[281] This warrior’s clutch, and the notion that it is discreditable if not criminal for the masculine adult to take recourse to weapons in hand-to-hand slaughter, are strongly suggestive of zoomimic motives and of studied mimicry of the larger carnivores, such as the jaguar—the “neck-twister” of the Maya.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
The quantity of stock consumed by the Seri varies greatly with the policy of rancheros and vaqueros. At different times during the last two and a half centuries it has been estimated that the chief portion of the subsistence of the tribe was derived from stolen stock, and it is probable that during the early period of the Encinas régime this estimate was fair; but under the Draconian rule of a Seri head for each head of slaughtered stock, the consumption is reduced to a few dozen head annually, including superannuated, crippled, and diseased animals unable to keep up with the herds, those bogged in Playa Noriega and other basins during freshets, the stallions and bulls slain in strife for leadership of their bands, and the festering or semimummied carcasses gladly turned over by idle rancheros on the chance visits of Seri bands to the frontier (such as the specimen in the photograph reproduced in figure 23).
No special devices have been developed in connection with the chase for stock, nor has material progress been made in acquiring Caucasian devices. There are, indeed, indications of a disposition to use knives in severing the tough integuments and tendons of horses and kine, although the tendency has not yet resulted (as elsewhere noted, ante, pp. 152*-154*) in the development of a knife-sense; and although boys on the frontier play at roping dogs, no effort to use the riata or any form of rope is made in the actual chase. As naively explained by Mashém amid approving grunts from his clan-mates, they have no time for ropes or knives when hungry.
A quantitatively unimportant yet by no means negligible fraction of the normal diet of Seriland is vegetal; and while the sources of vegetal food are many and diverse, the chief constituent is a single product characteristic of American deserts, viz., the tuna, or prickly pear.
