The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))McGee, W J
History
The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))
McGee, W J
Seri Indians; Seri language; Yuman languages
The estimation of Seri stature is difficilitated by the impossibility
of defining maturity; and the effort to determine whether particular
individuals were adult brought out clear indications of slowness in
reaching complete maturity, i. e., of the continuation of somatic
growth throughout an exceptionally long term in proportion to other
stages in the life of the individual. Thus, with scarcely an exception,
the polyparous matrons were taller than the mean of 5 feet 9 inches,
while the apparently adult maidens (with one exception) and the
younger wives were below this mean; and in like manner the stature
of the warriors varied approximately with appearance of age, all of
the younger men falling below the mean, and all of the older (except
Mashém) rising above it. The difficulty of estimation is further
increased by the absence of age records and the impracticability of
ascertaining and standardizing the habitually guarded expressions
for relative age implied in the kinship terminology; so that the age
determinations were roughly relative merely, and there was no means of
fixing the absolute age of maturity, of puberty, of marriage, or of the
assumption of manhood and womanhood howsoever defined.
Under the conditions, the determination of stature-range in the Seri
rancheria at Costa Rica in 1894 was not only difficult but uncertain;
yet in general terms it may be said that the women having two or more
children—about twenty in number—were notably uniform in stature,
ranging from about 5 feet 7½ inches (in the case of an aged and
shrunken elderwoman) to 5 feet 11 inches; that the younger women were
more variable; and that the warriors (seventeen in number), of whom
only a part were apparently heads of families, were more variable
still, though the variation, apart from that apparently correlated with
age, was less than is customarily found among the exceptionally uniform
Papago, and decidedly less than that seen among the Yaqui or the local
Mexicans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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