Conformably with their striking independence of knives, the Seri are conspicuously unskilful in all mechanical operations involving the use of tools. Their most elaborate manufacture is the balsa, made from reeds broken at the butts and with the leaves and tops removed by the hands or by fire, bound together with hand-made cords; next in elaborateness come the bow and arrow, normally made without cutting tools; then follows their fictile ware, which is made wholly by hand, without aid of the simple molds and paddles and other devices used by neighboring tribes; while their primitive fabrics were apparently of hand-extracted fibers, twisted and woven wholly by hand, with the aid of wood or bone in sewing and possibly in weaving. Practically the Seri possess but a single tool, and this is applied to a peculiarly wide variety of purposes—it is the originally natural cobble used for crushing bones and severing tendons, for grinding seeds and rubbing face-paint, for bruising woody tissue to aid in breaking okatilla poles for house-frames or mesquite roots for harpoons (both, afterward finished by firing), and on occasion for weapons; and this many-functioned tool is initially but a wave-worn pebble, is artificially shaped only by the wear of use, and is incontinently discarded when sharp edges are produced by use or fortuitous fracture. The hupf is supplemented chiefly by the simple perforator of mandible or bone or fire-hardened wood; and these two primitive implements, together with molluscan shells in natural condition, apparently serve as the primary tools for all the mechanical operations of the tribe. The dearth of tools and the absence not only of knives but of knife-sense among the Seri illumine those traditions of Seri fighting made tangible by the teeth-torn arm of Jesus Omada; for they explain the alleged recourse of the Seri warriors to nature’s weapons, used in the centripetal fashion characteristic of nascent intelligence. * * * * *