The habitations of the tribe are the simplest of jacales—mere bowers, affording partial protection from sun and wind, but not designed to shed rain or bar cold. Half a dozen of these were examined at Costa Rica in 1894 and probably a hundred more, in various stages of habitability, in Seriland proper in 1895, yet not the slightest trace of decoration was observed—the structures are plainly and barrenly utilitarian in every feature. The same may be said of the balsas in which the Seri navigate their stormy waters; for the peculiarly graceful curves of the craft evidently stand for nothing more than the mechanical solution of a complex problem in balanced forces, wrought out through the experience of generations, while the simple reed bundles are absolutely devoid of paint, of superfluous cord, of fetishistic appendages or markings, of tritons, nereids, or other votive symbols at bow or stern, and of industrially superfluous features or attachments in general—indeed, the only appendages discovered were one or two simple wooden marlinspikes (shown in figure 26), thrust among the reeds to be at hand in case of need for repairs. [Illustration: FIG. 14—Rattlesnake necklace.] Among the utensils employed in the primitive householdry of the Seri the most conspicuous and at the same time the most essential is the olla, or water-jar. Its technical features are described elsewhere; but it may here be noted that the olla is the central artifact about which the very life of the tribe rotates: since the clans never reside and rarely camp nearer than 3 to 15 miles from the aguaje, a large part of the water consumed must be transported great distances in these vessels; since the region is one of extreme aridity, the lives of small parties often depend on the integrity of the olla and on the care with which the fragile vessel is protected from shock or overturning; and hence the utensil must occupy a large if not a dominant place in everyday thought—indeed, the fact that it does so is attested by constant custom and also by its employment as the most conspicuous among the mortuary sacrifices. Thus, the relation of the Seri olla to its makers and users is parallel with that of the ever-present earthen pot to the Pueblo people, or that of the cooking basket to the acorn-eaters of California, save that its relative importance is enhanced by the fewness of activital lines and motives in Seri life. Moreover, this most characteristic utensil is established and hallowed in Seri thought by immemorial associations: its sherds are sown over the hundred thousand square miles of ancient “despoblado” from Tiburon to Caborca, Magdalena, Rio Opodepe, and Cerro Prieto, and are scattered through the 90 feet of shells forming Punta Antigualla (perhaps the oldest shell mound of America); and all the sherds from the range and the shell-strata are so like and so different from any other fictile ware as to be distinguished at a glance. Hence it would