MCGEE] INTERTRIBAL ANTIPATHIES 131* 



from actual iuvasion of the territory of the hereditary enemy. Like 

 representatives of tlic faitli-doniinated culture-grades f;enerally, they 

 spoke weightily of inherent rights descended from the ancient time, 

 even back unto the creation ; they repeatedly declared the right of the 

 Seri to protect their territory because it was theirs; yet their converse 

 but served to show the depth and persistence of their abhorrence of 

 the Seri and of evei-ything ])ertaining to tlieni. And when gales arose 

 to delay the work, when the frail craft of the party was storm buffeted 

 and lost for days, when they were seized with the strange sickness of 

 the sea, when the salt and sugar mysteriously disappeared (having 

 been secretly sacrificed to diminish suifering from thirst), when all of 

 the earth-powers and air-powers seemed to be arrayed against the ex- 

 pedition, they stoically held it to be but just j)unishment for a sacri- 

 legious infraction of the ancient law — and their steady adherence to 

 duty, despite tradition and physical difdculty and constant danger, 

 revealed a real heroism. The strain was no slight one; it may have 

 been felt more by the stay-at-homes than by the men in action; cer- 

 tainly a sister of one of the party (Anton Castillo) and spouse of a 

 su])porter at the supply station broke under the strain, and died of 

 her terrors — and thereturuof the party was, to the Papago women and 

 oldsters at least, as the rising of the dead. The dread inspired by the 

 ])ersonal presence of the alien is stronger still; when the Seri ran- 

 cheria at Costa Rica was visited in 18'.>4 it was found needful to keep 

 the Papago interpreter and others of the tribe at a distance, since the 

 mere sight of the inimical tribesmen threw even the women and children 

 into watchful irritation, like that of range-bred horses at scent of bear 

 or timber-wolf, or that of oft-harried cats and swine at sight of i)assing 

 dog — they instinctively huddled into circles facing outward, and ceased 

 to think connectedly under the stress of nervous tension. The irrita- 

 tion was so far mutual that it w.as days before the usually placid inter- 

 preter, Jose Lewis, recovered his normal spirits; while the 1895 inter- 

 preter, Hugh Norris, was actually rendered ill by the mere entrance 

 into Seriland at PozoEscalante. And the antipathy between Seri and 

 Yaqui is nearly as great as that between the common-boundary 

 neighbors. 



The instinctive antagonism, or race antipathy, between the Seri and 

 the widely distinct Caucasian is less trenchant and intense than the 

 local antipathy; yet even between Seri and Caucasian there would seem 

 to be hardly a germ of sympathy. In the days of his prime, the Tiburon 

 islanders flocked around Don Pascual, first as a provider of easy prov- 

 ender and later as a superpotent shaman whose wrath bore destruction ; 

 yet their allegiance was never more than that of the cowed and beaten 

 brute to a hated trainer, and his coming never brought a smile to their 

 stolid features — indeed, his passage among their jacales was met with 

 the same stolid yet sinister indift'erence accorded the solitary visitor to 

 a menagerie of caged carnivores. And no sooner did his vision become 



