220* THE SERI INDIANS ' [eth.ann.17 



Despite their poverty in propelling devices, the Seri navigate their 

 waters successfully and extensively. Perhaps the commonest function 

 of the craft is tliat exercised in connection with the turtle fishery, 

 though its chief office as a factor of general industrial economy is that 

 of bridging El Inflernillo at the will of the roving clans. It is by means 

 of this craft, also, that the semiceremonial pelican feasts on Tiburon 

 are consummated; it is by the same means that Isla Patos, Isla Turner, 

 Eoca Foca, and other insulated sources of food-supply are habitually 

 reached; and both Mashcm's accounts and the Jesuits' records indi- 

 cate that occasional voyages are pushed to San Esteban, San Lorenzo, 

 Angel de la Guarda, and even to the Baja California coast. 



Concordantly with the tribal customs, little freight is carried. The 

 traveling family transport their poor possessions to the shore, bring 

 out the balsa from its hiding place in the thick and thorny fogshrub- 

 berj-, launch it, lade it with a filled olla and the weapons of a man aud 

 implements of a woman, besides any chance food and clothing, and 

 embark lightly to enjoy the semirepose of drifting before the breeze — 

 until the rising gale brings labor still more arduous than that of scour- 

 ing the spall-strewn slopes or sandy stretches of their hard motherland. 

 Commonly the terminus of the trip is fixed largely by the chance of 

 wind and tide; and when it is reached the party carry the craft inshore, 

 conceal it shrewdly, aud then take up their birdskin bed and walk 

 forth iu search of fresh water and meat. The successful fishing trips 

 of course end in orgies of gorging, and when the voyage is the climax of 

 a foray to the mainland frontier for stock stealing, the quarters and 

 paunches and heads hastily thrown aboard at the mainland side of the 

 strait are carried to the raucherias for consumption at leisure; and this 

 has happened so often that equine hoofs aud bovine bones are common 

 constituents of the middens on Tiburon. 



Although measurably similar to Central American and South Amer- 

 icau types of water-craft, the Seri balsa is a notably distinct type for 

 its region. The California natives, as well as those of the mainland of 

 Mexico south of Eio Yaqui, used rafts made either of palm trunks 

 or of other logs lashed alongside rather than balsas; while the far- 

 traveling tribes used either sails or well-differentiated paddles for 

 proimlsion. 



Brieflj', the Seri balsa is remarkable for perfect adaptation to 

 those needs of its makers shaped by their distinctive euviroument. 

 It seems to approach the ideal of industrial economy — the acme of 

 practicality — in the adjustment of materials and forces to the ends 

 of a lowly culture; and, like the olla and harpoon and arrow, it affords 

 an impressive example of the adjustment of artifacts to environment 

 through the intervention of budding intelligence. Yet the chief 

 significance of the craft would seem to reside in its vestigial character 

 as a survival of that orarian stage iu the course of human development 



