132* THE SEKI INDIANS [Eiii.ANX.n 



impaired than their fear-born veneration evaporated, and their native 

 antipathy reappeared in original virulence. The LS94 party was for- 

 tunate in successfully treating a sick wife of sub-chief JMashem, and 

 subsequently spent days in the rancheria, distributing gifts to old and 

 young in a manner unprecedented in their experience and making liberal 

 exchanges for such small possessions as they wished to spare; yet, with 

 a single possible exception, they succeeded in bringing no more human 

 expression to any Seri face or eye than curiosity, avidity for food, stud- 

 ied indifference, and shrouded or snarling disgust. Among themselves 

 they were fairly cheerful, and the families were unobtrusively affection- 

 ate; yet the cheerfulness was always chilled and often banished by the 

 approach of an alien. The Sonorenses generally hold the Seri in inde- 

 scribably deep dread as uncanny and savage monsters lying beyond 

 the human pale; while the reciprocal feeling on the part of the Seri 

 toward Caucasians, and still more toward Indian aliens, seems akin to 

 that of the average man toward the rattlesnake, which he Hees or slays 

 without pause for thought — it seems nothing less than intuitive and 

 involuntary loathing. The Seri antipathy is at once deepened into an 

 obsession and crystallized into a cult; the highest virtue in their calendar 

 is the shedding of alien blood; and their normal imijulse on meeting an 

 alien is to kill unless deterred by fear, to flee if the way is clear, and to 

 fawn treacherously for better ojjportunity if neither natural course 

 lies open. 



Concordantly with their primary characteristic, the Seri have avoided 

 ethnic and demotic union beyond the narrow limits of their own kin- 

 dred; and even of these they seem to have cast out parts, annihilating 

 the Guayma and Upanguayma, displacing and nearly destroying tlie 

 Tepoka, and outlawing individuals and (api)arently) small groups. 

 The earlier chronicles indicate that the Jesuit missionaries, and alter 

 them the Franciscan friars and the secular officials, sought to scatter 

 the tribe by both cajolery and coercion, and endeavored to divide fam- 

 ilies by restraint of women and children and by banishment of wives; 

 there are loose traditions, too, of the capture and enslavement of Indian 

 and Caucasian women in Seriland; yet the great fact remains that not 

 a single mixed blood Seri is known to exist, and that no more than two 

 of the blood (Kolusio and perhaps one other) now live voluntarily 

 beyond the territorial and consanguiueal confines of the tribe. The 

 romantic story of a white slave and ancestress of a Seri clan, sometimes 

 ditfused through pernicious reportorial activity, is without shadow of 

 ])roof or probability; the tradition of the captivity of a Papago belle 

 was corroborated, albeit indefinitely, by Mashem's naive admission 

 that an alien women was once kept as a slave to a childless death due 

 to her inaptitude for long wanilerings; and there is not a single known 

 fact indicating even so much as miscibility of the Seri blood with tliat 

 of other varieties of the genus Homo. Naturally the presumption of 

 miscibility holds in the absence of direct evidence; yet the presumption 



