[Illustration: HOUSE COVERING, TIBURON ISLAND]
During this period of mutual toleration the Seri were so deeply
influenced by the white contact that, for probably the only time in
their history, they voluntarily allowed an alien free entry into
their territory; and Don Pascual explored the coast of Bahia Kino,
projected a port, and even visited Isla Tiburon twice or thrice. In
one of these visits he was ferried over Boca Infierno on a balsa, but,
finding himself unable to keep pace with the swift-footed Seri on their
hilly pathways, he returned for his saddle mule; halfway across, the
poor animal swimming behind the balsa suddenly plunged and struggled,
and, on landing, hobbled out on three legs—the fourth having being
snapped by a shark. Warned by this incident, Don Pascual abandoned a
half-formed plan of stocking the island, and afterward brought up a
small vessel from Guaymas in which he carried across a dozen caballeros
(including Don Ygnacio Lozania, who had visited the island with the
Andrade expedition); and this party examined the southeastern quarter
of the island, watering two or three times at Tinaja Anita, and
pushing as far westward as Arroyo Carrizal. On this trip he studied
the Seri house-building, and was the first to note the large use of
turtle-shells and sponges in the process.[217]
[217] Typical Seri jacales, as described by Don Pascual in 1894, were
observed on Tiburon by the 1895 expedition, as shown by the photographs
reproduced in plates VII, VIII, and IX.
About the middle fifties it became apparent that the Seri were
dividing into a parasitical portion clustered about the rancho (as
their forbears gathered about Populo and Pueblo Seri long before),
and a more independent faction clinging to their rugged ranges and
gale-swept fishing grounds; and it became evident, too, that the
thievery of the dependent faction would soon ruin the rancho if not
checked, or at least greatly diminished. Accordingly the passive policy
was modified by introducing a more active police service. At first
the penalties for theft and misdemeanors were light, and the system
promised well—especially as even a slight punishment was equivalent
to banishment, the criminal fleeing to Tiburon on his escape or
immediately after the crime; yet the experience of a year or two proved
that the escaped parasites seldom resumed the hard customs of their
tribal life, but generally returned to the borderland and there preyed
on the wandering stock from the rancho. Finally, driven to extremity,
and supported by the state and federal authorities (themselves
confessedly unable successfully to cope with the condition), Don
Pascual reluctantly adopted a severer régime. Sending out as messengers
several Seri still remaining at the rancho, he convened the leading
chiefs and clanmothers of the tribe in a council, and announced that
the stock-killing must cease, on pain of a Seri head for each head
of stock thereafter slain. The Indians seemingly acquiesced, and
separated; but within two days a group of Seri women “milled” a band
of horses, caught and threw one in such wise as to break its neck,
and immediately sucked its blood, gorged its intestines, and buried
its quarters to “ripen”, after their former fashion. Thereupon a
matron remaining near the rancho was sent to demand the delivery of
the perpetrators; and, when she failed to return, the vaqueros were
instructed to shoot the first Seri seen on the llano. Within two days
more, the tribe were on the warpath for revenge—and the war raged for a
decade.
During the early months of the Encinas war Don Pascual’s vaqueros
sought merely to enforce the barbaric law of a head for a head; but,
as they found themselves beset by ambush, assailed and wounded by
night, despoiled of favorite animals, and kept constantly in that
most nerve-trying state of eternal vigilance, their rancor rose to
an intensity nearly equal to the savage passion for blood-vengeance;
and thenceforth the Seri were hunted from the plain east of Desierto
Encinas precisely as were the stealthy jaguar and sneaking coyote—and
the ghastly details were better spared. There were few open battles;
commonly the vaqueros rode in groups and guarded against ambuscades,
and the Seri were picked off one by one; but once in the early sixties
Don Pascual, at the head of some 30 vaqueros, fell into an ambush on
the frontier, and several of his horses were killed and some of his
men wounded, while 60 or 70 Seri warriors were left on the field.
Don Pascual’s horse received a slight arrow wound, to which little
attention was paid; next morning the gash was swollen and inflamed and
the beast too stiff and logy for use; in the afternoon the glands under
the jaw were swollen, and there was a purulent discharge from eyes and
nostrils. On the second morning the animal was hardly able to move, its
head was enormously swollen, there were fetid ulcers about the jaws and
throat, and the swelling extended to the legs and abdomen. On the third
morning there were suppurating ulcers on various parts of the body,
while rags of putrefied flesh and stringy pus hung from the head and
neck, and the animal was unapproachable because of the stench; during
the day it dropped dead, and even the coyotes and buzzards shrank from
the pestilential carcass. This and parallel incidents impressed Don
Pascual with the dangers incident to Seri war; but fortunately the fact
that he—the leader of the party, the first to fall into the ambush,
and the target of most of the arrows—had escaped unscathed impressed
still more deeply the surviving savages, and they soon sued for peace.
Thenceforth he was revered as a shaman greater than those of the tribe,
feared as an invulnerable fighter, and honored as a just lawgiver;
and gradually the condition of mutual tolerance was restored, to
rest on a firmer basis than before.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY