Hello Listmembers, on Saturday morning, I caught the last part of a most remarkable new reel footage that was shown on The Turner Classic Movie Channel here in New Orleans between 10:00am and 10:20am CDT. It was about the legend of the Seri Indian Nation. I'm not sure if I'm spelling it correctly. The newsreel footage was in black and white and I imagine it had been shown in theaters at the time when it was filmed which seemed to me to be around 1950. It was produced by MGM. Apparently, there was a legend of a great Indian nation in Central America/Mexico which was created on the west coast of Baja California or Mexico some 1000 years ago by the Seri Indian tribe. The film crew went in search of any remnants of these people or this empire. They came across an island off Baja California called Tiburon which was inhabited by an Indian tribe of about 100 souls. They didn't see any ruins of any great structures on the island and so they weren't sure if they were in the right place but when the interpreter asked the people if they had heard of the Seri, they said yes and indicated that they were the Seri people. Though they wore clothes which indicated that they did have contact with the outside world and they played cards and did other things that indicated they were not totally isolated it seems that they did have very little contact with the outside world. The men were strong and handsome and the women were very attractive and wore Indian makeup and such. There were only a handful of children around and they had the run of the place and were treated very reverentially. The men often fished in the ocean and caught huge fish and sea turtles for eating. They seemed to be living an idyllic life on the island. They seemed to have never really know any enemies or, at least, in modern times, had any conflicts with the Mexican governent or anyone else for that matter. The film crew was about to leave when they saw something strange. The tribe had left a pile of discarded fish heads and turtle shells on the beach where the vultures fed on them. After the vultures had fed on the carrion, they saw a slender but tall man come up to the pile and start feeding off what had been left. Apparently he had broken some law of the tribe and this was his punishment. With this the film crew's interest was aroused and they began to ask more questions about the history of the people on the island and the Seri nation. It was then that they were introduced to the elder of the tribe who had been given the history of the tribe and its customs and its rituals. To him everything about the Seri nation had been intrusted. But it would go with him to his grave because as the young children led the old man to the film crew using a rope that he held on to the film crew discovered that the man had no eyes and then they discovered he had no tongue either. It seems that the tribe had taken out his eyes and cut off his tongue. What's more the film crew learned that the reason that the few children they saw had been treated so reverentially was because they would be the last of their tribe. The women of the tribe who led the tribe had voluntarily decided to never have any more children and that these children would be the last of the Seri people and that the history that the old man knew of the tribe would vanish with him. It seems that the Seri nation had indeed succeeded in creating an empire where they had no conflict, no wars. Not that they couldn't fight because the legend goes that they had many warriors. But in creating this idyllic nation where there was plenty of food and little conflict they created a society that never changed and slowly the nation began to die because it seems there was nothing for these people worth struggling for in their society. I couldn't help but think how incredibly sad this story was. It was a story of tribal suicide, not brought about by any external force or enemy or natural disaster or disease but simply by a loss of the will to live in a world without struggle in a world that never changed. As I said above, it was a most remarkable piece of film from about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't know anything more about the fate of these people but if anyone does know what happened to them I'd be interested in hearing about them. John Craven New Orleans