114 THE SERI INDIANS [etu.ann.i? 



been slaughtered for some montlis, an aged woraau may be seeu skulking 

 about the mestjuite clumps in sight of the raucho; if her presence is 

 tolerated for a day or two, she approaches to beg for water and food and 

 to receive the cast-oft' rags liastily forced on her nakedness by the sen- 

 sitive senoras; if she deem her welcome not too chill, she erects ajacal 

 a few hundred yards away, and there she is usually found, a morning or 

 two later, to be accompanied by a younger matron with a child or two; 

 and if these are tolerated, the raiu'hcria may grow to half a dozen jacales 

 and half a luuidred persons.' The baud may remain a fortnight or even 

 a month; but in case of serious illness of any of their number, or of 

 threat or punishment for petty peccadillos, or of an unusual storm, or 

 of a brilliant meteor, or of any exceptional occurrence about the raucho, 

 the rancheria is commonly found empty next morning. If the attaches 

 of the rancho are indisposed to tolerate the tirst envoy, yet feel kindly 

 rather than rancorous, she is merely dogged and stoned away like a 

 depredating domestic animal from another hacienda; if the rancor of 

 past encounters remains, the mercy accoided her is precisely that shown 

 the predatory coyote or other feral animal from the fastnesses of the 

 sierras — and the tribe take warning and doubtless rejoice that their 

 loss is no greater. 



Any recital of the common history of the peculiarly savage Seri 

 and the whites necessarily conveys au exaggerated notion of intimacy 

 and mutual iniluence, since it emphasizes the few positive interrelations 

 scattered along the decades of neglected nonrelation; and this is true 

 of the Encinas regime as of earlier centuries. The great fact is that 

 throughout their recorded history the Seri have touched civilization so 

 slightly and so seldom that the ett'ect of each contact was largely lost 

 before the next supervened; and theunprecedentedly intimate contact 

 of the Enciinis regime, especially during the initial period of abnormal 

 toleration, serves less to indicate relationship in characteristics and 

 sympathies than to measure the breadth of the chasm between the 

 Seri and the Mexican — a chasm not exceeded, and probably not 

 equaled, elsewhere in America. About the middle tifties, i)robably 

 every Seri above infancy and below decrepitude had seen Don Pascual 

 and some other habitues of the rancho; they yielded to the seductions 

 of indolent scavengering apparently more numerously than ever before; 

 they substituted cast oft' rags and barter-bought manta (plain cotton 

 cloth) for the products of their own primitive weaving; they ate 

 cooked food when it fell in their way; they half-heartedly adopted 

 metal cutting implements, and sought or stole nails and hoop-iron for 

 arrowpoiuts; some of them acquired a smattering of Spanish, and 

 many of them solicited and sported Spanish names, just as they begged 

 and flaunted tawdry handkerchiefs and beads; and they generally 

 enjoyed mildly the ecclesiastical fiestas, and took kindly to the cross 

 as a symbol of peace and plenty and perhaps of deeper import. Yet 



' A typical sinele jacal and the entire rancheria gathered at Costa Rica in 1894 are shown from 

 jdiotographs in plates x and xi. 



