Then came the second expedition of the Bureau of American Ethnology, to
which several Papago domiciled at Costa Rica were attached as guards.
While the party were at the rancho the day before the first entrada
into Seriland via Barranca Salina, a party of vaqueros from Rancho
Santa Ana tended a herd of stock to the barranca for water; one of
the animals strayed behind a dune, and the vaqueros, following its
trail, came on a small band of Seri already devouring the entrails,
and attacked them so vigorously that they escaped only by outrunning
the horses, leaving behind all their unattached possessions, including
a bow and quiver of arrows and an ancient and nonusable army rifle.
This incident, albeit typical, was untimely, and doubtless aided in
rendering the Indians too wild to permit communication with the aliens
during the ensuing weeks spent in their territory.
After the withdrawal of this expedition the Seri resumed their range
over the borderland plain, with the evident intention of avenging the
insult of the invasion. There were a number of skirmishes, in which
some of the Papago guards of the 1895 expedition were wounded and had
horses killed under them, though they did customary execution on the
worse-armed Seri; and extensively published press items indicate that,
toward the end of January, 1896, a party of five gold prospectors
landed on Tiburon, whence one escaped.
A well-attested episode ensued toward the end of 1896: Captain George
Porter and Sailor John Johnson spent the later part of the summer in
cruising the coasts of the Gulf, collecting shells, feathers, and
other curios in the small sloop _World_. About the end of October they
apparently anchored in Rada Ballena; and a day or two later Captain
Martin Mendez, of Guaymas, in charge of the schooner _Otila_, being
driven up the gulf and into Bahia Kunkaak by storms, came on a horde
of Seri looting Porter’s vessel. The episode received publicity on
Mendez’s return to Guaymas; United States Consular Agent Crocker
instituted inquiries, and Governor Corral sent a force to Costa
Rica, where, after some delay, a parley was held with a strong band
of Seri under the chiefship of “a seven-foot warrior named El Mudo
(The Mute), ... so called for his reticence of speech.”[223] The
testimony obtained at the parley and from Captain Mendez indicates
that Porter and Johnson landed, or at least approached the shore,
probably in a small boat; that they were met by a shower of arrows,
under which Johnson immediately fell, while Porter defended himself
with a shotgun, slaying five of the Seri before he was himself
transfixed; that the vessel was then looted, and that Mendez and his
crew were prevented from landing and apparently driven off by the Seri
force. In the course of the parley the state officials “demanded the
surrender of the ringleaders in the massacre”, with the alternative of
“regarding the whole tribe as guilty and punishing them accordingly”;
but El Mudo, evidently holding the invasion of the island as the
initial transgression and deeming the loss of the tribe under Porter’s
marksmanship as more than commensurate with the Caucasian loss,
peremptorily ended the conference and returned to the island. Vigorous
efforts were made to pursue the tribesmen beyond their practically
impassable frontier, with the usual product of ruined horses and
famished riders. Then the episode died away in an armed neutrality
strained somewhat beyond the normal. Meantime the Papago guards
remained at Costa Rica. “They are continuously on the lookout for these
Seris, and once or twice have killed a stray one or two.”[224]
[223] San Francisco Chronicle, October 16, 1898, p. 3. The details of
the episode, including the correspondence of Consular Agent Crocker,
were printed in the newspapers of San Diego (the place of residence of
Porter and Johnson), as well as in those of San Francisco and other
cities; and there was considerable correspondence concerning the matter
with the State Department at Washington. Some reports recount that the
bodies of Porter and Johnson were rent to fragments and devoured, but
these details naturally lack confirmation. El Mudo’s portrait appears
in plate XIX.
[224] The quotations are from the account of T. H. Silsbee, of San
Diego, prepared on his return from a visit to Costa Rica.
Both before and after the Porter-Johnson episode schemes were devised
by various parties, chiefly Californians, for obtaining concessions
covering Tiburon and its resources, most of these schemes involving
plans for the extermination of the Seri; and press accounts indicate
that a concession covering the islands of the gulf above the latitude
of 29° (i. e., including about half of Isla Tiburon) was granted
to an American company of much distinction. It would appear from
numerous news items that representatives of the company sought to land
on Tiburon, where they were first cajoled with offerings of food,
afterward found to be poisonous, and later driven off by an enlarged
force of naked archers. A recent publication bearing some official
sanction announces that “Mr W. J. Lyons, of Hermosillo, Sonora, has
secured a concession for the exploration of the island and in November
of this year will fit out an expedition for that purpose.”[225] The
various movements are significant as indices of current opinion and
official policy with respect to the tribe.
[225] El Estado de Sonora, Mexico. Sus Industrias, Comerciales, Mineras
y Manufacturas. Obra Publicada bajo los Auspicios del Gobierno del
Estado. Obra Ilustrada, Octubre de 1897. By J. R. Southworth, Nogales;
p. 73.
* * * * *
On the whole, the later episodes are natural sequels of the eventful
and striking earlier history of the Seri; and they can only be
interpreted as pointing to early extinction of one of the most strongly
marked and distinctive of aboriginal tribes.