'icGEEl THE CARNIVOROUS HABIT 215* 



appear to form a fairly trustworthy basis for consideration of the Seri 

 food habits. 



On reviewing- the constituents it would appear that the Seri must be 

 regarded as essentially a maritime people, in that about two-thirds of 

 their food is derived from the sea; also that they must be deemed essen- 

 tially carnivorous, since fully five-sixths of their diet (84 per cent 

 plus a share of the miscellaneous— chiefly scatophagous — category) is 

 animal. The tabulation does not show the relative proportions of the 

 several constituents cooked and eaten raw, but the best available data 

 indicate that fully three-fourths of the ordinary dietary, both animal 

 and vegetal, is ingested in raw condition, and that the greater part of 

 the remaining fourth is imperfectly cooked. 



In recapitulating the devices for food-getting, it is found that nearly 

 all of the more distinctive artifacts and crafts are either directly or 

 indirectly connected with that primary activity of living things, food- 

 conquest. Foremost among the distinctive artifacts of the Seri, in its 

 relation to daily life and in its technical perfection, is the canteenolla; 

 probably second in importance, and also in technical perfection, is the 

 balsa — whose functions, however, extend beyond simple food-getting; 

 next comes the crude and simple, yet economically perfected, turtle-har- 

 poon, with its variants in the form of arrow (with a function in warfare 

 as well as in food-getting) and fire-drill; while the light basket-tray, 

 although capable of carrying ten to twenty-five times its own weight, 

 is perhaps the least perfect technically of the artifacts directly connected 

 with sustentation. And it should be noted that the prevailing tools — 

 hupf, ahst, multifunctional shell, and awl of mandible or bone or tooth — 

 have either an immediate or a secondary connection with food-getting. 



NAVIGATION 



At first sight Seriland seems an abnormal habitat for a iirimitive 

 people, since its land area is cleft in twain liy a stormy strait^ — a strait 

 whose terrors to the few Caucasian navigators who have reached its 

 swirling currents are indicated by their appellations, " El (Janal I'eli- 

 groso de San Miguel"' and "El Infiernillo"; for such a stretch of 

 troubled water is commonly a more serious bar to travel than any mod- 

 erate land expanse. This intuitive notion of the eflectiveness of a 

 water barrier, and the conelative feeling of the incongruity of a land 

 barrier insuperable for centuries, is well illustrated by prevailing opin- 

 ion throughout northwestern Mexico; for it is commonly supposed in 

 Sonora and neighboring states that Seriland is conterminous with Isla 

 Tiburon, i. e., that the mainland portion of the province (including 

 Sierra Seri with its tianking footslopes) lies beyond the diabolic chan- 

 nel. Yet longer scrutiny shows that the superficial impression merely 

 mirrors Caucasian thought and fails to touch the essential conditions, 



'Hardy, Travels, p. 291. 



