Apkil 3, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



503 



manful opposition to their predation, to re- 

 treat to their stronghold, which thej^ have 

 stoutly defended against invasion. There 

 they subsist on abundant and easily ob- 

 tained sea food, on the game of the sub- 

 desert mountain slopes, and in season on 

 the fruits of cacti and other plants of the 

 foot-hills ; and since these sources of sub- 

 sistence unfailing and easily reached 

 through means shared with feral animals, 

 the Seri tribesmen have ever been notably 

 independent of other peoples and cultures, 

 and this territorial dominion has remained 

 an ethnic unit since the time of Coronado. 

 The Seri Indians display several more or 

 less distinctive characteristics, bothbiotic or 

 individual, and demotic or collective. Indi- 

 vidually they are of superb physique, able 

 to run down fleet game and capture half- 

 wild Mexican horses without ropes or pro- 

 jectiles ; able to run across the sand dunes 

 and playas of their bounding desert, water- 

 less and foodless, so rapidly as to escape 

 pursuing horsemen ; able to abstain from 

 food and water for days ; able habitually to 

 pass barefoot through cactus thickets and 

 over jagged rock slopes without thought of 

 discomfort ; able to gorge carrion and swill 

 the reeking filth of shrunken tinajas 

 without injury ; typically they are trained 

 athletes, strengthened against exercise, 

 habituated against abstinence, hardened 

 against pain, and inured against poison, all 

 at the same time and all in remarkable de- 

 gree. Considered as a demotic unit, the 

 Seri are characterized by hereditary enmity 

 toward alien peoples ; for three and a half 

 centuries they have been at war or on the 

 verge of war with Spanish explorers and 

 missionaries, with neighboring tribes, with 

 Mexican pioneers, with American prospec- 

 tors; they profess a passion for alien blood, 

 always gratified save when they are de- 

 terred by fear; they are fiercely endogamous 

 and the blackest crime in their calendar 

 to-day is the infraction of this law ; they 



speak a distinct language, apparently repre- 

 senting a distinct stock ; so far as can be 

 ascertained, their mj'thology is distinct; 

 save for a few simple arts that seem to 

 Jiave been acquired through imitation, 

 their culture is primitive, protolithic as to 

 stone, nascent only as to customary and 

 house-building, unborn as to agriculture, 

 and well advanced only in connection with 

 their reed balsas and the cords of vegetal 

 fibre or human hair used in making them ; 

 their grade of cooperation or order of soli- 

 darity is below that of the farmer ant, be- 

 low that of the yucca moth, not even on a par 

 with that of the seed-scattering bird that has 

 aided in giving character to a flora, for (ex- 

 cept that they have domesticated dogs) 

 they merely destroy and never propagate 

 or otherwise aid associated organisms ; col- 

 lectively they are bitterly inimical to men, 

 animals and plants, and are parasitic on a 

 peculiarly conditioned tract to which they 

 have adjusted physique and tribal custom. 

 Considered as a group composed of inter- 

 related individuals and subgroups, the 

 characteristics of the Seri Indians include 

 strong family ties, manifested especially in 

 maternal affection and in their little-under- 

 stood kinship system ; firm conjugal bonds 

 (despite modern polj'gjmy due to repeated 

 decimation of the warriors), displayed in 

 their endogamy and in a singular marriage 

 custom ; fixed tribal union (despite internal 

 dissension in the intervals of external con- 

 flict), revealed in community of property 

 and interests especially in relation to alien 

 peoples ; and rigid adherence to custom, as 

 exemplified in the crudeness of their arts, 

 in their habit of locating camps and habita- 

 tions far from fresh water, in their amor 

 patriae, and in many other ways, i. e., their 

 intertribal characteristics, like their physi- 

 cal attributes, are strongly individualized 

 and tend toward tribal integrity, independ- 

 ence and isolation. History and archseology 

 indicate that the characteristics of the Seri 



