MCGEE] PRIMARY STAGE OF ETHNOGAMY 287* 



conditiou characterized by abseuce of property and thrift-sense; while 

 its most essential concomitant is extratribal antipathy too bitter to 

 Ijennit toleration of alien blood, or even of alien presence save under 

 the constraint of superior force. 



MORTUARY CUSTOMS 



The prevailinj;: opinion among the better informed Caucasian neigh- 

 bors of the Seri is that the tribesmen display an inhuman indifference 

 to their dead; and this opinion is one of the factors — combining with 

 curient notions as to cannibalism and arrow-poisoning and beastlike 

 toothing in battle — involved in the widespread feeling that the tribes- 

 men are to be accounted as mongrel and uncanny monsters rather than 

 human beings. 



The ()i)inion that the Seri neglect their dead on occasion would seem 

 to rest on a considerable body of evidence; Mendoza's record of the 

 numberless neglected corpses of warriors polluting the air and poison- 

 ing the streams of Cerro Prieto in 1757 would seem to be unusual only 

 in its fulness; and Senor Encinas, albeit so conservative as to repudi- 

 ate the reputed anthropophagy and to recognize better qualities among 

 the folk than any conteiiiiiorary, declares that they are utterly negligent 

 of their dead, save that when the bodies lie near raucherias hea|)s of 

 brambles are thi-own over them to bar — and thus to lessen the disturb- 

 ance from — prowling coyotes. Quite indubitable, too, is the specific 

 testimony of va(iueros to the effect that Seri raiders overtaken by the 

 Draconian penalty of the frontier merely lie where they fall, even when 

 this is well within reach of the tribesmen, Don Andres Noriega's verifi- 

 cation of his boast (ante, p. 113) being an instance in i)oint. On the other 

 hand stands the conspicuous fact (unknown to the frontiersuian) that 

 well-marked cemeteries adjoin some of the rancherias of interior Seri- 

 land. The sum of the somewhat discrei)ant evidence accords with a 

 characteristically unsatisfactory statement by Mash(''m, to the ett'ect 

 that the mourning ceremonies are important only in connection with 

 women — i. e., matrons — because "the woman is just like the family" {" la 

 muger es conio la familia") ; and this intimation, in turn, is corroborated 

 by the single known instance of inhumation in Seriland, as well as by 

 certain indirect indications connecited with the scatophagic customs 

 (ante, p. 213). On the whole it seems certain that the mortuary cere- 

 monies attain their highest development in connection with females, the 

 recognized blood-bearers and legislators of the tribe. 



The special dignification of females in respect to funerary rites is 

 without precise parallel among other American aborigines, so far as 

 is known, but is n(jt without analogues in the shajjc of (presumptive) 

 vestiges of a former magnification of matrons iu the mortuary customs 

 of certain tribes. The vestiges are esjiecially clear among the Iro- 

 quoian Indians, whose aboriginal socialry coincided with that of the 



