Chapter VI: Introduction: Salient Features (5)

With the passing of the Jesuits, the publication of Sonoran records received a check from which the province has never completely recovered. True, the place of the order was partly taken by the Colegio Apostólico de Querétaro, which promptly dispatched fourteen Franciscan friars to Sonora, early in 1768, to take possession of the old missions and to found others;[127] it is also true that civil enactments and commissions, as well as military orders and reports, increased with the growth of population; but comparatively few of the events and actions found their way to the press. Seri episodes continued to recur with irregular frequency; according to Dávila, the Seri outbreaks and wars “exceed fifty in number since the conquest of Sonora”,[128] and there are decisive indications that the Franciscan régime was not without its due quota of strife. Moreover, the period was one of somewhat exceptionally vigorous pioneering, of the initiation of mining and agriculture, and of conquest over the “despoblado” formerly ranged and inhabited by the Seri. It was during this period that the Seri were permanently dislodged from their outlying haunts and watering-places in Cerro Prieto; and it was during this period, too, that exploration and settlement were extended to Rio Bacuache with such energy as to displace the Seri from their other outlying refuge in the barrancas of this stream. But, as the events and lines of progress multiplied, the burden for the contemporary chronicler augmented without corresponding increase in incentive to writing, and it is little wonder that the custom of writing, copying, manifolding, and printing the contemporary records fell into desuetude.

[127] Dávila, Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, p. 10; Bancroft, op. cit., p. 672.

[128] Ibid., p. 319.

Despite the meagerness of the Franciscan chronicles, the friars of this order are to be credited with making and recording one of the most noteworthy essays toward the subjugation of the Seri—an essay involving the first and last actual attempt to found a Caucasian establishment within Seriland proper. The ecclesiastical corps, sent out from Querétaro college under the presidency of Fray Mariano Antonio de Buena y Alcalde, reached Sonora early in 1768, and were distributed among the missions to which they were respectively assigned before the end of June; and Fray Mariano participated in the efforts to subdue the Seri ensconced in Cerro Prieto. After some months of apparently nominal siege, the hostiles straggled out of their retreat, whereupon “the governor, seeing them assembled and peaceful, besought the friar to instruct and baptize them”;[129] the friar promptly acquiesced, with the provision that he should be furnished with the requisite appurtenances of a mission, including not only a church and sacred ornaments, but a house and living for a resident minister. The requirements delayed procedure, but resulted in the appointment of Fray Juan Crisóstomo Gil de Bernabe (already designated by the Querétaro college as Fray Mariano’s successor) to take charge of the Seri mission. “The new president, desiring to gratify his proper zeal and the insistence of the governor as to the need of those miserable Indians for the bread of doctrinism”, obtained candles and wine from private benefactors, and, despite his inability to find even a hut for shelter, established a sanctuary in the Rancheria de los Seris (Pueblo Seri) on November 17, 1772:

[129] Crónica Seráfica y Apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro en la Nueva España ... escrita por el Padre Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, 2ª parte, Mexico, 1792, p. 426.

It was impossible to satisfy the ambition of the missionaries
to catechize all the Indians, because, although the whole
nation was peaceable, no small portion of them were devoid of
desire to hear doctrinism, as many of them had withdrawn to
their ancient lurking haunts, principally on Isla Tiburon,
whence they came to the Presidio Horcasitas, making false
displays to the governor of great fidelity and obedience,
petitioning that they should not be taken from the island, but
should be given a minister to baptize them the same as those
at Pitic; and they did not wish to join those nor to leave
the rocky fastness of their libertinage and asylum of their
crimes.... To conceal their purposes, they petitioned that a
town for them should be established on the opposite coast,
where they might assemble on leaving the island. Their request
was embarrassing because on examination of the coast there was
found only a single scanty spring in a carrizal in a playa-like
country [toda la tierra como de playa], with little fuel and no
timber.

Not unnaturally Fray Crisóstomo hesitated to locate a mission on the practically uninhabitable site, in which, moreover, “the mission would be of no utility because the Indians did not really wish to leave their island and submit to religious instruction, nor could the coast supply the necessary food, as it was a barren sand-waste, so that it would become necessary for the King to constantly supply provisions, else the converts would have a pretext for wandering around and avoiding attention to the catechism.” But the governor was obdurate, and only complained to the viceroy and the Querétaro college. Between fires, Fray Crisóstomo yielded, and on November 26, 1772, proceeded to Carrizal and established himself as a minister, without company or escort save a little boy to serve as acolyte. “With the aid of the Indios Tiburones the friar erected a jacal [or hut bower][130] to serve as a church, and a tiny hut as a habitation, and began immediately, with the greatest kindness, to convoke the people for religious instruction, only to see that the desires they had expressed to the governor to become Christians were not deep enough to bring them from their island to attend services—except a few who came and took part in the prayers when they thought fit. But as the congregation at the place was only nominal, and with only three jacales under control, so also was the instruction they sought; and because of both the condition of the land and their wandering instinct, which is in them almost a necessity and more excusable than in other Indians, because neither within their island nor on the coast is the territory fit for cultivation, and still less for the stability essential to civil and political life”, the missionary naturally despaired of substantial progress; indeed, “the only fruit for which he could hope, under his mode of living, was reduced either to a child or an adult whom he could, in special circumstances, shrive in extremis.” In this disheartening condition the friar spent the winter from near the end of November to March 6, 1773. Then, as appears from an official declaration, there came to him by night an Indian called Yxquisis, with a trumpery tale about a revolt on the part of the Piato and Apache, which led the guileless friar away from the poor shelter of his jacal under the guidance of the Indian. At the inquest Yxquisis confessed, although with many falsehoods (“con muchas mentiras”), that he had stoned the friar, but “without stating any motive for committing such an atrocious crime”. Yet even before the story reached Horcasitas two “Indios del Tiburon”, supposed to be implicated, were beaten to death with sticks on the spot in which the friar’s body was found,[131] and the body was buried by a chief of the tribe. And so ended the mission of Carrizal in the land of the Seri.

[130] Doubtless the structures approached the conventional Seri pattern, illustrated in the accompanying plate vi, from photographs taken on Tiburon in 1895.

[131] Arricivita, op. cit., pp. 426-429, 520-524.

RECENTLY OCCUPIED RANCHERIA, TIBURON ISLAND]

Traditions of this Franciscan mission still linger about Hermosillo and at Rancho San Francisco de Costa Rica, and they, like Arricivita’s account, indicate that the churchly jacal was planted either hard by Pozo Escalante or at a traditional Ojito Carrizal (Aguaje Parilla, not found in the surveys of 1895), supposed to lie a few miles farther northwestward. All the probabilities point to Pozo Escalante as the site, despite the fact that no cane now grows there; the topographic description applies exactly, while the state of the padre’s remains, when exhumed six months later, attests the dry and saline soil in this vicinity. None of these conditions exist about Aguaje Parilla at the southeastern base of Sierra Seri. The present absence of living carrizal at Pozo Escalante is of little significance, since the extinction of the plant might easily have been wrought either by the stock of later expeditions or by the rise of the salt-water horizon accompanying the local subsidence of the land; certainly dried roots and much-weathered fragments of cane still remain about the margin of the playa extending southward from the well.

The episode culminating in the assassination of Fray Crisóstomo was characteristic: beset at all points and rankling under the invasion of their range, the Seri sought anew to delude the governor with fair words, using their own reprobates and apostates at Pitic and elsewhere to point their asseverations; and remembering the facility with which the earlier ecclesiastics were duped into unwitting allies, they made the kindly and long-suffering friars the immediate object of their petitions. But some of the tribe galled under the lengthy and still lengthening blood-feud too deeply to tolerate the alien presence; and one of these, either alone or supported by the alleged accomplices or others, tried a typical ruse, suggested less by need than inherited habit; for the friar was helpless in their hands, and might have been slain in his jacal as easily as in the open. Typically, too, the assassination initiated or deepened factional dissension and further bloodshed.

The Franciscan records are of even less ethnologic use than those of the Jesuits. Beyond his incidental expressions concerning Seri character and custom in connection with the founding and abandonment of Carrizal, it need only be noted that Arricivita makes hardly a reference to the Tepoka, but habitually combines the “Seris y Piatos”—the latter perhaps representing the “confederate Pima” of “Rudo Ensayo”, or the Soba occupying the lower reaches of Rio San Ignacio about that time.

Among the meager and scattered Franciscan records is a letter from Fray Francisco Troncoso, dated September 18, 1824, which is of note as containing an estimate of the Seri population at the time:

This island [Tiburon] has more than a thousand savage
inhabitants, enemies of those of California, and it has
frequently occurred that, on balsas of reeds, ... they have
crossed over to invade the mission [of Loreto], killing and
robbing some of those they found there.[132]

[132] Incorporated in Escudero, Noticias Estadisticas de Sonora y Sinaloa; Mexico, 1849, p. 18.

The record is of value also as indicating that the Seri traversed the gulf freely, and raided settlements and tribes of the peninsula ruthlessly as those of the mainland.

* * * * *

The Carrizal episode was followed by a half century of comparative silence concerning the Seri, though various contemporary records and later compilations indicate customary continuance of the Seri wars. Among the more useful compilations is that of Velasco; and among the more important episodes noted by him was the Cimarrones-Migueletes war of 1780.[133] The Cimarrones included the greater part of the Seri of Tiburon and the Tepoka (then estimated at 2,000 of both sexes),[134] together with the “Pimas called _Piatos_, of the pueblos of Cavorca, Tubutama, Oquitoa, etc.”, and supposedly certain other representatives of the Pima and Apache, who had shortly before marauded Magdalena and sacked Saric, killing a dozen persons;[135] the Migueletes were national troops assigned to Sonora under the command of Colonel Domingo Elizondo. The forces met in several bloody battles in Cerro Prieto, at Jupanguaimas, and at Presidio Viejo; and the former, or at any rate the Seri, were once more “annihilated” (“reducidos a nulidad”). Nevertheless, the hydra-headed tribe retained enough vitality in 1807 to induce Governor Alejo Garcia Conde to send an army of a thousand men to Guaymas, en route to Tiburon, to repeat the extirpation—though the expedition came to naught for international reasons.

[133] Noticias Estadisticas del Estado de Sonora; Mexico, 1850, p. 124 et seq.

[134] Ibid., p. 132.

[135] Bancroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 682. It is incredible that such a confederation of so incongruous elements could ever have been effected; it is incomparably more probable that there was a succession, of outbreaks of the Seri, Piato, and Apache, each stimulated by the removal of soldiers for defense against the other enemies, just as Seri outrages follow Yaqui outbreaks today; but it was undoubtedly a custom of the times (a custom still existing) to connect the several enemies in current thought and speech.

Among the more useful contemporary records is an unpublished manuscript report by Don José Cortez, dated 1799, found in the Force library, translated by Buckingham Smith, and abstracted by Lieutenant A. W. Whipple for the Report of the Pacific Railway Survey. A subsection of this report is devoted to “the Seris, Tiburones, and Tepocas”. It runs:

The _Seri_ Indians live towards the coast of Sonora, on the
famous Cerro Prieto, and in its immediate neighborhood. They
are cruel and sanguinary, and at one time formed a numerous
band, which committed many excesses in that rich province. With
their poisoned shafts they took the lives of many thousand
inhabitants, and rendered unavailing the expedition that was
set on foot against them from Mexico. At this time they are
reduced to a small number; have, on many occasions, been
successfully encountered by our troops; and are kept within
bounds by the vigilance of the three posts (_presidios_)
established for the purpose. None of their customs approach, at
all, to those of civilization; and their notions of religion
and marriage exist under barbarous forms, such as have before
been described in treating of the most savage nations. The
_Tiburon_ and _Tepoca_ Indians are a more numerous tribe, and
worthy of greater consideration than the Seris, but their
bloodthirsty disposition and their customs are the same. They
ordinarily live on the island of Tiburon, which is connected
with the coast of Sonora by a narrow inundated isthmus, over
which they pass by swimming when the tide is up, and when it is
down, by wading, as the water then only reaches to the waist,
or not so high. They come onto the continent, over which they
make their incursions, and, after the commission of robberies,
they return to the island; on which account no punishment
usually follows their temerity. It is now twenty-three or
twenty-four years since the plan was approved by His Majesty,
and ordered to be carried out, of destroying them on their
island; but, until the present season, no movement has been
made to put it into execution. To this end the troops of
Sonora are being equipped; a corvette of the department of San
Blas aids in the expedition and two or three vessels of troops
from the companies stationed at the port of that name on the
South sea.[136]

[136] Reports of Explorations and Surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, vol. III, part 3: Report upon the Indian Tribes, 1855, pp. 122-123. The original Cortez manuscript is now in the Library of Congress.

The record is significant as voicing an ill-founded discrimination of the wandering Seri from the inhabitants of Tiburon, as echoing persistent conception of Tiburon as a peninsula, and as summarizing the characteristics of the tribe recognized at the end of the last century.

* * * * *

Meantime population and industries increased, while civil and military development pursued its course; the Presidio of Pitic expanded into a pueblo, and later into the city which gradually adopted the cognomen of General José Maria Gonzalez Hermosillo, a hero of Sonora in the stirring times of 1810-1812; Pueblo Seri became Mexicanized, retaining only a few Seri families in 1811, according to Manuel Cabrera;[137] Guaymas grew into a port of some commercial note; pearl fishing progressed along the coast and prospecting in the interior; despite constant harrying by Seri raids, the rancho of Bacuachito (probably the Bacoachizo of Escudero[138]) became a flourishing pueblo; and plans for ports in the northern gulf were broached and even tested. Moreover, the dawn of the nineteenth century stirred scientific interest in the native tribes, including the obstinate owners of Tiburon—an interest stimulated by Humboldt’s American journeys of 1803.

[137] In Velasco, op. cit., p. 137.

[138] Noticias Estadisticas de Sonora y Sinaloa, Compiladas y Amplificadas para la Comision de Estadistica Militar, por el Lic. D. José Agustin de Escudero; Mexico, 1849, p. 88.

Combining earlier cartography (originating with Kino) and persistent tradition up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Humboldt mapped “Isla de Tiburon” nearly a degree too far northward, and separated from the mainland by a greatly exaggerated strait. The land portion of the map is strikingly defective, revealing in numerous imaginary mesas the author’s penchant for Mexican plateaus, while “Rio Hiaqui” (“de Yaqui ou de Sonora” in the text) is combined with Rio Sonora and given an intermediate position, and “Rio de la Ascencion” (Rio San Ignacio) is represented as passing through an estuary into the gulf just off the northern end of Tiburon; the “Indiens Seris” being located on a figmentary mesa north of the latter river and due west of Caborca, Pitic (apparently a composite of San Diego de Pitic, or modern Pitiquito, with San Pedro de Pitic, or modern Hermosillo), and Altar.[139] His text corresponds:

[139] Atlas Géographique et Physique du Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, par Al.a de Humboldt; Paris, 1811, carte générale.

On the right bank of Rio de la Asencion live some very
bellicose Indians, the Seris, to whom many Mexican savants
ascribe an Asiatic origin by reason of the analogy offered
by their name with that of the Seri located by the ancient
geographers at the base of the Ottorocorras mountains.[140]

[140] Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland, troisième partie: Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, tome I; Paris, 1811, pp. 296-297.

Naturally most of the scientific inquiries of the time were, like those of Humboldt, based on tradition rather than on direct observation.

* * * * *

Toward the end of the first third of the century an important contribution to actual knowledge of Seriland and the Seri at last grew out of the pearl industry. In May, 1825, Lieutenant R. W. H. Hardy, R. N., was commissioned by the “General Pearl and Coral Fishery Association of London” to investigate the pearl fisheries of the Californian gulf; and his task was performed with promptness and energy. On February 13, 1826, he visited Pitic (under Hermosillo):

Half a league short [south] of it is another small place,
called the Pueblo de los Céres, inhabited by a squalid race
of Indians who are said to indulge in constant habits of
intemperance and to have lost the fire of the warrior. In its
stead they manifest the sullen stupidity peculiar to those who,
feeling themselves unfitted for companionship, strive to vent
their pusillanimous rage upon objects the most helpless and
unoffending, such as women, children, and dogs, who appear to
be the chief victims of their revenge.[141]

[141] Travels in the Interior of Mexico in 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828; London, 1829, p. 95.

His chief object in visiting Pitic was to obtain information concerning Tiburon, its natives, and its pearl-oyster beds; and he was rewarded with characteristic accounts of the ferocity of the tribesmen and their use of poisoned arrows, which he received with some incredulity.[142]

[142] Ibid., p. 107.

After examining the principal pearl fisheries of the western coast, Lieutenant Hardy reached the “Sal si Puedes” in the throat of the gulf, and, on August 9, “got aslant of wind, which carried us up to the northwest end of Tiburow island”[143]—i. e., apparently over the precise route sailed by Padre Ugarte in 1721. Anchoring on the island, he had the good fortune first to meet a native able to speak Spanish, and later to successfully treat the sick wife of the principal chief, after which he was treated with great consideration, and—unwittingly on his part—adopted into the tribe as a member of the chief clan by the ceremony of face painting, the symbol being that of the turtle totem, to judge from the superficial description. Taking slightly brackish water, just as Ugarte had done one hundred and five years before, and arming his crew, he spent the night near the rancheria (evidently in Bahia Agua Dulce). Next morning he “traveled over the greater part of the island” (!) in fruitless search for pearls and gold, and in the afternoon “got under weigh, and stood into a bay of the continent to the northeast of the island,” discovering and naming “Sargent’s Point”, together with “Cockle Harbour”, and “Bruja’s bay” in the lee of the point, and also “Arnold’s Island”; this island being apparently the present prominent cusp of Punta Sargent, now connected with the mainland by a continuous wave-built bar rising a little way above reach of tide. Anchoring in the bay named from his vessel (_La Bruja_), he examined the adjacent shore, ascertaining that “there is no fresh water near the spot, except during the rainy season, which only lasts about a month or six weeks”, nor “any vestige of Indians to be seen except a solitary hut erected by the Tiburons to serve them when they go there to fish”; and, noting the report that Padre Kino had visited this point, he quite appositely questioned the truth of the tradition, partly on the ground of the absence of fresh water, partly because “the Tepoca Indian establishment” mentioned in the tradition “is many leagues farther to the northward.” Awakened by an approaching storm, he was under way next morning at daylight, and, getting out of the “bad holding ground”, was caught by a gale and carried back to his “old anchorage in Freshwater Bay”, where he found the Indians rejoicing over the success of a ceremonial incantation to which they ascribed his return. The reconnaissance map is ill-drawn, locating “Fresh Water B.” on the mainland side and apparently combining “Sargent’s Point” and “Arnold’s Island” as “Sargents I.”; “San Miguel Pt.” is properly located, and idealized route lines traverse the “Canal peligroso de San Miguel” (El Infiernillo), which is of greatly exaggerated width. The careful itinerary shows, however, that Hardy scarcely entered this strait, and made but three or four anchorages in the vicinity—i. e., in Bahia Agua Dulce, in Bahia Bruja, probably in Cockle harbor (or “Cochla Inlet”), and finally off Isla Patos.

[143] Ibid., p. 280.

Hardy’s notes on the Indians are first hand, and hence of exceptional value. He says:

The Indians on the island of Tiburon are very stout, tall, and
well-built fellows, exceedingly like the Twelchii tribe of
Indians in Patagonia, and with a language so like theirs that I
imagined I was transported back into those wild regions. They
by no means look so ferocious as they are represented, and
there is something peculiarly mild in the countenances of the
females. Their dress is a sort of blanket, extending from the
hips to the knees. But most of the old women have this part
of the body covered with the skins of the eagle, having the
feathers turned _towards the flesh_. The upper part of the body
is entirely exposed, and their hair is dressed on the top of
the head in a knot which greatly sets off the effect of their
painted faces. The men use bows and stone-pointed arrows; but
whether they are poisoned I do not know. They use likewise a
sort of wooden mallet called Macána, for close quarters in war.
They have a curious weapon which they employ for catching fish.
It is a spear with a double point, forming an angle of about 5
degrees. The insides of these two points, which are 6 inches
long, are jagged; so that when the body of a fish is forced
between them it cannot get away on account of the teeth.[144]

[144] Op. cit., p. 289-290.

He saw “about fifteen or twenty canoes made of three long bamboo bundles fastened together”, and observed that, when engaged in turtle fishing, the Indian “paddles himself from the shore on one of these by means of a long elastic pole of about 12 or 14 feet in length, the wood of which is the root of a thorn called mesquite, growing near the coast”, this pole serving also as a harpoon shaft, provided with a harpoon head and cord, such as those still in use. Respecting the invocatory appurtenances, he says:

My attention was directed by the old women to a pile of bushes
outside the hut, which had a staff of about 5 feet in length
sticking up through the center. From the upper end of the
staff was suspended by a cord 12 or 14 inches long a round
stone ball, and to this ball was fastened another string
furnished with bits of cork, surrounded with small feathers
stuck into them at the distance of about 3 inches apart: the
only use of the stone ball being to prevent the wind from
blowing out horizontally the string which was furnished with
feathers.... Upon examining the bushy pile, I discovered a
wooden figure with a _carved hat_, and others of different
shapes and sizes, as well also as leathern bags, the contents
of which I was not permitted to explore.[145]

[145] Op. cit., pp. 294-295.

He also mentions that “in their festivities the Indians wear the head (with the horns on)” of the bura or mule deer. He adds:

It is believed that the Céres Indians have discovered a method
of poisoning their arrows, and that they do it in this way:
They kill a cow and take from it its liver. They then collect a
number of rattlesnakes, scorpions, centipedes, and tarantulas,
which they confine in a hole with the liver. The next process
is to beat them with sticks in order to enrage them, and being
thus infuriated, they fasten their fangs and exhaust their
venom upon each other and upon the liver. When the whole mass
is in a high state of corruption the old women take the arrows
and pass their points through it. They are then allowed to dry
in the shade, and it is said that a wound inflicted by them
will prove fatal. Others again say that the poison is obtained
from the juice of the yerba de la flécha (arrow wort).[146]

[146] Ibid., pp. 298, 299.

He purchased some of the arrows, which were stone-tipped, and had “certainly had an unguent applied to them”.

He was impressed by indications of family affection, and noted the custom of having two wives. Concerning tribal relations he says:

These people have been always considered extremely ferocious,
and there is little doubt, from their brave and warlike
character, that they may formerly have devastated a great part
of the country; but in modern days their feuds are nearly
confined to a neighboring tribe of the same name as themselves
(Céres), who speak the same language and in all probability
originally descended from the same stock. They are said to be
inferior to those of this island both in courage and stature,
and they are never suffered to cross the channel. From what I
was told * * * the Tiburow Céres have lately returned from a
sanguinary war with the Tépoca Céres, in which the former were
victorious.[147]

[147] Ibid., pp. 299, 300.

Later in his itinerary Hardy noted a typical Yaqui revolution, with a characteristic effort to secure the cooperation of the Seri.[148] He defined the Seri habitat as “the island of Tiburow, the coast of Tépoca, and the pueblo of Los Céres, near Pitic”;[149] and he estimated the population at “3,000 or 4,000 at the very utmost”,[150] and quoted the estimate of Don José Maria Retio, viz., that the Seri population of Tiburon was 1,000 to 1,500.[151]

[148] Ibid., p. 395 et seq.

[149] Ibid., p. 437.

[150] Ibid., p. 438.

[151] Ibid., pp. 235, 540.

Like most of those visitors to the Seri who have returned to tell their tale, Hardy “praised the bridge that carried him over” and gave the tribe passable character—worse, of course, than that of any other, yet hardly so bad as painted at Pitic.

A noteworthy traveler in western America during 1840-1842 was M. Duflot de Mofras, an attache of the French legation in Mexico. He traversed the Californias and entered Sonora, and while he failed to see Seriland, he made a note on the tribe, valuable as a current estimate of the population:

At the gates of the city of Hermosillo is established a Mission
which contains 500 Seri Indians; 1,000 of them, inhabit the
coast to the north of Guaymas and Île du Requin (Isla del
Tiburon).[152]

[152] Exploration du Territoire de l’Orégon, des Californies et de la Mer Vermeille, exécutée pendant les années 1840, 1841 et 1842, tome i; Paris, 1844, p. 214.

The next noteworthy episode in the external history of the Seri chronicled in the civil records of Sonora culminated in 1844. “The above-named Seris, although their number never became important, did not abandon their propensity to revolt, and, while they never rose en masse, made many factional uprisings. Ultimately ... they displayed such boldness, robbing ranchos, assassinating all they encountered, assaulting on the roads arrieros and other travelers”, that a considerable force was sent against them from Hermosillo under the direction of Captain Victor Araiza. It was planned to support this land force by a sea party from Guaymas, but delays and misunderstandings caused the practical abandonment of the plan. Tiring of the delay, Araiza “declared war on the Indians, surprising them on Punta del Carrizal, killing 11, including several innocent women and children”, and taking 4 captives of from 1 to 11 years in age; whereupon the army returned to Hermosillo.[153]

[153] Velasco, Noticias Estadisticas, pp. 124, 125. This chronicle is rendered peculiarly valuable by supplements in the form of Andrade’s and Espence’s journals, the latter incorporated (p. 125) after Velasco’s own writing was completed. The whole was revised, extended, and republished in the several volumes of the first series of Bol. Soc. Mex. Geog. y Estad., 1861-1806.

Disapproving of this undignified and inhuman crusade, the acting governor, General Francisco Ponce de Leon, planned a still more vigorous campaign by land and sea for the purpose of capturing the entire tribe and transporting them to Pueblo Seri, where a few of their kin were still harbored.[154] The command was intrusted to Colonel Francisco Andrade, who took personal charge of the land force, including 160 infantry from Guaymas, 60 infantry and 30 cavalry from Hermosillo, and considerable corps from Horcasitas and Altar. The naval auxiliary, in charge of Don Tomás Espence,[155] pilot, comprised a schooner of 12 tons; two launches, one carrying a 4-pound cannon and the other a 2-pound falconet; and one rowboat. On August 11, 1844, Espence sailed from Guaymas, and six days later cast anchor at the embarcadero (apparently a convenient place on the coast of Bahia Kino due west of Pozo Escalante—the Embarcadero Andrade of figure 1) opposite Tiburon. Andrade marched from Hermosillo August 13, reached Carrizal August 16, and had detachments at the coast to meet the squadron the next day. Both the vessels and this detachment were out of water, and next morning Espence, taking a few soldiers and an Indian guide, made his way to Tiburon in search of springs; but “on arriving it turned out that the Indian had deceived the party or did not wish to reveal the water.” Nevertheless they landed, and Espence hoisted the Mexican flag, “taking possession of the island in the name of the Mexican Government, as the first civilized person to touch the soil.” Afterward he divided his force, and he and the sailors wandered far, spending the entire day in vain search for water. Toward evening he “made the men wade into the sea up to their necks, and in this manner mitigated somewhat their burning thirst.” Meantime the soldiers had traveled inland some 6 or 8 miles, and found water at the head of an arroyo (apparently a temporary tinaja west of Punta Narragansett), but it was surrounded by Indians, who at once gave battle. Such was their thirst that the soldiers held their ground, drinking one at a time under the protection of their comrades. At length they killed two chiefs (one of whom wore a jacket taken from one Hijar, robbed on the Cienega road a few days before), and succeeded in withdrawing to a small eminence and sheltering themselves behind a rock. Later they effected a retreat without loss, and of course without water, so that they arrived at the shore even thirstier than the sailors. Making their way back to the mainland during the night, the party were relieved the following day by mule-loads of water sent over from Carrizal. On August 20 Colonel Andrade marched to the coast with most of his force, leaving a detachment to guard the route; and the next day Espence transported to the island 125 troops, 16 horses, and some mules and cattle, without other accident than the drowning of a mule and a steer “by the strength of the current”. Suffering much from thirst, the troops pressed inland to the watering-place already discovered, where they camped. The next day Colonel Andrade, with Lieutenant Jesus Garcia, worked northward, finding another watering-place (doubtless Tinaja Anita) 3½ leagues distant from the first; and this was made headquarters for the force. Several parties were sent out in search of water and Indians. A few watering-places were found, and a number of women and children with a few men were captured, though the journals indicate that the excursions were of limited extent only. Meantime Espence brought over the baggage and provisions; and on August 24, leaving a launch and a rowboat for the use of the troops, he sailed northward through the strait, and three days later, after passing many bars of sand, entered the bay at the extreme north (Bahia Agua Dulce), opposite Punta Tepopa, finding sharks swarming in thousands. Here he found fresh water 250 paces from the beach—the water which sustained Hardy eighteen years before, and Ugarte over a century earlier still. He found no Indians here, but a number of jacales and balsas (which he immediately burned), as well as bones and other remains of horses.[156] On August 28 and 29 Espence skirted the abrupt and rocky coasts of Tiburon, west and south of the northern bay, without seeing trace of natives; on the 30th he reached the western bay, where he found huts and fresh tracks, and captured a woman disabled by snake-bite. Farther down the bay he encountered a considerable party, who first prepared to attack, and then, overawed by his bold front, sued for peace; whereupon he accepted their submission, and sent them with a letter to Colonel Andrade. This affair concluded, and escaping currents so contrary that he was nearly locoed (“por las corrientes encontradas que me volvian loco”),[157] he coasted southward; and on September 1, at the southwestern point of the island, he found another rancheria, and made peaceful conquest of the occupants, whom he also sent with a letter to Andrade. Thence he coasted eastward, and, on September 3, returned to his starting point, “having navigated the island in the period of nine days, having in this time burned 64 huts and 97 balsas, and reduced to peace 104 Indians with their families.” The next day he transported the captives to the mainland, “their number, comprising men, women, and children, reaching 384, besides about 37 remaining at large on the island.”[158] On September 5 the remaining troops were transferred to the mainland, with the exception of a small detachment, which remained for an unspecified, but evidently short period, in the vain hope of corralling the warriors, with the families to which they belonged, supposed (on grounds not given) to remain on the island. The troops and their captives immediately moved to Laguna de los Cercaditos (probably Laguna la Cruz) to rejoin the cavalry guard; thence, suffering much from thirst, they marched toward Hermosillo, arriving at that place September 12,[159] where the troops and captives formed a triumphal procession, met on the highroad by the merchants and the civil and military authorities, and greeted by the ringing of bells and the firing of rockets, and with music and refreshments.

[154] On August 14, 1844, Secretary Manuel Cabrera reported that “there are in this pueblo not more than fifteen families of Ceris located within its borders, maintaining themselves by the manufacture of earthen ollas and by the garbage of their neighbors, i. e., in time of harvest they glean the wheat and corn left scattered, and the bones, entrails, and hoofs of the stock slaughtered for consumption by the inhabitants.” (Incorporated in Velasco, op. cit., p. 138.)

[155] Thomas Spence, of Guaymas; apparently the “Mr. Spence” mentioned favorably by Hardy (Travels, p. 90).

[156] The expressions of the journal indicate that Espence was not familiar with the Seri custom of eviscerating and quartering stolen stock, consuming the entrails at once, and transporting the more substantial pieces across the strait on their balsas. Velasco fell into still further error in assuming that the expressions relate to tracks and other indications of the presence of living stock on the island.

[157] Velasco, op. cit., p. 168.

[158] Ibid., p. 169. On the same page Espence classifies the captives as 6 oldsters (“viejos de sesenta años arriba”), 12 beldames (“viejas de cuarenta arriba”), 1 blind, 1 idiotic boy, 5 cripples male, 1 cripple female, 180 women, 160 children, and 144 men—510 in all. Andrade’s report enumerates the captives as 120 in each of two lots, with 20 or more in a third, making 260 odd (ibid., p. 180); while Velasco put the number at 200 and odd (“docientas y tantas persones”), men, women, and children, including only 30 odd oldsters and warriors combined. The discrepancies are characteristic, and of a piece with those prevailing in the same latitude and longitude today: e. g., Velasco says there are but four waters on the island, Espence says there are eight or ten, and Andrade implies that there are many; Velasco says there were 160 troops from Guaymas, while Andrade mentions only 80; Espence says that in transporting the stock (as noted above) but one mule was drowned by the strength of the current, while Andrade says that a mule and a steer were lost on account of the bad storm which prevailed during the day; yet there is such agreement between dates and facts in the independent journals of Andrade and Espence as to establish general verity despite the provincial weakness concerning details.

[159] According to Andrade (ibid., p. 182); Velasco says September 16 (ibid., p. 126).

The captives were imprisoned over night in the mint, the children weeping, the women chattering angrily or humbly, and the men sulking. Next day the Hermosilleños began distributing the children among themselves, some families taking three and many two, while the adults were transferred to Pueblo Seri, placed in charge of a single keeper, and set to gathering fuel, etc. Naturally this unstable status did not long persist; “within two months they began to disappear, fleeing to their respective and native haunts, stealing and carrying with them the children from whom they had been separated”;[160] and, according to Espence, they committed “many murders on the Pitic and Guaimas roads” as they returned to Tiburon.[161]

[160] Velasco, Noticias Estadisticas, p. 127.

[161] Ibid., p. 170.

While the Tiburon captives were escaping, the campaigning continued; and, in November, 1844, several Seri families, comprising 63 men, women, and children, who had been scavengering Rancho del Burro (“manteniéndose allí á merced de los desperdicios de dicho rancho”),[162] were captured and transported to the mint at Hermosillo, and soon afterward transferred to Pueblo Seri. During the same month a report came from Rancho del Pocito, on the Guaymas road, that Seri marauders (assumed to belong to the 16 families left on the island) had killed 10 head of stock; and a detachment of 15 cavalry was sent to inflict punishment. Early in December this party met a Seri force of over seventy warriors, including some of those captured on Tiburon and escaped from Pueblo Seri; after a battle of four hours the troops found their ammunition exhausted, several of their carbines out of order, and all but four or five of their horses winded; so that they were driven to parley with the Indians and to procure their surrender by pacific means—especially promises of good treatment.[163] Subsequently a municipal commission from Hermosillo reminded the defeated Seri of their surrender, and “three, four, or eight” of them presented themselves (“presentándose tres, cuatro ú ocho hombres”), and were probably added to the colony at Pueblo Seri.

[162] Ibid., p. 128.

[163] Ibid., p. 129. This naive recital is far from unique among the chronicles of conquest over the Seri. All of the records recount victories more or less brilliant, even when there are strong indications between lines that the Caucasians were outnumbered, outfought, forced from the field, and even driven into the protection of the pueblos. The Seri side of the story has never been told.

Espence’s journal clearly indicates a complete circumnavigation of Tiburon, the second in history (that of Ugarte in 1721 being the first); and naturally some of his notes are of ethnologic value:

The Ceris Indians are tall, well formed, not very corpulent;
the women are remarkable for small breasts and feet and high
insteps. At night they travel ill; this is to be attributed
to the reflection of the sun on the sand, which is quite
white, and as they all live on the shore where they gain
sustenance, which is fish and plankton [marisco], they are
daily exposed to a glare which injures their vision. Their
favorite food is turtles and horses.... They are all in the
most savage condition it is possible to conceive. Their
language is guttural, and they are most filthy in their
persons, as in their food, which is mostly eaten raw, or at
the best half cooked; they endure a thousand miseries on the
island, yet the love they have for it is incredible. They are
always accompanied by innumerable dogs, ... which they have
domesticated.[164]

[164] Velasco, Noticias Estadisticas, pp. 169-171.

Velasco adds:

The Ceris subsist on fish, the seeds of grass, and coastwise
shrubs, as well as on the flesh of horses and deer, which
they kill. There is no better proof of this fact than this—on
approaching the said Ceris, one instantly perceives that their
bodies exhale an intolerable stench, like that of a corpse of
eight or more days, totally rotten, so that it is necessary to
withdraw far as possible from them.[165]

[165] Ibid., pp. 127-128.

Of all the Indian tribes known in Sonora, none are more
barbarous and uncivilized than the Ceris. They are perverse to
the limit, vicious beyond compare in drunkenness, infinitely
filthy, the bitterest enemies of the whites, like the worst of
the Indians.[166]

[166] Ibid., p. 129.

He adds also that the men wear a pelican-skin robe and a breechclout of cotton cloth, with most of the body uncovered; “they have their faces painted or barred with prominent black lines. They use no foot-gear of any kind, and many have the nasal septum pierced and adorned with pieces of greenstone or ordinary glass.” “They are robust in stature, tall and straight, generally with bright black eyes. The women are not uncomely, and of bronzy color [de color abronzado]. Their clothing is made of pelican skins fastened together, retaining the feathers; with this they are covered from the waist downward”, the remainder of the body being bare. The women of Hermosillo provide them with cast off garments when they approach the city, and these they wear, unwashed, until they fall to pieces. “The said tribe, in addition to being the vilest and most brutal known in the country, are preeminently treacherous and traitorous, so that forty of their outbreaks may be counted during the efforts to reduce them to civilized life.” At the time of the Cimarrones outbreak, the Seri of Tiburon and Tepoka numbered 2,000; “to day [about 1846 or 1847], counting the 259, which are all that inhabit Tiburon and the most that can be presented, including the Tepoka Seri [los Ceris Tepocas], who have always been much fewer, their whole number will not amount to 500 persons of all sexes and ages, and the warriors can not exceed 60 or 80 at the most.” The Seri are not polygamous, though apparently promiscuous (“se nota en sus matrimonios mucha tolerancia mútuamente”). They “adore the moon, which they venerate and respect as a deity; when they see the new moon, they kneel and make obeisance; they kiss the earth and make a thousand genuflections, beating their breasts.”[167]

[167] Ibid., pp. 131-133.

The remarkably vigorous expedition of Andrade and Espence occurred within the memory of men still active, and naturally it lives in tradition at Hermosillo and Bacuache, and among the ranchos lying toward the border of Seriland; indeed, one of the two Mexicans accompanying the 1895 expedition, Don Ygnacio Lozania, retained shadowy impressions of participating in an invasion of the island, which could have been none other than that planned by Governor De Leon and executed by Colonel Andrade. Yet it is not uncharacteristic of Sonoran history that the wave of anti-Seri activity culminating in 1844 hardly outlasted its own breaking; certainly Escudero, writing less than five years later, declared of “la nacion _Seri_”: “During thirty-three years they have committed not a single act of hostility and live in peace and perfect harmony with the Sonorenses.” He added that they occupied the islands of Tiburon and Tepoca (sic) and the coasts of the gulf contiguous to Sonora and California, and from the most remote antiquity had been known by the names of “_tiburones_” or “_seris_”. Describing Pueblo Seri, he observed: “It now contains hardly a dozen aged Seris of both sexes”; and he forecast the early extinction of the tribe, since the people were incapable of abandoning their independent and solitary existence.[168]

[168] Noticias Estadisticas, pp. 141-142.

* * * * *

Here ends, practically, the history of Pueblo Seri as a Seri settlement, for, although one of the tribe survived for half a century and a few others may have survived for a decade, the “aged Seris of both sexes” melted away so rapidly as to leave no later record, and were apparently never replaced by others. Briefly, the history of the pueblo began with the establishment of a presidio or military post in 1741 in the natural gateway and watering-place leading into the settled valleys of the Opodepe and upper Sonora, for the sole purpose of protecting the settlements against the wandering Seri, who used this typical Sonora watergap as a way-station on forays but never as a place of residence. The history grew definite when the Jesuits obtained the allotment of lands for the Seri and established for them a mission, which was at the same time a place of catechizing for Seri neophytes, a place of detention for Seri captives, a place of refuge for Seri weaklings, and a place of resort for Seri sneaks and spies. The history proceeded with many vicissitudes, as the presidio was alternately abandoned under Seri attacks and reoccupied when the attacks were repulsed, and as the neophytes alternately escaped and suffered recapture; the formal history waned in relative importance as the population and interests of Pitic and afterward of Hermosillo waxed, and as the lands originally allotted to the Seri were gradually taken and held by Mexican settlers, and ended when the Seri tenure was formally extinguished in 1844, as described by Cabrera and Velasco; and the general history dropped into unimportance with the escape of Andrade’s captives, after temporary quartering on the legally established landholders and householders of the Mexicanized pueblo. For a century and a half the name of the pueblo has continually raised and renewed the assumption that it marks a site of aboriginal Seri habitation or has played some other leading rôle in Seri history, and this assumption has shaped opinion past and present; yet its error is clearly shown by scrutiny of the historical records, as well as by collateral ethnologic and archeologic evidence.

Here may be said to end, too, the local chronicles of the Seri; for although the state archives are crowded with charges, petitions, commissions, reports, and other papers pertaining to the irrepressible Seri; although these materials have overflowed to Ciudad, Mexico, and even to Washington, in official documents both numerous and voluminous; although Dávila in 1894 increased Velasco’s forty Seri wars to fifty; and although the weightiest events in the internal history of the Seri have occurred since 1844, little attempt has latterly been made to reduce the abundant data to print.

The Mexican geographic knowledge of the time was surprisingly vague, as is shown by the current maps, for example, the Tanner maps which appeared in several editions: the 1846 edition recalls and evidently reflects the Humboldt map of the beginning of the century; “R. Ascencion” is represented as embouching through an estuary about 30° 20', with the “Seris Indians” north of its lower half-length and west of “Pitic” and “Ft. del Alter”; Ures is located 3 or 4 miles southeast of this fort, and “Racuach” (the Bacuachito of the present) is 20 miles farther southeastward. Neither Rio Sonora nor any of its important branches are indicated, while “Pitic” is placed several times too far from the coast and from Guaymas, in a featureless expanse of paper; “Rio Hiaqui” is shown as a branchless and conventional stream of a single crescentic curvature, embouching in about the right latitude. The coast of the gulf is distorted, and “Tiburon” is shown as an island much too large and nearly a degree too far north, separated from the mainland by a greatly exaggerated strait, with an elongated mesa (“Mt. del Picu”) skirting the mainland coast—in short, the cartography is largely traditional if not fanciful.[169]

[169] A Map of the United States of Mexico, as organized and defined by the several Acts of the Congress of that Republic, constructed from a great variety of Printed and Manuscript Documents, by H. S. Tanner. Third edition, 1846. The map in De Mofras (op. cit., atlas) is little better.

* * * * *

The career of the Seri during the half century 1844-1894 is traceable by aid of (1) unpublished documents, (2) published results of scientific inquiries and surveys, and (3) personal reminiscences of men living on the Seri frontier; but in a summary touching only salient points the first-named source may be passed over.

One of the first foreign visitors to follow Baron Humboldt in systematic inquiries concerning the aborigines of northwestern Mexico was Henri Ternaux-Compans; his information, too, was secondhand and remote, yet he correctly recognized Isla Tiburon as “inhabited by the Seris, who have some huts also on the mainland”.[170]

[170] Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, tome iii, 1842, p. 320 (cited by Buschmann, Die Spuren der aztekischen Sprache im nördlichen Mexico und höheren amerikanischen Norden, in Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, aus dem Jahre 1854, zweiter Supplement, Band; Berlin, 1859, p. 219).

Later came Eduard Mühlenpfordt, an attaché of a German commercial company and later a Mexican state official, who traveled extensively and wrote partly at first hand, though there is little indication of personal acquaintance with Seriland or the Seri: he described “Bahia de San Juan Bautista”, with “the small island San Augustin” lying before it (in such manner as to identify this islet with Isla Tassne), and located “the large island Tiburon farther northward, opposite a mountainous coast”.[171] He added:

[171] Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico besonders in Beziehung auf Geographie, Ethnographie, und Statistik: Hannover, 1844, Band I, p. 441; Band II, p. 415.

The waterless but cattle-stocked plains between the place
Pitic and the coast, and thence up to the river Ascension,
are inhabited by a meager remnant of the Seri tribe, while on
Tiburon island, opposite this coast, the Tiburones dwell. The
Seris were formerly very numerous, by far the fiercest of all
the Indian tribes of northern Mexico, and very warlike. Through
ceaseless war with the Tiburones and the troops from the
Spanish presidios they are now nearly extinct.[172]

[172] Ibid., Band II, pp. 419-420.

Elsewhere the Tiburones were characterized as enemies of the Seri,[173] while the “Heris” tribe was enumerated as a branch of the “Pimas Bajas” people. Herr Mühlenpfordt’s characterization of the Seri and the Tiburon islanders as enemies would appear to be groundless, yet not wholly incomprehensible; in the first place, the earlier literature indicates that the term Seri (Seris, Ceris, Heris, etc.) was an alien designation of lax application,[174] doubtless extended occasionally or habitually to marauding nomads, regardless of affinity; again there is conclusive evidence that in many instances Seri convert-captives attached to the missions and pueblos were often regarded as tribal apostates and outlaws whose lives were forfeit; and, moreover, the region in which Herr Mühlenpfordt gained his information was and still is one of abounding tale, whose frequent exaggeration and not infrequent invention conceal and distort the simple facts.

[173] Ibid., Band I, p. 210.