Chapter IV: Introduction: Salient Features (3)

[15] Unquestionably the clearest view of El Infiernillo ever enjoyed by Caucasian eyes was that of Messrs Johnson and Mitchell from the culminating point of Sierra Seri (Johnson peak), which they occupied for about twenty-three hours on December 7 and 8, 1895. Mr Johnson’s notes on the appearance of the strait are as follows: “On the occasion of the ascent of Sierra Seri, which rises from the coast, shutting off the view of Isla Tiburon from the desert on the east, I received a striking impression of the elaborate and beautifully symmetrical plan of the long swirling currents of El Infiernillo. The climb had been made from the east direct to the summit peak, so that the first sight of both island and gulf was not only from close at hand, but from an elevation of about a mile. The crest of the ridge was reached at the instant of sunset, and the spectacle of the innumerable current-markings was brief. Our position was nearly opposite the northern end of the strait; and its elevation was so great that the opposite mainland and island shorelines were seen in map effect rather than in perspective. The entire strait, to its northern end at Punta Perla, was in the shadow of the island; and the current design was revealed only in the shadow. At the shadow-margin extending from the northern tip of the island the lines were sharply cut off; and beyond, along the westward bend of waters forming Bahia Tepopa and opening into the gulf in full sunlight, there was no suggestion of them. Within the shadow the effect was that of a film of oil on a water-surface which had been stirred and allowed to come to rest—though the regularity of the lines was as though the stirring had been orderly. Not the slightest motion was perceptible from the peak during the minute or two that the spectacle lasted before the sun disappeared and twilight fell, though the suggestion from configuration alone was that of violent swirling. The general movement was evidently southward toward Boca Infierno, and the swirls were apparently the result of frictional resistance along both shores; the system of curving lines as a whole was very much that which would be presented by a broad feather thrust into a bottle. There were central lines in great number, somewhat sinuous though never crossing, diverging one by one toward the shores on either hand, where they curved backward with complex interferences in large reversing arcs and many minute circlings. The straightening out of the curves in perspective was quite perceptible toward Boca Infierno, and beyond it was pronounced. The air appeared to be still, so that the current pattern was not at all obscured by waves; and the spectacle of the broad strait, appearing almost beneath me, incised with a crowded design of sweeping fine lines, the delicate clearness of which recalled a steel engraving, was peculiarly impressive. That we had been fortunate in the moment of reaching the summit was apparent next day. The spectacle was, indeed, repeated at sunrise and for a short period thereafter, though the general design was markedly different, and less intricacy of pattern was discernible, while the general effect was comparatively vague; perhaps the shadow of Sierra Seri was too heavy, or, more probably (as was my impression at the time), our position was not favorable for that direction of illumination. In full light during the day up to the hour of our departure in late afternoon, no hint or vestige of the current design remained. It was evident that the lines were brought out with especial clearness by the favorable illumination and comparative stillness of air; and it was particularly evident that the lines marked movements in the water, even if there were corresponding air-currents, since they harmonized perfectly with the configuration of the shores and with the trend of spits and bars and offshore markings seen through the shallow waters, especially toward the northern end of the strait. The accord between shore curves and the current lines seen in the evening indicated a southward motion much more vigorous than the reverse movement witnessed next morning; for the marked variation in the design noted in the morning was of a character strongly suggesting a reversed movement of the water, while the faintness of the markings then may perhaps have been due to comparative feebleness of current rather than to unfavorable lighting. Certainly the close agreement between the elaborate system of markings, so clearly revealed in the evening, and the prevailing curves of the shores would seem to indicate unmistakably that, whatever the direction and strength of flow, the markings were a product of current motion.”

[16] Publication No. 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of Navigation, 1880, p. 142.

[17] Op. cit., p. 143.

Like other mountain-bound water bodies, the portion of the gulf washing Seriland is exceptionally disturbed by winds of given velocity by reason of the high angle of incidence; and moreover the exceptionally prominent local configuration disturbs the atmospheric currents in a manner somewhat analogous to that in which the tidal currents are disturbed; so that the winds are highly variable but generally strong. Under the combined action of tide and wind the waters are normally ruffled; choppy seas freely flecked with whitecaps are rather the rule than the exception,[18] and are replaced less frequently by calms than by steadier billows breaking in continuous surf on sand-beaches (figure 5) and dashing into foam-flecked and rainbow-tinted spray-jets, bathing the rocky cliffs for 50 feet above their bases. Sometimes the wind stills suddenly, when the sea sinks to rhythmic swells, soon extinguished by reaction from the irregular shores and by the interference of tide-currents; but the swell seldom dies away before the gale springs again. The broad valley between Sierras Seri and Kunkaak, bottomed by El Infiernillo, is especially beset by fierce and capricious gales; the general atmospheric drift is disturbed by the leading and lesser sierras, as well as by temperature convection from the gulf, and eddies are developed in such wise as to send air-currents directly or obliquely up or down the valley. These local or sublocal winds are characteristic. Judging from observations covering several weeks, the valley is wind-swept longitudinally for an average of eighteen or twenty hours daily, the winds ranging from strong breezes to gales so stiff as to load the air with sand ashore and spray asea; and even the calms may be broken any minute by sudden gusts and williwaws, passing rapidly as they arrive. Not only waves but wind itself combines with tides to shape the structural features of the valley; nowhere within it do flour-fine sands like those of Desierto Encinas occur, save as a hardly perceptible constituent of the dunes and banks of coarser sand—they have been blown into the sea or beyond the limits of the valley. Throughout the strait so expressively named by its explorers, the capriciousness of the sea culminates, despite the shoalness and the protection from easterly and westerly winds; the storm currents and tide-currents are half the time opposed, raising breakers even when the air is nearly still; eddies and whirls and cross-currents arise constantly, and even at the stillest hours tumultuous waves come and go sporadically, while about the mile-wide boca the choppy sea sometimes takes the form of spire-like jets, spurting 5 or 10 feet high and breaking into aigrettes of glittering spray in most unwaterlike and wholly indescribable fashion. Dewey described the strait as “unsafe for navigation by any except the smallest class of vessels”; it is safe, indeed, only for portable and indestructible craft like the Seri balsas, which may be put off or carried ashore at will by craftsmen willing to wait for wind and tide, and unpossessed of impedimenta of a sort to be injured by wetting. Of such an environment the balsa is a natural product.

[18] A stiller and navigable condition of the sea is shown in the view of Punta Ygnacio, plate IV.

The adjunct islets of Seriland are miniatures of Tiburon in all essential respects, save that they are without fresh water. The largest is San Esteban, a somewhat complex butte rising sharply from the waters in a nearly continuous sea-cliff recording vigorous work by storms and tides; it is occasionally visited by the Seri, chiefly in search of water-fowl and eggs. The most important of the series in Seri economy and mythology is Isla Tassne, off the mouth of Bahia Kino; it is a rugged butte some 600 feet high, rising in wave-cut cliffs on the sea side and pedimented by low spits and banks of sand toward the lea; the sand-banks are literally flocked with pelicans, while other fowl cover the flatter ledges and crowd the crannies of the pinnacle. Isla Turner is a somewhat smaller and still more rugged butte, bounded on both sides by precipitous cliffs, while Roca Foca is merely a great rock shelving upward from the storm-swept waters off the most exposed angle of Tiburon; in the crannies of the former birds nest abundantly, while the lower ledges of both are haunted by seals. Isla Patos, north of Tiburon, is a breeding-place for different water-fowl, and is especially noted as a refuge for ducks; it, too, is for the most part a rocky butte, with a sandy shelf at the eastern base. Beyond San Esteban lies the similar but smaller Isla San Lorenzo, while Isla Salsipuedes and a few other islets stretch thence northward half way to the southern point of Isla Angel de la Guarda, the second-largest island of the gulf. San Lorenzo and the smaller islets are occasionally visited by the Seri, partly for a mineral pigment used in face-painting, partly in quest of game; and they sometimes push on to the larger island to enjoy its fairly abundant game, including the easily taken iguana, amid the ruins of an ancient culture apparently akin to that of southern Mexico. Even the most frequented islets, Tassne and Patos, can be reached only by crossing miles of open sea; but in their way the Seri are as canny navigators as they are skilful boat-builders—it is their habit to hug the shore in threatening weather, to await wind and tide for hours or days together, to set out on distant journeys only when all conditions favor, and in emergency to seize inspiration from the storm like the vikings of old, and bend supernormal power to the control of their craft.

* * * * *

Summarily, the prevailing features of Seriland may be said to be characterized by extreme development or intensity, many of them being of such sort as to be adequately described only by the aid of strong comparatives or superlatives. Seriland is the most rugged portion of piedmont Sonora, and is bounded by its most forbidding desert; the territory is nearly if not quite, the most arid and inhospitable of the Sonoran province; the diurnal and sporadic temperature-ranges are apparently the widest, and the gales and other storms apparently the severest of the entire province; the flora is among the most meager and least fruitful, and the mountains are among the craggiest of the continent; the tides are among the strongest and the tidal currents among the swiftest of the world; and, as shown by the limited direct observations and by the extraordinary marine transgression, the waters are among the most turbulent known. At the same time, the waters washing Seriland are among the richest of America in sea-food, so that the habitat is one of the easiest known for a simple life depending directly on the product of the sea. It is but natural that these extreme factors of environment should be measurably reflected in pronounced characteristics on the part of the inhabitants.

SUMMARY HISTORY

There is some doubt as to who was the first among the Caucasian explorers of the Western Hemisphere to set eyes on the Seri Indians. Nuño de Guzman, rival of Cortés and invader of Jalisco and Sinaloa, must have approached the southern boundary of Seri territory about 1530, though there is no record of contact with these tribesmen. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, one of Cortés’ captains, coasted along southern Sonora in 1532 to a point considerably beyond Rio Yaqui, where he was massacred on his return, and hence left no record of more northerly natives.[19] Both of these pioneers must accordingly be eliminated from the list of probable discoverers of the Seri.

[19] Theodore H. Hittell, History of California, 1898, vol. I, pp. 43-44.

In the course of their marvelous transcontinental journey, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions also approached Seriland, and apparently skirted its borders shortly before meeting Captain Diego de Alcaraz, of Guzman’s party; this was in April, 1536, according to Bandelier.[20] Vaca wrote: “On the coast is no maize: the inhabitants eat the powder of rush and of straw, and fish that is caught in the sea from rafts, not having canoes. With grass and straw the women cover their nudity. They are a timid and dejected people.”[21] He added half a dozen ambiguous sentences, of which only a part, apparently, refer to the “timid and dejected people”; half of these describe a poison used by them “so deadly that if the leaves be bruised and steeped in some neighboring water, the deer and other animals drinking it soon burst”. The people were identified as Seri (Ceris) by Buckingham Smith and General Stone,[22] and the identification may be considered as strongly probable, provided the Tepoka be classed with the Seri.

[20] Contributions to the History of the Southwestern Portion of the United States (Hemenway Southwestern Archæological Expedition), Papers of the Archæological Institute of America, American series, V, 1890, p. 44.

[21] Relation of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, translated from the Spanish by Buckingham Smith; New York, 1871, p. 172.

[22] Ibid, p. 178.

The next Caucasians to approach Seriland appear to have been the two Spanish monks, Fray Pedro Nadal and Fray Juan de la Asuncion, who, in 1538, sought to retrace Vaca’s route, and traveled northward to a river somewhat doubtfully identified as the Gila;[23] but the meager accounts of this journey contain no clear reference to the Seri Indians.

[23] Cf. Bandelier, Magazine of Western History, IV, 1886, p. 660.

On March 7-19, 1539, the Italian friar Marcos de Niza left San Miguel de Culiacan under instructions from the Viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, to explore the territory traversed by Vaca, under the guidance of the negro Estevanico, the only one of Vaca’s three companions remaining in Mexico; in good time he reached a point probably not far from the center of the present state of Sonora, whence messengers were sent coastward to return duly accompanied by certain “very poor” Indians wearing pearl-oyster (?) ornaments, who were reputed to inhabit a large island (almost certainly Tiburon) reached from the mainland by means of balsas. Bandelier identified these coastwise Indians with the Guayma tribe, a supposed branch of the Seri;[24] but if the “large island” were Tiburon, it would seem more probable that the Indians belonged to the tribe now known as Seri, while both description and location suggest the Tepoka. This record is of questionable weight, partly by reason of the doubtful identification of the Indians, and partly because the friar’s itinerary was found to be misleading by his immediate successors, because of the fact that portions of his narrative were based on hearsay; though it is just to note that Bandelier, after critical study, deemed the record about as trustworthy as others of the time, and to add that the disparagement of Niza’s discoveries by his followers was in accord with the fashion of the day—indeed it was little more severe relatively than the criticism of the strikingly trustworthy Ulloa by his first follower, Alarcon.

[24] Ibid, pp. 661-663; Papers of the Archæological Institute of America, American series, V, p. 118.

On July 8-19, 1539, according to the collection of Ramusio, three vessels sent out by Cortés to discover unknown lands—“Of Which Fleete was Captaine the right worshipfull knight Francis de Vlloa borne in the Citie of Merida”—sailed from Acapulco.[25] Skirting the mainland northwestward, they explored Mar de Cortés, or Gulf of California; and on September 24 (as fixed by interpolation from Ulloa’s excellent itinerary) they descried and described the features of the coast in such fashion as to locate their vessels (one was already lost) off the southern point of Tiburon, and in sight of the islands of San Esteban and San Lorenzo, as well as locally prominent points on the mainland of Lower California. Here they “discerned the countrey to be plaine, and certaine mountaines, and it seemed that a certaine gut of water like a brooke ran through the plaine” (p. 322). Judging from other geographic details, this “gut of water” was certainly the tide-torn gateway now named Boca Infierno; while the next day’s sailing (it is noteworthy that this was “north” instead of northwestward as usual) carried them by “a circuit or bay of 6 leagues into the land with many coones or creeks”, evidently Bahia Tepopa with the northern end of the turbulent strait El Infiernillo. The record shows clearly that Ulloa discovered Tiburon, but failed (quite naturally, in view of the route pursued and the peculiar configuration at both extremities of the strait) to perceive its insular character. No mention is made of inhabitants or habitations on this land-mass, though both are described on the neighboring island of Angel de la Guarda in terms that would be applicable to the Seri.

[25] The Voyages of the English Nation to America, collected by Richard Hakluyt and edited by Edmund Goldsmid, 1890, vol. III, p. 317.

On Monday, February 23, 1540, according to Winship,[26] Captain-General Francisco Vazquez Coronado set out on his ambitious and memorable expedition to the Seven Cities of Cibola. His course lay from Compostela along the coast of Culiacan, and thence northward through what is now Sinaloa and Sonora. On May 9-20, 1540, Hernando de Alarcon set sail on the ancillary expedition by sea; he followed the coast from Acapulco to Colorado river, and although he undoubtedly saw and was the first to name Tiburon,[27] and claimed to have “discouered other very good hauens for the ships whereof Captaine Francis de Vlloa was General, for the Marquesse de Valle neither sawe nor found them”,[28] he made no specific record of any of the features of Seriland or of contact with the Seri Indians. Meantime Coronado’s forces were divided, a considerable part of the army falling behind the leader; and some time during the early summer the belated army, under Don Tristan de Arellano, founded the town of San Hieronimo de los Corazones, which in the following year (1541) was transferred to a place in Señora (Sonora) not now identifiable. From Corazones Don Rodrigo Maldonado went down to the seacoast to seek the ships, and brought back with him “an Indian so large and tall that the best man in the army reached only to his chest”, with reports of still taller Indians along the coast.[29] It is impossible to locate Maldonado’s route with close accuracy, but in view of geographic and other conditions it is evident (as recently shown by Hodge[30]) that he must have descended Rio Sonora and approached or reached the coast over the broad delta-plain of that stream south of Sierra Seri, and thus within Seri territory. The reported gigantic stature practically identifies the Indians visited by him with the Seri, since no other gigantic tribes were consistently reported by explorers of western North America, and since the 6-foot Seri warriors, with their frequent Sauls of greater stature, are in fact gigantic in comparison with the average Spanish soldiery of earlier centuries. There are indications that the fame of these giants of the Southern sea spread to Europe and filtered slowly throughout the intellectual world, and that the fancy-clothed colossi grew with their travels, after the manner of their kind—indeed, there is no slender reason for opining that these half-mythical islanders were the real originals of Jonathan Swift’s Brobdingnagians,[31] despite his location of their fabled land a few degrees farther northward on the long-mysterious coast below the elusive “Straits of Anian”.

[26] The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1896, p. 382.

[27] As a harbor or anchorage marked “del Tiburon” on the map of “Domingo del Castillo, Piloto”, drawn in 1541, and reproduced in Historia de Nueva-España, escrita por su esclarecido Conquistador Hernán Cortés, aumentada con otras documentos, y notas, por el ilustrissimo Señor Don Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Arzobispo de Mexico; Mexico, 1770, p. 328.

[28] The Voyages of the English Nation to America, vol. IV, p. 6.

[29] Winship, op. cit., p. 484.

[30] Coronado’s March to Quivira, in J. V. Brower, Harahey (Memoirs of Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi, vol. II), 1899, p. 36.

[31] Cf. The History of Oregon, California, and the other Territories on the Northwest Coast of North America, by Robert Greenhow, 1845, p. 97; History of California, by Theodore H. Hittell, 1898, vol. I, p. 149.

About the middle of September, 1540, Captain Melchior Diaz, then in command at Corazones, selected 25 men from the force remaining at that point, and set out for the coast on what must have been one of the most remarkable, as it is one of the least-known, expeditions in the history of Spanish exploration; for he traversed either the streamless coast or the hardly more hospitable interior through one of the most utterly desert regions in North America, from the lower reaches of Rio Sonora to the mouth of the Colorado. The record of this journey is meager, ambiguous, and apparently inconsecutive; it indicates that he encountered the Indian giants seen by Maldonado, but confused them with the Indians of the Lower Colorado. On the return journey Diaz lost his life through an accident, and his party reached Corazones on January 18, 1541, after encountering hostility from Indians not far from that settlement. Word was sent to Coronado, then in winter quarters on the Rio Grande, who dispatched Don Pedro de Tovar to the settlement for the purpose of punishing the hostile natives; he, in turn, sent Diego de Alcaraz with a force to seize the “chiefs and lords of a village”. This Alcaraz did, but soon liberated his prisoners for a petty exchange. “Finding themselves free, they renewed the war and attacked them, and as they were strong and had poison, they killed several Spaniards and wounded others so that they died on the way back.... They got back to the town, leaving 17 soldiers dead from the poison. They would die in agony from only a small wound, the bodies breaking out with an insupportable pestilential stink.”[32]

[32] Winship, op. cit., p. 502.

The Coronado expedition had still further experience with (evidently) the same Indians; for as the army approached Corazones on the return a soldier was wounded, and was successfully treated, according to the record, with the juice of the quince. “The poison, however, had left its mark upon him. The skin rotted and fell off until it left the bones and sinews bare, with a horrible smell. The wound was in the wrist, and the poison had reached as far as the shoulder when he was cured. The skin on all this fell off.”[33]

[33] Ibid., p. 538.

There is some question as to the identity of the Indians met by Diaz’s men, Alcaraz and his force, and the Coronado army near Corazones; but various indications point toward the Seri. In the first place, the several Indian settlements mentioned in the records define what must have been then, as it was two centuries later, the Seri frontier, beyond which lay the “despoblado” of Villa-Señor, i. e., the immense area hunted and harried by roving bands from Tiburon; so that the Seri must frequently have crossed the paths pursued by the Spanish pioneers. In the second place, the accounts themselves seem to be typical records of contact with Seri Indians, which might be repeated for each subsequent episode in their history or century in time. The description of the effect of the poison is especially suggestive of the Seri; as pointed out on a later page, the Seri arrow-venom is magical in motive, but actually consists of decomposing and ptomaine-filled organic matter, so that it is sometimes septic in fact, while the arrow-poison of the neighboring Opata, Jova, and other Piman tribes was (so far as can be ascertained) vegetal; and these accounts seem to attest septic poisoning rather than the effects of any known vegetal toxic.[34]

[34] It should he noted that Mr. F. W. Hodge, whose large acquaintance with the Southwest and its literature gives his opinion great weight, is inclined to class the Indians in question as Opata.

Such (assuming the validity of the several identifications) are the earliest records concerning the truculent tribesmen and the desolate district known centuries later as the Seri and Seriland.

* * * * *

About 1545 began the Dark Ages in the history of northwestern Mexico; the excursion of Guzman, and the journeys of Cabeza de Vaca and Friar Marcos and of Coronado himself, died out of the memory of the solitary adventurers and scattering settlers who slowly infused Spanish culture and a strain of Caucasian blood into the Sonoran province; even the route taken by Coronado’s imposing cavalcade was lost for centuries, to be retraced only during the present generation, largely through the determinations of Simpson, Bandelier, Winship, and Hodge.[35] It is true that Don Francisco de Ibarra penetrated the territory in 1563, and remained until rumors of gold in other districts drew him elsewhere; it is also true that Captain Diego Martinez de Hurdaide pushed into the province in 1584, and entered on a career of subjugation, waging persistent war with the Yaqui, which resulted in the acquisition of the territory of Sonora by treaty April 15, 1610;[36] yet few records of exploration or settlement were written before the advent of the Jesuit missionaries, toward the end of the seventeenth century.

[35] Op. cit., pp. 29-73.

[36] Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, por F. T. Dávila, 1894, p. 8.

Still more astounding was the eclipse of knowledge of the gulf. Despite Ulloa’s survey of the entire coast, recorded in an itinerary so detailed that every day’s sailing may readily be retraced, and despite Alarcon’s repetition of the surveys and extension of the discoveries far up Rio Colorado (where his work was verified by that of Melchior Diaz), a mythic cartography arose to shadow knowledge and delude exploration for a century and a half; for “upon the authority of a Spanish chart, found accidently by the Dutch, and of the authenticity of which there never were, or indeed could be, any proofs obtained, an opinion prevailed that California was an island, and the contrary assertion was treated even by the ablest geographers as a vulgar error”;[37] and a mythic strait formed by cartographic extension of the Gulf of California indefinitely northward haunted the maps of the seventeenth century. This error was adopted by various geographers, including Fredericus de Witt in 1662, Peter van der Aa in 1690, and even Herman Moll so late as 1708; but it was consistently rejected by Guillaume Delisle and other French geographers. The myth “was finally punctured by Padre Kino in 1701; though even he and all his erudite co-evangels were apparently unaware that his observations only verified those of Ulloa, Alarcon, and Diaz.

[37] A Natural and Civil History of California; translated from the original Spanish of Miguel Venegas; London, 1759, vol. I, preface.

During the stagnant sesquicentury 1545-1695 there was little record of the Seri Indians, though that little indicates recognition of their leading characteristics and their insular habitat. Writing especially of the Yaqui before 1645, Padre Andrés Perez de Ribas declared (freely translated):

There is information of a great people of another nation
called Heris; they are excessively savage, without towns,
without houses, without fields. They have neither rivers nor
streams, and drink from a few lagoonlets and waterholes. They
subsist by the chase, but at harvest time they obtain corn by
bartering salt extracted from the sea and deerskins with other
nations. Those nearest to the sea also subsist on fish; and
it is said that there is, in the same sea, an island on which
others of the same nation live. Their language is exceedingly
difficult.[38]

[38] Historia de los Trivmphos de Nvestra Santa Fee entre Gentes las mas Barbaras y Fieras del Nueuo Orbe; Madrid, 1645, p. 358. The “Heris” are identified as Seri by Bandelier (Final Report of Investigations among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, in Papers Arch. Inst. Am., American series, III, 1890, p. 74).

The same author mentions cannibalism among the aborigines of northwestern Mexico, saying:

The vice of those called anthropophagi, who eat human flesh,
introduced by the devil, enemy of the human genus, among
nearly all these nations during their heathenism, is more or
less common. In the Acaxee and mountains this inhuman vice is
customary as eating of flesh obtained by the chase; it is of
daily occurrence among them; just as they sally in chase of
a deer, they go out over mountains and fields in search of
enemies to cut in pieces and eat roasted or boiled.[39]

[39] Op. cit., p. 11.

There is nothing to indicate that the anthropophagy was confined to, or even extended to, the Seri—a fact of interest in connection with later opinion. Ribas’ reference to an island inhabited by the Heris (Seri) indicates that the occupancy of Tiburon was fully recognized by the native tribes of the region.

Throughout the seventeenth century the western coast of Gulf of California, and in lesser degree the eastern coast also, became famous for pearl oysters, and expeditions were sent out and fisheries established at different times. The earliest of these expeditions was that of Captain Juan Iturbi in 1615; he sailed well up the gulf, reaching latitude 30° according to his reckoning (though the accounts imply between lines that he turned back at the Salsipuedes), collecting many pearls along the western coast “so large and clear that for one only he paid, as the King’s fifth, 900 crowns”;[40] and on his return he carried the fame of the Californian pearls to Ciudad Mexico, whence it resounded to Madrid and reverberated through all Europe. One of the more noteworthy pearl-gathering expeditions was that of Admiral Pedro Portel de Cassanate, which covered several years; he “took a very careful survey of the eastern coast of the gulf” in 1618, but was deterred from establishing a garrison by “the dryness and sterility of the country”;[41] yet neither this voyage nor any of the others appears to have resulted in any considerable rectification of the maps, or in valuable records relating to the aboriginal inhabitants. Various records indicate, however, that both pearl fishers by sea and gold seekers by land must have met the warlike Seri—and sometimes survived to enrich the growing lore concerning the tribe, and to establish the existence of their island stronghold.

[40] Venegas, op. cit., vol. I, p. 182.

[41] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. I, p. 192.

* * * * *

New light dawned on Sonoran history with the extension of evangelization by the Order of Jesuits into that territory under the pilotage of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino (Kaino, Kuino, Kühn, Kühne, Quino, Chino, etc.), who sailed from Chacala, March 18, 1683,[42] for California, with the expedition of Admiral Isidro Otondo y Antillon. This expedition failing, the padre returned to the mainland in 1686, and during the same year obtained authority and means for establishing missions in Sonora, of which one was to be “founded among the Seris of the gulf coast”.[43] Although the record of the padre’s movements is hardly complete, it would appear that several years elapsed before he actually approached, and also (contrary to the opinion of two centuries) that he never saw, the real Seri habitat. According to the anonymous author of “Apostolicos Afanes” (identified by modern historians as Padre José Ortega), Padre Kino made many journeys over the inhospitable wastes now known as Papagueria during the years 1686-1701,[44] and must have seen nearly the whole of the northern and eastern portions of the territory; but only a single journey led him toward Seriland. In February, 1694, he, with Padre Marcos Antonio Kappus, Ensign Juan Mateo Mange (chronicler of this expedition), and Captain Aguerra, set out for the coast; and Mange’s itinerary is so circumstantial as to locate their route and every stopping place, with a possible error not exceeding 5 miles in any case.

[42] Venegas, Noticia de la California, vol. I; Madrid, 1757, p. 219.

[43] The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. XV (History of the North Mexican States, vol. I, 1531-1800), 1884, p. 252.

[44] Apostolicos Afanes de la Compañia de Jesus, escritos por un Padre de la misma Sagrada Religion de su Provincia de Mexico; Barcelona, 1754, p. 246 et seq.

According to Mange’s itinerary, the explorers left Santa Magdalena de Buquibava, on the banks of Rio San Ignacio or Santa Magdalena, February 9, traveling northwestward down the valley of that river (for the most part) 12 leagues to San Miguel del Bosna; the original party having been enlarged at Santa Magdalena by the addition of Nicolas Castrijo and Antonio Mezquita, with two Indians for guides. On February 10 they traveled from Bosna 5 leagues southward (evidently in the valley of Rio San Ignacio, which is here 5 to 25 miles in width), to sleep at the watering place of Oacue, or San Bartolome. The next day they journeyed westward along the wash (of San Ignacio), stopping, as was their custom, to baptize the sick and others, and after covering 10 leagues camped at a tanque. On February 12 they continued westward over mesquite-covered plains for 4 leagues, and then turned northwestward for 3 leagues along the San Ignacio to Caborca, where they spent the remainder of the day in evangelical work. Next morning, after saying mass, they again proceeded westward “por la vega del rio abajo” (down the bank of the river); at 2 leagues distance they arrived at the place at which the river “sinks”, but continued westward along the sand-wash 5 leagues farther, passing the night at a tanque of turbid water. On February 14 they again celebrated mass, and then proceeded westward over the plains (“prosiguiendo nosotros al Poniente por llanos”); at 4 leagues they reached a rancheria which was dubbed San Valentin (still persisting as a Papago temporale; the “Bisanig” of various maps), watered from a well in the river bed; proceeding westward (“prosiguiendo al Poniente”) 6 leagues farther, they ascended a sierra trending from south to north (“trasmontada una sierra que sita de Sur á Norte”) of which they named the principal peak Nazareno, in a dry and sterile barranca in which they afterward slept; from this sierra they saw “the Gulf of California, and, on the farther coast, four mountains of that territory, which we named Los Cuatro Stos. Evangelistas, and toward the northwest an islet with three cerritos named Las Tres Marias, and in the southwest the Isla de Seris, to which they retreat when pursued by soldiers for their robberies, which we call San Agustin and others Tiburon.”[45] The record continues:

[45] Translated somewhat freely from Resumen de Noticias, in Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo I, 1856, pp. 235-236.

On the fifteenth, after saying mass, we continued our route to
the west by a dry and stony ravine which there is between the
mountains, and at 3 leagues we met some Indians taking water
from a small well in earthen jars, who, on seeing us, ran away,
flying from fear; but at two musket shots we overtook them,
treated them kindly, and brought them back to the well that
they might assist in watering the horses, giving them all the
water necessary, for the reason that they had not drunk the
day before. For this reason we called this place Paraje de las
Ollas. They were naked people, and only covered their private
parts with small pieces of hare skin; and one of them was so
aged that by his looks he must have been about 120 years old.
We continued to the west over barren plains, arid and without
pasture, a country as sandy as a sea-beach, until we reached
the sand-banks, where the horses had great difficulty; and
after another 7 leagues Father Kappus and the other people
camped without water, and with only pasture of salt grass;
but Padre Kino and I [Mange], with guides, and the governor
of Los Dolores [Aguerra], in order to be forehanded, went
west 2 leagues farther, crossing the bed of Rio San Ignacio;
we arrived at the banks of an arm of the sea to which, in the
sixty years that the province of Sonora had been peopled, no
one had come, and we were the first who had the great privilege
of seeing the Island of the Seris and that of Tres Marias, as
well as the mountains of Cuatro Evangelistas, in California,
on the other side of the gulf, the width of which, according
to the measuring instruments at this position of 30° [actually
about 30° 35'], is some 20 leagues. We returned to the bed of
the river [San Ignacio], where we found a well nearly dry;
we drew from it water for the horses, who had had nothing to
drink, and took some ourselves, although it was turbid, muddy,
and disagreeable.

Now, this itinerary recounts, in definite and unmistakable terms, the incidents and localities of a journey down the valley of Rio San Ignacio (also called Santa Magdalena, Altar, Ascuncion, Pitiquito, Caborca, etc., in different parts of its course), from the present city of Santa Magdalena by the present town of Caborca to the coast at a point almost directly west of both Caborca and Santa Magdalena. Moreover, Kino’s map of 1702[46] locates “Nazareno” on this river, and permits identification of the sierra with Dewey’s “three conspicuous peaks” placed directly inland from the lagoon at the mouth of San Ignacio river, on the Hydrographic Office charts; it also locates Caborca (miswritten “Cabetka”) in approximate position. Furthermore, it would have been physically impossible for the rather heavily outfitted Kino party, with carriages and churchly equipage, to traverse the untrodden and forbidding wastes from Caborca to even the nearest part of Seriland within the period of two days and a fraction, and the distance of 29 leagues (some 74 miles), detailed in the itinerary. The direct way from Caborca to Tiburon would lie due southward, over sierra-ribbed and barranca-cut plains never yet explored by white men, nor even traversed by Indians so far as known, for more than 100 miles in an air line; while the nearest practicable route, passing by way of Cieneguilla, Las Cruces, Pozo Noriega, Bacuachito, Sayula, Tonuco, Rancho Libertad, and Barranca Salina (or Aguaje Parilla) measures fully 200 miles, and requires at least six days for the passage with good horses and light equipage. The Kino party might, indeed, have turned southwestward at Caborca and pushed to the now abandoned landing at the anchorage below Cabo Lobos;[47] but the directions and distances specifically stated, and the specific identification of Rio San Ignacio at the end and at other points of the journey, all prove that this was not the route actually traveled. The terminus of the trip so clearly fixed by the itinerary is over 100 miles from the nearest point of Seriland proper; moreover, Tiburon is rendered invisible both from the coast and from Cerro Nazareno not only by distance, but by intervening sierras, notably those projecting into the Gulf to form Cabo Lobos and Punta Tepopa. It follows that Kino and Mange completely missed Seriland in their expedition to the coast, and there is nothing to indicate that they ever saw the Seri tribesmen. Their descriptions of the Indians encountered fairly fit the peaceful Papago of the interior and the timid Tepoka of the coast; and neither Mange’s narrative nor other contemporary records suggest contact between the exploring party and the distinctive holders of Tiburon. The specific and repeated references in the itinerary to the island of San Agustin, or Tiburon, evidently relate to the ancient Isla de Santa Inez, the modern Isla Angel de la Guarda,[48] one of the most prominent geographic features visible either from Cerro Nazareno or from the adjacent coast. There is no reason to infer that Kino or any of his party ever detected their error in identification of geographic features which must have been conspicuous in the lore of the aborigines and settlers of Sonora; indeed, the error well attests the prominence of the Seri and their habitat in the local thought of the time.[49]

[46] Tabula California, anno 1702 (Via terrestris in Californiam comperta et detecta per R. Patrem Eusebium Fran. Chino è S. I. Germanum. Adnotatis novis Missionibus ejusdem Soctis ab anno 1698 ad annum 1701), in Stocklein, Der Neue Welt-Bott, Augsburg und Grätz, 1726.

[47] Elaborately mapped and established (on paper) as the “Puerto y Villa de la Libertad” in 1861 (Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia y Estadistica, 1863, X, p. 263 et seq.), and actually maintained from 1875 to 1884 as the port of Libertad (not the abandoned Rancho Libertad on the border of Seriland), or Serna, according to Dávila (Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, pp. 140, 309).

[48] Identified by Alexandre de Humboldt in his Carte Générale du Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, of 1804 (in Atlas Géographique et Physique, Paris, 1811). So late as 1840 the old name was sometimes retained, e. g., on Robert Greenhow’s map accompanying his History of California and Oregon.

[49] In one of the last letters from his pen, dated November 25, 1899, the late Dr Elliott Cones wrote, “I find you trailing Kino and Mange in 1694 precisely as I had them, and I make no doubt of the substantial accuracy of your typewritten MS. I accept your position that the large island they sighted and named San Agustin was not Tiburon, but Angel de la Guarda Isl.”

* * * * *

An effect of the Jesuit invasion was to give record to episodes growing out of alien contact with the Seri. One of the earliest of these records recounts nocturnal raids by the “Seris Salineros” for robbery and murder in the pueblos of Tuape, Cucurpe, and Magdalena (de Tepoca).[50] In January, 1700, Sergeant Juan Bautista de Escalante set out with fifteen soldiers to this mission of Santa Magdalena de Tepoca on an expedition of protection and reprisal; and here he learned that the “Seris Salineros” had killed with arrows three persons. Taking their trail, he reached Nuestra Señora del Populo only to find that ten families of converts had deserted to steal cattle, whereupon he started in search of them; he overtook them 20 leagues away, and, despite armed resistance on their part, arrested and whipped them and returned them to the pueblo. Among the captives were two “Seris Salineros” concerned in the murders at Tepoca, and three others guilty of similar outrages at the Pueblo de los Angeles de Pimas Cocomacagües; these he executed as a warning to the others, after taking their depositions and confessions, and after they were shrived by Padre Adano Gilo (or Adan Gilg), the priest of Populo. This duty performed, he resumed the trail of the Seri, accompanied by the padre; and, approaching the sea, he found a port, as well as an island to which most of the Seri had escaped in balsas, leaving eight of their number, who were arrested and turned over to the priest.[51]

[50] A mission founded in 1699 by Padre Melchor Bartiromo (Historia de la Compañia de Jesus en Nueva España, que esta escribiendo el P. Francisco Javier Alegre, 1842, tomo III, p. 117), of which the location has long been lost.

[51] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., tomo I, p. 321.

This is the first record of actual invasion of Seriland by Caucasians. According to Bancroft, it “may be deemed the beginning of the Seri wars which so long desolated the province”.[52]

[52] Op. cit., p. 275 (the year is misprinted 1800 on this page and in the index).

The next noteworthy episode occurred when Sergeant Escalante, who had returned to Tuape and Santa Magdalena (de Tepoca), again set out for the coast on February 28, 1700, taking a new route (probably down Rio Bacuache). He traveled 30 leagues, passing four watering places, and on March 6 arrived at the Paraje de Aguas Frias (probably Pozo Escalante or Agua Amarilla of recent maps); there, three nights later, he was attacked by archers, who discharged arrows into the soldiers’ camp and immediately fled. Subsequently, seeking their enemies close to the sea 20 leagues away (probably on the eastern shore of El Infiernillo), Escalante and his men were joined by 120 Tepoka people; and, failing to find their assailants, they gave these allies a supply of provisions and turned them over to Padre Melchor Bartiromo, who allotted to them, in conjunction with 300 deserters from the missions who had been captured by the soldiers, not only lands but corn for sowing and eating. Having thus disposed of the Indians, Escalante and his soldiers returned to the coast on March 28, 1700, to punish the boldness and pride of the Indians in their stronghold (“los indios seris de la ranchería del medio”). Passing by balsas to the island, “they overtook those who caught up bows and arrows to fight, of whom they slew nine as an example to the others”; and these others they captured and sent to the priest at Populo—after which the party returned to Cucurpe in time to celebrate Holy Thursday on April 8.[53]

[53] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., tomo I, pp. 321-322.

This contemporary recital, written by Escalante’s acquaintance and rival in exploration and subjugation, Juan Mateo Mange, bears both internal and external evidence of falling well within the truth. It is corroborated and extended by Alegre’s version, written forty or fifty years later on data at least partially independent: according to Alegre, Escalante and his soldiers went on balsas to the “Isla de los Seris, which is called San Agustin by some, but more commonly Tiburon”. He added that the retreats of the Seri after the murders and robberies committed at the pueblos of Pimeria, as well as the abundant pearl fisheries, have made this place highly noted (“muy famosa”); and he correctly described the strait and the projecting sand-banks opposite the center of the island, which reduce the open water to a width of barely half a league: “At this constriction the Seri cross in balsas composed of many slender reeds, disposed in three bundles, thick in the middle and narrowing toward the ends, 5 and 6 varas in length. These balsas sustain the weight of four or five persons, and with light two-bladed paddles 2 varas in length cut the water easily.” He remarked also that while a part of the Seri seen on the island by Escalante were captured the major portion escaped, “fleeing with great swiftness”.[54]

[54] Op. cit., tomo III, pp. 117-119.

The early record is also corroborated, in a manner hardly credible in regions of more rapid social and physiographic development, by local tradition and by the survival of the well excavated by the party and still bearing Escalante’s name.

On the whole it may be considered established that Sergeant Escalante crossed El Infiernillo and visited Tiburon in 1700; and, although it may be possible that pearl fishers or others preceded him, he must be credited with the first recorded exploration of strait and island by white men.

The specific references to the Seri and their insular habitat by Ribas, by Kino and his chronicler, and by the various recorders of Escalante’s expeditions, establish the extent of the lore concerning people and place, even before the end of the seventeenth century. This lore found measurable expression in maps prepared in Europe, even by those cartographers who purposely or otherwise ignored the surveys of Ulloa and Alarcon. In his “newest and most accurate” map of America, 1662, Fredericus de Witt depicted the Gulf of California (“Mare Ver mio olim Mare Rvbrvm”) as extending northward to connect with the mythic Strait of Anian (“Fretum Aniani”), yet he located Rio Colorado (“R. de Tecon”) and Rio Gila (“R. de Coral”) approximately, placing the largest island in the gulf, named “I. Gigante”, just off their (common) embouchure;[55] and an anonymous map of the Pacific ocean, apparently by the same author and of closely corresponding date, is essentially similar.[56] The map of the northern part of America by Peter van der Aa, about 1690, is also similar, though on smaller scale;[57] and the same may be said of that cartographer’s new map of America, issued about the same time, in which the island is designated “I. de Gigante”.[58] A somewhat later map by Van der Aa (although supposed to have been issued in 1690) is greatly improved; the “Mer de Californie” is brought to rather indefinite end a little above the mouth of Rio Colorado (“R. de bona guia”); the “Pimases” are placed in proper position with respect to the Gila (“R. de Coral”), and the “Herises” are located a third of the way and the “Ahomeses” halfway down the gulf; while a greatly elongated island stretches from the one to the other off the province of “Sonora”.[59] The origin of the name “Gigante” is uncertain; it may be borrowed from a land feature. As used in some cases it apparently connotes the size of the island, while the use in other cases evidently connotes gigantic inhabitants.

[55] Novissima et Accuratissima Septentrionalis ac Meridionalis Americæ, Amsterdam. (In American Maps, 1579-1796, Library U. S. Geological Survey, 135.)

[56] Mar del Zvr, Hispanis, Mare Pacificum. (Ibid., 129.)

[57] ’T Noorder Deel van Amerika, Leyden. (Ibid., 178.)

[58] Nouvelle Carte de l’Amerique, Leyden. (Ibid., 156.)

[59] L’Amerique Septentrionale Suivant les Nouvelles Observations, etc., Leyden. (Ibid., 181.) This island is not named, but is undoubtedly the Santa Inez of several other maps—the Angel de la Guarda of the present.

Naturally, in view of the slow and imperfect diffusion of knowledge characteristic of early times, cartographers were dilatory in introducing the observations of Kino and Escalante. The map of America by Herman Moll, about 1708,[60] represents the “Gulf of California or Red Sea”, connecting the “South Sea” with the “Straits of Anian”, and depicts Rio Colorado (“Tison R.”) and a composite river apparently designed to represent Rio Gila (made up of “R. Sonaca”, “R. Azul”, and “R. Colorado”, with two other long tributaries from the south) embouching separately a little below midlength of the gulf. Somewhat above these are three islands, one of which is designated “Gigate Isle”, while “Pimeria” is located correctly with respect to Rio Gila, though too close to the sea, and “R. Sonora” is located too far southward, with a province of the same name just north of it. There is no reference to the Seri, but a locality in Lower California opposite Sonora is named “Gigante”.[61] Quite similar is the map of North America drawn and engraved by R. W. Seale about 1722, though the provinces of Pimeria and Sonora are brought closer together, while the magnified Gila is named Colorado (“Tison R.” also being retained).[62] The map of North America presented to the Duc de Bourgogne by H. Iaillot about 1720 is much the same; the “Isle de Californie” is separated from the continent by “Mar Vermejo ou Mer Rouge” with four islands, of which the southernmost, “I. de Gigante”, lies somewhat below the separate mouths of “R. de Tecon” and “R. de Coral”, while the extravagantly magnified Gila of previous maps is partially replaced by a still more extravagant “R. del Norte”, rising in a mythical lake above the fortieth parallel and falling into the gulf under the thirtieth.[63] The map of Mexico and Florida by Guillaume “De l’Isle”, published in Amsterdam by Covens and Mortier, 1722, patently begs the question as to the northern extension of “Mer de Californie” by cutting off the cartography at the critical point. “R. del Tison” is retained as a subordinate river, while the separate and greatly magnified Gila corresponds with that of the Iaillot map, the upper tributary being “R. Sonaca ou de Hila”; “R. di Sonora” is depicted in approximate position, with the province of the same name extending northward and “Seris” located a little above the mouth of the river. No islands are shown in the vicinity, but the name “Gigante” appears on the western coast of the gulf, about latitude 26°.[64] The map of North America by the same author, supposed to date about 1740 though probably earlier, recalls the Van der Aa map of 1690 (?); “Mer de Californie ou Mer Vermeille” ends doubtfully about latitude 34°, where “R. de bona guia” and “R. de Coral” bound the “Campagne de bona guia”, and fall separately into the gulf near its head; the “Pimases”, “Herises”, “Sumases”, “Aibinoses”, and “Ahomeses” are distributed thence southward along the coast to about the twenty-eighth parallel, while a nameless island stretches parallel with the coast of “Sonora” from about 28° to 32°.[65]

[60] North America, according to ye Newest and most Exact Observations, etc., London. (Ibid., 93.)

[61] Doubtless the mountain “La Giganta”, named by Admiral Otondo toward the end of the seventeenth century (Documentas para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, 1857, tomo V, p. 122), and noted by Hardy in 1820 (Travels in Interior of Mexico in 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828, London, 1829, p. 243).