SIL- Branch Electronic Working Papers #017: Seri Origin Myth

Roberto Herrera Marcos and Edward W. Moser Edited and annotated by Stephen A. Marlett

Herrera Marcos, Roberto and Edward W. Moser; Stephen A. Marlett (editor and annotator). 2015. Seri Origin Myth.(SIL-Mexico Branch Electronic Working Papers #17. [http://mexico.sil.org/resources/archives/60997](©) SIL International. These working papers may be periodically updated, expanded, or corrected. Comments may be sent to the editor at: [email protected]. 2 SIL-Mexico Branch Electronic Working Papers #017:Seri Origin Myth Introduction by the editor

The text presented here is a previously unpublished summary of one “typical version” (as it is labeled in the manuscript) of the Seri origin myth as compiled by Edward W. Moser (1924-1976) through interviews with Roberto Herrera Marcos (1916-1988) and perhaps other Seri individuals. Reference to this summary is made in Felger & M. Moser (1985:100), where other notes and other versions are brought to bear on the topic of Seri origin myths. The summary is presented here in its totality for the sake of the historical record. With his wife Mary B. (“Becky”), Edward Moser took up residence in the Seri community of (known as Haxöl Iihom in the , ISO 639-3 code [sei]) in 1952 and lived there until 1976, the year in which he died.1 The material presented here was acquired firsthand, and much of it in the Seri language itself, which Moser had learned while working under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Roberto Herrera Marcos, known locally as Cmiique Roberto, and sometimes referred to by the names Roberto Thomson and Roberto Herrera T., was a primary consultant with whom he collaborated for many years.2 A handwritten note on the undated manuscript suggests that the summary was written to pro- vide background information that would be used in Felger & M. Moser (1985). An audio record- ing of some part of an interview with Roberto Herrera, in Spanish, was made (E. Moser & M. Moser 1961); it was consulted in the preparation of the present version of the summary. (While the archived metadata of the interview has the date 1961, that date may not be correct for this particular recording.) The text has been lightly edited for this presentation. One change has been to use the spelling of the Seri words as they appear in the 2010 dictionary (M. Moser & Marlett 2010), replacing the (Americanist) phonetic symbols that appear in the original manuscript. More explanation of these words is provided in the footnotes, however, including both phonemic and allophonic transcriptions in the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association (IPA 1999), with phonemic long vowels represented as geminates while allophonic length is indicated with a raised dot. The glossing of morphemes in the footnotes generally follows the conventions of the Leipzig Glossing Rules.3 Abbreviations used in the footnotes for glossing morphemes are:

3 = third person def = definite fl = flexible, out of sight, or default nmlz = nominalizer pass = passive pl = plural pon = proposition/oblique nominalizer poss = possessive rlt = realis “t” form sbj = subject tr = transitive

1See http://www.sil.org/mexico/bio/iMoserEd.htm. 2See http://www.sil.org/mexico/bio/iHerreraRoberto.htm. 3See http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php. Seri origin myth 3 Seri origin myth

The earth is flat and circular. It consists of the sea and the land, which are seated on a flat earth base. Around all of this rotates the sky, which is a globe in which the sun, moon, and stars are embedded. Night occurs when the section with the sun goes under the land. In the beginning there was no land and there was no life. Then Hant Caai ‘the one who made the land’4 created a number of land and sea animals and placed them on a huge cane raft on the sea. Needing some soil to use in creating the land, he challenged the animals to dive into the sea and bring up some soil from the bottom. The land tortoise was the first to try. It stayed under water for one year but returned to the surface without having reached the bottom. The male green sea turtle was the next to try. It stayed down for five years. Upon surfacing, the sea turtle said that it had reached bottom but had had time only to scratch the soil before starting back up. Hant Caai found just a bit of soil stuck between the upper sections of one of the turtle’s front flippers. Mixing it with a bit of sea water, he formed it into a tiny ball. Then as he worked with it, he caused it to grow. It grew and expanded until it was very large. Then he placed it on the sea where it continued to expand until it had formed the land. Then Hant Caai stuck some sticks into the soft land and said that they would form the first house for the people. But he saw that the land was very soft. To determine just how soft it was, he made the most lightweight insect he could imagine, a daddy longlegs,5 and placed it on the land. But the land was too soft, and the insect became mired in the mud. So Hant Caai caused the personage Hant Quizin ‘the one who hardens the land’6 to appear and told him to make the ground firm. This he did by walking back and forth across the land. As he walked, great flashes of light and heat came from him and hardened the land, which by this time had extended itself to cover a great area. As yet there were neither people nor vegetation on the land. Then Hant Caai caused a tree to grow. The first tree was xopinl (Bursera hindsiana).7 Next he created a man, a woman, and a horse and placed them under the tree.8 These first people were giants called xiica coosyatoj ‘the ones who sing’.9 (They are not thought to have been Seris, although their language as occurring in the giants’ songs is partially understood today.)

4/ʔant kaai/ [ˌʔant ˈkaai] land sbj.nmlz:[tr:]make. 5This insect, identified as a member of the Phalangiidae family (harvestmen, also known as daddy longlegs), is actually still called hant cmaa tpaxi iti hacaatax /ʔant kmaa tpaχi iti ʔakaataχ/ [ˌʔant ˌkw̃ãã ˌtpaχi ˌiti ʔaˈkaatˑaˑχ] land now rlt:pass:finish 3.poss:on sbj.nmlz:[pass:]make_go ‘the one who was caused to go on the recently made land’ (Felger & M. Moser 1985:38-39, M. Moser & Marlett 2010:325). Unfortunately, since there are so many species of similar insects, to the best of my knowledge no specimen has been collected to use for positive and public identification by an entymologist. The general identification of the insect in this creation account (as something like a daddy longlegs) was again confirmed to me (the editor) by René Montaño Herrera in January 2015. It may be that, like with other aspects of this account, there is a lack of unanimity in the Seri community as to the identification of this insect. See V. Romero & Hernández Santana (2012:10) in which it is claimed that the insect is something quite different (also depicted as such in Flores Farfán 2011:15). Comparison with that work shows that there are various points of convergence and divergence with the account presented here. 6/ʔant kiʃin/ [ˌʔant ˈkiʃˑiˑn] land sbj.nmlz:[tr:]toast_with_heat. Some notes by Moser have the word ending with /m/ or [ŋ], but this appears to be an error. The name clearly ends with /n/ in the recording in which Roberto Herrera explains this. The name of this personage appears in a seriously altered form in the Creation Song, as [ʔamatikaʃɛnɛ] or [ʔamatikasɛnɛ] or [ʔamatikaʃini], depending on the source; note that it has an [n] in the song. 7/χopinɬ/ [χoˈpinɬ]. This plant (whose name was previously written more like its etymological source, xoop inl) is described in considerable detail in Felger & M. Moser (1985:235-240). 8It is worth noting there that this account includes a post-Conquest element (the horse). Moreover, the Seri people are not and were not known as being horsemen. 9/χiika koosjatox/ [ˌχiika ˈkoosjatox] thing\pl sbj.nmlz:sing\pl. This plural form of the verb for coos ‘sing’ is not the one that is used in modern Seri (the modern plural form being coosi). 4 SIL-Mexico Branch Electronic Working Papers #017:Seri Origin Myth Then Hant Caai tested the man and the woman. He told the man to mount the horse and ride it. The man tried, but he got on backwards and fell off when the horse moved. So Hant Caai told the man to paddle a reed boat that was there. This he was able to do. He paddled out to sea and speared a sea turtle. Upon returning to land, the man found that he had no knife. So he split a stalk of cane and used one of the sharp edges for butchering the turtle. These two tests showed that the man, while useless for working on the land, was a capable fisherman. The woman’s test was to prepare food and do other household tasks. She attempted to do the work, but did a poor job. (Some of the Seris suggest that these failures indicated that the future people, the Seris, would be unsuccessful in developing a technology of their own. The man’s success as a turtle hunter, however, showed that the Seris would adapt well to the sea.) The first man and woman had children and eventually a number of giants inhabited the land. At that time the sea was fresh water. One day a family of giants was cooking a sea turtle by having a fire burn on its upturned breast side. The still-hot coals had been scraped onto the ground when the boy who was to become a heron stepped on them. He ran to the sea to cool his foot, and from that time on the sea has been salty. The land was flat, without mountains or even sand dunes, so it was natural that floods should occur. Tides are caused by the land tilting back and forth, and sometimes, because of excessive tilting, a huge wave would be formed and it would crash into the land from the south. Such a cataclysm is called hant haaco iima ‘the spirit power of the land’.10 It is this power of the land that in some mysterious way caused this great upheaval. A flood is accompanied by fire, smoke, and earthquakes. Also, huge strange animals roved around at such a time. The overseer of this destruction was a spirit called Hant Haaco Iima Quih Yeen Iiqui Caap ‘the one who goes ahead of the spirit power of the land’.11 He accompanied the cataclysmic force and controlled it by tapping it with a stick that he carried. He also caused prepared food to appear for the fleeing giants to eat. Before the flood occurred, another personage of unknown name had appeared to the people and let each person who was to drown choose which animal, insect, or bird he wished to be changed into. This transformation took place during the flood. Sometimes giants were turned into an island or an odd-shaped rock.12 After one flood, Hant Caai saw that because the land was flat, the people had little chance to escape the destruction. So he sang a song, causing mountains, hills, and dunes to form. These were to provide protection for the people during future floods. In one such flood, the giants from the south fled north and reached the mountains just south of Puerto Libertad. There the flood overtook them and changed them into boojum trees,13 which still occur in that area.

10/ʔant ʔaako iima/ [ˌʔant ˌʔaakoˑ ˈiimˑaˑ/] land ? 3.poss:pon:?. The word /ʔaako/ is homophonous with the word for ‘house’. The verb on which the nominalized form /iima/ is formed is not used apart from expressions like this; it therefore has no obvious gloss. The 2010 dictionary does not list this expression as referring to the spirit power of the land but rather as simply the ‘catastrophe, the end of the world’. 11/ʔant ʔaako iima kiʔ jɛɛn iiki kaap/ [ˌʔant ˌʔaako ˈiimˑaˑ kiʔ ˌjɛɛn ˌiiki ˈkaap] land ? 3.poss:pon:? def;fl 3.poss:face 3.poss:toward sbj.nmlz:stand. 12Other unpublished notes by Moser add the following: “[The giants] had been fishing at the time ... [The islands or rocks into which they were turned include] Hastisel and Soosni.” The island Hastisel is listed as Hastisil Cholludo Island, Roca la Foca Island (located just south of Tiburón Island) in the 2010 dictionary. The spelling Hastisel is closer to the etymology of the name. Soosni is Alcatraz Island located near Bahía de Kino. 13Fouquieria columnaris. The Seri name is coototaj /koototax/ [ˈkootˑoˑtax]. References 5 The last flood to occur was the great flood. The water covered even the tallest mountains and killed all of the giants, changing them into various other living things. One giant became a wood- pecker, and in its fright it flew up and grabbed hold of the sky. The water rose so high that it covered the lower half of its tail, causing it to become lighter in color. With the passing of the giants, a different personage, Hant Hasooma ‘land shade’,14 appeared on Tiburón Island. Hant Hasooma is male, short, fat, and dirty. He wears a breech cloth and a hat with an exceptionally wide brim. He is the owner of all wild animals and always carries cholla fruit with him for food. He is associated with Tear,15 the chief of the evil spirits. (Some of the older people have said that Hant Hasooma is the real god of the Seris. His name is spoken at the end of the sun prayer.) On that occasion on Tiburon Island, Hant Hasooma began to rub his inner thighs. The rolls of dirt that this rubbing formed changed into people as they fell to the ground. They were the first Seris.16 Then Hant Caai caused another personage, Hant Iiha Quimx ‘the one who tells about the posses- sions of the land’,17 to appear. He told the people the names of the animals and plants that occur on the land and in the sea. Sometime around 1850 (according to an elderly woman whose father, as a boy, had attended the event), another personage, Cmaacoj Cmasol ‘yellow old man’,18 appeared on Tiburón Island and told the people the names of the plants and animals.19 One day, Hant Caai was on the mainland across from Tiburón Island. He sent up a smoke signal for the Seris on the island to come and get him. But they chose to ignore him. (Some Seris say that for this reason Hant Caai lost interest in them.)

References

Felger, Richard S. & Mary B. Moser. 1985. People of the desert and sea: ethnobotany of the Seri Indians. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Flores Farfán, Antonio. 2011. Comcáac ziix aptc iha [sic]: historia de la creación comcáac. México, D.F.: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Linguapax. http://lenguas.ciesas.edu.mx/corpora/Seri/Documentaci_n/comc_ac/ Annotations/creacion_comcaac.pdf

14/ʔant ʔasooma/ [ˌʔant ʔaˈsooma]. While Moser glosses the second word as ‘shade’, the 2010 dictionary gives its meaning as ‘frame for a shade shelter’. There is phonetic evidence that this word is a loanword (it is noted in the dictionary entry that there is no lengthening of the m in the word hasooma, unlike in native Seri words), and it is suggested in the dictionary that it may be from the verb suma ‘tie’ since the shade shelters were of a style that required the poles to be tied together. No explanation has been offered as to how the name of this personage and this type of structure are related, if indeed they are. 15/tɛaɾ/ [ˈtɛaɾ]. This is presumed to be a loanword from Spanish diablo. Native Seri words do not have an r- sound. Another personage is mentioned in the recording as well, who is associated with Tear. This personage, with seven heads (and therefore seven tongues) is Ziix Ípaloj Tomcoj Cöquiih [ˌʃiiχ ˌipaɬox toŋkox ˈkʷkʷiiʔ] (thing 3.poss:tongue\pl?:?3.poss:sbj.nmlz:be_(fl) 'thing whose tongues are seven'. 16A later note added in Moser’s handwriting added: “But Seris also passed through the last flood, some being saved on top of mountain with many birds, like a cloud.” 17/ʔant iiʔa kimχ/ [ˌʔant ˌiiʔa ˈkimχ] land 3.poss:pon:possess sbj.nmlz:[tr:]tell. The possessions of the land are said to include many things, including the mountains. 18/kmaakox kmasoɬ/ [ˌkw̃ããkox ˈkw̃ãsˑoˑɬ] old_man sbj.nmlz:yellow. 19Other unpublished notes by Moser identify this woman as Loreto, and her father as Juan Marcos. 6 SIL-Mexico Branch Electronic Working Papers #017:Seri Origin Myth IPA (International Phonetic Association). 1999. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moser, Edward W. & Mary B. Moser. 1961. “Texts. Seri Language Collection. The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Media: audio, text. Access: public, restricted. Resource: SEI002R052.” www.ailla.utexas.org Moser, Mary B. & Stephen A. Marlett, compilers. 2010. Comcaac quih yaza quih hant ihiip hac: Diccionario seri-español-inglés. 2nd Edition. Mexico City & : Plaza y Valdés Editores & Universidad de . Romero, Valeria & Guillermo Hernández Santana. 2012. Mitos comcaac: “Comcaac quih ziix haptc iiha yaat”. translated by José Antonio Flores Farfán & Guillermo Hernández Santana. Mexico City: INALI & LinguaPax.