MORTUARY FOOD SUPPLIES 



213* 



was not detected until the opportunity for personal inquiry had gone 

 by. About the rancherias on Isla Tiburoii, and especially about the 

 extensive house-group at the base of Punta Tornienta, there are burial 

 places marked by cairns of cobbles, or by heaps of thorny brambles 

 where cobbles arc not accessible; and most of these cairns and bramble- 

 piles are supplemented by hoards of desiccated feces carefully stored 

 in shells, usually of Area (a typical specimen is illustrated in figure 25). 

 The hoards range from 50 to 500 shells in quantity, and there were fully 

 a score of them at I'unta Tormenta alone. About the newer rancherias, 

 as at Rada Ballena, where there are no cemeteries, the hoards are simply 

 piled about small clumps of shrubbery. The meaning of the association 

 of the dietetic residua and death in the Seri mind is not wholly clear; 

 yet the connection between the "strong food" for the warpath and the 



riG. 25 — Scatophagic supplies. 



mystical food for the manes in the long. journey to the hereafter is close 

 enough to give some inkling of the meaning.' 



In recapitulating the food supplies of the Seri it is not without inter- 

 est to estimate roughly the relative quantities of the several constitu- 

 ents consumed; and the proportions maybe made the more readily 

 comprehensible by expression in absolute terms. As a basis for the 

 quantitative estimate, it may be assumed that the average Seri, living, 

 as he does, a vigorous outdoor life, consuming, as he does, a diet of less 

 average nutrition than the selected and cooked foods of higher culture, 

 and attaining, as he does, an exceptional stature and strength, eats 

 something more than the average ration; so that his ration of solid 

 food may be lumped at 2.75 pounds (about 1,250 grams) daily, or 1,000 



' Cf. Scatologic Kites of aU Katioiis, by Captain John G. Bourke, 1891 , especial]}' chapter Li, pp. 459-460. 

 The Seri custom, resting, as it does, on an evident economic basis, tends to explain the scatoi)hagy of 

 the Hoi»i and other tribes described by IJourke. 



