There is some doubt as to who was the first among the Caucasian
explorers of the Western Hemisphere to set eyes on the Seri Indians.
Nuño de Guzman, rival of Cortés and invader of Jalisco and Sinaloa,
must have approached the southern boundary of Seri territory about
1530, though there is no record of contact with these tribesmen. Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza, one of Cortés’ captains, coasted along southern
Sonora in 1532 to a point considerably beyond Rio Yaqui, where he was
massacred on his return, and hence left no record of more northerly
natives.[19] Both of these pioneers must accordingly be eliminated from
the list of probable discoverers of the Seri.
[19] Theodore H. Hittell, History of California, 1898, vol. I, pp.
43-44.
In the course of their marvelous transcontinental journey, Alvar
Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions also approached Seriland, and
apparently skirted its borders shortly before meeting Captain Diego
de Alcaraz, of Guzman’s party; this was in April, 1536, according to
Bandelier.[20] Vaca wrote: “On the coast is no maize: the inhabitants
eat the powder of rush and of straw, and fish that is caught in the sea
from rafts, not having canoes. With grass and straw the women cover
their nudity. They are a timid and dejected people.”[21] He added half
a dozen ambiguous sentences, of which only a part, apparently, refer to
the “timid and dejected people”; half of these describe a poison used
by them “so deadly that if the leaves be bruised and steeped in some
neighboring water, the deer and other animals drinking it soon burst”.
The people were identified as Seri (Ceris) by Buckingham Smith and
General Stone,[22] and the identification may be considered as strongly
probable, provided the Tepoka be classed with the Seri.
[20] Contributions to the History of the Southwestern Portion of the
United States (Hemenway Southwestern Archæological Expedition), Papers
of the Archæological Institute of America, American series, V, 1890, p.
44.
[21] Relation of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, translated from the
Spanish by Buckingham Smith; New York, 1871, p. 172.
[22] Ibid, p. 178.
The next Caucasians to approach Seriland appear to have been the two
Spanish monks, Fray Pedro Nadal and Fray Juan de la Asuncion, who, in
1538, sought to retrace Vaca’s route, and traveled northward to a river
somewhat doubtfully identified as the Gila;[23] but the meager accounts
of this journey contain no clear reference to the Seri Indians.
[23] Cf. Bandelier, Magazine of Western History, IV, 1886, p. 660.
On March 7-19, 1539, the Italian friar Marcos de Niza left San Miguel
de Culiacan under instructions from the Viceroy, Don Antonio de
Mendoza, to explore the territory traversed by Vaca, under the guidance
of the negro Estevanico, the only one of Vaca’s three companions
remaining in Mexico; in good time he reached a point probably not far
from the center of the present state of Sonora, whence messengers
were sent coastward to return duly accompanied by certain “very poor”
Indians wearing pearl-oyster (?) ornaments, who were reputed to inhabit
a large island (almost certainly Tiburon) reached from the mainland
by means of balsas. Bandelier identified these coastwise Indians with
the Guayma tribe, a supposed branch of the Seri;[24] but if the “large
island” were Tiburon, it would seem more probable that the Indians
belonged to the tribe now known as Seri, while both description and
location suggest the Tepoka. This record is of questionable weight,
partly by reason of the doubtful identification of the Indians, and
partly because the friar’s itinerary was found to be misleading by
his immediate successors, because of the fact that portions of his
narrative were based on hearsay; though it is just to note that
Bandelier, after critical study, deemed the record about as trustworthy
as others of the time, and to add that the disparagement of Niza’s
discoveries by his followers was in accord with the fashion of the
day—indeed it was little more severe relatively than the criticism of
the strikingly trustworthy Ulloa by his first follower, Alarcon.
[24] Ibid, pp. 661-663; Papers of the Archæological Institute of
America, American series, V, p. 118.
On July 8-19, 1539, according to the collection of Ramusio, three
vessels sent out by Cortés to discover unknown lands—“Of Which Fleete
was Captaine the right worshipfull knight Francis de Vlloa borne in
the Citie of Merida”—sailed from Acapulco.[25] Skirting the mainland
northwestward, they explored Mar de Cortés, or Gulf of California;
and on September 24 (as fixed by interpolation from Ulloa’s excellent
itinerary) they descried and described the features of the coast in
such fashion as to locate their vessels (one was already lost) off the
southern point of Tiburon, and in sight of the islands of San Esteban
and San Lorenzo, as well as locally prominent points on the mainland
of Lower California. Here they “discerned the countrey to be plaine,
and certaine mountaines, and it seemed that a certaine gut of water
like a brooke ran through the plaine” (p. 322). Judging from other
geographic details, this “gut of water” was certainly the tide-torn
gateway now named Boca Infierno; while the next day’s sailing (it is
noteworthy that this was “north” instead of northwestward as usual)
carried them by “a circuit or bay of 6 leagues into the land with
many coones or creeks”, evidently Bahia Tepopa with the northern end
of the turbulent strait El Infiernillo. The record shows clearly that
Ulloa discovered Tiburon, but failed (quite naturally, in view of the
route pursued and the peculiar configuration at both extremities of
the strait) to perceive its insular character. No mention is made of
inhabitants or habitations on this land-mass, though both are described
on the neighboring island of Angel de la Guarda in terms that would be
applicable to the Seri.
[25] The Voyages of the English Nation to America, collected by Richard
Hakluyt and edited by Edmund Goldsmid, 1890, vol. III, p. 317.
On Monday, February 23, 1540, according to Winship,[26] Captain-General
Francisco Vazquez Coronado set out on his ambitious and memorable
expedition to the Seven Cities of Cibola. His course lay from
Compostela along the coast of Culiacan, and thence northward through
what is now Sinaloa and Sonora. On May 9-20, 1540, Hernando de Alarcon
set sail on the ancillary expedition by sea; he followed the coast from
Acapulco to Colorado river, and although he undoubtedly saw and was
the first to name Tiburon,[27] and claimed to have “discouered other
very good hauens for the ships whereof Captaine Francis de Vlloa was
General, for the Marquesse de Valle neither sawe nor found them”,[28]
he made no specific record of any of the features of Seriland or of
contact with the Seri Indians. Meantime Coronado’s forces were divided,
a considerable part of the army falling behind the leader; and some
time during the early summer the belated army, under Don Tristan de
Arellano, founded the town of San Hieronimo de los Corazones, which in
the following year (1541) was transferred to a place in Señora (Sonora)
not now identifiable. From Corazones Don Rodrigo Maldonado went down to
the seacoast to seek the ships, and brought back with him “an Indian
so large and tall that the best man in the army reached only to his
chest”, with reports of still taller Indians along the coast.[29] It is
impossible to locate Maldonado’s route with close accuracy, but in view
of geographic and other conditions it is evident (as recently shown
by Hodge[30]) that he must have descended Rio Sonora and approached
or reached the coast over the broad delta-plain of that stream south
of Sierra Seri, and thus within Seri territory. The reported gigantic
stature practically identifies the Indians visited by him with the
Seri, since no other gigantic tribes were consistently reported by
explorers of western North America, and since the 6-foot Seri warriors,
with their frequent Sauls of greater stature, are in fact gigantic in
comparison with the average Spanish soldiery of earlier centuries.
There are indications that the fame of these giants of the Southern sea
spread to Europe and filtered slowly throughout the intellectual world,
and that the fancy-clothed colossi grew with their travels, after the
manner of their kind—indeed, there is no slender reason for opining
that these half-mythical islanders were the real originals of Jonathan
Swift’s Brobdingnagians,[31] despite his location of their fabled land
a few degrees farther northward on the long-mysterious coast below the
elusive “Straits of Anian”.
[26] The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, Fourteenth Annual Report of
the Bureau of Ethnology, 1896, p. 382.
[27] As a harbor or anchorage marked “del Tiburon” on the map of
“Domingo del Castillo, Piloto”, drawn in 1541, and reproduced in
Historia de Nueva-España, escrita por su esclarecido Conquistador
Hernán Cortés, aumentada con otras documentos, y notas, por el
ilustrissimo Señor Don Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Arzobispo de
Mexico; Mexico, 1770, p. 328.
[28] The Voyages of the English Nation to America, vol. IV, p. 6.
[29] Winship, op. cit., p. 484.
[30] Coronado’s March to Quivira, in J. V. Brower, Harahey (Memoirs of
Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi, vol. II), 1899, p. 36.
[31] Cf. The History of Oregon, California, and the other Territories
on the Northwest Coast of North America, by Robert Greenhow, 1845, p.
97; History of California, by Theodore H. Hittell, 1898, vol. I, p. 149.
About the middle of September, 1540, Captain Melchior Diaz, then in
command at Corazones, selected 25 men from the force remaining at that
point, and set out for the coast on what must have been one of the
most remarkable, as it is one of the least-known, expeditions in the
history of Spanish exploration; for he traversed either the streamless
coast or the hardly more hospitable interior through one of the most
utterly desert regions in North America, from the lower reaches of Rio
Sonora to the mouth of the Colorado. The record of this journey is
meager, ambiguous, and apparently inconsecutive; it indicates that he
encountered the Indian giants seen by Maldonado, but confused them with
the Indians of the Lower Colorado. On the return journey Diaz lost his
life through an accident, and his party reached Corazones on January
18, 1541, after encountering hostility from Indians not far from that
settlement. Word was sent to Coronado, then in winter quarters on the
Rio Grande, who dispatched Don Pedro de Tovar to the settlement for the
purpose of punishing the hostile natives; he, in turn, sent Diego de
Alcaraz with a force to seize the “chiefs and lords of a village”. This
Alcaraz did, but soon liberated his prisoners for a petty exchange.
“Finding themselves free, they renewed the war and attacked them, and
as they were strong and had poison, they killed several Spaniards and
wounded others so that they died on the way back.... They got back to
the town, leaving 17 soldiers dead from the poison. They would die
in agony from only a small wound, the bodies breaking out with an
insupportable pestilential stink.”[32]
[32] Winship, op. cit., p. 502.
The Coronado expedition had still further experience with (evidently)
the same Indians; for as the army approached Corazones on the return
a soldier was wounded, and was successfully treated, according to the
record, with the juice of the quince. “The poison, however, had left
its mark upon him. The skin rotted and fell off until it left the bones
and sinews bare, with a horrible smell. The wound was in the wrist, and
the poison had reached as far as the shoulder when he was cured. The
skin on all this fell off.”[33]
[33] Ibid., p. 538.
There is some question as to the identity of the Indians met by Diaz’s
men, Alcaraz and his force, and the Coronado army near Corazones; but
various indications point toward the Seri. In the first place, the
several Indian settlements mentioned in the records define what must
have been then, as it was two centuries later, the Seri frontier,
beyond which lay the “despoblado” of Villa-Señor, i. e., the immense
area hunted and harried by roving bands from Tiburon; so that the Seri
must frequently have crossed the paths pursued by the Spanish pioneers.
In the second place, the accounts themselves seem to be typical records
of contact with Seri Indians, which might be repeated for each
subsequent episode in their history or century in time. The description
of the effect of the poison is especially suggestive of the Seri; as
pointed out on a later page, the Seri arrow-venom is magical in motive,
but actually consists of decomposing and ptomaine-filled organic
matter, so that it is sometimes septic in fact, while the arrow-poison
of the neighboring Opata, Jova, and other Piman tribes was (so far as
can be ascertained) vegetal; and these accounts seem to attest septic
poisoning rather than the effects of any known vegetal toxic.[34]
[34] It should he noted that Mr. F. W. Hodge, whose large acquaintance
with the Southwest and its literature gives his opinion great weight,
is inclined to class the Indians in question as Opata.
Such (assuming the validity of the several identifications) are the
earliest records concerning the truculent tribesmen and the desolate
district known centuries later as the Seri and Seriland.
* * * * *
About 1545 began the Dark Ages in the history of northwestern Mexico;
the excursion of Guzman, and the journeys of Cabeza de Vaca and Friar
Marcos and of Coronado himself, died out of the memory of the solitary
adventurers and scattering settlers who slowly infused Spanish culture
and a strain of Caucasian blood into the Sonoran province; even the
route taken by Coronado’s imposing cavalcade was lost for centuries,
to be retraced only during the present generation, largely through the
determinations of Simpson, Bandelier, Winship, and Hodge.[35] It is
true that Don Francisco de Ibarra penetrated the territory in 1563, and
remained until rumors of gold in other districts drew him elsewhere;
it is also true that Captain Diego Martinez de Hurdaide pushed into
the province in 1584, and entered on a career of subjugation, waging
persistent war with the Yaqui, which resulted in the acquisition of the
territory of Sonora by treaty April 15, 1610;[36] yet few records of
exploration or settlement were written before the advent of the Jesuit
missionaries, toward the end of the seventeenth century.
[35] Op. cit., pp. 29-73.
[36] Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, por F. T. Dávila, 1894, p. 8.
Still more astounding was the eclipse of knowledge of the gulf. Despite
Ulloa’s survey of the entire coast, recorded in an itinerary so
detailed that every day’s sailing may readily be retraced, and despite
Alarcon’s repetition of the surveys and extension of the discoveries
far up Rio Colorado (where his work was verified by that of Melchior
Diaz), a mythic cartography arose to shadow knowledge and delude
exploration for a century and a half; for “upon the authority of a
Spanish chart, found accidently by the Dutch, and of the authenticity
of which there never were, or indeed could be, any proofs obtained,
an opinion prevailed that California was an island, and the contrary
assertion was treated even by the ablest geographers as a vulgar
error”;[37] and a mythic strait formed by cartographic extension of
the Gulf of California indefinitely northward haunted the maps of the
seventeenth century. This error was adopted by various geographers,
including Fredericus de Witt in 1662, Peter van der Aa in 1690, and
even Herman Moll so late as 1708; but it was consistently rejected by
Guillaume Delisle and other French geographers. The myth “was finally
punctured by Padre Kino in 1701; though even he and all his erudite
co-evangels were apparently unaware that his observations only verified
those of Ulloa, Alarcon, and Diaz.
[37] A Natural and Civil History of California; translated from the
original Spanish of Miguel Venegas; London, 1759, vol. I, preface.
During the stagnant sesquicentury 1545-1695 there was little record of
the Seri Indians, though that little indicates recognition of their
leading characteristics and their insular habitat. Writing especially
of the Yaqui before 1645, Padre Andrés Perez de Ribas declared (freely
translated):
There is information of a great people of another nation
called Heris; they are excessively savage, without towns,
without houses, without fields. They have neither rivers nor
streams, and drink from a few lagoonlets and waterholes. They
subsist by the chase, but at harvest time they obtain corn by
bartering salt extracted from the sea and deerskins with other
nations. Those nearest to the sea also subsist on fish; and
it is said that there is, in the same sea, an island on which
others of the same nation live. Their language is exceedingly
difficult.[38]
[38] Historia de los Trivmphos de Nvestra Santa Fee entre Gentes las
mas Barbaras y Fieras del Nueuo Orbe; Madrid, 1645, p. 358. The “Heris”
are identified as Seri by Bandelier (Final Report of Investigations
among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, in Papers Arch.
Inst. Am., American series, III, 1890, p. 74).
The same author mentions cannibalism among the aborigines of
northwestern Mexico, saying:
The vice of those called anthropophagi, who eat human flesh,
introduced by the devil, enemy of the human genus, among
nearly all these nations during their heathenism, is more or
less common. In the Acaxee and mountains this inhuman vice is
customary as eating of flesh obtained by the chase; it is of
daily occurrence among them; just as they sally in chase of
a deer, they go out over mountains and fields in search of
enemies to cut in pieces and eat roasted or boiled.[39]
[39] Op. cit., p. 11.
There is nothing to indicate that the anthropophagy was confined to, or
even extended to, the Seri—a fact of interest in connection with later
opinion. Ribas’ reference to an island inhabited by the Heris (Seri)
indicates that the occupancy of Tiburon was fully recognized by the
native tribes of the region.
Throughout the seventeenth century the western coast of Gulf of
California, and in lesser degree the eastern coast also, became
famous for pearl oysters, and expeditions were sent out and fisheries
established at different times. The earliest of these expeditions
was that of Captain Juan Iturbi in 1615; he sailed well up the gulf,
reaching latitude 30° according to his reckoning (though the accounts
imply between lines that he turned back at the Salsipuedes), collecting
many pearls along the western coast “so large and clear that for one
only he paid, as the King’s fifth, 900 crowns”;[40] and on his return
he carried the fame of the Californian pearls to Ciudad Mexico, whence
it resounded to Madrid and reverberated through all Europe. One of
the more noteworthy pearl-gathering expeditions was that of Admiral
Pedro Portel de Cassanate, which covered several years; he “took a
very careful survey of the eastern coast of the gulf” in 1618, but was
deterred from establishing a garrison by “the dryness and sterility of
the country”;[41] yet neither this voyage nor any of the others appears
to have resulted in any considerable rectification of the maps, or
in valuable records relating to the aboriginal inhabitants. Various
records indicate, however, that both pearl fishers by sea and gold
seekers by land must have met the warlike Seri—and sometimes survived
to enrich the growing lore concerning the tribe, and to establish the
existence of their island stronghold.
[40] Venegas, op. cit., vol. I, p. 182.
[41] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. I, p. 192.
* * * * *
New light dawned on Sonoran history with the extension of
evangelization by the Order of Jesuits into that territory under the
pilotage of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino (Kaino, Kuino, Kühn, Kühne,
Quino, Chino, etc.), who sailed from Chacala, March 18, 1683,[42] for
California, with the expedition of Admiral Isidro Otondo y Antillon.
This expedition failing, the padre returned to the mainland in 1686,
and during the same year obtained authority and means for establishing
missions in Sonora, of which one was to be “founded among the Seris
of the gulf coast”.[43] Although the record of the padre’s movements
is hardly complete, it would appear that several years elapsed before
he actually approached, and also (contrary to the opinion of two
centuries) that he never saw, the real Seri habitat. According to
the anonymous author of “Apostolicos Afanes” (identified by modern
historians as Padre José Ortega), Padre Kino made many journeys over
the inhospitable wastes now known as Papagueria during the years
1686-1701,[44] and must have seen nearly the whole of the northern
and eastern portions of the territory; but only a single journey led
him toward Seriland. In February, 1694, he, with Padre Marcos Antonio
Kappus, Ensign Juan Mateo Mange (chronicler of this expedition), and
Captain Aguerra, set out for the coast; and Mange’s itinerary is so
circumstantial as to locate their route and every stopping place, with
a possible error not exceeding 5 miles in any case.
[42] Venegas, Noticia de la California, vol. I; Madrid, 1757, p. 219.
[43] The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. XV (History of the North
Mexican States, vol. I, 1531-1800), 1884, p. 252.
[44] Apostolicos Afanes de la Compañia de Jesus, escritos por un Padre
de la misma Sagrada Religion de su Provincia de Mexico; Barcelona,
1754, p. 246 et seq.
According to Mange’s itinerary, the explorers left Santa Magdalena de
Buquibava, on the banks of Rio San Ignacio or Santa Magdalena, February
9, traveling northwestward down the valley of that river (for the most
part) 12 leagues to San Miguel del Bosna; the original party having
been enlarged at Santa Magdalena by the addition of Nicolas Castrijo
and Antonio Mezquita, with two Indians for guides. On February 10
they traveled from Bosna 5 leagues southward (evidently in the valley
of Rio San Ignacio, which is here 5 to 25 miles in width), to sleep
at the watering place of Oacue, or San Bartolome. The next day they
journeyed westward along the wash (of San Ignacio), stopping, as was
their custom, to baptize the sick and others, and after covering 10
leagues camped at a tanque. On February 12 they continued westward over
mesquite-covered plains for 4 leagues, and then turned northwestward
for 3 leagues along the San Ignacio to Caborca, where they spent the
remainder of the day in evangelical work. Next morning, after saying
mass, they again proceeded westward “por la vega del rio abajo” (down
the bank of the river); at 2 leagues distance they arrived at the place
at which the river “sinks”, but continued westward along the sand-wash
5 leagues farther, passing the night at a tanque of turbid water. On
February 14 they again celebrated mass, and then proceeded westward
over the plains (“prosiguiendo nosotros al Poniente por llanos”);
at 4 leagues they reached a rancheria which was dubbed San Valentin
(still persisting as a Papago temporale; the “Bisanig” of various
maps), watered from a well in the river bed; proceeding westward
(“prosiguiendo al Poniente”) 6 leagues farther, they ascended a sierra
trending from south to north (“trasmontada una sierra que sita de Sur á
Norte”) of which they named the principal peak Nazareno, in a dry and
sterile barranca in which they afterward slept; from this sierra they
saw “the Gulf of California, and, on the farther coast, four mountains
of that territory, which we named Los Cuatro Stos. Evangelistas, and
toward the northwest an islet with three cerritos named Las Tres
Marias, and in the southwest the Isla de Seris, to which they retreat
when pursued by soldiers for their robberies, which we call San Agustin
and others Tiburon.”[45] The record continues:
[45] Translated somewhat freely from Resumen de Noticias, in Documentos
para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo I, 1856, pp. 235-236.
On the fifteenth, after saying mass, we continued our route to
the west by a dry and stony ravine which there is between the
mountains, and at 3 leagues we met some Indians taking water
from a small well in earthen jars, who, on seeing us, ran away,
flying from fear; but at two musket shots we overtook them,
treated them kindly, and brought them back to the well that
they might assist in watering the horses, giving them all the
water necessary, for the reason that they had not drunk the
day before. For this reason we called this place Paraje de las
Ollas. They were naked people, and only covered their private
parts with small pieces of hare skin; and one of them was so
aged that by his looks he must have been about 120 years old.
We continued to the west over barren plains, arid and without
pasture, a country as sandy as a sea-beach, until we reached
the sand-banks, where the horses had great difficulty; and
after another 7 leagues Father Kappus and the other people
camped without water, and with only pasture of salt grass;
but Padre Kino and I [Mange], with guides, and the governor
of Los Dolores [Aguerra], in order to be forehanded, went
west 2 leagues farther, crossing the bed of Rio San Ignacio;
we arrived at the banks of an arm of the sea to which, in the
sixty years that the province of Sonora had been peopled, no
one had come, and we were the first who had the great privilege
of seeing the Island of the Seris and that of Tres Marias, as
well as the mountains of Cuatro Evangelistas, in California,
on the other side of the gulf, the width of which, according
to the measuring instruments at this position of 30° [actually
about 30° 35'], is some 20 leagues. We returned to the bed of
the river [San Ignacio], where we found a well nearly dry;
we drew from it water for the horses, who had had nothing to
drink, and took some ourselves, although it was turbid, muddy,
and disagreeable.
Now, this itinerary recounts, in definite and unmistakable terms,
the incidents and localities of a journey down the valley of Rio San
Ignacio (also called Santa Magdalena, Altar, Ascuncion, Pitiquito,
Caborca, etc., in different parts of its course), from the present
city of Santa Magdalena by the present town of Caborca to the coast
at a point almost directly west of both Caborca and Santa Magdalena.
Moreover, Kino’s map of 1702[46] locates “Nazareno” on this river, and
permits identification of the sierra with Dewey’s “three conspicuous
peaks” placed directly inland from the lagoon at the mouth of San
Ignacio river, on the Hydrographic Office charts; it also locates
Caborca (miswritten “Cabetka”) in approximate position. Furthermore, it
would have been physically impossible for the rather heavily outfitted
Kino party, with carriages and churchly equipage, to traverse the
untrodden and forbidding wastes from Caborca to even the nearest part
of Seriland within the period of two days and a fraction, and the
distance of 29 leagues (some 74 miles), detailed in the itinerary.
The direct way from Caborca to Tiburon would lie due southward, over
sierra-ribbed and barranca-cut plains never yet explored by white men,
nor even traversed by Indians so far as known, for more than 100 miles
in an air line; while the nearest practicable route, passing by way
of Cieneguilla, Las Cruces, Pozo Noriega, Bacuachito, Sayula, Tonuco,
Rancho Libertad, and Barranca Salina (or Aguaje Parilla) measures fully
200 miles, and requires at least six days for the passage with good
horses and light equipage. The Kino party might, indeed, have turned
southwestward at Caborca and pushed to the now abandoned landing at
the anchorage below Cabo Lobos;[47] but the directions and distances
specifically stated, and the specific identification of Rio San Ignacio
at the end and at other points of the journey, all prove that this was
not the route actually traveled. The terminus of the trip so clearly
fixed by the itinerary is over 100 miles from the nearest point of
Seriland proper; moreover, Tiburon is rendered invisible both from the
coast and from Cerro Nazareno not only by distance, but by intervening
sierras, notably those projecting into the Gulf to form Cabo Lobos
and Punta Tepopa. It follows that Kino and Mange completely missed
Seriland in their expedition to the coast, and there is nothing to
indicate that they ever saw the Seri tribesmen. Their descriptions of
the Indians encountered fairly fit the peaceful Papago of the interior
and the timid Tepoka of the coast; and neither Mange’s narrative nor
other contemporary records suggest contact between the exploring party
and the distinctive holders of Tiburon. The specific and repeated
references in the itinerary to the island of San Agustin, or Tiburon,
evidently relate to the ancient Isla de Santa Inez, the modern Isla
Angel de la Guarda,[48] one of the most prominent geographic features
visible either from Cerro Nazareno or from the adjacent coast. There
is no reason to infer that Kino or any of his party ever detected
their error in identification of geographic features which must have
been conspicuous in the lore of the aborigines and settlers of Sonora;
indeed, the error well attests the prominence of the Seri and their
habitat in the local thought of the time.[49]
[46] Tabula California, anno 1702 (Via terrestris in Californiam
comperta et detecta per R. Patrem Eusebium Fran. Chino è S. I.
Germanum. Adnotatis novis Missionibus ejusdem Soctis ab anno 1698 ad
annum 1701), in Stocklein, Der Neue Welt-Bott, Augsburg und Grätz, 1726.
[47] Elaborately mapped and established (on paper) as the “Puerto
y Villa de la Libertad” in 1861 (Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana
de Geografia y Estadistica, 1863, X, p. 263 et seq.), and actually
maintained from 1875 to 1884 as the port of Libertad (not the abandoned
Rancho Libertad on the border of Seriland), or Serna, according to
Dávila (Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, pp. 140, 309).
[48] Identified by Alexandre de Humboldt in his Carte Générale du
Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, of 1804 (in Atlas Géographique et
Physique, Paris, 1811). So late as 1840 the old name was sometimes
retained, e. g., on Robert Greenhow’s map accompanying his History of
California and Oregon.
[49] In one of the last letters from his pen, dated November 25, 1899,
the late Dr Elliott Cones wrote, “I find you trailing Kino and Mange in
1694 precisely as I had them, and I make no doubt of the substantial
accuracy of your typewritten MS. I accept your position that the large
island they sighted and named San Agustin was not Tiburon, but Angel de
la Guarda Isl.”
* * * * *
An effect of the Jesuit invasion was to give record to episodes
growing out of alien contact with the Seri. One of the earliest of
these records recounts nocturnal raids by the “Seris Salineros” for
robbery and murder in the pueblos of Tuape, Cucurpe, and Magdalena (de
Tepoca).[50] In January, 1700, Sergeant Juan Bautista de Escalante set
out with fifteen soldiers to this mission of Santa Magdalena de Tepoca
on an expedition of protection and reprisal; and here he learned that
the “Seris Salineros” had killed with arrows three persons. Taking
their trail, he reached Nuestra Señora del Populo only to find that ten
families of converts had deserted to steal cattle, whereupon he started
in search of them; he overtook them 20 leagues away, and, despite
armed resistance on their part, arrested and whipped them and returned
them to the pueblo. Among the captives were two “Seris Salineros”
concerned in the murders at Tepoca, and three others guilty of similar
outrages at the Pueblo de los Angeles de Pimas Cocomacagües; these he
executed as a warning to the others, after taking their depositions
and confessions, and after they were shrived by Padre Adano Gilo (or
Adan Gilg), the priest of Populo. This duty performed, he resumed the
trail of the Seri, accompanied by the padre; and, approaching the sea,
he found a port, as well as an island to which most of the Seri had
escaped in balsas, leaving eight of their number, who were arrested and
turned over to the priest.[51]
[50] A mission founded in 1699 by Padre Melchor Bartiromo (Historia
de la Compañia de Jesus en Nueva España, que esta escribiendo el P.
Francisco Javier Alegre, 1842, tomo III, p. 117), of which the location
has long been lost.
[51] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., tomo I, p. 321.
This is the first record of actual invasion of Seriland by Caucasians.
According to Bancroft, it “may be deemed the beginning of the Seri wars
which so long desolated the province”.[52]
[52] Op. cit., p. 275 (the year is misprinted 1800 on this page and in
the index).
The next noteworthy episode occurred when Sergeant Escalante, who had
returned to Tuape and Santa Magdalena (de Tepoca), again set out for
the coast on February 28, 1700, taking a new route (probably down Rio
Bacuache). He traveled 30 leagues, passing four watering places, and on
March 6 arrived at the Paraje de Aguas Frias (probably Pozo Escalante
or Agua Amarilla of recent maps); there, three nights later, he was
attacked by archers, who discharged arrows into the soldiers’ camp and
immediately fled. Subsequently, seeking their enemies close to the sea
20 leagues away (probably on the eastern shore of El Infiernillo),
Escalante and his men were joined by 120 Tepoka people; and, failing to
find their assailants, they gave these allies a supply of provisions
and turned them over to Padre Melchor Bartiromo, who allotted to
them, in conjunction with 300 deserters from the missions who had
been captured by the soldiers, not only lands but corn for sowing and
eating. Having thus disposed of the Indians, Escalante and his soldiers
returned to the coast on March 28, 1700, to punish the boldness and
pride of the Indians in their stronghold (“los indios seris de la
ranchería del medio”). Passing by balsas to the island, “they overtook
those who caught up bows and arrows to fight, of whom they slew nine as
an example to the others”; and these others they captured and sent to
the priest at Populo—after which the party returned to Cucurpe in time
to celebrate Holy Thursday on April 8.[53]
[53] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., tomo I, pp. 321-322.
This contemporary recital, written by Escalante’s acquaintance and
rival in exploration and subjugation, Juan Mateo Mange, bears both
internal and external evidence of falling well within the truth. It
is corroborated and extended by Alegre’s version, written forty or
fifty years later on data at least partially independent: according to
Alegre, Escalante and his soldiers went on balsas to the “Isla de los
Seris, which is called San Agustin by some, but more commonly Tiburon”.
He added that the retreats of the Seri after the murders and robberies
committed at the pueblos of Pimeria, as well as the abundant pearl
fisheries, have made this place highly noted (“muy famosa”); and he
correctly described the strait and the projecting sand-banks opposite
the center of the island, which reduce the open water to a width of
barely half a league: “At this constriction the Seri cross in balsas
composed of many slender reeds, disposed in three bundles, thick in
the middle and narrowing toward the ends, 5 and 6 varas in length.
These balsas sustain the weight of four or five persons, and with light
two-bladed paddles 2 varas in length cut the water easily.” He remarked
also that while a part of the Seri seen on the island by Escalante were
captured the major portion escaped, “fleeing with great swiftness”.[54]
[54] Op. cit., tomo III, pp. 117-119.
The early record is also corroborated, in a manner hardly credible in
regions of more rapid social and physiographic development, by local
tradition and by the survival of the well excavated by the party and
still bearing Escalante’s name.
On the whole it may be considered established that Sergeant Escalante
crossed El Infiernillo and visited Tiburon in 1700; and, although it
may be possible that pearl fishers or others preceded him, he must be
credited with the first recorded exploration of strait and island by
white men.
The specific references to the Seri and their insular habitat by
Ribas, by Kino and his chronicler, and by the various recorders of
Escalante’s expeditions, establish the extent of the lore concerning
people and place, even before the end of the seventeenth century. This
lore found measurable expression in maps prepared in Europe, even by
those cartographers who purposely or otherwise ignored the surveys of
Ulloa and Alarcon. In his “newest and most accurate” map of America,
1662, Fredericus de Witt depicted the Gulf of California (“Mare Ver
mio olim Mare Rvbrvm”) as extending northward to connect with the
mythic Strait of Anian (“Fretum Aniani”), yet he located Rio Colorado
(“R. de Tecon”) and Rio Gila (“R. de Coral”) approximately, placing
the largest island in the gulf, named “I. Gigante”, just off their
(common) embouchure;[55] and an anonymous map of the Pacific ocean,
apparently by the same author and of closely corresponding date, is
essentially similar.[56] The map of the northern part of America by
Peter van der Aa, about 1690, is also similar, though on smaller
scale;[57] and the same may be said of that cartographer’s new map of
America, issued about the same time, in which the island is designated
“I. de Gigante”.[58] A somewhat later map by Van der Aa (although
supposed to have been issued in 1690) is greatly improved; the “Mer
de Californie” is brought to rather indefinite end a little above the
mouth of Rio Colorado (“R. de bona guia”); the “Pimases” are placed
in proper position with respect to the Gila (“R. de Coral”), and the
“Herises” are located a third of the way and the “Ahomeses” halfway
down the gulf; while a greatly elongated island stretches from the one
to the other off the province of “Sonora”.[59] The origin of the name
“Gigante” is uncertain; it may be borrowed from a land feature. As used
in some cases it apparently connotes the size of the island, while the
use in other cases evidently connotes gigantic inhabitants.
[55] Novissima et Accuratissima Septentrionalis ac Meridionalis
Americæ, Amsterdam. (In American Maps, 1579-1796, Library U. S.
Geological Survey, 135.)
[56] Mar del Zvr, Hispanis, Mare Pacificum. (Ibid., 129.)
[57] ’T Noorder Deel van Amerika, Leyden. (Ibid., 178.)
[58] Nouvelle Carte de l’Amerique, Leyden. (Ibid., 156.)
[59] L’Amerique Septentrionale Suivant les Nouvelles Observations,
etc., Leyden. (Ibid., 181.) This island is not named, but is
undoubtedly the Santa Inez of several other maps—the Angel de la Guarda
of the present.
Naturally, in view of the slow and imperfect diffusion of knowledge
characteristic of early times, cartographers were dilatory in
introducing the observations of Kino and Escalante. The map of America
by Herman Moll, about 1708,[60] represents the “Gulf of California or
Red Sea”, connecting the “South Sea” with the “Straits of Anian”, and
depicts Rio Colorado (“Tison R.”) and a composite river apparently
designed to represent Rio Gila (made up of “R. Sonaca”, “R. Azul”,
and “R. Colorado”, with two other long tributaries from the south)
embouching separately a little below midlength of the gulf. Somewhat
above these are three islands, one of which is designated “Gigate
Isle”, while “Pimeria” is located correctly with respect to Rio
Gila, though too close to the sea, and “R. Sonora” is located too
far southward, with a province of the same name just north of it.
There is no reference to the Seri, but a locality in Lower California
opposite Sonora is named “Gigante”.[61] Quite similar is the map of
North America drawn and engraved by R. W. Seale about 1722, though the
provinces of Pimeria and Sonora are brought closer together, while the
magnified Gila is named Colorado (“Tison R.” also being retained).[62]
The map of North America presented to the Duc de Bourgogne by H.
Iaillot about 1720 is much the same; the “Isle de Californie” is
separated from the continent by “Mar Vermejo ou Mer Rouge” with four
islands, of which the southernmost, “I. de Gigante”, lies somewhat
below the separate mouths of “R. de Tecon” and “R. de Coral”, while the
extravagantly magnified Gila of previous maps is partially replaced
by a still more extravagant “R. del Norte”, rising in a mythical
lake above the fortieth parallel and falling into the gulf under the
thirtieth.[63] The map of Mexico and Florida by Guillaume “De l’Isle”,
published in Amsterdam by Covens and Mortier, 1722, patently begs the
question as to the northern extension of “Mer de Californie” by cutting
off the cartography at the critical point. “R. del Tison” is retained
as a subordinate river, while the separate and greatly magnified Gila
corresponds with that of the Iaillot map, the upper tributary being “R.
Sonaca ou de Hila”; “R. di Sonora” is depicted in approximate position,
with the province of the same name extending northward and “Seris”
located a little above the mouth of the river. No islands are shown in
the vicinity, but the name “Gigante” appears on the western coast of
the gulf, about latitude 26°.[64] The map of North America by the same
author, supposed to date about 1740 though probably earlier, recalls
the Van der Aa map of 1690 (?); “Mer de Californie ou Mer Vermeille”
ends doubtfully about latitude 34°, where “R. de bona guia” and “R. de
Coral” bound the “Campagne de bona guia”, and fall separately into the
gulf near its head; the “Pimases”, “Herises”, “Sumases”, “Aibinoses”,
and “Ahomeses” are distributed thence southward along the coast to
about the twenty-eighth parallel, while a nameless island stretches
parallel with the coast of “Sonora” from about 28° to 32°.[65]
[60] North America, according to ye Newest and most Exact Observations,
etc., London. (Ibid., 93.)
[61] Doubtless the mountain “La Giganta”, named by Admiral Otondo
toward the end of the seventeenth century (Documentas para la Historia
de Mexico, cuarta série, 1857, tomo V, p. 122), and noted by Hardy in
1820 (Travels in Interior of Mexico in 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828,
London, 1829, p. 243).
[62] A map of North America, with the European Settlements and whatever
else is Remarkable in ye West Indies, from the latest and best
Observations. (American maps, loc. cit., 110.)
[63] Amerique Septentrionale Divisée en Ses Principales Parties.
(Ibid., 109.)
[64] Carte du Mexique et de la Floride, des Terres Angloises et des
Isles Antilles, etc. (Ibid., 136.)
[65] L’Amerique Septentrionale ... par G. de l’Isle: Amsterdam, Chez
Pierre Mortier. (Ibid., 172.) The island is, of course, Santa Inez, i.
e., Angel de la Guarda.
With one or two exceptions, these maps demonstrate the prevailing
neglect or ignorance of the classic explorations along the western
coast of America early in the sixteenth century; yet they introduce
features representing vague knowledge of the Seri Indians and their
insular habitat, undoubtedly derived (like that of Padre Kino and
Sergeant Escalante anterior to their expeditions) from native sources.
The Kino map of 1702 gradually came to be recognized as trustworthy in
important particulars, and brought to an end the baseless extension
northward of the gulf; yet it was seriously inaccurate in details,
particularly those affected by the erroneous identification of the
second-largest island in the gulf with the largest. Accordingly Isla
Santa Inez (the modern Isla Angel de la Guarda) is omitted from its
proper position, and replaced by “I. S. August” close to the eastern
coast; yet the land-mass of Tiburon is roughly defined as a peninsula
bounded on the north by “Portus S. Sabina” (Bahia Tepopa) and on the
south by “Baya S. Ioa. Bapt.” (Bahias Kunkaak and Kino). Two other
considerable islands are represented as dividing the width of the bay
west-southwest of “I. S. August”, and are named “2. Saltz-Insel”;
although evidently traditional, their positions correspond roughly with
those of San Esteban and San Lorenzo. The map locates the “Topokis”
between Rio San Ignacio and Rio Sonora, with the “Guaimas” immediately
below the latter.[66] Kino’s three pier-like islands bridging the gulf
were adopted in Delisle’s map of America, published in Amsterdam by
Jean Cóvens and Corneille Mortier about 1722, in greatly reduced size,
though larger islands are shown farther northward; and an ill-defined
peninsula corresponding to Tiburon is retained.[67] The D’Anville map
of 1746 embodies Kino’s discoveries about the head of the gulf and
retains his pier-like islands, yet not only corrects his error in
omitting the second greatest island of the gulf, but perpetuates equal
error in the opposite direction: “I. de S. Vicente” is made the largest
of the islands and located near the western coast a little below the
mouth of Rio San Ignacio, while “I. de Sta. Inés” is made second
largest and is located southeast of it and near the eastern coast. The
third island in size is named “Seris”, while the fourth and fifth,
completing the Kino trio, are called “Is. de Sal”, and the mainland
projection remains defined on the south by “B. de S. Juan”.[68] The
Vaugondy map of 1750 locates the transverse trio of islands in greatly
reduced size, and omits the larger islands of the gulf.[69] The
islands, etc., of the Covens and Mortier map of 1757 correspond closely
with D’Anville’s map of 1746, and a nameless bay defines a peninsula in
the position of Tiburon.[70] The Pownall map of 1783 also follows that
of D’Anville so far as the islands are concerned, though the position
of that corresponding to the present Angel de la Guarda lies beyond the
limit of the sheet; “I. de Inez” lies some distance below the mouth of
“Sta. Madalena” river, off the territory of the “Sobas” and “Seris”;
“Seris I.” is smaller, the two “Sall Is.” are smaller still, and there
is an ill-defined projection of the mainland, bounded on the south by
“B. de S. Juan”.[71]
[66] Map in Stocklein, op. cit.
[67] Carte d’Amerique, etc. (American maps, loc. cit., 20.)
[68] Amérique Septentrionale ... par le Sr. d’Anville, Paris. (Ibid.,
50 and 51.)
[69] Amérique Septentrionale ... par le Sr. Robert de Vaugondy, Paris.
(Ibid., 27.)
[70] L’Amerique Septentrionale, etc., Amsterdam. (Ibid., 160.)
[71] A new map of North America, with the West India Islands.... Laid
down according to the Latest Surveys, and Corrected from the Original
Materials of Goverʳ Pownall, London. (Ibid., 22.)
While the makers of the later of these maps were engaged in
perpetuating the vestigial features, erroneous and otherwise, of the
Kino map, the Jesuits of peninsular California employed themselves
in reexploration of the western coast of the gulf, a particularly
productive expedition being that of Padre Ferdinando Consag, in 1747.
The padre’s map represents the western coast in considerable though
much distorted detail, and depicts “I. del Angel de la Guarda” as a
greatly elongated body, a third of the way across the gulf from the
western coast; next in size is “I. d S. Lorenzo”; then come “ I. d
S. Esteban” in the middle of the gulf, and in the same transverse
line, but quite near the eastern coast, “I. d S. Agustin”, the two
being approximately equal in size, while above and about equidistant
from them is “I. de S. Pedro”, about half so large as either.
These, with four smaller islands near the western coast, bear the
general designation “Islas de Sal, si puedes”, which in this case
may be translated “Salt (possibly) islands,” though later forms
of the name imply a quite different meaning, i. e., “Islands of
Get-out-if-(you-)can”, or “Get-out-if-canst”.[72] The eastern coast
shows two deep indentations named “Tepoca” and “Bahia d S. Juan
Bautista” bounding a peninsula corresponding in position to insular
Seriland.[73] It is evident that the cartography of the eastern coast
is based on that of Kino, that the island of San Agustin is hypothetic,
and that the land-mass of Tiburon proper is not separated from the
mainland, while San Pedro island is apparently the Isla Patos of the
present. The more general map by Venegas combines details of the
Consag, Kino, and other maps; “I. del Angel de la Guarda” is greatly
magnified and placed somewhat too far northward, while both San Lorenzo
and San Esteban are made much larger than “I. San Agustin”, which is
represented as scarcely larger than “I. de S. Pedro”; the mainland is
indented to great depth by Kino’s “Pto. de Sta. Sabina” and “Bahia
de Sn. Juan Baptista”, in such wise as to define a decided peninsula,
while the “Seris” are located 2° farther southward and below Rio
Sonora, and the “Guaimas” still farther down the coast.[74] Another
illustration of the chaotic notions of the time is afforded by the
Baegert map, published in 1773, and credited largely to Consag.[75]
The sheet locates the author’s routes of arrival (1751) and departure
(1768), the former overland from far down the coast to the mouth of
“Torrens Hiaqui,” and thence directly across “Mare Californiae”, via
“Tiburon” (lying just off the mouth of the river, in latitude 28°),
with the usual congeries of islands, headed by “I. S. Ang. Gart” (Angel
de la Guarda), in latitude 30°-31°, and the usual shore configuration
above the debouchure of Rio Sonora; “Los Seris” are located in the
interior between Rio Sonora and “Torrens Hiaqui”, while just above
the mouth of the latter lies “Gua mas M.[ission] destr. per Apostatas
Seris”. The Pownall map of 1786 incorporates Padre Consag’s results on
reduced scale, but omits the islands toward the eastern shore of the
gulf.[76]
[72] It seems probable that various early cartographers were misled
by the traditional lore of “salineros”, or salt-making Indians, in
combination with the unusual designation of these islands. In his text
Padre Consag rendered the term “Sal-si-puedes”, and strongly emphasized
the violent tidal currents and consequent dangers to vessels which
suggested the vigorously idiomatic designation to early navigators
(Venegas. Noticia de la California, III, p. 145); in the Venegas map
(ibid., tomo I, p. 1) the name is used without the qualifying comma,
and in the text it is hyphenated “Sal-si-puedes”, the author observing
concerning the local currents, “These currents run with astonishing
rapidity, and their noise is equal to that of a large rapid river
among rocks; nor do they run only in one direction, but set in many
intersected gyrations” (A Natural and Civil History of California,
p. 63). And the “Sacerdote Religioso”, whose letters place him among
the authorities on Lower California, wrote: “In the narrows of the
gulf are a multitude of islets, for the passage being so dangerous to
vessels they are called _Sal si puedes_” (Noticias de la Provincia
de Californias, Valencia, 1794, p. 11); while Hardy, who navigated
this portion of the gulf early in the present century (Travels in the
Interior of Mexico, London, 1829, p. 279), mentioned a passage “between
the islands called ‘Sal si Puedes’ (get back if you can)”. So, too,
Duflot de Mofras wrote of “les îles de Sal si puedes (Sors si tu peux)”
in his Explorations du Territoire de l’Orégon, Paris, 1814, p. 219.
Bancroft properly reduced the obscure connotive phrase to the single
denotive term “Salsipuedes,” and noted the signification as “Get out if
thou canst” (North Mexican States, vol. I, p. 444). In 1873-1875 Dewey
restricted the name to a single island and a channel, and emphasized
the currents in the latter “against which sailing vessels found it
almost impossible to make any headway” (The West Coast of Mexico,
Publication 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of Navigation, 1880,
p. 113), and rendered the name “Sal-si-puedes” in the text, “Sal si
puedes” on the charts. Hittell’s reference to “the group of islands
then known as Salsipuedes, the largest of which is now called Tiburon”
(History of California, vol. I, p. 225), doubtless expresses the early
use of the term precisely, save that the present Tiburon was long
treated as a part of the mainland, while its names were applied to Isla
Tassne or some other islet. Vide postea, p. 45.
[73] Seno de California, etc., in Venegas, Noticia de la California,
tomo III, p. 194.
[74] Noticia de la California, tomo I, p. 1.
[75] California, per P. Ferdinandum Consak, S. I., et alios, in
Nachrichten von der amerikanischen Halbinsel Californien....
Geschrieben von einem Priester der Gesellschaft Jesu (identified as
Jacob Baegert by Rau, Smithsonian Report, 1863, p. 352); Mannheim, 1773.
[76] A New Map of the Whole Continent of America, London. (American
maps, loc. cit., 4.)
On the whole the cartography of a century indicates that the striking
explorations of Ulloa, Alarcon, and Diaz were utterly neglected; it
indicates, too, that Kino’s observations were promptly adopted, but
that his erroneous identification of the island seen from Nazareno
occasioned confusion; yet there is nothing to indicate definite
knowledge of Escalante’s discoveries. Apparently the cartographic
tangle began with the failure to discover the narrow strait traversing
Seriland, coupled with hearsay notions of an insular Seri stronghold;
it was complicated by Kino’s erroneous identification of the hearsay
island; and it grew into the mapping of a traditional islet about the
position of Tiburon, and the extension of the mainland into a peninsula
embracing the actual land-mass of that island[77]—the islet lying
about the site of the modern Isla Tassne, and often appearing under
the name San Agustin.[78] Accordingly, so far as maps are concerned,
Escalante’s discoveries were no less completely lost than those of
Ulloa.
[77] This cartography reappeared occasionally up to about the middle of
the nineteenth century, as illustrated by the Greenhow map accompanying
the edition of his history issued in 1845.
[78] This condition is revealed in Mühlenpfordt, Versuch einer getreuen
Schilderung der Republic Mejico, etc.; Hannover, 1844.
* * * * *
The recorded, history of the Seri Indians during the earlier
two-thirds of the eighteenth century is largely one of zealous effort
at conversion on the part of the Jesuit missionaries, who repeatedly
approached the territory by both land and sea; yet the records touch
also on events of exploration and on the characteristics of the tribe.
One of the earliest chroniclers was Padre Juan Maria de Sonora, who
in 1699-1701 inspected many of the missions of Lower California and
Sonora and acquainted himself in exceptional degree with the neophytes
and their wilder kindred. About the beginning of 1701 he crossed with
great danger (“pasé con grande peligro”) from Loreto to the eastern
coast, and, accompanied by two “Indios Guaymas, caciques,” proceeded
among the Sonoran settlements.[79] On February 18 he was at the new
town of Magdalena (de Tepoca), “where, with great labor, Padre Melchor
Bartiromo had gathered more than a hundred souls of the maritime nation
of Tepocas”, and where the visitors were accorded an enthusiastic
reception. He went on to say:
[79] Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo V;
Mexico, 1857, pp. 125-126.
It is notable that where the Tepocas and Salineros are located
the sea is populous with islands [muy poblado de islas], and
the first of these toward the coast contains foot-folk [gente
de á pié], who live on it. Then there are two islands much
nearer the mainland of California, and it is said that they
[the Tepoka] are able to navigate in their barquillas [balsas]
to the adjacent coast; and the possession of these Tepocas, who
are all Seris by nation, of certain words of the Cuchimies of
[Lower] California, who occupy the opposite coast, indicates
that they have communicated in other times.[80]
[80] Ibid., p. 132.
This record is especially significant as indicating the affinity
between the Seri and the Tepoka, as establishing the transnavigation
of the Gulf by the Seri craft, and as explaining the possible passage
of loan words from the Cochimi to the Seri, and presumptively from the
Seri to the Cochimi.
A notable visitor to the shores of Seriland was Padre Juan Maria
Salvatierra, who had previously “made a peace betwixt the Seris
cristians, and the Pimas”, soon violated by the former “in the murder
of 40 Pimas”. In August, 1709, he essayed the recovery of a vessel
wrecked “on the barren coast of the Seris”, which these Indians were
engaged in looting and breaking up for the nails; and, by dint of his
“persuasive elocution ... not a little forwarded by the respectable
sweetness of his air”, aided by timely explosions of the bark’s
pateraroes (mortars), he induced restitution, the restoration of peace,
and the reinstatement of several of the robbing and murdering Seri as
communicants.[81] Padre Salvatierra observed the distinctive character
of the Seri tongue, but made no extended exploration of Seriland,
either coastwise or interior.
[81] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. I, pp.
405-411.
The next noteworthy visitor was Padre Juan de Ugarte, who, at the
instance of Salvatierra, undertook an exploration of the gulf coast
complementary to Kino’s land explorations about its northern terminus.
Ugarte was the Hercules of Baja California history; he awed the natives
by slaying a California lion, unarmed save with stones, and enforced
orderly attention to his catechizing by seizing an obstreperous
champion by the hair, lifting him at arm’s length, and shaking him
into submission; and under incredible difficulties due to absence
of material and distance of timber, he built the first vessel ever
constructed in California, the bilander (two-master) _El Triunfo
de la Cruz_—a fit prototype of the _Oregon_ of nearly two centuries
later—which proved to be the finest craft ever seen on the coast, and
played an important role in later history.[82]
[82] Hittell, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 191-193, 219-221.
On May 15, 1721, Ugarte embarked at Loreto (Lower California) and
skirted the coast northward to the Islas de Salsipuedes, whence
he crossed the gulf to “Puerto de _Santa Sabina, ó Bahia de San
Juan Bautista_” near the islands “en la Costa de los _Tepoquis_,
y _Seris_”.[83] The Indians soon appeared and, in excess of amity
(ascribed to the display of the cross), threw themselves into the sea
and swam to the ship, and afterward aided in taking water; for “early
next day the Indians appeared in troops, and all with water-vessels;
the men each with two in nets hanging from a pole across their
shoulders, and the women with one.”[84] After watering, the Ugarte
party, accompanied by two of the Indians, set sail in the bilander with
a pinnace and a canoe, and in the early morning found themselves in a
narrow channel apparently separating the island from the mainland; the
pinnace and the canoe were dispatched to courier the larger craft; but
“the channel, besides being narrow and crooked, was so full of shoals
that ... the bilander stuck and was in danger of being lost”, while
the canoe and the pinnace were caught by the currents and carried “to
such a distance as not to be seen”. Finding it impossible to return,
the party pushed on, and “after three days of continual danger, they
reached the mouth of the channel, where they found the boat and
pinnace”; when they were surprised to find the strait opening, not into
the gulf, but into a great and spacious bay. Approaching a landing,
they were met by Indian archers wearing feather headdresses and
comporting themselves in a threatening manner; but these were pacified
by the two Indians brought from the watering-place. Here Ugarte was
taken ill, and the islanders made thirteen “balsillas” on which fifty
Indians passed to the bilander and urged him to land on the island,
where they had prepared a house for his reception; this he did, despite
severe suffering, and was received with great ceremony. After a short
stay, the party explored the coast northward, stopping off Caborca to
lay in supplies, and discovered (anew and independently) the mouth of
the Colorado; then, despite repeated risk and much suffering from the
exceeding tides, severe storms, and the terrible tiderips off Islas
Salsipuedes, they finally made return to Loreto.
[83] Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo II, p. 343.
[84] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. II, p. 48.
The itinerary of this voyage recounts the first recorded navigation
through El Infiernillo; and, while it is too meager to permit retracing
the trip in detail, it seems practically certain that the vessels
entered Bahia Tepopa, watered at Pozo Hardy, passed around Punta
Perla and thence southward through the strait, and emerged through
Boca Infierno into Bahia Kunkaak, afterward proceeding westward and
northward around the outer coast, and thus circumnavigating Tiburon.
While Ugarte’s pilot, Guilermo Estrafort (or Strafort),[85] displayed
great energy and courage in charting the coast, the voyage neither
yielded published maps nor affected current and subsequent cartography;
for, although Ugarte’s narrative and Estrafort’s map and journal were
sent to Mexico to be presented to the viceroy, they were apparently
lost.[86] Nor does the itinerary indicate recognition of Kino’s error
in identification of the Seri island, though several days were occupied
in voyaging from the island to the latitude of Caborca; indeed,
it seems probable that it was either Salvatierra, Kino’s intimate
associate, or Ugarte, Kino’s colleague and Salvatierra’s intimate
friend, who fixed the name of the pioneer padre on the geographic
features still known as Bahia Kino and Punta Kino—features which Kino
never knew, as already shown.
[85] An Englishman named (probably) William Strafford, according to
Bancroft; op. cit, vol. I, p. 444.
[86] Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo II, p. 370.
Although both Salvatierra and Ugarte were on superficially amicable
terms with the Seri, the amity was evidently of the shallowest and most
evanescent sort. Venegas says:
Of the _Seris_ and _Tepocas_, although the padre passed
among them with the pay in his hand, he could not induce
them to assist him in any way, even when they saw the party
in the greatest distress; while others toiled, they reclined
with the greatest serenity, nor have they shown the priests
the slightest civility during the forty years of their
acquaintance—they utterly refused to part with ollas of coarse
ware, even for a liberal exchange.[87]
[87] Ibid., p. 386.
And the contemporary lore, crystallized in current administrative
policy and later records, and corroborated by deep-rooted customs
maintained for centuries and still persisting, is significant; it
indicates that then, as now, it was the habit of the Tiburon islanders
to flee from or fawn upon powerful visitors, to ambush or assail by
night parties of moderate strength, to openly attack none but the weak
or defenseless, yet ever to delight in tricking the credulity and
consuming the stores and stock of aliens, and to revel in shedding
alien blood when occasion offered. The adventurous hunters and gold
seekers of the mainland, and the still hardier pearl fishers of the
coast, wrote nothing; but both civil and ecclesiastical records imply
common knowledge that weaker parties venturing into the purlieus of
Seriland never returned—they disappeared and left no sign.
* * * * *
While Salvatierra and Ugarte were occupied on the coast, the
missionaries were no less industrious in the interior. The mission
of Santa Magdalena de Tepoca was apparently soon abandoned; but the
so-called Seri missions at Populo (Nuestra Señora del Populo) and
Angeles (Nuestra Señora de los Angeles) were maintained from the time
of Kino’s coming up to the expulsion of the Jesuits (in 1767), while
that at Nacameri was nearly as well sustained. The relations of these
missions to Seriland are significant: according to the anonymous author
of Sonora’s classic, “Rudo Ensayo”, written in 1763, Nacameri lay in
the valley of Rio Opodepe (or Horcasitas), 7 leagues below the town
of the same name (still extant); 9 leagues down the same stream lay
Populo (on the site of the present town of Horcasitas); Angeles lay 3
or 4 leagues farther downstream, or over 12 leagues above the site of
Pitic[88] (the present Hermosillo); while various references indicate
that the temporary mission of Santa Magdalena was located in the same
valley, probably a few leagues above Opodepe.[89] Accordingly, the
missions ranged from 100 to 150 miles inland, measured in an air line,
or four hard days’ journey, as shown by Escalante’s record, from the
Seri coast. The nearest mission at Angeles was 75 miles, or three days’
journey, from the inland margin of Seriland proper, and the intervening
territory was a depopulated expanse (“el grande despoblado”) according
to Villa-Señor,[90] ranged but not inhabited by Seri and Tepoka hunting
parties. Never traversed by white men, save those of Coronado’s parties
nearly two centuries before and of Escalante’s hurried expeditions of
1700, this “despoblado” was practically unknown; even the surprisingly
well-informed author of “Rudo Ensayo” was unaware of the existence
of Rio Bacuache, and noted only such prominent mountains as Cerro
Prieto and “Bacoatzi the Great in the land of the Seris”,[91] lying
far outside the tribal home. The remoteness of the missions from the
habitat of the tribe bears testimony to the dread with which they
were regarded, and to the slightness of the influence exerted on the
tribesmen by the zealous padres.
[88] Rudo Ensayo, Guiteras’ translation in Records of the American
Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, vol. V, 1894, p. 124.
Bandelier identified the author as Padre Nentwig, S. J., of Huassavas,
eastern Sonora (Final Report of Investigations among the Indians, etc.,
part 1, in Papers of the Archæological Institute of America,” vol. III,
1890, p. 78). The name is written “John Nentuig” in a third-person
reference in Guiteras’ translation; but an editorial footnote adds, “No
doubt a printer’s mistake for Mentuig—L. F. F[lick]” (ibid., p. 191).
[89] Noticias Estadisticas del Estado de Sonora, by José Francisco
Velasco, Mexico, 1850, p. 124.
[90] Theatro Americano, Descripcion General de los Reynos, y
Provincias de la Nueva-España, y sus Jurisdicciones, Joseph Antonio de
Villa-Señor, y Sanchez, segunda parte; Mexico, 1748, p. 392.
[91] Op. cit., p. 133.
Despite the efforts of both priesthood and soldiery, the number of
Seri converts at the missions was limited. In 1700 there were ten
families at Populo; true, they had slipped away to maverick the
herds (“por ladrones de ganados”), but Escalante overtook them and
whipped them back to the shadow of the church; later he captured 120
Tepoka people (probably some twenty families, with a few strays), and
recaptured 300 backsliders (perhaps fifty families or more), and haled
them all to the mission, where lands were allotted to them and where
they were carefully guarded by the ecclesiastics—until opportunity
came for reescape; and to this congregation Escalante added a few
Seri prisoners taken on Tiburon, as noted above. In 1727 Brigadier
Pedro de Rivera noted a dozen tribes in central Sonora, including the
“Seris” and “Tepocas”, numbering 21,746 “of all ages and both sexes”,
all receiving the ministrations of “los Padres de la Compañia de
Jesvs”. He added: “Besides the above-named Indians there are found
in the middle part of the province of Ostimuri, in the western part
bordering on the Gulf of California, certain nations of pagans in small
numbers; they are the Salineros, Cocomaques, and Guaymas.”[92] Neither
the numbers of Seri and Tepoka at the missions, nor the respective
proportions at the missions and on the native habitat, were recorded
by the brigadier. According to Alegre, eighty families (including
those transferred from Pitic) were gathered at Populo and Angeles,
under the specially sedulous efforts of Judge José Rafael Gallardo,
in 1749;[93] although Padre Nicolas de Perera, “who for the longest
time bore with their insolent behavior, ... did not see more than 300
hundred persons when they had all come together”.[94] It would appear
that the great majority of the Populo and Angeles converts belonged to
the Tepoka, while others belonged to the Guayma and Upanguayma, with
whom the Seri were at war about that time;[95] yet there were enough
representatives of the Seri to gain a shocking character for sloth,
filth, thievery, treachery, obstinacy, and drunkenness. Assuming that
a quarter of the converts were Seri (and this ratio is larger than any
of the known records would indicate), there could hardly have been more
than a hundred of the tribe gathered about the several missions at
this palmiest time of Jesuit missionizing; and the records show that
by far the greater portion of these were women, children, cripples,
and vieillards, the warriors being commonly slain in the vigorous
proselyting expeditions conducted by the civil and military coadjutors
of the padres. If at this time the Seri population reached the 2,000
estimated by Dávila[96] and others, the proportion of proselytes (or
apostates from Seri naturalism) was but 5 per cent of the tribe and
naturally comprised the less vigorous and characteristic element. The
writer of “Rudo Ensayo” reckons that during six years preceding 1763
the Seri stole from the settlers (for eating, the sole use to which
they put such stock) “more than 4,000 mules, mares, and horses”,[97] i.
e., enough to sustain two or three hundred people, or a full thousand
if this meat formed no more than a fourth or a fifth of their diet, as
the contemporary records imply—and this was after the “extermination”
of the Seri by Parilla in 1750.
[92] Diario y Derrotero de lo Caminado, Visto, y Observado en el
Discurso de la Visita general de Precidios, situados en las Provincias
Ynternas de Nueva España; Guathemala, 1836, leg. 1514-1519.
[93] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, vol. III, p. 290.
[94] Rudo Ensayo, p. 193.
[95] Bancroft, op. cit.. vol. I, pp. 532-533. The former were
annihilated or driven into the Yaqui country by 1763 (Rudo Ensayo, p.
166).
[96] Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, p. 319.
[97] Ibid., p. 140.
Evidently the good padres greatly overestimated their knowledge of and
influence on this savage yet subtle tribe; actually they touched the
Seri character only lightly and temporarily, contributing slightly
to spontaneous acculturation, but never coming into relation with the
tribe as a whole.
And despite the efforts of both soldiers and priests, the savages
continued to ravage the settlements, to repel pioneering, to decimate
the herds and murder the vaqueros who sought to protect them, to
plunder everything portable and ambuscade punitive parties, and even
to engage in open hostilities. “In 1730 the Seris, Tepocas, Salineros,
and Tiburon islanders kept the province in great excitement, killing
twenty-seven persons and threatening all the pueblos with a general
conflagration”;[98] and both before and after this date the recorded
sanguinary episodes were too frequent for even passing mention, while
the indications between lines point to robberies and assassinations
and minor conflicts too many for full record even by the patient
chroniclers of the time.
[98] Bancroft, op. cit., p. 517.
* * * * *
Sometime about the beginning of the eighteenth century the Spanish
settlements pushed down Rio Sonora beyond the confluence of the
Opodepe to the last water gap, made conspicuous by a marble butte in
its throat and by the fact that here the sometimes subterranean flow
always rose to the surface in a permanent stream of pure and cool
water. Here, according to Padre Dominguez, “it was attempted to locate
the Presidio of Cinaloa against the rapacity of the Zeris, Tepocas,
and Pimas; and here General Idobro, of Cinaloa, wished to found a
pueblo of Tiburon Indians, brought for the purpose [probably from
Populo and Angeles] that they might be kept in subjection, but most
of them returned to their island and attempted to make attacks from
their hiding places.”[99] Nevertheless, the padre found 29 married
persons, 14 single, and 99 children of these “races” at the rancho. At
the time of his visit the place was known as Rancho del Pitquin; later
it became the Pueblo of Pitic, or Pitiqui, or Pitiquin, or San Pedro
de Pitic,[100] and long afterward the city of Hermosillo, while the
beautiful marble butte was christened Cerro de la Campana.
[99] “Diario del Padre Dominguez en Sonora y Sinaloa, 1731; manuscript
in archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
[100] This place on Rio Sonora is not to be confounded with the Rancho
(afterward Pueblo) of Pitiqui or San Diego de Pitiqui (The Geographical
and Historical Dictionary of America, and the West Indies * * * of
Colonel Don Antonio de Alcedo, by G. A. Thompson, London, 1814, vol.
IV, p. 153), or Pitic chiquito (Bol. Soc. Mex. Geog. y Est., vol.
VIII, 1860, p. 454), or Pitiquin, now the town of Pitiquito on Rio San
Ignacio.
By 1742 the settlements were so far extended as to warrant the
establishment of a royal fort in the water-gap at Pitic;[101] and the
ecclesiastics kept pace with the military movement by founding the
mission of San Pedro de la Conquista,[102] or “Pueblo de San Pedro
de la Conquista de Seris”[103] (now abbreviated to “Pueblo Seris”,
or merely “Seris”); both fort and mission being designed primarily
for better protection of the settlements against Seri sorties. These
outposts brought the missionaries and their soldier supporters a day’s
journey nearer Seriland, i. e., to within some 27 leagues (71 miles),
or two days’ journey, from Bahia Kino and the desert boundary of the
Seri stronghold; and although neither fort nor mission was continuously
maintained, the event marked a practically permanent advance on the
“despoblado” previously despoiled and desolated by the wandering Seri.
[101] Alegre, Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, tomo III, p. 288;
Villa-Señor, Theatro Americano, segunda parte, p. 392; Rudo Ensayo, p.
193.
[102] Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 528.
[103] Reise-Erinnerungen und Abenteuer aus der neuen Welt, von C. A.
Pajeken, Bremen, 1861, p. 97.
Even before this date friction between missionaries and laymen had
grown out of the ecclesiastical charity for a people whose repeated
atrocities placed them outside the pale of sympathy on the part of
the industrial settlers; and this friction was felt especially about
the new presidio. In 1749 Colonel Diego Ortiz Parilla became governor
of Sonora, and began a rigorous rule over civilians, soldiers,
ecclesiastics, and Indians; and when the 80 families (classed as
Seri, but mainly of Tepoka and other tribes) domiciled at Populo were
dissatisfied with his transfers of land and people, he promptly met
their protests by arresting them and transporting the greater part of
them, including all the women and children, to various places, “some
even in Guatemala and other very distant parts of America.”[104]
Naturally this was resented, not only by the Seri messmates at the
missions, but to some extent by their kinsmen over the plains and along
the coast, with whom sporadic communication was maintained—chiefly
through spies, but partly by occasional escapes of the practically
imprisoned proselytes and the less frequent but more numerous
captures of new converts; and the Seri raids became more extended and
vindictive, reaching northward to Caborca, northeastward to Santa Ana
and Cucurpe, and eastward into the fertile valley of Rio Opodepe at
several points. Deeply incensed in his turn, Parilla undertook a war
of extermination—a war interesting not merely as an episode in Seri
history, but still more as a type of the Seri wars of two centuries.
Organizing a force of 500 men, and bringing canoes from Rio Yaqui, he
planned an expedition to Tiburon, to cover two months—and returned
with 28 prisoners, “all women and children and not a single Seri man”;
though he reported killing 10 or 12 warriors in action (according to
other accounts the slain comprised only 3 or 4 oldsters). These women
and children were domiciled at the pueblo of the Conquest of the Seri,
which in current thought thenceforth became the pueblo of the Seri,
and gradually passed into lore and later into history as the home of
the tribe rather than the mere penitentiary which it was in fact. The
padres waxed satirical over this quixotic conquest: Alegre recounts
that—
[104] Rudo Ensayo, p. 194; Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 535.
The good governor returned so vainglorious over his expedition
that it was even said he would punish anyone intimating that
there was a _Seri left in the world_, and proclaimed through
all America and Europe that he had extirpated by the roots that
infamous race.... The truth is that the force, on reaching
Tiburon, ascertained that the enemy had retreated to the
mountains; that none of the 75 Spaniards who accompanied the
governor could be induced, either by entreaties or threats,
to ascend in search of the Seri; but that some of the Pima
allies undertook to beleaguer the mountains, these, with one
or another of the officers, being the only ones that saw the
face of the enemy, and even these on two occasions only. From
the first sally they returned reporting that they had killed
3 of the Seri, and their empty word was accepted; the second
time they were so fortunate as to discover a village of women
and children, whom they took prisoners, and returned declaring
that the men had been left dead on the field. This famous
conquest, which the manuscript drawn up by the commander of the
expedition did not hesitate to compare with those of Alexander
and Cæsar, who were as nothing beside the governor of Sonora,
intoxicated much more the allied chief of the Pima, who had
taken the leading part in the final victory.[105]
[105] Historia de la Compaña de Jesus, tomo III, pp. 290-291; cf.
Apostolicos Afanes de la Compañia de Jesus, escritos por un Padre de la
misma Sagrada Religion de su Provincia de Mexico; Barcelona, 1754, pp.
366-368.
Eventually the vanity of this chief (Luis, or “Luys de Saric”) led to a
revolt on the part of the Pima tribe with the massacre of Padres Tello
and Rohen at Caborca.
Ortega was still more sarcastic in his fuller record of the expedition.
The skepticism of the padres as to the completeness of Parilla’s
extermination was well grounded, as was attested by the continuation
of Seri sorties with undiminished frequency and by the persistence of
hippophagy at the expense of the stockmen as already noted; moreover,
in the absence of records of maritime operations, in view of the
impracticability of transporting so large a force as that of Parilla
on balsas, and in the light of a still common application of the name
Tiburon to Sierra Seri and its environs as well as to the island, it
would seem to be an open question whether the much-lauded expedition
ever attained the insular stronghold, or even reached the seashore.
However this may be, the expedition was the first of a long series sent
out to exterminate one of the hardiest and acutest of tribes, wonted to
one of the hardest and aridest of habitats; and, save in the subsequent
advertising, all have yielded results more or less similar.
Another curtailment of the range of the Seri dates from the refounding
of the mission of “San José de Guaimas”[106] (on the site of the
present Guaymas) in 1751, and the establishment of a “rancho called
Opan Guaimas” some distance up the coast about the same time; the site
of the mission being that of a sanctuary located by Kino in 1701,
and revisited by Salvatierra and Ugarte, though never continuously
maintained. True, the padre and the ranchero suffered from the Seri,
who displaced the former, killed eight of his converts, burned the
church, and scattered the hundred families of the pueblo, afterward
keeping the Spaniards at a distance for ten years;[107] yet the
settlers only returned with new vigor, and gradually gained the
strength requisite for holding the town. Naturally the belligerency
of the Seri in this vicinity impressed the state authorities with the
desirability of further “extermination”; and when in 1756 a band of
the Seri, after a hypocritical suit for peace, entrenched themselves
among the all but inaccessible rocks and barrancas of Cerro Prieto
(a ragged sierra midway between Pitic and San José de Guaimas, which
for this reason came to be regarded—erroneously—as the headquarters
of the tribe), Don Juan Antonio de Mendoza, then governor of Sonora,
sent out a strong body of soldiery to dislodge or destroy them; but
after 200 of the soldiers were ambushed and 24 of them wounded, the
expedition returned to the capital, San Miguel de Horcasitas. Stung by
this defeat, Mendoza reorganized his force and led the way in person to
Cerro Prieto, where one of the four parties into which the force was
divided wrought such execution that, in the following May, there were
seen the bodies of enemies “dead and eaten by animals, dead and partly
buried in the earth, dead lying in caves, and dead in the water-pockets
of the sierra”.[108] In this battle Mendoza himself was ambushed and
attacked by three Seri archers, escaping only by the mediation of
his saint (“por medio de mi santo”); but during the ensuing night he
carried out the ingenious ruse of beating drums in different parts of
the canyon, which reechoed from the rocky heights with such terrifying
effect that the enemy fled, leaving him in victorious possession of the
field.
[106] Rudo Ensayo, p. 229 (misspelled “Guiamas”).
[107] Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 554.
[108] Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo I, p.
85.
Again in 1760, when a band of the Seri (supposed to be temporarily
combined with the Pima) took refuge in Cerro Prieto, Governor Mendoza
attacked them with over 100 men; but a band of 19 Seri successfully
held this force at bay for several hours, until their chief (called
El Becerro) fell wounded and dying, yet retaining sufficient vitality
to rise, as the Spaniards approached, and transfix Mendoza with an
arrow—when the two leaders died together.[109] Mendoza was succeeded by
Governor José Tienda de Cuervo, who, in 1761, led a force of 420 men to
Cerro Prieto, where a still bloodier battle was fought, the Seri losing
49 killed and 63 captured, besides 322 horses; though the greater
part of their force escaped to the island of San Juan Bautista (San
Esteban?).[110]
[109] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, tomo III, p. 298.
[110] Ibid., p. 299; Rudo Ensayo, p. 196. It is probable that part or
all of the captives were quartered at Pueblo Seri, though, the record
is silent on this point.
In 1763 Don Juan de Pineda succeeded to the governorship, and obtained
the cooperation of a force of national troops under Colonel Domingo
Elizondo:
Headquartering in El Pitiqui, he commenced active war against
the said Seris, but was unable to reduce them, because, being
separated and dispersed over their vast territory, they wore
out the troops, who only occasionally stumbled on one little
rancheria or another. For this reason, and because in many
years they could not exterminate them, and desiring to leave
the country, they opened negotiations with them, making them
small presents and offering them royal protection if they would
surrender peacefully. Some of them pretended to do this and
assembled at Pitiqui, where they remained with the same bad
faith as always, fed at the expense of the royal treasury,
when the troops retired, leaving the evil uncured, but merely
covered.[111]
[111] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., vol. I, p. 224.
In the same year Padre Tomás Ignacio Lizazoin reported, for the
information of the viceroy, that the ravages of the Seri and other
Indians “had caused the almost total abandonment of Pimeria and Sonora
provinces”, and proposed plans for protection which were apparently
never carried out.[112]
[112] Bancroft, op. cit., p. 565.
* * * * *
The aggressive and bloody policy of Parilla, Mendoza, and Cuervo
undoubtedly widened the divergence between the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities, and brought to nought the pacific policy of the latter.
Inspired by fervid zeal, the good padres stretched the mantle of
charity to its utmost over their converts, bringing into the fold all
whom they could coax or coerce, and clinging unto all whom they could
subsidize or suppress. Uninformed or misinformed concerning the extent
of Seriland and the numbers and real traits of its inhabitants on their
native heath, and professionally prone to see the most favorable side
of the situation, they imagined themselves making conquest over a cruel
and refractory tribe; yet careful review of the records indicates that
they deluded themselves, and in some measure distorted history, through
overweening notions concerning their progress in evangelizing the
Seri. Actually, their converts were the lame and halt and blind left
behind in the harder-pressed raids, captives taken in battle by the
intrepid Escalante and other soldiers, apostates and outlaws ostracized
and driven off by their fellows, spies sent out to find the way for
further rapacity,[113] and the general riffraff and offscouring of the
tribe, who esteemed parasitism above the hereditary independence of
their kin. This condition is attested by later examples; it is also
attested by the rapidly growing divergence of the ecclesiastical and
civil policies; it is equally attested by at least partial recognition
of the situation on the part of several of the padres: Villa-Señor,
writing about 1745, parades the mission and two pueblos of the tribe,
and says, “All the Ceris Indians are Christians” (“Todos los Indios
Ceris, son Cristianos”);[114] yet he adds that “it is rare to find one
who does not cling to the idolatry of their paganism”, and elsewhere
describes the great “despoblado” extending to the coast as inhabited by
pagan Seri and Tepoka Indians (“habitado de los Indios Seris, y Tepoca,
Gentiles”).[115] Venegas, writing about 1750, refers to “the Seris
and Tepocas, who are either infidels or imperfectly reduced, and tho’
Father Salva Tierra civilized them and the missionaries have baptized
many, they still retain such a love for their liberty and customs as
all the labours of the missionaries have not been able to obliterate,
so that it is impossible to incorporate them with the missions by
mildness”;[116] and his last word of them notes their massacre of
Padres Tello and Rohen in Caborca, and ends with an invocation “for
the complete reduction of these unhappy savages, now involved in the
shadow of death”.[117] So, also, the talented author of “Rudo Ensayo”,
writing in 1763, says of the Seri:
[113] Captain Fernando Sanchez Salvador, in his official
Representaciones to the Crown in 1751, complains that these Indians
“are allowed on frivolous pretexts to visit the presidios, and they
make use of the privilege to discover weak points and to plan attacks”
(Bancroft, op. cit., p. 542).
[114] Theatro Americano, segunda parte, p. 401.
[115] Ibid., p. 392.
[116] History of California, vol. II, p. 190.
[117] Ibid., p. 211. It is improbable that the Seri had anything to do
with this particular butchery. According to Coues, the latter padre
was killed at Sonoita; and he renders the name “Ruen or Ruhen” (On
the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer; the Diary and Itinerary of Francisco
Garcés, etc., 1900, vol. I, p. 88).
They have always been wild, resisting the law of God, even
those who had removed from among them to Populo, Nacameri, and
Angeles, and who constituted the smallest part of the nation.
And even these few, in order to have constant communication
with and give information to their heathen relatives, used
to go, as if they could not arouse suspicion, to spy out in
other villages what they wanted to know for their plans, and
immediately giving the intelligence they obtained to the
runaway Indians, these would act accordingly and nobody could
guess how they acquired the necessary information.[118]
[118] Op. cit., p. 193.
Again, in summarizing the relations with the tribe, this anonymous
author naively remarked:
And at the present day, notwithstanding that in different
encounters during the campaign of November, 1761, and before
and since then, more than forty men have been killed by our
arms and over seventy women and children have been captured,
still they are as fierce as ever and will not lend an ear to
any word of reconciliation.[119]
[119] Op. cit., pp. 195-196.
In general, the Jesuit history of the Seri is clear enough with
respect to the small extruded fraction, but nearly blind to the normal
tribe; there is nothing to indicate clear recognition of Seriland as
a hereditary habitat and stronghold; yet the records are such as to
define the salient episodes in Seri history as seen from a distantly
external view-point. Nor can it be forgotten that the erudite
evangelists made a deep and indelible impression on the intellectual
side of Sonora, and drew the strong historical outline on which their
own relations to the civil authorities on the one hand and to the Seri
Indians on the other hand are cast by the light of later knowledge.
The discordance between the civil and military authorities and the
dominant ecclesiastical order of Sonora sounded to Ciudad Mexico, and
eventually echoed to Madrid, and was doubtless one of a series of
factors which led to the needlessly harsh expulsion of the scholarly
Jesuits in 1767—and hence to a hiatus in the history of the province
and its tribes.
* * * * *
Although the padres knew little of the habits and customs of the “wild”
Seri save through hearsay, some of their notes are of ethnologic value:
Villa-Señor located them on the deserts extending from Pitic and
Angeles to Tepopa bay, and added:
They hold and occupy various rancherias, and subsist by the
chase of deer, bura [mule-deer], rabbits, hares, and other
animals, and also on the cattle they are able to steal from the
Spaniards, and on fish which they harpoon with darts in the
sea, and on the roots in which the land abounds.[120]
[120] Theatro Americano, p. 401.
Villa-Señor distinguished the “Tepocas”, whom he combined with the
“Gueimas” and “Jupangueimas”. Alegre located the Seri on the coast of
the gulf from a few leagues north of the mouth of Rio Yaqui to Bahia
San Juan de Bautista (Bahia Kino), adding, “with them may be classed
the Guaimas, few in number and of the same language”.[121] Writing
about the same time, José Gallardo observed: “The distinction is slight
between the Seri and Upanguaima, the one and the other having the
same idiom” (“Poco es la distincion que hay entre seri y upanguaima,
... y unos y otros casi hablan un mismo idioma”).[122] The author of
“Rudo Ensayo” wrote: “The Guaimas speak the same language, with but
little difference, as the Seris.”[123] He mistook Cerro Prieto as
their principal retreat; mentioned the mountains of Bacoatzi Grande,
Las Espuelas, and others as other haunts; noted Tiburon and San Juan
Bautista (San Esteban?) islands as less-known shelters, and gave
extended attention to “the poison they use for their arrows” as “the
most virulent known in these parts”; for “even in cases where the skin
only is wounded, the injured part begins to swell, and the swelling
extends all over the body to such a size that the flesh bursts and
falls to pieces, causing death in twenty-four hours.” To test this
poison, the Seri “bandage tightly the thigh or arm of one of their
robust young men; then make an incision with a flint and let the blood
flow away from the wound. When the blood is some distance from the
incision, they apply the point of an arrow to it, steeped in the deadly
poison. If at the approach of the point of the arrow the blood begins
to boil and recedes, the poison is of the right strength, and the man
who lends his blood for the experiment brushes it out with his hand to
prevent the poison from being introduced into his veins.” He was unable
“to find out with certainty of what deadly materials the deadly poison
is composed. Many a thing is spoken of, such as heads of irritated
vipers cut at the very moment of biting into a piece of lung; also half
putrefied human flesh and other filth with which I am unwilling to
provoke the nausea of the reader.” He added the opinion that “the main
ingredient is some root.”[124] Padre Joseph Och, who, with other German
evangels including padres Mittendorf, Pfefferkorn, and Ruen (or Rohen),
was stationed in northwestern Sonora shortly before the eviction of the
Jesuits, was one of the recorders of aboriginal traits and features,
though his record (like that of most of his confrères) is impoverished
by his failure to discriminate tribes; but one of his notes is specific:
[121] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, p. 216.
[122] The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. III (The Native Races,
vol. III), 1882, p. 704.
[123] Op. cit., p. 166.
[124] Ibid., pp. 197, 198.
As an extraordinary trapping [Zierde] the Seris pierce the
nasal septum and hang small colored stones, which swing in
front of the mouth, thereto by strings. A few carry, suspended
from the nose, little blue-green pebbles, in which they repose
great faith. They prize these very highly, and one must give
them at least a horse or a cow in exchange for one.[125]
[125] Nachrichten von verschiedenen Ländern des Spanisches Amerika,
aus eigenhändigen Aufsätzen einiger Missionare der Gesellschaft Jesu,
herausgegeben von Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, erster Theil; Halle,
1809, p. 255.
It is significant fact, and one attesting the physical and intellectual
distance of the padres from the normal Seri, that so few notes of
ethnologic value were made during the Jesuits’ régime. With a single
exception, so far as is known,[126] they recorded not a word of the
Seri tongue, not a distinctive custom beyond those evidently of common
knowledge, none of the primitive ceremonies and ideas such as attracted
their coadjutors in Canada and elsewhere. They made no reference to the
alleged cannibalism so conspicuous in later lore; but their silence on
this point cannot be regarded as evidential, since they were equally
silent concerning nearly all the characteristic customs and traits.
The neighboring Papago tribe met the invaders frankly as man to man,
displaying a notable combination of receptivity and self-containment
which enabled them to assimilate just so much of the Caucasian culture
as they deemed desirable, yet to maintain their purity of blood and
distinctiveness of culture for centuries; the Seri, on the other
hand, met the invaders as enemies, to be first feared, then blinded,
balked, and bled by surreptitious and sinister devices, and finally
to be assassinated through ambuscade or remorseless treachery; and it
is manifest that they surpassed the gentle padres in shrewdness and
strategy, using them as playthings and tools, and carefully concealing
their own characters and motives the while.
[126] The Noticia de las Personas qua han escrito ó publicado algunas
obras sobre Idiomas que se hablan en la Republica (of Mexico), by Dr
José Guadalupe Romero, includes a MS. “Vocabulario de las Lenguas
Eudeve, Pina y Seris”, written by Padre Adamo Gilg (Bol. Soc. Mex.
Geog. y Estad., 1860, tomo VIII, p. 378).
* * * * *
With the passing of the Jesuits, the publication of Sonoran records
received a check from which the province has never completely
recovered. True, the place of the order was partly taken by the Colegio
Apostólico de Querétaro, which promptly dispatched fourteen Franciscan
friars to Sonora, early in 1768, to take possession of the old missions
and to found others;[127] it is also true that civil enactments and
commissions, as well as military orders and reports, increased with the
growth of population; but comparatively few of the events and actions
found their way to the press. Seri episodes continued to recur with
irregular frequency; according to Dávila, the Seri outbreaks and wars
“exceed fifty in number since the conquest of Sonora”,[128] and there
are decisive indications that the Franciscan régime was not without
its due quota of strife. Moreover, the period was one of somewhat
exceptionally vigorous pioneering, of the initiation of mining and
agriculture, and of conquest over the “despoblado” formerly ranged and
inhabited by the Seri. It was during this period that the Seri were
permanently dislodged from their outlying haunts and watering-places
in Cerro Prieto; and it was during this period, too, that exploration
and settlement were extended to Rio Bacuache with such energy as to
displace the Seri from their other outlying refuge in the barrancas of
this stream. But, as the events and lines of progress multiplied, the
burden for the contemporary chronicler augmented without corresponding
increase in incentive to writing, and it is little wonder that the
custom of writing, copying, manifolding, and printing the contemporary
records fell into desuetude.
[127] Dávila, Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, p. 10; Bancroft, op.
cit., p. 672.
[128] Ibid., p. 319.
Despite the meagerness of the Franciscan chronicles, the friars of
this order are to be credited with making and recording one of the
most noteworthy essays toward the subjugation of the Seri—an essay
involving the first and last actual attempt to found a Caucasian
establishment within Seriland proper. The ecclesiastical corps, sent
out from Querétaro college under the presidency of Fray Mariano
Antonio de Buena y Alcalde, reached Sonora early in 1768, and were
distributed among the missions to which they were respectively assigned
before the end of June; and Fray Mariano participated in the efforts
to subdue the Seri ensconced in Cerro Prieto. After some months of
apparently nominal siege, the hostiles straggled out of their retreat,
whereupon “the governor, seeing them assembled and peaceful, besought
the friar to instruct and baptize them”;[129] the friar promptly
acquiesced, with the provision that he should be furnished with the
requisite appurtenances of a mission, including not only a church and
sacred ornaments, but a house and living for a resident minister.
The requirements delayed procedure, but resulted in the appointment
of Fray Juan Crisóstomo Gil de Bernabe (already designated by the
Querétaro college as Fray Mariano’s successor) to take charge of the
Seri mission. “The new president, desiring to gratify his proper zeal
and the insistence of the governor as to the need of those miserable
Indians for the bread of doctrinism”, obtained candles and wine from
private benefactors, and, despite his inability to find even a hut for
shelter, established a sanctuary in the Rancheria de los Seris (Pueblo
Seri) on November 17, 1772:
[129] Crónica Seráfica y Apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de
la Santa Cruz de Querétaro en la Nueva España ... escrita por el Padre
Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, 2ª parte, Mexico, 1792, p. 426.
It was impossible to satisfy the ambition of the missionaries
to catechize all the Indians, because, although the whole
nation was peaceable, no small portion of them were devoid of
desire to hear doctrinism, as many of them had withdrawn to
their ancient lurking haunts, principally on Isla Tiburon,
whence they came to the Presidio Horcasitas, making false
displays to the governor of great fidelity and obedience,
petitioning that they should not be taken from the island, but
should be given a minister to baptize them the same as those
at Pitic; and they did not wish to join those nor to leave
the rocky fastness of their libertinage and asylum of their
crimes.... To conceal their purposes, they petitioned that a
town for them should be established on the opposite coast,
where they might assemble on leaving the island. Their request
was embarrassing because on examination of the coast there was
found only a single scanty spring in a carrizal in a playa-like
country [toda la tierra como de playa], with little fuel and no
timber.
Not unnaturally Fray Crisóstomo hesitated to locate a mission on the
practically uninhabitable site, in which, moreover, “the mission
would be of no utility because the Indians did not really wish to
leave their island and submit to religious instruction, nor could the
coast supply the necessary food, as it was a barren sand-waste, so
that it would become necessary for the King to constantly supply
provisions, else the converts would have a pretext for wandering
around and avoiding attention to the catechism.” But the governor
was obdurate, and only complained to the viceroy and the Querétaro
college. Between fires, Fray Crisóstomo yielded, and on November 26,
1772, proceeded to Carrizal and established himself as a minister,
without company or escort save a little boy to serve as acolyte. “With
the aid of the Indios Tiburones the friar erected a jacal [or hut
bower][130] to serve as a church, and a tiny hut as a habitation, and
began immediately, with the greatest kindness, to convoke the people
for religious instruction, only to see that the desires they had
expressed to the governor to become Christians were not deep enough
to bring them from their island to attend services—except a few who
came and took part in the prayers when they thought fit. But as the
congregation at the place was only nominal, and with only three jacales
under control, so also was the instruction they sought; and because of
both the condition of the land and their wandering instinct, which is
in them almost a necessity and more excusable than in other Indians,
because neither within their island nor on the coast is the territory
fit for cultivation, and still less for the stability essential to
civil and political life”, the missionary naturally despaired of
substantial progress; indeed, “the only fruit for which he could hope,
under his mode of living, was reduced either to a child or an adult
whom he could, in special circumstances, shrive in extremis.” In this
disheartening condition the friar spent the winter from near the
end of November to March 6, 1773. Then, as appears from an official
declaration, there came to him by night an Indian called Yxquisis, with
a trumpery tale about a revolt on the part of the Piato and Apache,
which led the guileless friar away from the poor shelter of his jacal
under the guidance of the Indian. At the inquest Yxquisis confessed,
although with many falsehoods (“con muchas mentiras”), that he had
stoned the friar, but “without stating any motive for committing such
an atrocious crime”. Yet even before the story reached Horcasitas two
“Indios del Tiburon”, supposed to be implicated, were beaten to death
with sticks on the spot in which the friar’s body was found,[131] and
the body was buried by a chief of the tribe. And so ended the mission
of Carrizal in the land of the Seri.
[130] Doubtless the structures approached the conventional Seri
pattern, illustrated in the accompanying plate vi, from photographs
taken on Tiburon in 1895.
[131] Arricivita, op. cit., pp. 426-429, 520-524.
[Illustration: PL. VI