284* THE SERI INDIANS [eth.annit 



auglit ill the simple yet puissant law of conjugal conation — tlint law 

 whose motive underlies the world's song and story aud all the pulsing 

 progress of maukiud as the in8i)iration of most men's work and most 

 women's hopes — the vital intensity of this era passes down the line of 

 blood-descent to the betterment of later generations. (4) Another col- 

 lateral feature is the necessary reaction on clan and tribe; for not only 

 does the individual character-making raise the average physique and 

 morale of the group, but the carefully studied restraint of excessive 

 individuality serves to strengthen still further the tribal bonds aud 

 to lift still higher the racial bar against aliens. The blackest crime iu 

 the Seri calendar is the toleration of alien blood; and no more effective 

 device could be found for keeping alive the race-sense on which this 

 canon deijeuds than that virtually sacramental surveillance of sexual 

 intimacy which Seri usage requires.' 



On scanning the conventional classifications of human marriage in 

 the light of the Seri customs, it becomes clear that these customs define 

 a plane not hitherto recognized observationally. For convenience, this 

 plane and the mode of marriage defining it may, iu special allusion to 

 the correlative race-sense, be styled ethno{/amy; aud the more systematic 

 characters of this mode and plane of marriage may be outlined briefly: 



1. The most conspicuous character of ethnogamic union, as manifested 

 iu the type tribe, is its absolute confinement to the consanguineal groui). 

 The breach of this limitation is hardly conceivable iu the minds of the 

 group, since aliens are not classed as human, nor even dignified as 

 animals of the kinds deified in their lowly faith, but contemned as 

 unclean and loathsome monsters; yet the infraction has a sort of theo- 

 retical place at the head of their calendar as an utterly intolerable 

 crime. In respect to this character, ethuogamy corresponds fairly with 

 the endogamy of McLennan, Spencer, aud others, i. e., with the tribal 

 endogamy of Powell. 



2. A hardly less conspicuous character of ethnogamic union is the 

 formality, or legality, accompanying and reflecting the collective nature 

 of the function. Iu this respect ethuogamy is the direct antithesis of 

 that hypothetical promiscuity postuliited by Morgan and adopted by 

 Spencer, Lubbock, Tylor, and others; and the customs of the type tribe 

 go farther, perhaps, than any other exami)le in verifying the alternative 



' The remarkable race-sense of the tribe, with the conjugal conation in which it seems to root, are 

 discuased ante, pp. 160-163. There is nothing to indicate, and niach to oontraindic.ite, that the Seri 

 are consrioiisly enf^aged in stiriiicuUiire; yet their sociiil and tidiicial di^x'ices would seem to be no less 

 eftVctivi- in developing race-sense, with its concomitants, than yvere those of prehistoric men in devel- 

 oping the physical attributes of animal associates, such as the wool-bearing of the sheep, the egg-lay- 

 ing of the fowl, and the milk-giving of the cow ; or the still more striking mental attributes, such as 

 the servility of the horse, the tidelity of the dog, and the domesticity of the cat. All these attributes 

 are artidcial. Ihongh not consciously so to their producers, hardly even to modern users: they are 

 by-products of long-continued breeding and exercise, commonly directed toward collateral ends {as 

 when the horse was bred for speed, the dog for hunting, aud the fowl and cat for beauty) ; and, simi- 

 larly, the Seri rai-e-si-nsc would seem to be largely a by-product of faith-shaped customs (U'signeil 

 primarily to jiropitiate or invoke mystical potencies — yet the collateral etfect is not diminished because 

 overlooked in the jiriniary motive. 



