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
A still more beautiful example of Seri stone art is depicted in plate
LV. It is of the same homogeneous and coarse-grained granite as the
last specimen, and closely approaches it in dimensions; it is slightly
longer and broader, but somewhat thinner, and weighs 1 pound 11 ounces
(0.77 kilogram); and, except for the absence of the accidental notch,
its artificial features are still more closely similar. The ends are
slightly battered, as illustrated in the end view at the right of
the plate; the edges are similarly worn, but to a less extent; while
both sides have been symmetrically faceted by use in grinding, the
facets being straight in the longitudinal direction but slightly
curved in the transverse direction, in the shape of the Mexican mano.
The specimen displays well-marked color distinctions between the
artificially worn and the natural surfaces, the former being gray
and the latter weathered to yellowish or pinkish-brown; these colors
show that something like two-thirds of the surface is artificial and
the intervening third natural; and the natural portion corresponds
in every respect, not only in form but in condition of surface, with
the granite cobbles of Seriland’s stormy shores. Unfortunately the
color distinctions, with the limits of faceting and other artificial
modifications, are obscure in the photomechanical reproduction; they
are indicated more clearly in the outline drawing oversheet. The
specimen is partially saturated with fat, and bears an ocher stain
attesting use in the preparation of face-paint. It was found carefully
wrapped in a parcel with the shell paint-cup illustrated in plate
XXVII, a curlew mandible, two or three hawk feathers, and a tuft of
pelican down (the whole evidently forming the fetish or medicine-bag of
a shamanistic elderwoman), in an out-of-the-way nook in the wall of an
abandoned jacal at Punta Narragansett.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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