Chapter V: Introduction: Salient Features (4)

[62] A map of North America, with the European Settlements and whatever else is Remarkable in ye West Indies, from the latest and best Observations. (American maps, loc. cit., 110.)

[63] Amerique Septentrionale Divisée en Ses Principales Parties. (Ibid., 109.)

[64] Carte du Mexique et de la Floride, des Terres Angloises et des Isles Antilles, etc. (Ibid., 136.)

[65] L’Amerique Septentrionale ... par G. de l’Isle: Amsterdam, Chez Pierre Mortier. (Ibid., 172.) The island is, of course, Santa Inez, i. e., Angel de la Guarda.

With one or two exceptions, these maps demonstrate the prevailing neglect or ignorance of the classic explorations along the western coast of America early in the sixteenth century; yet they introduce features representing vague knowledge of the Seri Indians and their insular habitat, undoubtedly derived (like that of Padre Kino and Sergeant Escalante anterior to their expeditions) from native sources.

The Kino map of 1702 gradually came to be recognized as trustworthy in important particulars, and brought to an end the baseless extension northward of the gulf; yet it was seriously inaccurate in details, particularly those affected by the erroneous identification of the second-largest island in the gulf with the largest. Accordingly Isla Santa Inez (the modern Isla Angel de la Guarda) is omitted from its proper position, and replaced by “I. S. August” close to the eastern coast; yet the land-mass of Tiburon is roughly defined as a peninsula bounded on the north by “Portus S. Sabina” (Bahia Tepopa) and on the south by “Baya S. Ioa. Bapt.” (Bahias Kunkaak and Kino). Two other considerable islands are represented as dividing the width of the bay west-southwest of “I. S. August”, and are named “2. Saltz-Insel”; although evidently traditional, their positions correspond roughly with those of San Esteban and San Lorenzo. The map locates the “Topokis” between Rio San Ignacio and Rio Sonora, with the “Guaimas” immediately below the latter.[66] Kino’s three pier-like islands bridging the gulf were adopted in Delisle’s map of America, published in Amsterdam by Jean Cóvens and Corneille Mortier about 1722, in greatly reduced size, though larger islands are shown farther northward; and an ill-defined peninsula corresponding to Tiburon is retained.[67] The D’Anville map of 1746 embodies Kino’s discoveries about the head of the gulf and retains his pier-like islands, yet not only corrects his error in omitting the second greatest island of the gulf, but perpetuates equal error in the opposite direction: “I. de S. Vicente” is made the largest of the islands and located near the western coast a little below the mouth of Rio San Ignacio, while “I. de Sta. Inés” is made second largest and is located southeast of it and near the eastern coast. The third island in size is named “Seris”, while the fourth and fifth, completing the Kino trio, are called “Is. de Sal”, and the mainland projection remains defined on the south by “B. de S. Juan”.[68] The Vaugondy map of 1750 locates the transverse trio of islands in greatly reduced size, and omits the larger islands of the gulf.[69] The islands, etc., of the Covens and Mortier map of 1757 correspond closely with D’Anville’s map of 1746, and a nameless bay defines a peninsula in the position of Tiburon.[70] The Pownall map of 1783 also follows that of D’Anville so far as the islands are concerned, though the position of that corresponding to the present Angel de la Guarda lies beyond the limit of the sheet; “I. de Inez” lies some distance below the mouth of “Sta. Madalena” river, off the territory of the “Sobas” and “Seris”; “Seris I.” is smaller, the two “Sall Is.” are smaller still, and there is an ill-defined projection of the mainland, bounded on the south by “B. de S. Juan”.[71]

[66] Map in Stocklein, op. cit.

[67] Carte d’Amerique, etc. (American maps, loc. cit., 20.)

[68] Amérique Septentrionale ... par le Sr. d’Anville, Paris. (Ibid., 50 and 51.)

[69] Amérique Septentrionale ... par le Sr. Robert de Vaugondy, Paris. (Ibid., 27.)

[70] L’Amerique Septentrionale, etc., Amsterdam. (Ibid., 160.)

[71] A new map of North America, with the West India Islands.... Laid down according to the Latest Surveys, and Corrected from the Original Materials of Goverʳ Pownall, London. (Ibid., 22.)

While the makers of the later of these maps were engaged in perpetuating the vestigial features, erroneous and otherwise, of the Kino map, the Jesuits of peninsular California employed themselves in reexploration of the western coast of the gulf, a particularly productive expedition being that of Padre Ferdinando Consag, in 1747. The padre’s map represents the western coast in considerable though much distorted detail, and depicts “I. del Angel de la Guarda” as a greatly elongated body, a third of the way across the gulf from the western coast; next in size is “I. d S. Lorenzo”; then come “ I. d S. Esteban” in the middle of the gulf, and in the same transverse line, but quite near the eastern coast, “I. d S. Agustin”, the two being approximately equal in size, while above and about equidistant from them is “I. de S. Pedro”, about half so large as either. These, with four smaller islands near the western coast, bear the general designation “Islas de Sal, si puedes”, which in this case may be translated “Salt (possibly) islands,” though later forms of the name imply a quite different meaning, i. e., “Islands of Get-out-if-(you-)can”, or “Get-out-if-canst”.[72] The eastern coast shows two deep indentations named “Tepoca” and “Bahia d S. Juan Bautista” bounding a peninsula corresponding in position to insular Seriland.[73] It is evident that the cartography of the eastern coast is based on that of Kino, that the island of San Agustin is hypothetic, and that the land-mass of Tiburon proper is not separated from the mainland, while San Pedro island is apparently the Isla Patos of the present. The more general map by Venegas combines details of the Consag, Kino, and other maps; “I. del Angel de la Guarda” is greatly magnified and placed somewhat too far northward, while both San Lorenzo and San Esteban are made much larger than “I. San Agustin”, which is represented as scarcely larger than “I. de S. Pedro”; the mainland is indented to great depth by Kino’s “Pto. de Sta. Sabina” and “Bahia de Sn. Juan Baptista”, in such wise as to define a decided peninsula, while the “Seris” are located 2° farther southward and below Rio Sonora, and the “Guaimas” still farther down the coast.[74] Another illustration of the chaotic notions of the time is afforded by the Baegert map, published in 1773, and credited largely to Consag.[75] The sheet locates the author’s routes of arrival (1751) and departure (1768), the former overland from far down the coast to the mouth of “Torrens Hiaqui,” and thence directly across “Mare Californiae”, via “Tiburon” (lying just off the mouth of the river, in latitude 28°), with the usual congeries of islands, headed by “I. S. Ang. Gart” (Angel de la Guarda), in latitude 30°-31°, and the usual shore configuration above the debouchure of Rio Sonora; “Los Seris” are located in the interior between Rio Sonora and “Torrens Hiaqui”, while just above the mouth of the latter lies “Gua mas M.[ission] destr. per Apostatas Seris”. The Pownall map of 1786 incorporates Padre Consag’s results on reduced scale, but omits the islands toward the eastern shore of the gulf.[76]

[72] It seems probable that various early cartographers were misled by the traditional lore of “salineros”, or salt-making Indians, in combination with the unusual designation of these islands. In his text Padre Consag rendered the term “Sal-si-puedes”, and strongly emphasized the violent tidal currents and consequent dangers to vessels which suggested the vigorously idiomatic designation to early navigators (Venegas. Noticia de la California, III, p. 145); in the Venegas map (ibid., tomo I, p. 1) the name is used without the qualifying comma, and in the text it is hyphenated “Sal-si-puedes”, the author observing concerning the local currents, “These currents run with astonishing rapidity, and their noise is equal to that of a large rapid river among rocks; nor do they run only in one direction, but set in many intersected gyrations” (A Natural and Civil History of California, p. 63). And the “Sacerdote Religioso”, whose letters place him among the authorities on Lower California, wrote: “In the narrows of the gulf are a multitude of islets, for the passage being so dangerous to vessels they are called _Sal si puedes_” (Noticias de la Provincia de Californias, Valencia, 1794, p. 11); while Hardy, who navigated this portion of the gulf early in the present century (Travels in the Interior of Mexico, London, 1829, p. 279), mentioned a passage “between the islands called ‘Sal si Puedes’ (get back if you can)”. So, too, Duflot de Mofras wrote of “les îles de Sal si puedes (Sors si tu peux)” in his Explorations du Territoire de l’Orégon, Paris, 1814, p. 219. Bancroft properly reduced the obscure connotive phrase to the single denotive term “Salsipuedes,” and noted the signification as “Get out if thou canst” (North Mexican States, vol. I, p. 444). In 1873-1875 Dewey restricted the name to a single island and a channel, and emphasized the currents in the latter “against which sailing vessels found it almost impossible to make any headway” (The West Coast of Mexico, Publication 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of Navigation, 1880, p. 113), and rendered the name “Sal-si-puedes” in the text, “Sal si puedes” on the charts. Hittell’s reference to “the group of islands then known as Salsipuedes, the largest of which is now called Tiburon” (History of California, vol. I, p. 225), doubtless expresses the early use of the term precisely, save that the present Tiburon was long treated as a part of the mainland, while its names were applied to Isla Tassne or some other islet. Vide postea, p. 45.

[73] Seno de California, etc., in Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo III, p. 194.

[74] Noticia de la California, tomo I, p. 1.

[75] California, per P. Ferdinandum Consak, S. I., et alios, in Nachrichten von der amerikanischen Halbinsel Californien.... Geschrieben von einem Priester der Gesellschaft Jesu (identified as Jacob Baegert by Rau, Smithsonian Report, 1863, p. 352); Mannheim, 1773.

[76] A New Map of the Whole Continent of America, London. (American maps, loc. cit., 4.)

On the whole the cartography of a century indicates that the striking explorations of Ulloa, Alarcon, and Diaz were utterly neglected; it indicates, too, that Kino’s observations were promptly adopted, but that his erroneous identification of the island seen from Nazareno occasioned confusion; yet there is nothing to indicate definite knowledge of Escalante’s discoveries. Apparently the cartographic tangle began with the failure to discover the narrow strait traversing Seriland, coupled with hearsay notions of an insular Seri stronghold; it was complicated by Kino’s erroneous identification of the hearsay island; and it grew into the mapping of a traditional islet about the position of Tiburon, and the extension of the mainland into a peninsula embracing the actual land-mass of that island[77]—the islet lying about the site of the modern Isla Tassne, and often appearing under the name San Agustin.[78] Accordingly, so far as maps are concerned, Escalante’s discoveries were no less completely lost than those of Ulloa.

[77] This cartography reappeared occasionally up to about the middle of the nineteenth century, as illustrated by the Greenhow map accompanying the edition of his history issued in 1845.

[78] This condition is revealed in Mühlenpfordt, Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republic Mejico, etc.; Hannover, 1844.

* * * * *

The recorded, history of the Seri Indians during the earlier two-thirds of the eighteenth century is largely one of zealous effort at conversion on the part of the Jesuit missionaries, who repeatedly approached the territory by both land and sea; yet the records touch also on events of exploration and on the characteristics of the tribe.

One of the earliest chroniclers was Padre Juan Maria de Sonora, who in 1699-1701 inspected many of the missions of Lower California and Sonora and acquainted himself in exceptional degree with the neophytes and their wilder kindred. About the beginning of 1701 he crossed with great danger (“pasé con grande peligro”) from Loreto to the eastern coast, and, accompanied by two “Indios Guaymas, caciques,” proceeded among the Sonoran settlements.[79] On February 18 he was at the new town of Magdalena (de Tepoca), “where, with great labor, Padre Melchor Bartiromo had gathered more than a hundred souls of the maritime nation of Tepocas”, and where the visitors were accorded an enthusiastic reception. He went on to say:

[79] Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo V; Mexico, 1857, pp. 125-126.

It is notable that where the Tepocas and Salineros are located
the sea is populous with islands [muy poblado de islas], and
the first of these toward the coast contains foot-folk [gente
de á pié], who live on it. Then there are two islands much
nearer the mainland of California, and it is said that they
[the Tepoka] are able to navigate in their barquillas [balsas]
to the adjacent coast; and the possession of these Tepocas, who
are all Seris by nation, of certain words of the Cuchimies of
[Lower] California, who occupy the opposite coast, indicates
that they have communicated in other times.[80]

[80] Ibid., p. 132.

This record is especially significant as indicating the affinity between the Seri and the Tepoka, as establishing the transnavigation of the Gulf by the Seri craft, and as explaining the possible passage of loan words from the Cochimi to the Seri, and presumptively from the Seri to the Cochimi.

A notable visitor to the shores of Seriland was Padre Juan Maria Salvatierra, who had previously “made a peace betwixt the Seris cristians, and the Pimas”, soon violated by the former “in the murder of 40 Pimas”. In August, 1709, he essayed the recovery of a vessel wrecked “on the barren coast of the Seris”, which these Indians were engaged in looting and breaking up for the nails; and, by dint of his “persuasive elocution ... not a little forwarded by the respectable sweetness of his air”, aided by timely explosions of the bark’s pateraroes (mortars), he induced restitution, the restoration of peace, and the reinstatement of several of the robbing and murdering Seri as communicants.[81] Padre Salvatierra observed the distinctive character of the Seri tongue, but made no extended exploration of Seriland, either coastwise or interior.

[81] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. I, pp. 405-411.

The next noteworthy visitor was Padre Juan de Ugarte, who, at the instance of Salvatierra, undertook an exploration of the gulf coast complementary to Kino’s land explorations about its northern terminus. Ugarte was the Hercules of Baja California history; he awed the natives by slaying a California lion, unarmed save with stones, and enforced orderly attention to his catechizing by seizing an obstreperous champion by the hair, lifting him at arm’s length, and shaking him into submission; and under incredible difficulties due to absence of material and distance of timber, he built the first vessel ever constructed in California, the bilander (two-master) _El Triunfo de la Cruz_—a fit prototype of the _Oregon_ of nearly two centuries later—which proved to be the finest craft ever seen on the coast, and played an important role in later history.[82]

[82] Hittell, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 191-193, 219-221.

On May 15, 1721, Ugarte embarked at Loreto (Lower California) and skirted the coast northward to the Islas de Salsipuedes, whence he crossed the gulf to “Puerto de _Santa Sabina, ó Bahia de San Juan Bautista_” near the islands “en la Costa de los _Tepoquis_, y _Seris_”.[83] The Indians soon appeared and, in excess of amity (ascribed to the display of the cross), threw themselves into the sea and swam to the ship, and afterward aided in taking water; for “early next day the Indians appeared in troops, and all with water-vessels; the men each with two in nets hanging from a pole across their shoulders, and the women with one.”[84] After watering, the Ugarte party, accompanied by two of the Indians, set sail in the bilander with a pinnace and a canoe, and in the early morning found themselves in a narrow channel apparently separating the island from the mainland; the pinnace and the canoe were dispatched to courier the larger craft; but “the channel, besides being narrow and crooked, was so full of shoals that ... the bilander stuck and was in danger of being lost”, while the canoe and the pinnace were caught by the currents and carried “to such a distance as not to be seen”. Finding it impossible to return, the party pushed on, and “after three days of continual danger, they reached the mouth of the channel, where they found the boat and pinnace”; when they were surprised to find the strait opening, not into the gulf, but into a great and spacious bay. Approaching a landing, they were met by Indian archers wearing feather headdresses and comporting themselves in a threatening manner; but these were pacified by the two Indians brought from the watering-place. Here Ugarte was taken ill, and the islanders made thirteen “balsillas” on which fifty Indians passed to the bilander and urged him to land on the island, where they had prepared a house for his reception; this he did, despite severe suffering, and was received with great ceremony. After a short stay, the party explored the coast northward, stopping off Caborca to lay in supplies, and discovered (anew and independently) the mouth of the Colorado; then, despite repeated risk and much suffering from the exceeding tides, severe storms, and the terrible tiderips off Islas Salsipuedes, they finally made return to Loreto.

[83] Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo II, p. 343.

[84] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. II, p. 48.

The itinerary of this voyage recounts the first recorded navigation through El Infiernillo; and, while it is too meager to permit retracing the trip in detail, it seems practically certain that the vessels entered Bahia Tepopa, watered at Pozo Hardy, passed around Punta Perla and thence southward through the strait, and emerged through Boca Infierno into Bahia Kunkaak, afterward proceeding westward and northward around the outer coast, and thus circumnavigating Tiburon. While Ugarte’s pilot, Guilermo Estrafort (or Strafort),[85] displayed great energy and courage in charting the coast, the voyage neither yielded published maps nor affected current and subsequent cartography; for, although Ugarte’s narrative and Estrafort’s map and journal were sent to Mexico to be presented to the viceroy, they were apparently lost.[86] Nor does the itinerary indicate recognition of Kino’s error in identification of the Seri island, though several days were occupied in voyaging from the island to the latitude of Caborca; indeed, it seems probable that it was either Salvatierra, Kino’s intimate associate, or Ugarte, Kino’s colleague and Salvatierra’s intimate friend, who fixed the name of the pioneer padre on the geographic features still known as Bahia Kino and Punta Kino—features which Kino never knew, as already shown.

[85] An Englishman named (probably) William Strafford, according to Bancroft; op. cit, vol. I, p. 444.

[86] Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo II, p. 370.

Although both Salvatierra and Ugarte were on superficially amicable terms with the Seri, the amity was evidently of the shallowest and most evanescent sort. Venegas says:

Of the _Seris_ and _Tepocas_, although the padre passed
among them with the pay in his hand, he could not induce
them to assist him in any way, even when they saw the party
in the greatest distress; while others toiled, they reclined
with the greatest serenity, nor have they shown the priests
the slightest civility during the forty years of their
acquaintance—they utterly refused to part with ollas of coarse
ware, even for a liberal exchange.[87]

[87] Ibid., p. 386.

And the contemporary lore, crystallized in current administrative policy and later records, and corroborated by deep-rooted customs maintained for centuries and still persisting, is significant; it indicates that then, as now, it was the habit of the Tiburon islanders to flee from or fawn upon powerful visitors, to ambush or assail by night parties of moderate strength, to openly attack none but the weak or defenseless, yet ever to delight in tricking the credulity and consuming the stores and stock of aliens, and to revel in shedding alien blood when occasion offered. The adventurous hunters and gold seekers of the mainland, and the still hardier pearl fishers of the coast, wrote nothing; but both civil and ecclesiastical records imply common knowledge that weaker parties venturing into the purlieus of Seriland never returned—they disappeared and left no sign.

* * * * *

While Salvatierra and Ugarte were occupied on the coast, the missionaries were no less industrious in the interior. The mission of Santa Magdalena de Tepoca was apparently soon abandoned; but the so-called Seri missions at Populo (Nuestra Señora del Populo) and Angeles (Nuestra Señora de los Angeles) were maintained from the time of Kino’s coming up to the expulsion of the Jesuits (in 1767), while that at Nacameri was nearly as well sustained. The relations of these missions to Seriland are significant: according to the anonymous author of Sonora’s classic, “Rudo Ensayo”, written in 1763, Nacameri lay in the valley of Rio Opodepe (or Horcasitas), 7 leagues below the town of the same name (still extant); 9 leagues down the same stream lay Populo (on the site of the present town of Horcasitas); Angeles lay 3 or 4 leagues farther downstream, or over 12 leagues above the site of Pitic[88] (the present Hermosillo); while various references indicate that the temporary mission of Santa Magdalena was located in the same valley, probably a few leagues above Opodepe.[89] Accordingly, the missions ranged from 100 to 150 miles inland, measured in an air line, or four hard days’ journey, as shown by Escalante’s record, from the Seri coast. The nearest mission at Angeles was 75 miles, or three days’ journey, from the inland margin of Seriland proper, and the intervening territory was a depopulated expanse (“el grande despoblado”) according to Villa-Señor,[90] ranged but not inhabited by Seri and Tepoka hunting parties. Never traversed by white men, save those of Coronado’s parties nearly two centuries before and of Escalante’s hurried expeditions of 1700, this “despoblado” was practically unknown; even the surprisingly well-informed author of “Rudo Ensayo” was unaware of the existence of Rio Bacuache, and noted only such prominent mountains as Cerro Prieto and “Bacoatzi the Great in the land of the Seris”,[91] lying far outside the tribal home. The remoteness of the missions from the habitat of the tribe bears testimony to the dread with which they were regarded, and to the slightness of the influence exerted on the tribesmen by the zealous padres.

[88] Rudo Ensayo, Guiteras’ translation in Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, vol. V, 1894, p. 124. Bandelier identified the author as Padre Nentwig, S. J., of Huassavas, eastern Sonora (Final Report of Investigations among the Indians, etc., part 1, in Papers of the Archæological Institute of America,” vol. III, 1890, p. 78). The name is written “John Nentuig” in a third-person reference in Guiteras’ translation; but an editorial footnote adds, “No doubt a printer’s mistake for Mentuig—L. F. F[lick]” (ibid., p. 191).

[89] Noticias Estadisticas del Estado de Sonora, by José Francisco Velasco, Mexico, 1850, p. 124.

[90] Theatro Americano, Descripcion General de los Reynos, y Provincias de la Nueva-España, y sus Jurisdicciones, Joseph Antonio de Villa-Señor, y Sanchez, segunda parte; Mexico, 1748, p. 392.

[91] Op. cit., p. 133.

Despite the efforts of both priesthood and soldiery, the number of Seri converts at the missions was limited. In 1700 there were ten families at Populo; true, they had slipped away to maverick the herds (“por ladrones de ganados”), but Escalante overtook them and whipped them back to the shadow of the church; later he captured 120 Tepoka people (probably some twenty families, with a few strays), and recaptured 300 backsliders (perhaps fifty families or more), and haled them all to the mission, where lands were allotted to them and where they were carefully guarded by the ecclesiastics—until opportunity came for reescape; and to this congregation Escalante added a few Seri prisoners taken on Tiburon, as noted above. In 1727 Brigadier Pedro de Rivera noted a dozen tribes in central Sonora, including the “Seris” and “Tepocas”, numbering 21,746 “of all ages and both sexes”, all receiving the ministrations of “los Padres de la Compañia de Jesvs”. He added: “Besides the above-named Indians there are found in the middle part of the province of Ostimuri, in the western part bordering on the Gulf of California, certain nations of pagans in small numbers; they are the Salineros, Cocomaques, and Guaymas.”[92] Neither the numbers of Seri and Tepoka at the missions, nor the respective proportions at the missions and on the native habitat, were recorded by the brigadier. According to Alegre, eighty families (including those transferred from Pitic) were gathered at Populo and Angeles, under the specially sedulous efforts of Judge José Rafael Gallardo, in 1749;[93] although Padre Nicolas de Perera, “who for the longest time bore with their insolent behavior, ... did not see more than 300 hundred persons when they had all come together”.[94] It would appear that the great majority of the Populo and Angeles converts belonged to the Tepoka, while others belonged to the Guayma and Upanguayma, with whom the Seri were at war about that time;[95] yet there were enough representatives of the Seri to gain a shocking character for sloth, filth, thievery, treachery, obstinacy, and drunkenness. Assuming that a quarter of the converts were Seri (and this ratio is larger than any of the known records would indicate), there could hardly have been more than a hundred of the tribe gathered about the several missions at this palmiest time of Jesuit missionizing; and the records show that by far the greater portion of these were women, children, cripples, and vieillards, the warriors being commonly slain in the vigorous proselyting expeditions conducted by the civil and military coadjutors of the padres. If at this time the Seri population reached the 2,000 estimated by Dávila[96] and others, the proportion of proselytes (or apostates from Seri naturalism) was but 5 per cent of the tribe and naturally comprised the less vigorous and characteristic element. The writer of “Rudo Ensayo” reckons that during six years preceding 1763 the Seri stole from the settlers (for eating, the sole use to which they put such stock) “more than 4,000 mules, mares, and horses”,[97] i. e., enough to sustain two or three hundred people, or a full thousand if this meat formed no more than a fourth or a fifth of their diet, as the contemporary records imply—and this was after the “extermination” of the Seri by Parilla in 1750.

[92] Diario y Derrotero de lo Caminado, Visto, y Observado en el Discurso de la Visita general de Precidios, situados en las Provincias Ynternas de Nueva España; Guathemala, 1836, leg. 1514-1519.

[93] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, vol. III, p. 290.

[94] Rudo Ensayo, p. 193.

[95] Bancroft, op. cit.. vol. I, pp. 532-533. The former were annihilated or driven into the Yaqui country by 1763 (Rudo Ensayo, p. 166).

[96] Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, p. 319.

[97] Ibid., p. 140.

Evidently the good padres greatly overestimated their knowledge of and influence on this savage yet subtle tribe; actually they touched the Seri character only lightly and temporarily, contributing slightly to spontaneous acculturation, but never coming into relation with the tribe as a whole.

And despite the efforts of both soldiers and priests, the savages continued to ravage the settlements, to repel pioneering, to decimate the herds and murder the vaqueros who sought to protect them, to plunder everything portable and ambuscade punitive parties, and even to engage in open hostilities. “In 1730 the Seris, Tepocas, Salineros, and Tiburon islanders kept the province in great excitement, killing twenty-seven persons and threatening all the pueblos with a general conflagration”;[98] and both before and after this date the recorded sanguinary episodes were too frequent for even passing mention, while the indications between lines point to robberies and assassinations and minor conflicts too many for full record even by the patient chroniclers of the time.

[98] Bancroft, op. cit., p. 517.

* * * * *

Sometime about the beginning of the eighteenth century the Spanish settlements pushed down Rio Sonora beyond the confluence of the Opodepe to the last water gap, made conspicuous by a marble butte in its throat and by the fact that here the sometimes subterranean flow always rose to the surface in a permanent stream of pure and cool water. Here, according to Padre Dominguez, “it was attempted to locate the Presidio of Cinaloa against the rapacity of the Zeris, Tepocas, and Pimas; and here General Idobro, of Cinaloa, wished to found a pueblo of Tiburon Indians, brought for the purpose [probably from Populo and Angeles] that they might be kept in subjection, but most of them returned to their island and attempted to make attacks from their hiding places.”[99] Nevertheless, the padre found 29 married persons, 14 single, and 99 children of these “races” at the rancho. At the time of his visit the place was known as Rancho del Pitquin; later it became the Pueblo of Pitic, or Pitiqui, or Pitiquin, or San Pedro de Pitic,[100] and long afterward the city of Hermosillo, while the beautiful marble butte was christened Cerro de la Campana.

[99] “Diario del Padre Dominguez en Sonora y Sinaloa, 1731; manuscript in archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology.

[100] This place on Rio Sonora is not to be confounded with the Rancho (afterward Pueblo) of Pitiqui or San Diego de Pitiqui (The Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America, and the West Indies * * * of Colonel Don Antonio de Alcedo, by G. A. Thompson, London, 1814, vol. IV, p. 153), or Pitic chiquito (Bol. Soc. Mex. Geog. y Est., vol. VIII, 1860, p. 454), or Pitiquin, now the town of Pitiquito on Rio San Ignacio.

By 1742 the settlements were so far extended as to warrant the establishment of a royal fort in the water-gap at Pitic;[101] and the ecclesiastics kept pace with the military movement by founding the mission of San Pedro de la Conquista,[102] or “Pueblo de San Pedro de la Conquista de Seris”[103] (now abbreviated to “Pueblo Seris”, or merely “Seris”); both fort and mission being designed primarily for better protection of the settlements against Seri sorties. These outposts brought the missionaries and their soldier supporters a day’s journey nearer Seriland, i. e., to within some 27 leagues (71 miles), or two days’ journey, from Bahia Kino and the desert boundary of the Seri stronghold; and although neither fort nor mission was continuously maintained, the event marked a practically permanent advance on the “despoblado” previously despoiled and desolated by the wandering Seri.

[101] Alegre, Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, tomo III, p. 288; Villa-Señor, Theatro Americano, segunda parte, p. 392; Rudo Ensayo, p. 193.

[102] Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 528.

[103] Reise-Erinnerungen und Abenteuer aus der neuen Welt, von C. A. Pajeken, Bremen, 1861, p. 97.

Even before this date friction between missionaries and laymen had grown out of the ecclesiastical charity for a people whose repeated atrocities placed them outside the pale of sympathy on the part of the industrial settlers; and this friction was felt especially about the new presidio. In 1749 Colonel Diego Ortiz Parilla became governor of Sonora, and began a rigorous rule over civilians, soldiers, ecclesiastics, and Indians; and when the 80 families (classed as Seri, but mainly of Tepoka and other tribes) domiciled at Populo were dissatisfied with his transfers of land and people, he promptly met their protests by arresting them and transporting the greater part of them, including all the women and children, to various places, “some even in Guatemala and other very distant parts of America.”[104] Naturally this was resented, not only by the Seri messmates at the missions, but to some extent by their kinsmen over the plains and along the coast, with whom sporadic communication was maintained—chiefly through spies, but partly by occasional escapes of the practically imprisoned proselytes and the less frequent but more numerous captures of new converts; and the Seri raids became more extended and vindictive, reaching northward to Caborca, northeastward to Santa Ana and Cucurpe, and eastward into the fertile valley of Rio Opodepe at several points. Deeply incensed in his turn, Parilla undertook a war of extermination—a war interesting not merely as an episode in Seri history, but still more as a type of the Seri wars of two centuries. Organizing a force of 500 men, and bringing canoes from Rio Yaqui, he planned an expedition to Tiburon, to cover two months—and returned with 28 prisoners, “all women and children and not a single Seri man”; though he reported killing 10 or 12 warriors in action (according to other accounts the slain comprised only 3 or 4 oldsters). These women and children were domiciled at the pueblo of the Conquest of the Seri, which in current thought thenceforth became the pueblo of the Seri, and gradually passed into lore and later into history as the home of the tribe rather than the mere penitentiary which it was in fact. The padres waxed satirical over this quixotic conquest: Alegre recounts that—

[104] Rudo Ensayo, p. 194; Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 535.

The good governor returned so vainglorious over his expedition
that it was even said he would punish anyone intimating that
there was a _Seri left in the world_, and proclaimed through
all America and Europe that he had extirpated by the roots that
infamous race.... The truth is that the force, on reaching
Tiburon, ascertained that the enemy had retreated to the
mountains; that none of the 75 Spaniards who accompanied the
governor could be induced, either by entreaties or threats,
to ascend in search of the Seri; but that some of the Pima
allies undertook to beleaguer the mountains, these, with one
or another of the officers, being the only ones that saw the
face of the enemy, and even these on two occasions only. From
the first sally they returned reporting that they had killed
3 of the Seri, and their empty word was accepted; the second
time they were so fortunate as to discover a village of women
and children, whom they took prisoners, and returned declaring
that the men had been left dead on the field. This famous
conquest, which the manuscript drawn up by the commander of the
expedition did not hesitate to compare with those of Alexander
and Cæsar, who were as nothing beside the governor of Sonora,
intoxicated much more the allied chief of the Pima, who had
taken the leading part in the final victory.[105]

[105] Historia de la Compaña de Jesus, tomo III, pp. 290-291; cf. Apostolicos Afanes de la Compañia de Jesus, escritos por un Padre de la misma Sagrada Religion de su Provincia de Mexico; Barcelona, 1754, pp. 366-368.

Eventually the vanity of this chief (Luis, or “Luys de Saric”) led to a revolt on the part of the Pima tribe with the massacre of Padres Tello and Rohen at Caborca.

Ortega was still more sarcastic in his fuller record of the expedition.

The skepticism of the padres as to the completeness of Parilla’s extermination was well grounded, as was attested by the continuation of Seri sorties with undiminished frequency and by the persistence of hippophagy at the expense of the stockmen as already noted; moreover, in the absence of records of maritime operations, in view of the impracticability of transporting so large a force as that of Parilla on balsas, and in the light of a still common application of the name Tiburon to Sierra Seri and its environs as well as to the island, it would seem to be an open question whether the much-lauded expedition ever attained the insular stronghold, or even reached the seashore. However this may be, the expedition was the first of a long series sent out to exterminate one of the hardiest and acutest of tribes, wonted to one of the hardest and aridest of habitats; and, save in the subsequent advertising, all have yielded results more or less similar.

Another curtailment of the range of the Seri dates from the refounding of the mission of “San José de Guaimas”[106] (on the site of the present Guaymas) in 1751, and the establishment of a “rancho called Opan Guaimas” some distance up the coast about the same time; the site of the mission being that of a sanctuary located by Kino in 1701, and revisited by Salvatierra and Ugarte, though never continuously maintained. True, the padre and the ranchero suffered from the Seri, who displaced the former, killed eight of his converts, burned the church, and scattered the hundred families of the pueblo, afterward keeping the Spaniards at a distance for ten years;[107] yet the settlers only returned with new vigor, and gradually gained the strength requisite for holding the town. Naturally the belligerency of the Seri in this vicinity impressed the state authorities with the desirability of further “extermination”; and when in 1756 a band of the Seri, after a hypocritical suit for peace, entrenched themselves among the all but inaccessible rocks and barrancas of Cerro Prieto (a ragged sierra midway between Pitic and San José de Guaimas, which for this reason came to be regarded—erroneously—as the headquarters of the tribe), Don Juan Antonio de Mendoza, then governor of Sonora, sent out a strong body of soldiery to dislodge or destroy them; but after 200 of the soldiers were ambushed and 24 of them wounded, the expedition returned to the capital, San Miguel de Horcasitas. Stung by this defeat, Mendoza reorganized his force and led the way in person to Cerro Prieto, where one of the four parties into which the force was divided wrought such execution that, in the following May, there were seen the bodies of enemies “dead and eaten by animals, dead and partly buried in the earth, dead lying in caves, and dead in the water-pockets of the sierra”.[108] In this battle Mendoza himself was ambushed and attacked by three Seri archers, escaping only by the mediation of his saint (“por medio de mi santo”); but during the ensuing night he carried out the ingenious ruse of beating drums in different parts of the canyon, which reechoed from the rocky heights with such terrifying effect that the enemy fled, leaving him in victorious possession of the field.

[106] Rudo Ensayo, p. 229 (misspelled “Guiamas”).

[107] Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 554.

[108] Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo I, p. 85.

Again in 1760, when a band of the Seri (supposed to be temporarily combined with the Pima) took refuge in Cerro Prieto, Governor Mendoza attacked them with over 100 men; but a band of 19 Seri successfully held this force at bay for several hours, until their chief (called El Becerro) fell wounded and dying, yet retaining sufficient vitality to rise, as the Spaniards approached, and transfix Mendoza with an arrow—when the two leaders died together.[109] Mendoza was succeeded by Governor José Tienda de Cuervo, who, in 1761, led a force of 420 men to Cerro Prieto, where a still bloodier battle was fought, the Seri losing 49 killed and 63 captured, besides 322 horses; though the greater part of their force escaped to the island of San Juan Bautista (San Esteban?).[110]

[109] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, tomo III, p. 298.

[110] Ibid., p. 299; Rudo Ensayo, p. 196. It is probable that part or all of the captives were quartered at Pueblo Seri, though, the record is silent on this point.

In 1763 Don Juan de Pineda succeeded to the governorship, and obtained the cooperation of a force of national troops under Colonel Domingo Elizondo:

Headquartering in El Pitiqui, he commenced active war against
the said Seris, but was unable to reduce them, because, being
separated and dispersed over their vast territory, they wore
out the troops, who only occasionally stumbled on one little
rancheria or another. For this reason, and because in many
years they could not exterminate them, and desiring to leave
the country, they opened negotiations with them, making them
small presents and offering them royal protection if they would
surrender peacefully. Some of them pretended to do this and
assembled at Pitiqui, where they remained with the same bad
faith as always, fed at the expense of the royal treasury,
when the troops retired, leaving the evil uncured, but merely
covered.[111]

[111] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., vol. I, p. 224.

In the same year Padre Tomás Ignacio Lizazoin reported, for the information of the viceroy, that the ravages of the Seri and other Indians “had caused the almost total abandonment of Pimeria and Sonora provinces”, and proposed plans for protection which were apparently never carried out.[112]

[112] Bancroft, op. cit., p. 565.

* * * * *

The aggressive and bloody policy of Parilla, Mendoza, and Cuervo undoubtedly widened the divergence between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and brought to nought the pacific policy of the latter. Inspired by fervid zeal, the good padres stretched the mantle of charity to its utmost over their converts, bringing into the fold all whom they could coax or coerce, and clinging unto all whom they could subsidize or suppress. Uninformed or misinformed concerning the extent of Seriland and the numbers and real traits of its inhabitants on their native heath, and professionally prone to see the most favorable side of the situation, they imagined themselves making conquest over a cruel and refractory tribe; yet careful review of the records indicates that they deluded themselves, and in some measure distorted history, through overweening notions concerning their progress in evangelizing the Seri. Actually, their converts were the lame and halt and blind left behind in the harder-pressed raids, captives taken in battle by the intrepid Escalante and other soldiers, apostates and outlaws ostracized and driven off by their fellows, spies sent out to find the way for further rapacity,[113] and the general riffraff and offscouring of the tribe, who esteemed parasitism above the hereditary independence of their kin. This condition is attested by later examples; it is also attested by the rapidly growing divergence of the ecclesiastical and civil policies; it is equally attested by at least partial recognition of the situation on the part of several of the padres: Villa-Señor, writing about 1745, parades the mission and two pueblos of the tribe, and says, “All the Ceris Indians are Christians” (“Todos los Indios Ceris, son Cristianos”);[114] yet he adds that “it is rare to find one who does not cling to the idolatry of their paganism”, and elsewhere describes the great “despoblado” extending to the coast as inhabited by pagan Seri and Tepoka Indians (“habitado de los Indios Seris, y Tepoca, Gentiles”).[115] Venegas, writing about 1750, refers to “the Seris and Tepocas, who are either infidels or imperfectly reduced, and tho’ Father Salva Tierra civilized them and the missionaries have baptized many, they still retain such a love for their liberty and customs as all the labours of the missionaries have not been able to obliterate, so that it is impossible to incorporate them with the missions by mildness”;[116] and his last word of them notes their massacre of Padres Tello and Rohen in Caborca, and ends with an invocation “for the complete reduction of these unhappy savages, now involved in the shadow of death”.[117] So, also, the talented author of “Rudo Ensayo”, writing in 1763, says of the Seri:

[113] Captain Fernando Sanchez Salvador, in his official Representaciones to the Crown in 1751, complains that these Indians “are allowed on frivolous pretexts to visit the presidios, and they make use of the privilege to discover weak points and to plan attacks” (Bancroft, op. cit., p. 542).

[114] Theatro Americano, segunda parte, p. 401.

[115] Ibid., p. 392.

[116] History of California, vol. II, p. 190.

[117] Ibid., p. 211. It is improbable that the Seri had anything to do with this particular butchery. According to Coues, the latter padre was killed at Sonoita; and he renders the name “Ruen or Ruhen” (On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer; the Diary and Itinerary of Francisco Garcés, etc., 1900, vol. I, p. 88).

They have always been wild, resisting the law of God, even
those who had removed from among them to Populo, Nacameri, and
Angeles, and who constituted the smallest part of the nation.
And even these few, in order to have constant communication
with and give information to their heathen relatives, used
to go, as if they could not arouse suspicion, to spy out in
other villages what they wanted to know for their plans, and
immediately giving the intelligence they obtained to the
runaway Indians, these would act accordingly and nobody could
guess how they acquired the necessary information.[118]

[118] Op. cit., p. 193.

Again, in summarizing the relations with the tribe, this anonymous author naively remarked:

And at the present day, notwithstanding that in different
encounters during the campaign of November, 1761, and before
and since then, more than forty men have been killed by our
arms and over seventy women and children have been captured,
still they are as fierce as ever and will not lend an ear to
any word of reconciliation.[119]

[119] Op. cit., pp. 195-196.

In general, the Jesuit history of the Seri is clear enough with respect to the small extruded fraction, but nearly blind to the normal tribe; there is nothing to indicate clear recognition of Seriland as a hereditary habitat and stronghold; yet the records are such as to define the salient episodes in Seri history as seen from a distantly external view-point. Nor can it be forgotten that the erudite evangelists made a deep and indelible impression on the intellectual side of Sonora, and drew the strong historical outline on which their own relations to the civil authorities on the one hand and to the Seri Indians on the other hand are cast by the light of later knowledge.

The discordance between the civil and military authorities and the dominant ecclesiastical order of Sonora sounded to Ciudad Mexico, and eventually echoed to Madrid, and was doubtless one of a series of factors which led to the needlessly harsh expulsion of the scholarly Jesuits in 1767—and hence to a hiatus in the history of the province and its tribes.

* * * * *

Although the padres knew little of the habits and customs of the “wild” Seri save through hearsay, some of their notes are of ethnologic value: Villa-Señor located them on the deserts extending from Pitic and Angeles to Tepopa bay, and added:

They hold and occupy various rancherias, and subsist by the
chase of deer, bura [mule-deer], rabbits, hares, and other
animals, and also on the cattle they are able to steal from the
Spaniards, and on fish which they harpoon with darts in the
sea, and on the roots in which the land abounds.[120]

[120] Theatro Americano, p. 401.

Villa-Señor distinguished the “Tepocas”, whom he combined with the “Gueimas” and “Jupangueimas”. Alegre located the Seri on the coast of the gulf from a few leagues north of the mouth of Rio Yaqui to Bahia San Juan de Bautista (Bahia Kino), adding, “with them may be classed the Guaimas, few in number and of the same language”.[121] Writing about the same time, José Gallardo observed: “The distinction is slight between the Seri and Upanguaima, the one and the other having the same idiom” (“Poco es la distincion que hay entre seri y upanguaima, ... y unos y otros casi hablan un mismo idioma”).[122] The author of “Rudo Ensayo” wrote: “The Guaimas speak the same language, with but little difference, as the Seris.”[123] He mistook Cerro Prieto as their principal retreat; mentioned the mountains of Bacoatzi Grande, Las Espuelas, and others as other haunts; noted Tiburon and San Juan Bautista (San Esteban?) islands as less-known shelters, and gave extended attention to “the poison they use for their arrows” as “the most virulent known in these parts”; for “even in cases where the skin only is wounded, the injured part begins to swell, and the swelling extends all over the body to such a size that the flesh bursts and falls to pieces, causing death in twenty-four hours.” To test this poison, the Seri “bandage tightly the thigh or arm of one of their robust young men; then make an incision with a flint and let the blood flow away from the wound. When the blood is some distance from the incision, they apply the point of an arrow to it, steeped in the deadly poison. If at the approach of the point of the arrow the blood begins to boil and recedes, the poison is of the right strength, and the man who lends his blood for the experiment brushes it out with his hand to prevent the poison from being introduced into his veins.” He was unable “to find out with certainty of what deadly materials the deadly poison is composed. Many a thing is spoken of, such as heads of irritated vipers cut at the very moment of biting into a piece of lung; also half putrefied human flesh and other filth with which I am unwilling to provoke the nausea of the reader.” He added the opinion that “the main ingredient is some root.”[124] Padre Joseph Och, who, with other German evangels including padres Mittendorf, Pfefferkorn, and Ruen (or Rohen), was stationed in northwestern Sonora shortly before the eviction of the Jesuits, was one of the recorders of aboriginal traits and features, though his record (like that of most of his confrères) is impoverished by his failure to discriminate tribes; but one of his notes is specific:

[121] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, p. 216.

[122] The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. III (The Native Races, vol. III), 1882, p. 704.

[123] Op. cit., p. 166.

[124] Ibid., pp. 197, 198.

As an extraordinary trapping [Zierde] the Seris pierce the
nasal septum and hang small colored stones, which swing in
front of the mouth, thereto by strings. A few carry, suspended
from the nose, little blue-green pebbles, in which they repose
great faith. They prize these very highly, and one must give
them at least a horse or a cow in exchange for one.[125]

[125] Nachrichten von verschiedenen Ländern des Spanisches Amerika, aus eigenhändigen Aufsätzen einiger Missionare der Gesellschaft Jesu, herausgegeben von Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, erster Theil; Halle, 1809, p. 255.

It is significant fact, and one attesting the physical and intellectual distance of the padres from the normal Seri, that so few notes of ethnologic value were made during the Jesuits’ régime. With a single exception, so far as is known,[126] they recorded not a word of the Seri tongue, not a distinctive custom beyond those evidently of common knowledge, none of the primitive ceremonies and ideas such as attracted their coadjutors in Canada and elsewhere. They made no reference to the alleged cannibalism so conspicuous in later lore; but their silence on this point cannot be regarded as evidential, since they were equally silent concerning nearly all the characteristic customs and traits. The neighboring Papago tribe met the invaders frankly as man to man, displaying a notable combination of receptivity and self-containment which enabled them to assimilate just so much of the Caucasian culture as they deemed desirable, yet to maintain their purity of blood and distinctiveness of culture for centuries; the Seri, on the other hand, met the invaders as enemies, to be first feared, then blinded, balked, and bled by surreptitious and sinister devices, and finally to be assassinated through ambuscade or remorseless treachery; and it is manifest that they surpassed the gentle padres in shrewdness and strategy, using them as playthings and tools, and carefully concealing their own characters and motives the while.

[126] The Noticia de las Personas qua han escrito ó publicado algunas obras sobre Idiomas que se hablan en la Republica (of Mexico), by Dr José Guadalupe Romero, includes a MS. “Vocabulario de las Lenguas Eudeve, Pina y Seris”, written by Padre Adamo Gilg (Bol. Soc. Mex. Geog. y Estad., 1860, tomo VIII, p. 378).

* * * * *