lf)4* THE SEKI INDIANS [eth.ann.17 



young or eiippled fowl w:is roi)ed to a shrub or stone, to be fed by liis 

 fellows; when at intervals a youth stole out to rob the captive's pouch. 

 At first blush this device would seem to rise above the normal indus- 

 trial plane of tlie Seri and to lie within the lower stages of zooculture, 

 like the cormorant fishing of China if not the hawking of medieval 

 Europe: yet on the whole it may be deemed fairly consistent with that 

 cruel yet mutually beueticial toleration between tribesmen and i)eli(',ans 

 attested by the preservation of the avian communal, as already noted. 

 Moreover, Don Andres observations are iu accord with early notes 

 of the exceedingly primitive aborigines of California, from whom the 

 Seri have undoubtedly borrowed various cultural suggestions; thus 

 Venegas quotes Padre Torquemada as saying: 



I accidentally found a gull tied with a string and one of his wings broke. Around 

 this maimed bird lay heaps of excellent pilchards, brought thither by its compan- 

 ions; and this, I found, was a stratagem practiced by the Indians to procure them- 

 selves a dish of fish; for they lie concealed while the gulls bring these charitable 

 supplies, and when they think that little more is to be expected they seize upon the 

 contributions. 



The padre says also of these gulls that " they have a vast craw, 

 which iu some hangs down like the leather bottles used in Peru for 

 carrying water, and in it they put their captures to carry them to their 

 young ones"' — from which it is evident that he refers to the pelican. 

 Venegas adds, "Such are the mysterious ways of Providence for the 

 sup])ort of his creatures!'' ' And in the margin of his accompanying 

 "Mapa de la California", he introduces a vigorous picture of a captive 

 fowl, its free fellow, and the mess of tish, the cut being headed "Alca- 

 trazes" (pelicans). 



Despite these devices, the dearth of fishing-tackle among the Seri is 

 evidently extreme. Save in the single specimen figured, no piscatorial 

 apparatus of any sort was found among the squalid but protean pos- 

 sessions at the Costa Kica raucheria; neither nets nor hooks nor rods 

 nor lines nor any other device suitable for taking the finny game were 

 found in the scores of jacales containing other artifacts on 1'iburon; 

 while Senor Enciuas was conversant only with the simple method of 

 taking fish by hand from the pools and shallows left by receding 

 breakers or ebbing tides. This dearth of devices is significantly har- 

 monious with other Seri characteristics: it accords with the leading 

 place assigned the turtle in their industry and their lore; it is iu har- 

 mony with that primitive and nonmechanical instinct which leads them 

 to rely on bodily strength and skill and swiftness rather than on extra- 

 corporeal artifacts in their crude and incomplete conquest of nature; 

 and it is a manifest expression of relation with their distinctive phys- 

 ical euvironuient — for the ever-thundering breakers of their gale-swept 

 coast are abundant, albeit capricious, bringers of living grist, while 

 the ofishore gales at low tide lay bare hundreds of acres of shoaler 



* History of California, 1759, vol. i, p. 41. 



