148* THE 8ERI INDIANS Ieth.anx.IT 



Amerindian ' average; the feet are set straiglit in walking, asl)efitstbe 

 pedestrian hal)it; the arms are not elongated, and the thighs seem no 

 longer in i)roportion to other elements of the stature than are those of 

 the highest human types. In like manner the bodies are notably free 

 from artificial deformation; the skulls are not flattened or otherwise 

 distorted; there is no scarification, or even tattooing; neither ears nor 

 lips aie pierced for pendants or labrets; the teeth are not filed or 

 drilled, though iu some cases at least the first incisors of females are 

 extracted; and while there are trustworthy records of the piercing of 

 the nasal septum for the insertion of pendants, no exami)les were found 

 at Costa Eica iu 1894. The food habits and other customs of the tribe 

 indicate, or at least suggest, more or less specialized and perhaps dis- 

 tinctive internal characters; but, without actual examination of the 

 organs, these inferred characters demand little more i han passing notice. 



On reviewing the more prominent somatic characters of the Seri, it 

 is found that the greater number are either functional or presump- 

 tively correlated with function, and that only a few — chiefly stature 

 and color — are simply structural; accordingly a comparison of the 

 peculiar somatic features and the peculiar individual habits of the 

 tribe would seem to be instructive in more than ordinary degree. 



The most striking trait of the Seri is the jiedestrian habit. The 

 warriors and women and children alike are habitual rovers; their jacales 

 and even their largest rancherias are only temporary domiciles, evi- 

 dently vacant oftener than occupied; the principal rancherias are 

 separated by a hard day's journey or more; and none of the known 

 rancherias or jacales of more persistent use are nearer than i to 10 

 miles from the fresh water by which their occupants are supi)lied. 

 Probably the most persistently occupied rancherias of the last lialf 

 century have been those located from time to time near Costa Rica, 

 yet even these were seldom occupied by the same group for more than 

 a fortnight or possibly a month, and were often vacated within a day 

 or two alter erection. Still more temporary camps intervene between 

 jacales, and their sites may be seen iu numbers iu the neighborhood of 

 the better-beaten paths, or along the shores, or even over the track- 

 less spall-strewn plains; they may be .merely trampled spots, sparsely 

 strewn with oyster shells and large bones gnawed at the ends, usually 

 in the lea of a shrub or rock; in places of small shrubbery or excep- 

 tionally abundant grass there may be two or three or perhaps half a 

 dozen ''forms" (suggesting the temporary resting places of rabbits), iu 

 which robust bodies nestled and shrugged themselves into the warm 

 earth and under the meager vegetation. Rarely there are ashes and 

 cinders hard by, to mark the site of a tiny fire, and more frequently 

 battered and stained or greasy bowlders record their own use as meat- 



' The term Amerind (with the self-explanatory mutatious A merindian, Auifrindize, etc.) has been 

 eslablishecl by the Anthropological Society of Waaiiington as a convenient collective designation for 

 the aboriginal American tribes ( A.merican Anthropoloi;iMt. new series, vol. 1, 1899, p. 582). 



