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
stone arrow-making were found in all Seriland, though the entire party
of twelve were on constant lookout for them for a month. The natural
inference from these facts is that the ancestral Seri, like their
descendants, were not habitual stone arrow-makers.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XLVI
NATURAL PEBBLE SLIGHTLY USED AS GRINDER]
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XLVII
NATURAL PEBBLE SLIGHTLY USED AS DOMESTIC IMPLEMENT]
* * * * *
There is a final category of Seri artifacts which would be classed
as distinctive by Caucasians on the basis of material, though they
are combined with the stone artifacts by the tribesmen; it comprises
arrowpoints of hoop-iron or other metal, harpoon-points of nails,
spikes, or wire, awls of like materials, and other metallic adjuncts
to ordinary implements. The use of iron is of course post-Columbian,
and its ordinary sources are wreckage and stealage. The date of
introduction is unknown, and probably goes back to the days of Cortés
and Mendoza; certainly the value of metal was so well understood in
1709 that when Padre Salvatierra’s bilander was beached in Seriland
the tribesmen at once began to break her up for the nails (ante, page
67); yet the metal is wrought cold and only with hupf and ahst like
the local materials, and is habitually regarded and designated as a
stone. By reason of the primitive methods of working, the metals are
of course available only when in small pieces or slender shapes. There
is a tradition among the vaqueros of the frontier that a quantity of
hoop-iron designed for use in making casks was carried away from a
rancheria in the vicinity of Bacuachito during a raid in the seventies,
and that this stock has ever since served to supply the Seri with
material for their arrowpoints; but it is probable that the chief
supply is derived from the flotsam swept into the natural drift trap
of Bahia Kunkaak by prevailing winds and tidal currents, and cast up
on the long sandspit of Punta Tormenta after every storm. A surprising
quantity and variety of wreckage was found on this point, and thence
down the coast to Punta Narragansett, by the 1895 expedition: staves
and heads of casks broken up after beaching, a telegraph pole crossbar
which had evidently brought in a cargo of large wire, and a piece of
door-frame with heavy strap-iron hinges attached with screws, were
among the troves of the tribesmen within a few weeks; and it was noted
that while even the hinge screws and the tacks attaching tags to the
cask-heads had been extracted by breaking up the wood, the roughly
forged hinges of 2 by ⅜-inch wrought iron had been abandoned after a
tentative battering with cobbles, and lay among the refuse stones about
the jacales.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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