WORK AND REST: GENIUS AND STUPIDITY. 421 



merely ' one of the most strongly marked and distinctive of aboriginal 

 tribes/ but ' must be assigned to the initial place in the scale of develop- 

 ment represented by the American aborigines, and hence to the lowest 

 recognized phase of savagery.' In Dr. McGee's detailed description 

 of this remarkable tribe of savages, the following passage is significant : 



"So the observer of the Seri is impressed by the intensity of functioning 

 along lines defined by their characteristic traits, and equally by the capricious- 

 ness of the functioning and the remarkably wide range between activity and in- 

 activity 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 role to rSle are singu- 

 larly 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 war- 

 riors, 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."* 



This is an entirely different view from that which travelers of a day 

 have expressed concerning savage and barbarous man, and statements 

 such as those of Eengger about the pathological slowness and stupidity 

 of the Guarani, as Hirnf terms it, must be read in a new light. And 

 perhaps we may say the same thing about Sproat's;]; characterization 

 of the Indians of Vancouver Island, which has been cited with approval 

 by Spencer. Many travelers and investigators have seen the savage 

 during the period of laziness and stupidity only and have ascribed to 

 him these qualities alone. But while the Seri Indians are so well de- 

 veloped somatically, are runners in a land of running peoples (their 

 very name signifies ' spry '), are expert paddlers in very stormy waters, 

 excellent hunters and warriors of high prestige, in fact possess a phys- 

 ical strength-reserve which makes them masters of their habitat, Hhey 

 have been no less notorious among the Caucasian settlers of two genera- 

 tions for unparalleled laziness, for a lethargic sloth beyond that of slug- 

 gish ox or somnolent swine, which was an irritating marvel to the 

 patient padres of the eighteenth century, and is to-day a by-word in the 

 even-tempered land of Manana.' Moreover this inactivity is so complete 

 that ' 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 con- 



* Loc. cit., p. 156. 



t'The Origins of Art' (London, 1900). 



$See: F. Boas in Proc. Atner. Assoc. Adv. 8ci., 1894. Here Sproat's error 

 is pointed out. 



