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
Along the lower reaches of Rio Bacuache, and in some of the deeper
gorges of Sierra Seri and Sierra Kunkaak, grow a few veritable trees
of moderately straight trunk and grain and solid wood, such as the
guaiacan (_Guaiacum coulteri_) and sanjuanito (_Jacquinia pungens_);
both of these fruit, the former in a wahoo-like berry of medicinal
properties, and the latter in a nut, edible when not quite ripe and
forming a favorite rattle-bead when dry. On the flanks of such gorges
the slender-branched baraprieta (_Cæsalpinia gracilis_) grows up in
the shelter of more vigorous shrubs, its branches yielding basketry
material, while its fruit is a woody bean much like that of the
cat-claw. In like stations there are occasional clumps of yerba mala
or yerba de flecha (_Sebastiana bilocularis_), an exceptionally leafy
bush growing in straight stems suitable for arrowshafts, and alleged
to be poisonous from root to leaf—with inherent probability, since
the plant is without the thorny armature normal to the desert. Along
the sand-washes, especially about their lower extremities wet only in
floods, springs a subannual plant (_Hymenoclea monogyra_) which shrinks
to stunted tussocks after a year or more of drought, but flourishes in
close-set fens after floods; though of acrid flavor and sage-like odor,
it is eaten by herbivores in time of need, and it yields abundant
seeds, consumed by birds, small animals, and men. About all of the
permanent waters not invaded by white men and the white man’s stock
there are brakes of cane or carrizal (_Phragmites communis_?); the
jointed stems are half an inch to an inch in thickness and 8 to 25 feet
in height; the seeds are edible, while the stems form the material for
balsas and afford shafts for arrows, harpoons, fire-sticks, etc., and
the silica-coated joints may be used for incising tough tissues.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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