences, clearly indicates its importance; the fact that the ancient Greeks at once idealized in unparalleled degree, and produced unexcelled perfection in, the human form being of no small significance. Even if the measure of the incarnation of ideals be reduced to the lowest minimum consistent with common knowledge, it remains true that the progeny of successive generations are not the offspring of average parents, but of pairs at the perfection and conjugal culmination of their virile and muliebrile excellencies; so that the generations must run in courses of cumulatively increasing racial (or human) perfection, under a general law of conjugal conation.

In extending the general law of conjugal conation to the Seri, it is found peculiarly applicable, in view of their distinctive marriage custom, the effect of which is to intensify conjugal sentiments, with the attendant magnification, and potential if not actual incarnation, of ideals.256 Accordingly there would appear to be a harmony between Seri race-sense and Seri race-type no less delicate than that between the stressful action and the stress-shaped structures of the tribe, and while the inception of both type and feeling may be ascribed to the isolated environment, it seems manifest that both have interacted constructively and in cumulative fashion through a significant process exemplified more clearly by this tribe than by others thus far studied. At the same time, analysis of the harmony between type and sentiment indicates that the lowly Seri are actually, albeit unconsciously, carrying out a meaningful experiment in stirpiculture—an experiment whose methods and results are equally valuable to students. The Seri gymnastic and the Seri stirpiculture are in close accord, in that both are conditioned by initially dilatory yet ultimately intense action; the results are equally accordant in that the one conduces toward individual vigor and the other toward a vigorous and distinctive stirp; while the excellence of the methods (viewed from the somatic standpoint) is attested by the magnificence of the product. Now, comparison of the stirpicultured Seri with contemporary tribes shows that the desert-bound folk have attained unequaled somatic development, and suggests that the intuitive stirpicultural processes have been rendered peculiarly effective through the persistence of that tribal isolation in which the processes apparently took rise; so the race-sense of the Seri may be regarded as the product of long-continued stirpicultural processes, initially shaped by environment, yet developed to unusual degree by somatico-social habits, kept alive largely through continuous environmental interaction.

Summarily, the Seri are characterized by noble physique, by peculiarly swift and lightsome movements, by great endurance coupled with capacity for vigorous action, by animal-like symmetry and slowness of maturation, and by various minor attributes combining with the major features to form a distinctive race-type; and they are still more conspicuously characterized by an acute race-sense which holds them apart from all aliens. At first sight, several of their somatic attributes seem incomparably primitive, yet analysis of the attributes in the light of certain laws which they exemplify better than other peoples thus far studied indicates not so much a lack of development as an excess of growth along purely somatic lines, with a correlative defect of development along demotic lines; and when the lines of growth are traced to the sources and conditions, it becomes fairly clear that the aberrant development of the tribe is merely the reflection of a distinctive environment operating (evidently) throughout a long period. In brief, the somatic interest of the Seri seems to center in the remarkable adjustment of the tribe to a peculiar environment—an adjustment of such delicacy as to imply interaction throughout many generations.

DEMOTIC CHARACTERS

The Seri, like all other peoples, are characterized by various collective attributes which vastly transcend in interest and importance the somatic attributes exhibited by the individuals. These superorganic attributes are essentially activital—i. e., they represent what the people do rather than what they merely are; and in both collective and activital aspects they serve to distinguish the human realm from the organic realm, and to afford a basis for the classification of mankind—i. e., they combine to form demotic characters.

The demotic characters of the Seri, like those of other peoples, may be classed as (1) esthetic, (2) industrial, (3) institutional, (4) linguistic, and (5) sophic; and in this order the essentially human attributes of the tribe (except the last named) may be described. It is a matter of deep regret that the data concerning the demotic characters of the tribe are too meager to afford more than a mere outline of their activities, and that their suggestive mythology must be passed over for the present.

Symbolism and Decoration

FACE-PAINTING

One of the most conspicuous customs of the Seri is that of painting the face in designs by means of mineral pigments. Of the 55 members of the tribe shown in the group forming plate XIII, 28 (in the original photograph; a somewhat less number in the reproduction) exhibit face-painting more or less clearly, and this proportion may be regarded as typical; i. e., about half of the tribe are painted.

On noting the individual distribution of face-painting, it is found to be practically confined to the females, though male infants are sometimes marked with the devices pertaining to their mothers, as adult warriors are said to be on special occasions; and so far as observed all the females, from aged matrons to babes in arms, are painted, though sometimes the designs are too nearly obliterated by wear to be traceable. About 35 of the individuals shown in the group (plate XIII) are females; of these, fully four-fifths showed designs or definite traces of the paint, while the remaining fifth bore traces too faint to be caught by the camera; but none of the men or larger boys were painted. In the smaller group shown in plate XIV all of the females display paint, as does the small boy in the center also, while the man (husband of the middle-aged matron) reveals no trace of the symbol. The two pictures typify the prevalence and the distribution by sex of the painting.

The painted designs vary among different individuals, but are fairly persistent for each. The prevailing design at Costa Rica in 1893 was that of the aged matron known as Juana Maria (plate XVIII), with variations in detail such as that exhibited by her unmarried daughter Candelaria (the Seri belle shown in plate XXIV); next in frequency were the designs, in white and red, exhibited by the matrons portrayed in plates XX and XXII. Other designs observed are indicated in plate XXVI. The variations in individual designs are apparently due either to varying care in the application of the paint or to the degree of obliteration by wear—e. g., the withered Juana Maria sometimes put on her design askew and was negligent of details, while the blooming Candelaria greatly elaborated the details of the pattern and carefully perfected the symmetry of the whole when preparing for her full-dress sitting before the camera (plate XXIV), so that her design was then gorgeous by contrast with the nearly obliterated blur of a half-hour before. The designs are renewed every few days, especially for ceremonious occasions, and hence are practically permanent.

When grouped in relation to their wearers, the designs are found to exhibit family connection. Thus, Juana Maria’s design is repeated, with greater elaboration of detail and with a pair of supplementary marks, in that of her daughter Candelaria; the winged symbol of the Seri matron portrayed in plate XX is repeated with minor variations in that of her daughter, the Seri maiden pictured in plate XXV; while the symbols of the mother and infant daughter depicted in plate XV are essentially alike. It is noticeable, too, that in the nearly spontaneous arrangement of individuals in the group shown in plate XIII there is a tendency toward subgrouping by symbols; and it was constantly observed that the family groups gathered about particular jacales (such as that shown in plate XIV) displayed corresponding designs, though there were frequent visitors from neighboring jacales bearing other designs. Briefly, all the observed facts, as well as the supplementary information gained by inquiry, indicate that the designs are hereditary in the female line, but are susceptible of slight modification both in elaborateness of detail and in the addition of minor supplementary features.

The principal apparatus and materials used in the face-painting are illustrated in plate XXVII. The chief pigments are ocher, gypsum, and the rare mineral dumortierite; the ocher yields various shades of red, ranging from pink to brown; the gypsum affords the white used in most of the designs; while the dumortierite is the source of the slightly varying tints of blue. So far as was observed, the pigments are not blended by mixing, though there is some blending due to overlapping in application. The ocher is commonly extracted and transported as lumps of ocherous clay or ocherous gypsum (plate XXVII, figures 1 and 5), though it is sometimes reduced to powder and transported in bits of skin or rag, or in cylinders of cane (plate XXVII, figures 3 and 4); and it is prepared by trituration with a pebble or rubbing with the fingers, usually in a shell cup. Sometimes the shell used for the purpose is the valve of a Cardium, which serves indiscriminately as cup, spoon, skin-scraper, etc.; but preference is apparently given to thick and strong shells, such as the wave-worn valve of Chama (?), shown in plate XXVII, figure 7, which are consecrated to the use and eventually buried with the user, together with a supply of the paint (like that illustrated in the cane cylinder—figure 4—which was a mortuary sacrifice). The gypsum is usually carried in natural slabs or other fragments, perhaps rounded by wear (plate XXVII, figures 6 and 8); it is prepared by wetting and rubbing two pieces together, the larger being reduced to metate shape by the operation. The dumortierite was observed only in the form of a pencil made by pulverizing the substance and mixing with sufficient clay to give consistency. The several pigments are applied wet by means of human-hair brushes kept for the purpose, the process occupying from half an hour to three or four hours for the more elaborate designs. So far as observed at Costa Rica in 1894, the paints were mixed in water only; but since painting outfits found on Tiburon island in 1895 were smeared with grease, it is probable that either water or fats may serve for menstrua, at the convenience of the artists. Commonly the process of painting is measurably cooperative. The matron usually depicts her device on the faces of her daughters up to the age of 12 or 15 years, when they learn to make the applications themselves; and frequently two or more women (usually those with similar devices) work together in preparing and applying the pigments, each laying the paint on her own face and apparently guiding her hand partly by the sense of feeling and partly by suggestions from her coworkers; but Candelaria and some other of the younger women at Costa Rica frequently worked alone, aided by a mirror in the form of a shallow bowl of water set in the shadow while the brilliant desert glare fell full on the face.

The mines yielding the pigments were not located. The geologic conditions are such that the ochers are undoubtedly abundant; but it is probable that the gypsum is uncommon and confined to a remote locality or two, and that the dumortierite is rare and scanty here as elsewhere. The care with which the paints are preserved, prepared, and applied, the fact that they are indispensable feminine appurtenances even on the longest journeys, and their sacred rôle in the mortuary customs, all combine to indicate that they are among the most highly prized possessions of the people and by far the most precious of their minerals.

The sematic functions of the designs are esoteric, yet an inkling of their meaning was obtained through Mashém, the interpreter at Costa Rica in 1894; from his expressions it appears that the designs are sacred insignia of totemic character, serving to denote the clans of which the tribe is composed. But three clans were identified, and these only with some uncertainty, viz., the Turtle clan,257 denoted by the symbols of Juana Maria (plate XVIII) and Candelaria (plate XXIV and the upper left figure in plate XXVI); the Pelican clan, denoted by the designs of two typical matrons (plates XX and XXII) and a typical maiden (plate XXV), and probably also by those of the medio-lateral figures in plate XXVI; and (still less certainly) the Rattlesnake clan, denoted by the symbol of the lower left figure in this plate. The special sematic values of the colors also are esoteric, and were not ascertained; even in the case of the simple pelican design, the difference in meaning between the solid red pattern of one group and the similar pattern of white in another group was successfully concealed. So, too, the significance of the various subordinate or supplementary devices—the distinct border-line shown in plate XX, the lower cheek devices in plate XXIV, the separate chin mark in plate XXV, the fetish-like symbols on the lower cheeks in the lower left figure of plate XXVI, etc.—eluded inquiry; while some of the minor features of both form and color were sufficiently variable in the devices borne by different faces of the same family, and even in successive paintings of the same face, to suggest some individual freedom in carrying out the detail of the generally uniform designs.

The telic functions, or ultimate purposes, of the face-painting are also esoteric, though not beyond the reach of inference from the sematic functions, coupled with general facts of zoic and primitive human customs. Even at first sight the painted devices bring to mind the directive markings of lower animals defined by Professor Todd258 and interpreted by Ernest Seton-Thompson;259 and in view of the implacably militant habit of the Seri it would seem evident that the artificial devices are, at least in their primary aspect, analogous to the natural markings. On analyzing the directive markings of animals, it is convenient to divide them into two classes, distinguished by special function, usual placement, and general relation to animal economy: the first class serve primarily to guide flight in such manner as to permit ready reassembling of the flock; they are usually posterior, as in rabbit, white-tail deer, antelope, and various birds; and they primarily signify inimical relations to alien organisms, with functional exercise under stress of fear. The second class of markings serve primarily for mutual identification of approaching individuals; as comports with this function, they are usually facial, or at least anterior; and their functional exercise is normally connected with peaceful association—though the strongly emphasized facial symbols of the males doubtless blazon forth the alternative meanings of preference for peace or readiness for strife, like the calumet tomahawk of the Sioux warrior (as interpreted by Cushing). So the directive markings of the first class are substantially beacons of danger and fear, while those of the second are just as essentially standards of safety and confidence; and they may properly be designated as beacon-markings and standard-markings, respectively.260 On seriating the two classes in terms of development, it is at once found that the beacon-markings are in large measure connected with excursive movement and are centrifugal in effect, while the standard-markings are connected mainly with incursive movement and are centripetal in effect; at the same time the latter express not only the higher intelligence, but also the greater degree of that conjustment which forms the basis of collective organization; so that the latter unquestionably represents the higher developmental stage. Now, the primary functions of these directive markings of the higher grade—signalization (or attentionization) and identification—correspond precisely with paramount needs of the alien-hating and clan-loving Seri; so that careful analysis would seem fully to justify the casual impression of functional similitude between the Seri face-painting and the directive markings of social animals.

While the first survey establishes a certain analogy between the primitive face-painting and the standard-markings of animals, an important disparity is noted when the survey is extended to individuals; for among beasts and birds the standards are usually the more conspicuously displayed by the males, while the paint devices of the Seri are confined to the females. A suggestion pointing toward explanation of this disparity is readily found in the seriation of developmental stages marked by (1) the fear-born beacon-markings, (2) the confidence-speaking standard-markings, and (3) the painted symbols; for the artificial devices coincide with an immeasurably advanced mental development, with concomitant advance in safety and peace on the one hand and in artificializing weapons on the other hand. This suggestion alone fails to explain the disparity fully, yet it raises another, growing out of the great social advancement connected with the mental development—i. e., the effect of the distinctively demotic organization of the human genus as represented by the Seri people. On considering this organization, it is found strictly maternal: the tribe is made up of clans defined by consanguinity reckoned only in the female line; each clan is headed by an elderwoman, and comprises a hierarchy of daughters, granddaughters, and (sometimes) great-granddaughters, collectively incarnating that purity of uncontaminated blood which is the pride of the tribe; and this female element is supplemented by a masculine element in the persons of brothers, who may be war-chiefs or shamans, and may hence dominate the movements of groups, but whose blood counts as nothing in the establishment and maintenance of the clan organization. Thus the females alone are the blood-carriers of the clans; they alone require ready and certain identification in order that their institutional theory and practice may be maintained; and hence they alone need to become bearers of the sacred blood-standards. The warriors belong to the tribe, and are distinguished by luxuriantly flowing hair, by the up-stepping movement from which the people derive their appellation, by their unique archery attitude, and by their dark skin-color; the boys count for little until they enter the warrior class; but on the females devolves the duty of defining and maintaining the several streams of blood on which the rigidly guarded tribal integrity depends.261 Undoubtedly the blood-markings play an important rôle in courtship and marriage, but too little is known of the esoteric life of the tribe to permit this rôle to be traced.

In brief, the Seri face-painting would seem to be essentially zoosematic, or symbolic of zoic tutelaries, and to signify subspecific (or subvarietal) characteristics maintained by the clan organization and kept prominent by the militant habit of the tribe; at the same time it is noteworthy that the purely symbolic motive is accompanied by a nascent decorative tendency, displayed by the individual refinement of form and color in the symbol proper to each of the groups.

DECORATION IN GENERAL

Aside from the face-painting there is a conspicuous dearth of decoration or tangible symbolism among the Seri.

The symbolic or decorative modification of the physique would seem to be limited to two classes of mutilations, of which one was observed at Costa Rica in 1894 while the other is apparently obsolete. The observed corporeal modification is the absence of medial superior incisors of the females, in consequence of forcible removal at a period not definitely ascertained. The interpreter at Costa Rica was uncommunicative on the subject; Don Pascual opined that the mutilation formed part of an elaborate puberty ceremonial, and this opinion would seem to be corroborated by the condition of the cranium of an immature female examined by Dr Hrdlička; but since the half-dozen adult maidens at the rancho in 1894 were free from the mutilation while all the wives bore its gruesome trace, it would seem more probable that the custom is connected with marriage. Whatever the period of the infliction, Mashém’s guarded expressions seemed to indicate that it was a mark of physical inferiority; and this suggestion, interpreted in the light of the Seri use of teeth as weapons of offense and defense, would seem to indicate that the mutilation is at once the badge of corporeal inferiority and a means of maintaining the physical superiority of the males—of course in that theoretically fiducial but actually forceful way characteristic of primitive culture.

The second mutilation was the only corporeal modification noted by early missionaries and explorers—it was the perforation of the nasal septum for the insertion of a skewer, perhaps of polished stone (though doubtless more commonly of bone), to which swinging objects were attached. One of the most useful records is that of the Jesuit, Padre Joseph Och, who described the nasal attachment as a small, colored stone suspended by cords from the perforated septum, and guarded with such jealous veneration that “one must give them at least a horse or a cow for one” (ante, p. 78); while according to Hardy’s record, the nasal fetish is “a small, round, white bone, 5 inches in length, tapering off at both ends, and rigged something like a cross-jack yard.”262 The custom is apparently obsolete, and nothing is known directly of details or motives.