People of the Desert and Sea: Ethnobotany of the Seri Indians

by Richard Stephen Felger, Mary Beck Moser

"People of the Desert and Sea is one of those books that should not have to wait a generation or two to be considered a classic. A feast for the eye as well as the mind, this ethnobotany of the Seri Indians of Sonora represents the most detailed exploration of plant use by a hunting-and-gathering people to date. . . . Scholarship in the best sense of the term--precise without being pedantic, exhaustive without exhausting its readers."--Journal of Arizona History

"To read and gaze through this elegantly illustrated book is to be exposed, as if through a work of science fiction, to an astonishing and unknown cultural world."--North Dakota Quarterly

"This qualitative ethnobotanical study is an excellent example of interdisciplinary research on traditional plant knowledge of a hunting, gathering, and seafaring people."--Economic Botany

435 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1985

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe this book exists.

The amount of time and effort put into writing this book must have been immense.

This book breaks down the lives of the Seri people in great detail. There are many chapters on various parts of their lives including hunting, basketmaking, clothing, etc.

This book helped me answer my main question going in: How did these people survive in an environment with such little rain?

My favorite parts of the book included: describing how they would make and dangerously travel on reed balsas on the sea of Cortez, the hunting tactics they used on sea turtles and mule deer, their freshwater gathering process, and especially the detailed species account descriptions in the second part of the book.

This was an enlightening and inspiring book and greatly increased my connection with the sonoran desert around me.

[Don Diego · Rating 4 out of 5]

A readable, scientific study of the environment in which the Seri lived. I read it before I joined a group trip to Isla Tiburon, homeland of the Seris. It was fun to be able to identify some of the plants we saw there.