Intermingling with the woody trees and shrubs in most stations, and replacing them in some, are the conspicuous and characteristic cacti in a score of forms. East of Desierto Encinas, and sometimes west of it, these are dominated by the saguaro (Cereus giganteus), though throughout most of Seriland the related saguesa (Cereus pringleii?) prevails. The saguaro is a fluted and thorn-decked column, 1 foot to 3 feet in diameter and 10 to 60 feet in height, sometimes branching into a candelabrum, while the still more monstrous saguesa (figure 4) usually consists of from three to ten such columns springing from a single root; both are masses of watery pulp, revived and renewed during each humid season, and both flower in a crown of fragrant and brilliant blossoms at or near the top of column or branch, and fruit in fig-like tunas (or prickly pears) during late summer or early autumn. Ordinarily the saguesa, like the saguaro, is sparsely distributed; but there is an immense tract between Desierto Encinas and the eastern base of Sierra Seri in which it forms a literal forest, the giant trunks close-set as those of trees in normal woodlands. Hardly less imposing than the giant cactus is the wide-branching species known as pitahaya (Cereus thurburi?), in which the trunks may be ten to fifty in number, each 4 to 8 inches in diameter and 5 to 40 feet in height; and equally conspicuous, especially in eastern Seriland, is the cina (Cereus schotti), which is of corresponding size, and differs chiefly in the simpler fluting of the thorn-protected columns. Both the pitahaya and the cina flower and fruit like the saguaro, the tunas yielded by the former being especially esteemed by Mexicans as well as Indians. Another important cactus is the visnaga (Echinocactus wislizeni lecontei), which rises in a single trunk much like the saguaro, save that it is commonly but 3 to 6 feet in height and is protected by a more effective armature of straight and curved thorns; it yields a pleasantly acid, pulpy fruit, which may be extracted from its thorny setting with some difficulty; but its chief value lies in the purity and potability of the water with which the pulpy trunk is stored. The visnaga is widely distributed throughout the Sonoran province and beyond, and extends into eastern Seriland; it is rare west of Desierto Encinas and is practically absent from Isla Tiburon, where it may easily have been exterminated by the improvident Seri during the centuries of their occupancy. Most abundant of all the cacti, and less conspicuous only by reason of comparatively small size, is the cholla (an arborescent Opuntia); on many of the sheetflood-carved plains it forms extensive thickets 5 to 8 feet high, the main trunks being 2 to 6 inches in diameter, while dozens or hundreds of gaunt and thorn-covered branches extend 3 to 8 feet in all directions; and it occurs here and there throughout the district from the depths of the valleys and the coast well up to the rocky slope of the sierras. It yields quantities of fruit, somewhat like tunas, but more woody and insipid; this fruit is seldom if ever used for human food, but is freely consumed by herbivores. Much less abundant than the cholla is the nopal, or prickly pear; and there are various other opuntias, often too slender to stand alone and intertwined with stiffer shrubs which lend them support, and many of these yield small berry-like tunas. Another characteristic cactus, widespread as the cholla and abundant in nearly all parts of Seriland save on the rocky slopes, is the okatilla (Fouquiera splendens). It consists of half a dozen to a score of slender, woody, and thorn-set branches radiating from a common root, usually at angles of 30° to 45° from the vertical, and ordinarily reaching heights of 10 to 20 feet.

The pulp masses of the larger cacti, especially the saguaro, saguesa, pitahaya, and cina, are supported by woody skeletons in the form of vertical ribs coincident with the external flutings; within a few years after the death and decay of these desert monsters the skeletons weather out, and the vertical ribs form light and strong and approximately straight bars or shafts, valuable for many industrial purposes; while the slender arms of okatilla are equally valuable, in the fresh condition after removal of the spiny armament, and in the weathered state without special preparation.

On many of the higher plain-slopes, especially in eastern Seriland, there are pulpy stemmed shrubs and bushes, sometimes reaching the dignity of trees, which present the normal aspect of exogenous perennials during life, but which are so spongy throughout as to shrink into shreds of bark-like debris shortly after death. These are the torotes of the Sonoran province—common torote (Jatropha cardiophylla), torote amarillo (Jatropha spathulata), torote blanco (Bursera microphylla), torote prieto (Bursera laxiflora), torotito (Jatropha canescens?), etc. These plants grow in the scattered and scraggy tufts characteristic of arid districts (a typical torote tuft appears in left foreground of figure 4); they are protected from evaporation by the usual glazed epidermis, and maintained by the water absorbed during the humid seasons; but they are thornless and are protected from animal enemies by pungent odors, and at least in some cases by toxic juices. Like various plants of the province they are measurably communal—indeed, the torotito appears to be dependent on union with an insect for reproduction, like certain yuccas, and like the cina and (in some degree at least) the saguaro and other cacti.

Along the lower reaches of Rio Bacuache, and in some of the deeper gorges of Sierra Seri and Sierra Kunkaak, grow a few veritable trees of moderately straight trunk and grain and solid wood, such as the guaiacan (Guaiacum coulteri) and sanjuanito (Jacquinia pungens); both of these fruit, the former in a wahoo-like berry of medicinal properties, and the latter in a nut, edible when not quite ripe and forming a favorite rattle-bead when dry. On the flanks of such gorges the slender-branched baraprieta (Cæsalpinia gracilis) grows up in the shelter of more vigorous shrubs, its branches yielding basketry material, while its fruit is a woody bean much like that of the cat-claw. In like stations there are occasional clumps of yerba mala or yerba de flecha (Sebastiana bilocularis), an exceptionally leafy bush growing in straight stems suitable for arrowshafts, and alleged to be poisonous from root to leaf—with inherent probability, since the plant is without the thorny armature normal to the desert. Along the sand-washes, especially about their lower extremities wet only in floods, springs a subannual plant (Hymenoclea monogyra) which shrinks to stunted tussocks after a year or more of drought, but flourishes in close-set fens after floods; though of acrid flavor and sage-like odor, it is eaten by herbivores in time of need, and it yields abundant seeds, consumed by birds, small animals, and men. About all of the permanent waters not invaded by white men and the white man’s stock there are brakes of cane or carrizal (Phragmites communis?); the jointed stems are half an inch to an inch in thickness and 8 to 25 feet in height; the seeds are edible, while the stems form the material for balsas and afford shafts for arrows, harpoons, fire-sticks, etc., and the silica-coated joints may be used for incising tough tissues.

The coasts of Seriland, both insular and mainland, are skirted by zones of exceptionally luxuriant shrubbery, maintained chiefly by fog moisture. Along the mountainous parts of the coast the zone is narrow and indefinite, but on the plains portions it extends inland for several miles with gradually fading characters; this is especially true in the southern portion of Desierto Encinas, where the fog effects may be observed in the vegetation 12 or 15 miles from the coast. Most of the fog fed species are identical with those of the interior, though the shrubs are more luxuriant and are otherwise distinctive in habit. On the Tiburon side of gale-swept El Infiernillo, and to some extent along other parts of the coast, some of these shrubs (notably Maytenus phyllanthroides) grow in dense hedge-like or mat-like masses, often yards in extent and permanently modeled by the wind in graceful dune-like shapes. Somewhat farther inland the flatter coastwise zones of Tiburon are rather thickly studded with shrubby clumps from 6 inches to 2 feet high, made up of Frankenia palmeri with half a dozen minor communals; while still farther inland follows the prevailing Sonoran flora of mesquite, scrubby paloverde, and chaparral (Celtis pallida), etc., only a little more luxuriant than the normal.

Throughout Seriland proper, and especially in the interior valleys of Tiburon, grasses are more prevalent than in other portions of the Sonoran province, their abundance doubtless being due to the rarity of graminivorous animals during recent centuries.

Fauna

Considered collectively, the fauna of the Sonoran province is measurably distinctive (though less so than the flora), especially in the habits of the organisms. The prevailing animals, like the plants of extraneous type, evidently represent genera and species developed under more humid conditions and adjusted to the arid province through a long-continued and severe process of adaptation; and no fundamentally distinct orders or types comparable with the cacti and torotes of the vegetal realm are known. The prime requisite of animal life in the province is ability to dispense with drinking, either habitually or for long intervals, and to maintain structure and function in the heated air despite the exceptionally small consumption of water; the second requisite is ability to cooperate in the marvelously complete solidarity of animal and vegetal life characteristic of subdesert regions. No systematic studies have been made of special structures in the animal bodies adapting them to retention of liquids, either by storage (as in the stomach of the camel) or by diminished evaporation, though the prevalence of practically nonperspiring mammals, scale-covered reptiles, and chitin-coated insects suggests the selection, if not the development, of the fitter genera and species for the peculiar environment. Much more conspicuous are the characters connected with cooperation in the ever severe but never eliminative strife for existence in the sub-desert solidarity; the mammals are either exceptionally swift like the antelope, exceptionally strong like the local lion, exceptionally pugnacious and prolific like the peccary, or exceptionally capable of subsisting on waterless sierras like the bura and mountain goat; the reptiles are either exceptionally swift like the rainbow-hued lizards, exceptionally armed like the sluggish horned toads, exceptionally venomous like the rattlesnake, or exceptionally repulsive, if not poisonous, like the Gila monster; even the articulates avoid the mean, and are exceptionally swift, exceptionally protective in form and coloring, exceptionally venomous like the tarantula and scorpion and centipede, or exceptionally intelligent like the farmer ant and the tarantula-hawk; while there is apparently a considerable class of insects completely dependent on the cooperation of plants for the perpetuation of their kind, including the yucca moth and (undescribed) cactus beetle. Among plants the intense individuality (which is the obverse of the enforced solidarity) is expressed in thorns and heavily lacquered seeds and toxic principles; among animals it is expressed by chitinous armament, as well as by fleetness and fangs and deadly venom.

The larger land animals of Seriland proper are the mountain goat in the higher sierras, the bura (or mule-deer) and the white-tail deer on the mid-height plains and larger alluvial fans, with the antelope on the lower and drier expanses. Associated with these are the ubiquitous coyote, a puma, a jaguar of much local repute which roams the higher rocky sites, and a peccary ranging from the coast over the alluvial fans and mid-height plains of the mainland (though it is apparently absent from Tiburon). Of the smaller mammals the hare (or jack-rabbit) and rabbit are most conspicuous, while a long-tail nocturnal squirrel abounds, its burrows and tunnels penetrating the plains of finer debris so abundantly as to render these plains, especially on Tiburon, impassable for horses and nearly so for men. The California quail and the small Sonoran dove are fairly common; a moderate number of small birds haunt the more humid belts, and there is a due proportion of Mexican eagles and hawks of two or three forms, with still more numerous vultures. Ants abound, dominating the insect life, while wasps and spiders, with various flies and midges, gather about the vital colonies of the drier plains and swarm in the moister belts. Horned toads and various lizards—bright-colored and swift, or earth-tinted and sluggish—are fairly abundant, while black-tail rattlesnakes haunt the more luxuriant vegetation of fog zones, permanent waters, and cienegas. On the whole, the land fauna of Seriland is much like that of the province in general, though the various forms of life are less abundant than the average, since all (except the abounding squirrel) are sought for food by the omnivorous Seri; and the distribution, even when relatively abundant, is woefully sparse, as befits the scant and scattered vegetal foundation for the animal life.

Strongly contrasted with the meagerness of the land fauna is the redundant aquatic fauna of that portion of the gulf washing the shores of Seriland. Tiburon island is named from the sharks, said by some explorers to have been seen by thousands along its coasts; these voracious feeders find ample food in literal shoals and swarms of smaller fishes; a not inconsiderable number of whales have survived the early fisheries (one, estimated at 80 feet in length, was stranded in Rada Ballena about 1887); while schools of porpoises play about Boca Infierno and elsewhere, making easy prey of slower swimmers caught in the tide-rips and gale-swept breakers. Proportionately abundant and varied is the crustacean life; littoral mollusks cling to the ledges exposed along all the rocky coast stretches, and the entire beach from Punta Antigualla to Punta Ygnacio is banded by a practically continuous bank of wave-cast molluscan shells, the shell-drift being often yards in width and many inches in depth. Common crabs abound in many of the coves, and a large lobster-like crab frequently comes up from deeper bights and bottoms; oysters attach themselves to rocks and to the roots of shrubby trees skirting protected bays like Rada Ballena, while clams are numerous in all broad mud-flats, such as those of Laguna la Cruz; and the pearl oyster was fished for centuries toward Punta Tepopa, until the ferocity of the Seri put an end to the industry. Especially abundant and large are the green turtles on which the Seri chiefly subsist, leaving the shells scattered along the shore and about rancherias in hundreds; while two land tortoises (Gopherus agassizii and Cinosternum sonorense) range about the margins of the lagoons, and one of these is alleged to enter the water freely.

The abundance of water-fowl is commensurate with that of the submarine life. The pelican leads the avifauna in prominence if not in actual numbers, breeding on Isla Tassne (Pelican island), and periodically patrolling the whole of Bahia Kunkaak and El Infiernillo in lines and platoons of military regularity; gulls are always in sight, and the cormorant is common; while different ducks haunt several of the islets, and the shores are promenaded by curlews, snipes, and other waders. There is a corresponding wealth of plankton, which at low spring tide with offshore gale covers acres of shallow littoral with squirming or inert but always slimy life, the substratum for that of higher order; and jellyfish and echinoids are cast up by nearly every wave, while at night the surf rolls up the smooth strands in shimmering lines of phosphorescent light. On the whole, the aquatic life teems in tropic luxuriance and more than ordinary littoral variety; for the waters of the gulf are warmed by radiation and conduction from its sun-parched basin, while the concentrated tides distribute and stimulate the species and keep the vital streams astir.

Local Features

Considered as a tribal habitat, Seriland comprises four subdivisions of measurably distinct character, viz., (1) the broad desert bounding the territory on the east; (2) the mountainous zone of Sierra Seri; (3) Tiburon island and the neighboring islets; and (4) the navigable straits and bays contiguous to island and mainland.

1. So far as its marginal portions are concerned, Desierto Encinas is a typical valley of the Sonoran province, sparsely dotted with vital colonies of the prevailing type and variegated by the exceptionally luxuriant mesquite forests of the Bacuache and Sonora fans; but the interior of the valley is rendered distinct by the fact that it lies near, if not below, the level of the sea.11 The central feature is Playa Noriega—a film of brackish water for a few days after each considerable semiannual freshet, a sheet of saline mud for a few weeks later, and for the greater part of the year a salt-crusted sherd 20 square miles in area, level as a floor and unimpressionable as a brick pavement. The playa is rimmed by dunes 10 to 40 feet in height, and about these and along the arroyos which occasionally break into it there is some aggregation of salt-enduring shrubs, evidently sustained in part by the semiannual freshet with its meager vapors and fogs. Outside this rim the surface is exceptionally broken; low dunes and irregularly wandering banks of soft and dust fine sand are interspersed with meandering salt flats much like the central playa, ranging from a few feet in width and a few yards in length up to mappable dimensions, as in the lesser playa lying east of the great one; and many of the dustbanks are honeycombed with squirrel burrows. This annulus of broken surface is narrow on the west, soon passing into okatilla scrub and then into the saguesa forests of the eastern base of Sierra Seri; on the east it is miles in breadth, passing gradually into the normal Sonoran plain; on the south it widens still farther, stretching all the way to Arenales de Gil and Pozo Escalante, and merging into the playa-like mud-flats bordering Laguna la Cruz, into which the gulf waters are sometimes forced by southwesterly gales at high spring tides. Throughout this portion of the desert, marine shells are scattered over the playa-like flats or lodged in the adjacent banks, sometimes in great beds; the vegetation is scantier than usual and largely of salt-loving habit; the mud-flats are usually coated with saline and alkaline crusts, while the dunes are soft and fluffy, and expand into broad belts perforated with the tunnels of the surprisingly abundant rodents. Across this plain of bitter sand-dust lie the two hard land routes to Seriland—the supposed Escalante route of 1700, down the fan of Rio Bacuache and thence by Barranca Salina; and the Encinas route, down the northern border of the Rio Sonora fan and thence by Pozo Escalante to the shores of Bahia Kino.12

Desierto Encinas is an impossible human habitat in any proper sense; it is merely a broad and hardly passable boundary between habitats. The hardy stock of the frontier ranchos, pasturing partly on the thorny fruit of the cholla, push far out on the plains, and are sometimes watered for short periods, under strong guards of heavily armed vaqueros, at Barranca Salina; yet the greater part of the expanse is trodden only by the Seri. Two or three ruined frames of Seri jacales and a few graves crown the low knoll near Pozo Escalante, and there are one or two house remnants near Barranca Salina; these are notable not only as the easternmost remaining outposts of Seri occupancy, but because they represent the only known instances in all Seriland of the erection of even temporary houses adjacent to water. Distinct paths, trodden deep by bare Seri feet, radiate from both waters toward the Seriland interior, but no traceable trails extend eastward.

The southern limit of Desierto Encinas is marked either by the broad mud-flats opening into Laguna la Cruz or by the coast of the gulf, the coast cutting the lower portions of the plain being accentuated by a sand-bank 30 or 40 feet high, against which the surf thunders in nearly continuous roar, audible halfway or all the way to Pozo Escalante. A Seri trail skirts the crest of this bank, sending occasional branches into the interior. At Punta Antigualla the bank expands and rises into a great mammillated shell-mound nearly 100 feet high, with several of the cusps occupied by more or less ruined jacales; and occasionally occupied houses occur midway thence to the southernmost point of Sierra Seri, and again at the base of the first spur east of Punta Ygnacio. Beyond Punta Antigualla the sweep of the waves is stronger than in Bahia Kino, and the coastal sand-bank is generally higher. Between the rocky buttresses of Punta Ygnacio and the next spur eastward the sand-ridge rises fully 50 feet above mean low tide, and here, as elsewhere, its verge is protected by a fog-fed chaparral thicket with occasional clumps of okatilla and other cacti. Behind the coast barrier lie lagoon-like basins, generally dry and floored with saline silt-beds, though sometimes occupied by briny pools formed through seepage during southwesterly gales; and there are physiographic indications that the northwestward extension of Laguna la Cruz formerly stretched some miles farther than now and lay in the rear of Punta Antigualla in such wise as to form a source of supply of the clam-shells of which the eminence is built.

2. Sierra Seri is a double range, divided mid-length by a broad saddle barely 2,000 feet in height.13 Like other Sonoran ranges, the nucleal portions are exceedingly rugged and precipitous—at least two of its picachos shoot so boldly that they commonly seem to overhang, and have been called leaning peaks. In large part the precipices rise abruptly from a symmetrical dome molded by sheetflooding, much as the insulated buttes rise from the Bacuache fan in northeastern Seriland; so that the tract lying between Desierto Encinas and El Infiernillo is a composite of exceptionally precipitous and exceptionally smooth mountain slopes. One of the Seri trails radiating from Barranca Salina lies across the mid-sierra saddle; others push into several mountain valleys, and the largest leads to Tinaja Trinchera, at the base of Johnson peak, where there are a few low walls of loose-laid rubble, somewhat like those of the trincheras (entrenched mountains) farther eastward—the only structures of the sort seen in Seriland. Toward the southern end of the range lie various trails, the most conspicuous paralleling the coast, either near the shore or over the steep salients, according to the configuration; while here and there ruinous jacales a few yards from the coast attest sporadic habitation. The eastern shore of Bahia Kunkaak from Punta Ygnacio northward reveals a typical geologic section of the Sonoran province: the transgressing waves have carved in the granitic subterrane a broad shelf lying just below mean low tide and usually stretching several furlongs offshore; this shelf is relieved here and there by remnantal crags of obdurate rocks, cumbered by bowlders and locally sheeted with sand and arkose derived from mechanically disintegrated granite; while the inner margin of the shelf is a sea-cliff, usually 30 to 50 feet high, of which the lower half is commonly granite and the upper half unconsolidated and recent-looking mechanical debris collected by sheetflood erosion. Sometimes the granite of the subterrane is replaced by volcanics; sometimes ancient and firmly cemented talus deposits separate the superficial mantle from the subterrane, as shown in the lower part of plate V; sometimes the line of sheetflood planation passes below tide-level, when the waves beat against the unconsolidated deposits in a deep embayment; sometimes the sharply defined planation surface ends abruptly at the sides of subranges or buttes shooting upward in the abrupt slopes characteristic of the sierra proper; yet this 10-mile stretch of coast is a nearly continuous revelation of the structure of sheetflood-carved plains and of modern marine transgression. The debris of the combined processes forms an abundant and varied assortment of bowlders, cobbles, and pebbles, whence the inhabitants readily derive their simple implements without need for studied forethought or manual cunning.

The long sand-spit terminating in Punta Miguel and the shorter one terminating in Punta Arena are the product of geologically recent wave building, and consist of irregular series of V-bars, backed by lagoon-like basins and enclosing considerable bodies of brine in the central portions; and the bars and basins become successively higher outward, in such wise as to attest the secular subsidence of this coast. Several jacales are located on the higher portion of the southern sand-spit, midway between Punta Granita and Punta Miguel, while footpaths traverse the flat and skirt the coast. Toward the terminal portion of the spit the sand is blown into hummocks, held by clumps of salt-enduring and sand-proof shrubbery; but there are no rancherias here, despite the fact that it is a natural point of embarkation—doubtless because no Seri structure could withstand the sand-drifting gales and storm inundations of this exposed spot. The more protected lagoons behind the outer bars harbor abundant waterfowl, within bowshot of shrub-clumps and dunes well adapted to the concealment of hunters, while the mud-flats open to the tide abound in clams and other edible things. The features of the Punta Miguel sand-spit are repeated with variations along the eastern shore of El Infiernillo; and Seri jacales, evidently designed for temporary occupancy, occur here and there, usually on higher banks above reach of the severer storms.

3. Tiburon island itself is apparently the chosen home of the Seri—a habitat to which the mainland tract is at once a dependency, an alternative refuge, and a circumvallation. Its dominant range, Sierra Kunkaak, mates Sierra Seri in its essential features, though the rocks are for the greater part ordinarily obdurate eruptives rather than exceptionally obdurate granites, as in the mainland sierra; accordingly the range is somewhat lower and broader, while the sheetflood sculpture, with its sharp transition into precipitous cliffs, is somewhat less trenchant. Sierra Menor is a third term in the mountain series, in structure and geomorphy as in altitude; while the interior plain is a homologue of that portion of Desierto Encinas lying north of Playa Noriega—i. e., of its (potentially) free-drained portion. Almost the entire perimeter of Tiburon is suffering marine transgression, and is faced with seacliffs overlooking wave-carved shelves; and in both form and structure the greater part of the coast repeats, with minor variations, the features of the mainland coast from Punta Ygnacio northward. Partly because of the superior magnitude and height of its debris-yielding sierra, partly because of protection from the wave-beat of the open gulf, the eastern shore is skirted with a talus-shape slope, usually two to four miles wide; and while there are unmistakable evidences of sheetflood carving in the higher portions of this plane, the coastal cliff commonly reveals nothing but heterogeneous debris, sometimes rising thirty or forty feet above tide. Somewhat the greater part of the volume of this debris is fine—i. e., sand and silt and nondescript rock-matter; but there is always a considerable element of larger rock-fragments, which gather along the shore in a pavement of bowlders and cobbles (upper figure of plate V). These coarse materials—important factors in aboriginal industry—are harmoniously distributed; more conspicuously on the ground than on the map, the coast is set with salients (of which Punta Narragansett is a type), consisting merely of exceptional accumulations of debris from gorges in the sierra and from shallow arroyos, or pebble washes, traversing the coastwise plain. These salients owe their prominence partly to the relative coarseness, partly to the abundant supply, of fragmental material from the heights; and about their extremities the beach is paved with bowlders, which grade to cobbles or even to pebbles along the reentrant shores on either hand. This distribution of cobbles is one of the conditions governing the placement of Seri rancherias; and in many cases the jacales are located, either singly or in groups, where the coastal salients and reentrants meet, and where there is an abundant supply of cobbles of convenient size and wave-tested hardness.

The coastwise plain skirting eastern Tiburon has a few wave-built projections analogous to those east of El Infiernillo; the most conspicuous of these are Punta Tormenta, Punta Tortuga, and Punta Perla with its tide-swept extensions, Bajios de Ugarte. All of these are located primarily by sierra-fed arroyos, but all are greatly extended by wave-borne material laid down along lines determined by the prevailing currents of this best-protected portion of the coast. The long outer face of Punta Tormenta, shaped by the storms of Bahia Kunkaak, is strikingly regular and symmetric; its broad extremity and inner face are diversified by subordinate bars and lagoons, evidently tending to connect with the main coast toward Punta Tortuga, and thereby to transform the whole of Rada Ballena into a lagoon. Already the narrow embayment is so shallow that, although a comfortable haven at high tide, it is mostly mud-flat and sand-waste at extreme low tide—a condition which explains the stranding of an 80-foot whale in this treacherous harbor about 1887. The rada is between two and three miles in length. It abounds in marine life of kinds preferring quieter waters: clams are plentiful in its mud-flats, a sponge lines portions of the bottom toward its inner extremity, oysters cluster numerously on bowlders and on the mangrove-like roots and trunks of a large shrub along the outer shore, and various fishes find refuge here from the fierce currents and the hungry sharks and porpoises of the open strait; these and other creatures form food for innumerable waders and other water-fowl that seek shelter in the quiet bay, which is still further protected by salt-enduring shrubbery on the bars of the point and by the shrubby thickets and wave-cast banks and wind-built dunes on the mainland side.

The combination of conditions renders this portion of the Tiburon coast the optimum habitat of the Seri Indians. There are, indeed, no houses or other traces of permanent habitation on Punta Tormenta itself, which is not only swept by gales but must sometimes be inundated by gale-driven waters at high spring tide; but at the inner end of the long sand-spit, and also on the mainland opposite the outer portion of Rada Ballena, there are extensive and well-kept rancherias, capacious enough to accommodate comfortably thirty or forty Seri families, i. e., 150 or 200 persons. Toward its landward end the sand-spit is built largely of pebbles and cobbles, of which thousands of tons are adapted to industrial use; sea-food is practically unlimited and is readily taken; water-fowl literally crowd the protected rada within arrow-shot of natural cover; the outer slope of the bar is admirably suited for landing and embarking balsas in calm weather, while the bay is an ideal harbor for the portable craft, and the shrub-grown shores give unlimited opportunity for concealing them when not in use; the dunes and banks are high enough to protect the low jacales from storm-winds, while the abundant sponges and turtle-shells afford material for thatching and shingling the more exposed walls and roofs; and finally, it is but a favorite distance (about 4 miles) to the permanent fresh water of Tinaja Anita. From this Seri metropolis well-trod trails radiate toward all other parts of the island; the best beaten leads to the tinaja, sending branches into all the neighboring gorges, in which game is sometimes taken; next best-worn is the trail laid across Sierra Kunkaak to strike Arroyo Carrizal mid-length of its permanently wet portion; others pass northward to rancherias at different points on the coast, and still another skirts the coast southward by several smaller rancherias to the considerable jacal collection near Punta Narragansett—this, like other longshore routes, having alternative trails, the evanescent fair-weather one following the beach, while the permanent path threads the thorn-set thickets marking the crest of the sea-cliff or cuts across the longer salients. The Narragansett rancheria is also a center for radiating trails, the best-beaten of these leading toward the fresh waters of Tinaja Anita and Arroyo Carrizal; and even the rancherias half-way thence to Punta Mashém send their most permanent paths over 15 miles of intervening ranges and spall-strewn valleys toward the same waters. According to Mashém’s cautious statements, there is a minor Seri metropolis at the northwestern spur of Sierra Kunkaak, within reach of Pozo Hardy and Arroyo Agua Dulce, and two or three smaller rancherias along the western shore; but these were not reached by the 1895 expedition.

4. The seas washing Seriland are notably troubled by tides and winds. Gaping toward the Pacific, and narrowing and shoaling for the 800 miles of its length (measured from midway between Islas de Tres Marias and Cabo San Lucas), Gulf of California approaches Bay of Fundy, Bristol channel, and Broad sound as a tide accumulator; while the semidiurnal sweep of the waters in the upper half of the gulf is conditioned by the constriction of the basin to a fraction of its average cross-section at the narrows between Isla Tiburon and Punta San Francisquito. Toward the head of the gulf the ordinary spring tides range from 20 to 25 feet, and may be much increased by favoring winds; the debacles culminate there, but the currents culminate off Seriland in the great tide-gate half dammed by the islands of Tiburon, San Esteban, San Lorenzo, and Salsipuedes,14 with their marine buttresses, and through the breaches of Pasaje Ulloa, Estrecho Alarcon, and Canal de Salsipuedes flow, four times daily, some two or three cubic miles of water in tremendous tidal floods, probably unsurpassed in vigor elsewhere on the globe. Naturally the islands and the adjacent coasts afford extraordinary examples of marine transgression; and while exceptional wave-work is a factor, the transgression is undoubtedly due mainly to the extraordinary tidal currents in this gateway of the gulf. The fierce currents and the frequent storms of the region condition local navigation, and have undoubtedly contributed to the development of the peculiarly light, strong, and serviceable water-craft of the aboriginal navigators among the islands.

El Infiernillo derives its distinctive characteristics largely from the local character of the tides. Bahia Kunkaak is a funnel-shape embayment so placed as to catch half the volume of the incoming tide and to concentrate the flow into a bore hurtling through Boca Infierno and thence throughout the shoaling strait with greatly accelerated velocity; meantime the body of the tidal stream is diverted around Tiburon, and then enfeebled in its northward flow by the expansion of the gulf above the Tiburon-San Francisquito gateway, so that the entire strait is flooded (to the limit fixed by the capacity of Boca Infierno) before the main tide flows into its head past Isla Patos and through Bahia Tepopa; and with this unobstructed inflow the strait is reflooded with a counterbore, whereby the waters are heaped and pounded into an unstable, swirling, churning mass.15 The flooding is little less than catastrophic in magnitude and suddenness; indeed, the volume of water in the body of the strait between Punta Perla and Boca Infierno is approximately doubled at neap tide and tripled at spring tide twice in each twenty-four hours. Then, as the crest of the main debacle advances into the upper gulf beyond Punta Tepopa, the trough of the ebb is already approaching the Tiburon-San Francisquito constriction; and even before the final flooding of El Infiernillo from the north is completed, the waters of Bahia Kunkaak are receding and a tiderip is tearing through Boca Infierno at a rate sufficient to half empty the reservoir of its accumulated volume before the ebb trough has rounded the island to the head of the strait. Thus the effect of the exceptional tides of the gulf and the peculiar configuration of Seriland is to concentrate and accentuate tidal currents in El Infiernillo, and to convert the channel into a raceway for nearly continuous tide rips. According to Dewey, the spring tides are 10 feet and the neaps 7 feet about the northern end of the strait;16 in December, 1895, the tides about Punta Blanca and Punta Granita were roughly determined as 13 or 14 feet at spring and 7 or 8 at neap, the range varying considerably with the direction and force of the wind; and the consequent current through Boca Infierno was estimated at 4 to 8 miles per hour, the higher velocity of course coinciding with the spring tide. The change in direction of the current is almost instantaneous—indeed, the run is in opposite directions on opposite sides of the narrow strait when the wind sets obliquely—so that the tidal flow is practically continuous. The currents are of course slacker in the body of the strait, but even here suffice to transport coarse sediments; and it is to this agency that the “shoals and sand spits” noted by Dewey17 and the maintenance of a deep channel through Boca Infierno are chiefly to be ascribed. The materials of Punta Tormenta and Punta Tortuga attest the transportation of pebbles up to 3 or 4 inches in diameter by the combined work of waves and tidal currents.

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

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

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

SUMMARY HISTORY

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

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

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

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

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

On Monday, February 23, 1540, according to Winship,26 Captain-General Francisco Vazquez Coronado set out on his ambitious and memorable expedition to the Seven Cities of Cibola. His course lay from Compostela along the coast of Culiacan, and thence northward through what is now Sinaloa and Sonora. On May 9-20, 1540, Hernando de Alarcon set sail on the ancillary expedition by sea; he followed the coast from Acapulco to Colorado river, and although he undoubtedly saw and was the first to name Tiburon,27 and claimed to have “discouered other very good hauens for the ships whereof Captaine Francis de Vlloa was General, for the Marquesse de Valle neither sawe nor found them”,28 he made no specific record of any of the features of Seriland or of contact with the Seri Indians. Meantime Coronado’s forces were divided, a considerable part of the army falling behind the leader; and some time during the early summer the belated army, under Don Tristan de Arellano, founded the town of San Hieronimo de los Corazones, which in the following year (1541) was transferred to a place in Señora (Sonora) not now identifiable. From Corazones Don Rodrigo Maldonado went down to the seacoast to seek the ships, and brought back with him “an Indian so large and tall that the best man in the army reached only to his chest”, with reports of still taller Indians along the coast.29 It is impossible to locate Maldonado’s route with close accuracy, but in view of geographic and other conditions it is evident (as recently shown by Hodge30) that he must have descended Rio Sonora and approached or reached the coast over the broad delta-plain of that stream south of Sierra Seri, and thus within Seri territory. The reported gigantic stature practically identifies the Indians visited by him with the Seri, since no other gigantic tribes were consistently reported by explorers of western North America, and since the 6-foot Seri warriors, with their frequent Sauls of greater stature, are in fact gigantic in comparison with the average Spanish soldiery of earlier centuries. There are indications that the fame of these giants of the Southern sea spread to Europe and filtered slowly throughout the intellectual world, and that the fancy-clothed colossi grew with their travels, after the manner of their kind—indeed, there is no slender reason for opining that these half-mythical islanders were the real originals of Jonathan Swift’s Brobdingnagians,31 despite his location of their fabled land a few degrees farther northward on the long-mysterious coast below the elusive “Straits of Anian”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, this itinerary recounts, in definite and unmistakable terms, the incidents and localities of a journey down the valley of Rio San Ignacio (also called Santa Magdalena, Altar, Ascuncion, Pitiquito, Caborca, etc., in different parts of its course), from the present city of Santa Magdalena by the present town of Caborca to the coast at a point almost directly west of both Caborca and Santa Magdalena. Moreover, Kino’s map of 170246 locates “Nazareno” on this river, and permits identification of the sierra with Dewey’s “three conspicuous peaks” placed directly inland from the lagoon at the mouth of San Ignacio river, on the Hydrographic Office charts; it also locates Caborca (miswritten “Cabetka”) in approximate position. Furthermore, it would have been physically impossible for the rather heavily outfitted Kino party, with carriages and churchly equipage, to traverse the untrodden and forbidding wastes from Caborca to even the nearest part of Seriland within the period of two days and a fraction, and the distance of 29 leagues (some 74 miles), detailed in the itinerary. The direct way from Caborca to Tiburon would lie due southward, over sierra-ribbed and barranca-cut plains never yet explored by white men, nor even traversed by Indians so far as known, for more than 100 miles in an air line; while the nearest practicable route, passing by way of Cieneguilla, Las Cruces, Pozo Noriega, Bacuachito, Sayula, Tonuco, Rancho Libertad, and Barranca Salina (or Aguaje Parilla) measures fully 200 miles, and requires at least six days for the passage with good horses and light equipage. The Kino party might, indeed, have turned southwestward at Caborca and pushed to the now abandoned landing at the anchorage below Cabo Lobos;47 but the directions and distances specifically stated, and the specific identification of Rio San Ignacio at the end and at other points of the journey, all prove that this was not the route actually traveled. The terminus of the trip so clearly fixed by the itinerary is over 100 miles from the nearest point of Seriland proper; moreover, Tiburon is rendered invisible both from the coast and from Cerro Nazareno not only by distance, but by intervening sierras, notably those projecting into the Gulf to form Cabo Lobos and Punta Tepopa. It follows that Kino and Mange completely missed Seriland in their expedition to the coast, and there is nothing to indicate that they ever saw the Seri tribesmen. Their descriptions of the Indians encountered fairly fit the peaceful Papago of the interior and the timid Tepoka of the coast; and neither Mange’s narrative nor other contemporary records suggest contact between the exploring party and the distinctive holders of Tiburon. The specific and repeated references in the itinerary to the island of San Agustin, or Tiburon, evidently relate to the ancient Isla de Santa Inez, the modern Isla Angel de la Guarda,48 one of the most prominent geographic features visible either from Cerro Nazareno or from the adjacent coast. There is no reason to infer that Kino or any of his party ever detected their error in identification of geographic features which must have been conspicuous in the lore of the aborigines and settlers of Sonora; indeed, the error well attests the prominence of the Seri and their habitat in the local thought of the time.49