224* THE SERt INDIANS [eth.ann.17 



ary sense-effects (a.s when the sense of smell is intensified by exercise 

 of the organs of taste), or, in another direction, by the habit of the 

 yonthful penman who shapes his letters by aid of lingnal and facial 

 contortion; yet it is a characteristic of primitive life — one doubtless 

 due to the interrelations of psycho-physical functions — to not only 

 employ but to greatly exalt vocal formulas associated with manual 

 activities, so that words, and eventually the Word, aciiuires a mystical 

 or talisraanic or sacred significance pervading all lower culture — indeed 

 the savage shaman is unable to work his marvels without mumbled 

 incantations ending in some formulated and well-understood utterance, 

 and his practice persists in the meaningless mirmmery and culminating 

 "presto" of modern jugglery. So, viewed in the light of psycho- physi- 

 cal causes and prevalent customs connected with vocal formulas, it 

 would seem i)robable that the conventional features of the Seri jacales 

 are crystallized in the tribal lore (juite as effectually through the asso- 

 ciated work-chants as through direct memory of the forms and struc- 

 tures themselves. And the simple runes chanted in unison bj' Seri 

 matrons engaged in bending and lashing their okatilla house-bows 

 apparently define a nascent stage in the development of the elaborate 

 fiducial house-building ceremonies characteristic of various higher 

 tribes; for the spontaneous vocal accompaniment tends naturally to run 

 into ritual under that law of the development of myth or fable which 

 explains so many of the customs and notions of primitive peojiles.' 



APPARELING 



Slightly as they have been affected by three centuries of sporadic 

 contact with higher culture, the Seri reveal many marks of accultura- 

 tion ; and the most conspicuous of these are connected with clothing, 

 especially on the frontier, where women and even warriors habitually 

 wear a livery of subserviency in the form of cast-off Caucasian rags 

 (as illustrated in most of the photographs taken at Costa Rica). Even 

 in the depths of Seriland the native fabrics are largely replaced by 

 white men's stuffs, obtained by barter, beggary, and robbery; yet it is 

 easy to distinguish the harlequin veneer of borrowed trappings from 

 the few fixed types of covering that seem characteristic. 



The most distinctive piece of apparel is a kilt, extending from waist 

 to knees, worn alike by men and women and the larger children. 

 Aboriginally it was either a birdskin robe or a rectangle of toarse 

 textile fabric, secured at the waist by a hair-cord belt; acculturally it 

 is usually a rectangle of manta (coarse sheeting) or other stuff, prefer- 

 ably cotton or linen but sometimes woolen, fastened either by tucking 

 in the corners or by a belt of cord. Good specimens of the accultural 

 cloth kilt worn by men and larger boys are illustrated in plates xvi 



'1 lio law of fable in its relation tn primitive surgery is formulated in tlie Sixteenth Ann. Hep. Bur. 

 Am. Eth., 1897, p. 22. 



