MCGEE] THE LONG JOURNEY 293* 



dread of sepulchral visitants. The most suggestive of the associa- 

 tions, i. e., between the scatophagic stores and the sepulchers, awaits 

 full explanation. 



Serial Place of Seri Socialry 



In the conventional seriation of social development four stages are 

 clearly recognizable, viz: (1) Savagery, in which the social organization 

 is based on blood kinship reckoned in the female line; (2) barbarism, in 

 which the basis of organization is actual or assumed consanguinity 

 reckoned in the male line; (3) civilization, in which the laws are based 

 on property-right, jjrimarily territorial ; and (4) enlightenment, in which 

 the organization is constitutional and rests on the recognition of equal 

 human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, in 

 terms of this seriation of general culture-stages, the place of the Seri 

 tribe is clear. Reckoning consanguinity wholly in the maternal line, 

 as they do, they belong in the initial stage of savagery. Accordingly 

 they pertain to the lower or more primitive of the two great stages 

 I'epresented by the American aborigines. 



A still more refined seriatioTi may be effected through conspection of 

 the several lines of activital development — the esthetic and Industrial, 

 and especially the so))hic or fiducial, as well as the strictly social; for 

 these lines are most intimately intertwined. Thus, in the Old World, the 

 transition from maternal to patriarchal organization was accompanied, 

 and evidently superinduced, by the development of zooculture into 

 extensive herding; in difterent districts of the New World, a ])arallel 

 transition attended the development of agriculture to a phase involv- 

 ing the protection of acequias and fields by armed men ; while through- 

 out primitive life, laws are formulated and enforced cliiefly through 

 .appeals to the superphysical or mythologic. Now, leview of the Seri 

 esthetic indicates that the decorative concepts and activities are in 

 large measure inchoate and are practically confined to a single manifes- 

 tation, i. e., the delineation of totemic symbols primarily denoting zoic 

 tutelaries and incidentally connoting the blood-carriers of clans conse- 

 crated to these beast gods; so that the esthetic motives and devices of 

 the tribe aie essentially zoosematic. In like manner a considerable 

 part of the technic of the tribe is zooniimic, as already shown, while 

 even the most highly developed industrial activities occupy the biotic 

 borderland of mechanical chance rather than the characteristic demotic 

 realm of intellectual design. So, too, tiie faith of the folk is exclusively 

 and overweeningly zootheistic, to the extent that every motion, every 

 thought, every organized action, every law, every ceremony, is shaped 

 with reference to mystical potencies vaguely conceived as a ijautheou 

 of maleficent beast gods; audit is this dark and hopeless faith that 

 gives character to the tribal esthetic and technic. Concordantly the 

 fiiith finds reflection in the very elements of the social organization; 

 the matron is the blood-carrier and tiie lawgiver not in and for herself 



