The classifications by Pimentel and Orozco were widely accepted, and were given still wider currency by republication in standard works, such as the classic dictionary of the Nahuatl tongue by Rémi Siméon, in which is defined “La famille Seri, dans la Sonora, avec 3 idiomes: le Seri, le Guaima et l’Upanguaima.”191 In his ethnographic tableau of the nations and languages of Mexico, M. V. A. Malte-Brun followed Orozco almost literally, save that he emphasized the suggested Caribbean affiliation of the Seri, saying:

They make use of poisoned arrows, and when one studies their manners, their habits, their modes of life, one is tempted to find in them a strong affinity [grande affinité] with the Caribs of the continent and the islands.192

During the seventies Hubert Howe Bancroft was engaged in collecting material for his monumental series of works, and in arranging the ethnologic data for publication. Of the Seri he wrote:

East of the Opata and Pima bajo, on the shores of the Gulf of California, and thence for some distance inland, and also on the island of Tiburon, the Ceri language with its dialects, the Guaymi and Tepoca, is spoken. Few of the words are known, and the excuse given by travelers for not taking vocabularies is, that it was too difficult to catch the sound. It is represented as extremely harsh and guttural in its pronunciation and well suited to the people who speak it, who are described as wild and fierce. It is, so far as known, not related to any of the Mexican linguistic families.193

The only vocabulary of this language which Bancroft was able to find was added (without reference to the aboriginal source); it comprised the eleven words collected by Lavandera and discussed by Ramirez in 1850.194

The Seri, with their affines, the Tepoka, Salinero, Guayma, and Upanguayma, were included by Bancroft in his arbitrarily defined “Northern Mexican family”.195 The accompanying map (which is highly inaccurate) located the “Salineros” on the gulf coast, considerably north of the common embouchure of “R. de Horcasitas” and “Rio de Sonora”; while the “Seris” were more conspicuously represented about the broad estuary into which the rivers embouch, and the “Tepocas” were located still farther southward on both Tiburon and the mainland, the island being placed too far southward and the river much too far northward.196 Numerous data relating to the Seri were incorporated in his text; all were second-hand, though many were taken from unique or rare manuscripts. The coastwise natives of Sonora were said to “live on pulverized rush and straw, with fish caught at sea or in artificial enclosures”; mention was made of the allegation that “the Salineros sometimes eat their own excrement”; anthropophagy was noted, but as pertaining rather to the interior than to the coastwise tribes;197 and prominence was given to the Seri arrow poison, of which an early author wrote:

The poison with which they envenom the points of their arrows is the most active that has ever been known here.... It has not been possible to ascertain with certainty the deadly materials of which this pestilential compound is brewed. Many things are alleged, e. g., that it is made from the heads of vipers, irritated and decapitated at the moment of striking their teeth into a piece of lung or of half putrefied human flesh.

Reference was made also to the “magot” (probably the yerba mala of the modern Mexicans) as a source of arrow poison.198 The girls’ puberty feast was said to be kept up for several days among the Seri and Tepoka, and the former were said to “superstitiously celebrate the new moon, and bow reverentially to the rising and setting sun”, and also to “employ charms in their medical practice”.199 Finally, the constituent tribes were discriminated in a manner recalling the persistent assumption that the parasite-converts at the missions fairly represented the Seri:

The Tepocas and Tiburones are fierce, cruel, and treacherous, more warlike and courageous than the Ceris of the mainland, who are singularly devoid of good qualities, being sullenly stupid, lazy, inconstant, revengeful, depredating, and much given to intemperance. Their country even has become a refuge for evil doers. In former times they were warlike and brave, but even this quality they have lost, and have become as cowardly as they are cruel.200

It is evident that this characterization of “the Ceris of the mainland” was based on the degraded scavengers outlawed by the tribe and attached to the missions and pueblos during much of the historical period.

It was also during the seventies that the errors and uncertainties of three and a half centuries concerning the coasts of the Californian gulf were finally brought to an end through the surveys of Commander (now Admiral) George Dewey, U. S. N., and the officers of the United States ship Narragansett, under the direction of the Hydrographic Office of the United States. These surveys resulted in trustworthy and complete geodetic location of all coastwise features, in geographic placement of the entire coast-line, in soundings of such extent as to determine the bottom configuration, in tidal determinations, in recognition of the currents, in definition of harbors and anchorages, and eventually in a series of elegant and accurate charts (dated 1873-75) available for the cartographers and navigators of the world. As the largest island in the gulf, Tiburon received especial attention; its coast was accurately surveyed and mapped, while the interior was sketched in considerable detail, and the adjacent channels were carefully defined and sounded.

Naturally the surveyors came into contact with the Seri tribesmen. Of them Commander Dewey wrote:

During the greater part of the year Tiburon Island is resorted to by the Seris (or Ceres) tribe of Indians, who inhabit the adjacent mainland, and their huts and encampments may be seen in many places along the shore, principally on the eastern side of the island. They are reputed to be exceedingly hostile and to use poisoned arrows in opposing the landing of strangers on what they consider their domain, but during the stay of the Narragansett in the vicinity they were very friendly. At first they were shy and made threatening gestures, but soon finding that our intentions were peaceable, became friendly and returned our visits to the shore by frequent and lengthy calls on board ship. They are very expert in hunting with the bow and arrow and in catching fish and turtles, which abound in the surrounding waters. The canoes of these Indians deserve especial mention. They are made of long reeds, which are bound together with strings after the manner of fascines, three of which when fastened together ... have sufficient buoyancy to support one or two persons. They kneel in these canoes when paddling, the water being at the same level in the canoe as outside of it.201

Illustrations of the “Tiburon canoe” (or balsa), drawn by H. Von Bayer, were also introduced.202 In addition Mr Von Bayer succeeded in obtaining two photographs of Seri Indians, taken on shipboard; one of these is of special interest in that it illustrates the peculiar attitude of the Seri archer in the act of using his weapon.203

Unfortunately the surveys were confined to the coast, and the interior remained unmeasured and unmapped save on the basis of tradition and travelers’ tales, supplemented by a few vague itineraries and traverses. Except along the international boundary and the railway (Ferrocarril de Sonora), the locations of pueblos and ranches remained guesses, the delineation of mountains remained a work of imagination, and even the best cartographers continued to run in rivers at random or in such wise as to afford artistic effect.204

In 1879 M. Alphonse L. Pinart traveled extensively in northern Mexico and southwestern United States, and made considerable linguistic collections among various tribes. Desiring to obtain a Seri vocabulary, he planned a visit to the tribal territory; but on reaching Caborca in March he was met by the information that the Seri were on the warpath, and had recently devastated a hacienda on their frontier and slain more than a dozen white settlers.205 Thence he repaired to Pueblo Seri, and early in April obtained there a Seri-Spanish vocabulary of several hundred words, with a number of short phrases throwing some light on the grammatic construction. This record was transmitted to Dr Albert S. Gatschet. It comprises a title page inscribed “Vocabulario de la lengua Séri Interprete el GI. de los Seris y otro Indio. Pueblo de Seris 4 Abril 1879”; four foolscap sheets (written on both sides, thus making 16 pages) of vocabulary; and a final page bearing two short phrases and inscribed “Los Séris, me dice el general de ellos, son como doscientos hombres de llevar armas—viven todavia parte en la isla de Tiburon, parte en la costa.206 Pueblo de Seris, 4 Abril, 1879, Alph. Pinart.” A transcript of this invaluable vocabulary is preserved in the Bureau of American Ethnology. There is nothing either in the original vocabulary or in the known correspondence relating to it to identify the aboriginal informant, but the identification is made easy through the coincident testimony of living witnesses and the unmistakable implication of the historical records to the effect that there was at that time but a single Seri Indian207 resident at Pueblo Seri—i. e., the official interpreter, “El General” Kolusio. This identification is strengthened by the remarkable similarity between this vocabulary and that of Bartlett, a similarity made the more striking by the fact that one was recorded in English, the other in Spanish; the identification is supported, too, by Kolusio’s memory of “giving his language” to a stranger “not a Mexicano” yet familiar with the Spanish; and the identification is practically established by the considerable number of terms expressing concepts alien to the Seri (e. g., ax, adobe, house, horse, hog, field, irrigate, pigeon, thresh, tobacco, shirt, the names of the months, etc.), evidently acquired through long and intimate acquaintance with Mexican customs and domiciles and modes of thought—for all these concepts were familiar enough to Kolusio, yet to no other known Seri Indian of recent decades. Accordingly it may be deemed practically certain that M Pinart’s vocabulary, like that of Commissioner Bartlett, was obtained from Kolusio; and it is at least strongly probable that both the Lavandera-Ramirez and the Tenochio-Pimentel vocabularies were derived from the same aboriginal source—an indubitably excellent source, save for the occasional interjection of alien notions, and the infrequent substitution of foreign equivalents for forgotten terms.

Barred from Seriland by the current war craze, M Pinart was prevented from obtaining much collateral information concerning the Seri; but he concluded (on grounds not stated) that “the Tepoca spoken on the south of Rio del Altar is identical with the Seri”,208 and also that “the Guaymas were of the stock of the southern Pimas, or Nebomes”.209

While M Pinart failed to publish, his linguistic collections were compared, systemized, and made public by Dr Albert S. Gatschet in a notable memoir on “Der Yuma-Sprachstamm”, 1883. Comparing the Seri, as represented by the Pinart and Bartlett and Pimentel vocabularies, with the Yavapai, M’Mat, and incidentally with the Konino, Tonto, Cochimi, and other tongues, Dr Gatschet was led to adopt the suggestion of Professor Wilhelm Herzog210 that the Seri is a dialect of the Yuman stock. In the comparative vocabulary, which comprises about a hundred and forty Seri words (selected from the 611 terms in the Pinart collection), there are perhaps a dozen terms presenting some similarity to those of one or more Yuman dialects; among these are terms for ax, tree, split, tobacco, heaven, pigeon, dog, and others of presumptively or certainly alien character.211

Herzog’s suggested classification, with Gatschet’s indorsement, was accepted even more promptly and widely than the earlier classifications of Pimentel and Orozco. It was tacitly adopted by Director J. W. Powell in his classic arrangement of Indian linguistic families of America north of Mexico;212 it was explicitly approved by Adolph F. Bandelier in his “Final Report of Investigations”;213 and it was implicitly accepted and fortified by Dr Daniel G. Brinton in his work on “The American Race”.214 Brinton’s Seri words were “chiefly from the satisfactory vocabulary obtained by the late John Russell Bartlett”; of the 21 terms, about 8 (including that for the alien concept “house”) suggest affinity with the Yuman, chiefly in the Mohave dialect; the others are either wholly distinct or only superficially similar, e. g., in the concurrence of a consonant or two, or merely in the correspondence in number of syllables.215

Stated briefly, the scientific researches relating to Seriland and the Seri during the fifty years from the fourth decade of the century to the middle of the last decade resulted in (1) a satisfactory survey of the coast, (2) the collection of two excellent Seri vocabularies, with a few others of less extent, and (3) two discrepant linguistic classifications of the tribe, both widely quoted and accepted.

During the half century of historical silence from 1844 forward, and pending the progress of the desultory researches, the Seri suffered a succession of external shocks more serious in their internal effects than any of those of the three centuries preceding; indeed it is just to say that during this half century the Seri range was curtailed, the Seri customs were modified, and the Seri population was diminished more effectively than during the preceding sesquicentury of fairly definite record. The chief factor in this transformation was an intrepid pioneer, who pushed actual settlement toward the Seri frontier more vigorously than any predecessor—Señor Pascual Encinas, a son of Sonora.216

Born near Hermosillo in 1819, Don Pascual was in early maturity at the time of Colonel Andrade’s expedition, and was fully conversant with the later history of the Seri. Of adventurous disposition, and holding interests in Bacuachito, he was familiar with the Seri frontier; and in hunting deer and other large game over the vast delta plain of Rio Sonora he had perceived the agricultural possibilities of the region. During the struggle of 1844 he became impressed with the idea that the Seri might be controlled and gradually inducted into useful citizenship through a judicious combination of industrial, educational, and evangelical agencies; and before the end of the year he began the establishment of a rancho (the present Rancho San Francisco de Costa Rica) on the Seri borderland, with the double object of developing new resources and regulating the relations between tribesmen and settlers. Enlisting the aid of a corps of vaqueros, mechanics, and farmers, he excavated a deep well, erected corrals and adobe houses, cleared away the exceptionally luxuriant mesquite forests, fenced fields, and stocked the plains with horses, burros, and cattle. At the same time he sought Seri wanderers and treated them with such kindness and firmness as to gain their confidence; and while most of the tribe held aloof, some attached themselves to the rancho, and a few even were taught to labor; albeit in desultory fashion. In this stage, as for some years afterward, he was materially aided by his contemporary, Kolusio, then in his physical prime and still in good repute among his kinsmen. Meantime he obtained the assignment of two priests, who made it their chief duty still further to placate the tribesmen and their families and to induct them into religious observances and belief; and as the confidence of the Indians increased, he had two boys domiciled in the rancho and educated in the Spanish as well as in the faith, in the hope that they might pass into priesthood and so form a future bond with their kin. One of these neophytes disappeared in the troublous times of a later decade, though tradition indicates that he became a tribal outcast (like Kolusio still later) and slunk away to Pitiquito and Altar, and afterward to California; the other, christened Juan Estorga and nicknamed El Gran Pelado (“The Great Shorn”), survives as subchief Mashém, long since relapsed into his native savagery, save that he remembers the Spanish, affects a hat, cuts his hair to the neck (whence his nickname), and prefers footgear to the fashion of his fellows.

Industrially, Don Pascual’s venture proved successful; the fertile soil, periodically watered from below by the underflow of the semiannual freshets, yielded incredible crops; reveling in the exceptional floral wealth of the delta and tided over bad seasons by the artificial forage, the stock increased and multiplied beyond precedent; and so the rancho became a flourishing establishment, housing a score or more of families and harboring a hundred or two dependents, in addition to the thousands of half-wild horses and cattle. Meantime, the industrial lines ramifying from the rancho formed a drag net for Seri raiders, practically cutting off forays eastward toward Hermosillo and Horcasitas, and greatly reducing the sallies southeastward toward Guaymas and northeastward toward Bacuachito and Caborca; and Don Pascual began to receive recognition and state and federal concessions as a public benefactor. For a decade the industrial and evangelical influence and the effect of the bold kindness of El Patron extended and became felt throughout the tribe, and most of the families visited the rancho at least occasionally. Yet even the best of them remained averse to labor save in sporadic spurts, and indifferent to the religious teaching, save when sweetened by substantial largess; while all but the decrepit and the two carefully restrained neophytes came and went capriciously, and were much given to decamping incontinently by night to return shamefacedly one by one in the course of a week or two, without consistent or adequate excuse for their stampede—indeed the vaqueros habitually classed these nocturnal flights of the Seri and the reasonless stampedes of their stock in the same category. Ostensibly a few of the larger boys and girls and a still smaller number of the adults were helpers about the rancho; actually they were scavengers, consuming the waste of the shambles and the earth-mixed scatterings from the thrashing floors, and saving the rancheros the noisome duty of removing the carcasses of animals dead by disease or accident; and as their indolence increased under the easy régime, they grew into more and more open thievery. By no means deficient in shrewdness and cunning, they adopted numberless devices for imposing on the credulity of the majordomo and other officials of the rancho. When coin-like tokens of stamped copper were used in the transactions of the rancho as equivalents of labor, the Seri ingeniously obtained sheet copper by stealth or barter, systematically counterfeited the tokens, and exchanged them for supplies at the rancho store; it was a favorite trick to surreptitiously break the neck or a leg of a horse, cow, or burro, and report finding the dead or crippled animal, at the same time begging for the carcass; and, whenever opportunity offered, they slyly slaughtered a head of stock, consumed it to the hoofs and horns and larger bones, sucked up the blood stains, and buried the few remains in cactus thickets, impenetrable save by their own hardy limbs and bodies. Nor did any of the tribe except the two restrained neophytes ever really enter the collective life of the patriarchal group headed by Don Pascual; they attended no industrial or social or churchly function save in response to reminder and solicitation; they craved the white man’s medicines in slight disorders, but rejected them in extremis; and the dying or dead were spirited away to be inhumed and mourned, according to their wont, in their harsh but beloved motherland.

During this period of mutual toleration the Seri were so deeply influenced by the white contact that, for probably the only time in their history, they voluntarily allowed an alien free entry into their territory; and Don Pascual explored the coast of Bahia Kino, projected a port, and even visited Isla Tiburon twice or thrice. In one of these visits he was ferried over Boca Infierno on a balsa, but, finding himself unable to keep pace with the swift-footed Seri on their hilly pathways, he returned for his saddle mule; halfway across, the poor animal swimming behind the balsa suddenly plunged and struggled, and, on landing, hobbled out on three legs—the fourth having being snapped by a shark. Warned by this incident, Don Pascual abandoned a half-formed plan of stocking the island, and afterward brought up a small vessel from Guaymas in which he carried across a dozen caballeros (including Don Ygnacio Lozania, who had visited the island with the Andrade expedition); and this party examined the southeastern quarter of the island, watering two or three times at Tinaja Anita, and pushing as far westward as Arroyo Carrizal. On this trip he studied the Seri house-building, and was the first to note the large use of turtle-shells and sponges in the process.217

About the middle fifties it became apparent that the Seri were dividing into a parasitical portion clustered about the rancho (as their forbears gathered about Populo and Pueblo Seri long before), and a more independent faction clinging to their rugged ranges and gale-swept fishing grounds; and it became evident, too, that the thievery of the dependent faction would soon ruin the rancho if not checked, or at least greatly diminished. Accordingly the passive policy was modified by introducing a more active police service. At first the penalties for theft and misdemeanors were light, and the system promised well—especially as even a slight punishment was equivalent to banishment, the criminal fleeing to Tiburon on his escape or immediately after the crime; yet the experience of a year or two proved that the escaped parasites seldom resumed the hard customs of their tribal life, but generally returned to the borderland and there preyed on the wandering stock from the rancho. Finally, driven to extremity, and supported by the state and federal authorities (themselves confessedly unable successfully to cope with the condition), Don Pascual reluctantly adopted a severer régime. Sending out as messengers several Seri still remaining at the rancho, he convened the leading chiefs and clanmothers of the tribe in a council, and announced that the stock-killing must cease, on pain of a Seri head for each head of stock thereafter slain. The Indians seemingly acquiesced, and separated; but within two days a group of Seri women “milled” a band of horses, caught and threw one in such wise as to break its neck, and immediately sucked its blood, gorged its intestines, and buried its quarters to “ripen”, after their former fashion. Thereupon a matron remaining near the rancho was sent to demand the delivery of the perpetrators; and, when she failed to return, the vaqueros were instructed to shoot the first Seri seen on the llano. Within two days more, the tribe were on the warpath for revenge—and the war raged for a decade.

During the early months of the Encinas war Don Pascual’s vaqueros sought merely to enforce the barbaric law of a head for a head; but, as they found themselves beset by ambush, assailed and wounded by night, despoiled of favorite animals, and kept constantly in that most nerve-trying state of eternal vigilance, their rancor rose to an intensity nearly equal to the savage passion for blood-vengeance; and thenceforth the Seri were hunted from the plain east of Desierto Encinas precisely as were the stealthy jaguar and sneaking coyote—and the ghastly details were better spared. There were few open battles; commonly the vaqueros rode in groups and guarded against ambuscades, and the Seri were picked off one by one; but once in the early sixties Don Pascual, at the head of some 30 vaqueros, fell into an ambush on the frontier, and several of his horses were killed and some of his men wounded, while 60 or 70 Seri warriors were left on the field. Don Pascual’s horse received a slight arrow wound, to which little attention was paid; next morning the gash was swollen and inflamed and the beast too stiff and logy for use; in the afternoon the glands under the jaw were swollen, and there was a purulent discharge from eyes and nostrils. On the second morning the animal was hardly able to move, its head was enormously swollen, there were fetid ulcers about the jaws and throat, and the swelling extended to the legs and abdomen. On the third morning there were suppurating ulcers on various parts of the body, while rags of putrefied flesh and stringy pus hung from the head and neck, and the animal was unapproachable because of the stench; during the day it dropped dead, and even the coyotes and buzzards shrank from the pestilential carcass. This and parallel incidents impressed Don Pascual with the dangers incident to Seri war; but fortunately the fact that he—the leader of the party, the first to fall into the ambush, and the target of most of the arrows—had escaped unscathed impressed still more deeply the surviving savages, and they soon sued for peace. Thenceforth he was revered as a shaman greater than those of the tribe, feared as an invulnerable fighter, and honored as a just lawgiver; and gradually the condition of mutual tolerance was restored, to rest on a firmer basis than before.

Don Pascual estimates that during the dozen years of strife between his men and the Seri forces about half of the tribe were slain. The horror of the history of this period may be passed over; it may merely be noted as a casual fact that one of the two Mexicans accompanying the 1895 expedition was credited with 17 Seri heads. When he pointed out the site of his last exploit, a mile or two south of Rancho Libertad, and some incredulity was expressed, he immediately galloped to the spot and brought back a silent witness in the form of a bleached Seri skull.218

At the close of the war Don Pascual continued the industrial development of the plains lying east of the desert border of Seriland, received new concessions in recognition of his conquest, and developed the ranches of Santa Ana and Libertad; but the evangelical arm of his vigorous mission gradually withered. For a dozen years the Seri looked up to “El Patron” as a quasi ruler, whose approval was requisite for the ratification of chieftainship, and through him ran a slender thread of nominal fealty to the state and the republic; yet few parasites gathered about the rancho. Mashém had gone back to his clan; and when depredations were committed at Bacuachito or elsewhere and the criminals were caught, usually through Don Pascual’s instrumentality, they were sometimes haled to Hermosillo for trial, and Kolusio was kept there as the official interpreter of charges and evidence and findings. Sometime during the sixties a few Seri youths were coaxed to Pueblo Seri for education, but when they were instructed to cut their hair they slunk dejectedly to their temporary domicile, only to decamp during the ensuing night; again, in 1870, Kolusio was commissioned to bring in a few young people and a matron or two of the tribe, and succeeded in doing so just in time to encounter an epidemic of measles, from which some died, while the others shook the dust of the pueblo from their feet forever; and this last straw, added to his alien residence and his presence at the dreaded trials, broke down the tribal toleration of Kolusio and made him an outlaw forever.

In the later seventies Don Pascual’s energies began to wane, while the Seri population was waxing again; and, although the Encinas frontier was protected, raids began to recur toward Bacuachito, on the ranchos southwest of Caborca, and sometimes toward Guaymas; and the hostilities then engendered have never terminated. In the eighties Don Pascual suffered from cataract, gradually losing his sight, and his rule relaxed still further; Rancho Libertad was abandoned, and a condition of armed neutrality supervened at San Francisco de Costa Rica and Santa Ana; and this condition still persists, save as occasionally modified by a crude sort of diplomacy on the part of the Seri: when blood-feud is not burning (and it is usually extinguished by the killing of an alien on the coast or some remote part of the frontier), and when no stock have been slaughtered for some months, an aged woman may be seen skulking about the mesquite clumps in sight of the rancho; if her presence is tolerated for a day or two, she approaches to beg for water and food and to receive the cast-off rags hastily forced on her nakedness by the sensitive señoras; if she deem her welcome not too chill, she erects a jacal a few hundred yards away, and there she is usually found, a morning or two later, to be accompanied by a younger matron with a child or two; and if these are tolerated, the rancheria may grow to half a dozen jacales and half a hundred persons.219 The band may remain a fortnight or even a month; but in case of serious illness of any of their number, or of threat or punishment for petty peccadillos, or of an unusual storm, or of a brilliant meteor, or of any exceptional occurrence about the rancho, the rancheria is commonly found empty next morning. If the attachés of the rancho are indisposed to tolerate the first envoy, yet feel kindly rather than rancorous, she is merely dogged and stoned away like a depredating domestic animal from another hacienda; if the rancor of past encounters remains, the mercy accorded her is precisely that shown the predatory coyote or other feral animal from the fastnesses of the sierras—and the tribe take warning and doubtless rejoice that their loss is no greater.

Any recital of the common history of the peculiarly savage Seri and the whites necessarily conveys an exaggerated notion of intimacy and mutual influence, since it emphasizes the few positive interrelations scattered along the decades of neglected nonrelation; and this is true of the Encinas régime as of earlier centuries. The great fact is that throughout their recorded history the Seri have touched civilization so slightly and so seldom that the effect of each contact was largely lost before the next supervened; and the unprecedentedly intimate contact of the Encinas régime, especially during the initial period of abnormal toleration, serves less to indicate relationship in characteristics and sympathies than to measure the breadth of the chasm between the Seri and the Mexican—a chasm not exceeded, and probably not equaled, elsewhere in America. About the middle fifties, probably every Seri above infancy and below decrepitude had seen Don Pascual and some other habitués of the rancho; they yielded to the seductions of indolent scavengering apparently more numerously than ever before; they substituted cast-off rags and barter-bought manta (plain cotton cloth) for the products of their own primitive weaving; they ate cooked food when it fell in their way; they half-heartedly adopted metal cutting implements, and sought or stole nails and hoop-iron for arrowpoints; some of them acquired a smattering of Spanish, and many of them solicited and sported Spanish names, just as they begged and flaunted tawdry handkerchiefs and beads; and they generally enjoyed mildly the ecclesiastical fiestas, and took kindly to the cross as a symbol of peace and plenty and perhaps of deeper import. Yet even during this halcyon term no Seri save Kolusio and the Altar outlaw ever learned to live in a house; none but these and Mashém wore hats habitually; and, despite the fact that they often witnessed and sometimes playfully or perforce participated in the processes, no Seri ever really encompassed the idea of house-building or even of making adobe. Though surrounded by horses when near the rancho, they never learned to ride nor to use the animals otherwise than for immediate slaughter and consumption; though in frequent sight of skilful ropers, they never fully grasped the idea of the riata, preferring to seize their prey with hands and teeth; though familiar with the agricultural operations of the rancho, they never turned a sod nor planted a seed on their own account; though in frequent sight of cooking, they seldom began and never finished the process with their own food; though acquainted with firearms, they continued to regard them as thaumaturgic devices, and chose the bow and arrow for actual use; though submitting to apparel on the frontier, they commonly cast away the incumbrances on returning to their lairs; and no Mexican or other Caucasian ever saw within their esoteric life—their names remained unrevealed, their hair remained sacred, their mourning for the dead was unheard save at a distance, and no alien, even unto today, has ever seen the birth of their babes, the christening of their children, the burial of their dead, or the ceremonies of their shrines. The Seri and the whites were, indeed, mutually tolerant; but, so far as concerns mutual sympathy, the toleration was almost precisely on a par with that between the ranchero and the vulture-flock that scavengers his corrals—and when depredation began the toleration was of a piece with that between householders and their unwillingly domiciled rodents. It is not too much to say that the interracial mistrust and hatred of the Western Hemisphere culminates on the borders of Seriland; though the antipathy is commonly regarded by the alien tribesmen and the Mexicans as other than racial, since the Seri are felt to be hardly human—a feeling fully shared by the Seri, who undoubtedly deem themselves more closely akin to their deified bestial tutelaries than to the hated humans haunting their borders.

Even during the Encinas régime the Seri came in occasional contact with aliens on other parts of the frontier: on Hacienda Serna, the somewhat remoter borderland outpost on the north, the relations between the landholders and the Seri were analogous to those on the Encinas plains, though less acute in the ratio of relative distance. Occasionally small parties of warriors journeyed to Guaymas220 on balsas or on foot to barter pelican-skin robes for Caucasian commodities, chiefly aguardiente and manta; still more rarely similar pilgrimages were made to the outskirts of Hermosillo; a few marauding raids were made to the ranches lying near Cieneguilla and Caborca; and a number of ill-advised prospecting parties, coming by land or water, paid the penalty of foolhardiness. Writing about 1864, Historian Velasco recurred to the Seri to say:

This handful of bandits, assassins, thieves, brutes [inhumanos], infinitely vile and cowardly, on February 28 last, on the Guaymas road, at the place called Huerfano, assassinated 4 unhappy women, including a girl of 9 years, and 7 men who were conducting them in a cart toward that port.

He bitterly denounced the apparent apathy of the state and federal authorities, adding:

When it is read in history fifty years hence that a handful of murderous Ceris, certainly not more than 80 of the tribe able to bear arms, was able to domineer in the midst of their crimes with unexampled audacity on account of the debility of the government and the inhabitants, it will be regarded as a romance or a fable; for it seems impossible that in the nineteenth century such a condition of things could exist to degrade the reason, the morality, and the dignity of civilized man.

Yet a final note, apparently added in press, recorded that—

In consequence of the last incident of the Ceris, the prefect of Guaymas, Don Cayetano Navarro, took the field, returning with 12 women and 16 children prisoners; also 2 striplings and a vieillard. He slew 9 among those who had no leader. This was on Isla Tiburon. The Indians fled thence, and are supposed to be at Tepococ.221

These may be considered as characteristic skirmishes attending the Encinas war. Other episodes followed, including the outbreaks of 1879, noted in part by M Pinart. Bacuachito suffered in various locally important events that will never be written: when Don Jesus Omada, a water-guide to the expedition of 1895, was asked about the Seri at Bacuachito, he answered with cumulative vehemence, “They killed my father. They killed my brother! They killed my brother’s wife!! They have killed half my friends!!!” As he spoke he was feverishly baring his breast; displaying a frightful scar over the clavicle, he exclaimed, “There struck a Seri arrow”; then he stripped his arm with a single sweep to reveal a ragged cicatrix extending nearly from shoulder to wrist, and added in a tone tremulous with pent bitterness, “The Seri have teeth!”

In the course of the half century from 1844 onward, the population of Sonora increased materially, and carried more than a proportionate increase in the development of agricultural and mineral resources; and, especially under the beneficent Diaz régime, the state passed from the condition of a remote frontier province into that of a well-governed commonwealth. Naturally this progress carried the Caucasian element, including that of blended blood, farther and farther away from the nonprogressive Seri; and thereby the horror and detestation awakened by the very utterance of the name of the lowly tribe were intensified beyond description or ready understanding. The traditions of arrow poisoning were kept alive, and, doubtless, growing; the recitals of carrion eating were repeated, and possibly—just possibly—magnified beyond the reality; the accounts of offense and defense by nails and teeth (such as that of Jesus Omada) passed from mouth to mouth until—incredible as it may seem—the more timid Sonorenses stood in greater dread of these natural weapons of the Seri than of their brutal clubs and swift-thrown missiles, or even of their poisoned arrows; while traditions of cannibalism came up and received such general credence that the current items of Seri outrages, both in local gossip and in the Mexican and American press, customarily recounted savage butcheries ending with gruesome feastings on the raw or slightly cooked flesh of the victims. The shuddering antipathy felt for the perpetrators of these inhumanities even a thousand miles away increased toward their frontier, as light toward its source; the dread was deepened by the failure of punitive expeditions sent out again and again only to be balked by waterless sand-wastes or wrecking tiderips; and in 1894 and 1895, at least, the horror of the Seri was a daily and nightly incubus on half the citizens of Hermosillo and the tributary pueblos and ranchos, and a thorn in the flesh of the state officials.

The external history of the Seri since the spring of 1894 is fairly known, both through the direct researches and through press reports, and would seem to be typical. This era may be assumed to open with the arrival on Tiburon’s shores of the sloop Examiner, carrying two San Francisco newspaper writers, Robinson and Logan, with two assistants, Clark and Cowell. The to-have-been-expected happened duly, save that two of the party escaped, and on reaching Guaymas advertised the disaster through correspondence and the press. Several of the accounts indicated that the two victims were not only slain but eaten, and various plans were laid in California, Arizona, and Sonora for the recovery of the bones222—as if, forsooth, the omnivorous and strong-toothed Seri spared anything save scattered teeth and split sections of the longer shafts of skeletons the size of those of Homo sapiens. While in Guaymas the two survivors set up claims for indemnity, which initiated international correspondence and inquiry into the details of the affair. These details are indicated, in sufficient fulness for present purposes, in a formal communication incorporated in the international correspondence, viz.:

Smithsonian Institution,
Bureau of American Ethnology,
Washington, December 14, 1894.

Sir: Early in November I visited the Seri tribe of Indians, inhabiting Tiburon island in the Gulf of California and an area of several thousand square miles of the adjacent mainland in Sonora, Mexico. The visit was for the purpose of making collections under your authority as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; but I availed myself of the opportunity for obtaining additional information relating to the customs, habits, and history of the tribe. In addition to my own party I was accompanied by Señor Pascual Encinas, a prominent citizen of Hermosillo, and owner of several ranchos adjacent to, and one within, the territory claimed by the Seri Indians; also by Señor A. Alvemar-Leon of Hermosillo, a young Mexican gentleman educated in the United States. For Señor Encinas the Seri Indians have the highest regard, and his kindly motive in accompanying the party was to facilitate friendly intercourse with the Indians; Señor Alvemar-Leon acted as Spanish-English interpreter, and one of the tribe who speaks Spanish [Mashém] acted as the Seri interpreter.

One of the subjects of inquiry of the Indians related to the alleged killing of two Americans by the Seri Indians on Tiburon island during last spring at a date not definitely known either to the Indians or to myself. At first the Indians were indisposed to convey information on the subject, but after receiving presents from Señor Encinas and myself, and friendly assurances from the former, the interpreter for the tribe confessed the crime and detailed the circumstances, denying, however, that any of the Indians present at the place of conference (Rancho de San Francisco de Costa Rica, 17 leagues west-southwest of Hermosillo and near the coast) participated.

According to the first account given through the Indian interpreter, the Indians on the island saw a small vessel approach the shores of the island, and saw four men land therefrom in a small boat. The spokesman among the strangers made inquiry, chiefly by signs, as to whether game was abundant in the interior of the island, and was by signs answered in the affirmative by the chief of the tribe, who displayed a letter of authority from the state officials at Hermosillo. Then the strangers divided, two remaining on the shore by the small boat, while the spokesman and another, accompanied by several Indians, started toward the interior of the island. When they were some distance away—the account continues—some of the Indians remaining on shore indicated by signs a desire to borrow the rifle of one of the two men on the beach, and after some parley the rifle was turned over to them; then the Indians desired also to borrow the small boat in which the party of white men had landed, and after one of the two men remaining on the shore was put aboard the vessel, this, too, was placed in the hands of the Indians. Thereupon several of the Indians entered the small boat, carrying the white man’s rifle, and rowed around a headland a short distance away. Passing this point they landed and a part of them ran quickly into the interior in such direction as to intercept the course of the white men. There they lay in wait until the strangers appeared, when they shot the spokesman, killing him almost instantly. On this the second white man cried out for help, whereupon he too was shot and wounded, and then (according to the first account) ran away and concealed himself in the bushes and was seen no more. The Indians who had borrowed the boat then went back to the shore, and reentered the boat with the intention of returning and capturing the fine vessel of the strangers; but as they approached the vessel, being at the time quite near the shore, the man on board arose suddenly with a gun pointed toward them and shouted, whereupon they dropped the borrowed gun and, leaping from the boat, ran away among the mesquite bushes, all escaping unhurt. The white man on the beach then, as the account ran, leaped into the boat, and, recovering his gun, rowed to the vessel and got aboard, when the two men at once made sail and escaped down the bay.

The foregoing account was given to Señor Encinas alone by the Indians through their interpreter, and was afterward conveyed to me through Señor Alvemar-Leon. Both of us recognized the incongruity with the character of the Seri Indians of that part of the narrative relating to the wounding and escape of the second man, and Señores Encinas and Leon and myself sought to impress the improbability of the account on the interpreter. Subsequently the Indians, through their interpreter, conveyed to Señor Encinas a modification of the account (after adhering to the first version for twenty-four hours), which agreed in all essential respects with the first, excepting the supplementary statement that some of the Indians (but neither the party who accompanied the white men nor those who followed in the boat) ran after the wounded man, caught him, shot him again—whereupon he again cried out—and then killed him with stones. This modified account, also, Señor Encinas duly conveyed to me.