Something is known of Seri warfare through the history of the centuries
since 1540, and especially through the bloody episodes of the Encinas
régime and the occasional outbreaks of the last decade or two.
The available data clearly indicate that the warfare of the tribe
complements their pacific industries in every essential respect.
As befits their primitive character, warfare has played an important
role in the history of the folk, forming, indeed, one of the chief
factors in determining the course of tribal development. There is no
means of estimating the losses suffered and occasioned in warfare with
the neighboring tribes during either prehistoric or historic times;
but the indications are that they were much greater than the losses
connected with Caucasian contact. Neither is it practicable to estimate
reliably the fatalities attending the interminable conflicts with the
Spanish invaders and their descendants, though it is safe to say that
the Seri losses in strife against Spaniards and Mexicans aggregate many
hundred, and that the correlative loss on the part of their enemies
reaches several score, if not some hundred, lives. Few if any other
aboriginal tribes of America have had so sanguinary a history as the
Seri, and none other has at once so long and so bloody a record.
According to the consistent accounts of several survivors of conflict
with the Seri, their chief weapons are arrows, stones, and clubs—though
several survivors manifest greater fear of the throttling hands and
rending teeth of the savage warriors than of all their artificial
weapons combined. A striking feature of the recitals, indeed, is
the rarity of reference to weapons; the ambushes or surrounds or
chance meetings, with their disastrous or happy consequences, are
commonly described with considerable detail; the carbines or rifles,
the machetes and knives, or the deftly thrown riatas employed by the
rancheros or vaqueros are mentioned with full appreciation of their
serviceability; but the ordinary expressions concerning the despised
yet dreaded Seri are precisely those employed in recounting conflicts
with carnivorous beasts. When Andrés Noriega’s kinswoman proudly
related how he alone once overawed and routed an attacking party
of 30 Seri warriors, she duly mentioned the carbine ready for use in
his hands and the six-shooter and machete in his belt; but nothing was
said of the Seri weapons. When a distinguished sportsman citizen of
Caborca, the local authority on the Seri, sought to dissuade the 1895
expedition from visiting Tiburon, he was repetitively and cumulatively
emphatic in his oracular forecast, “Ils vont vous tuer! _Ils vont vous
tuer!!_ ILS VONT VOUS TUER!!!”—yet he made but passing reference
to “poisoned” arrows, and none to other weapons, in the general
implication that invaders of the tribal territory were torn limb from
limb and strewn over the rocks and deserts of Seriland. When Jesus
Omada, of Bacuachito, boasted his Seri scars, he indeed emphasized the
arrow-mark on his breast, but only as a prelude and foil to the far
ghastlier record of his teeth-torn arm. When Robinson and his companion
were butchered on Tiburon in 1894, the bloody work was effected chiefly
by means of a borrowed Winchester; and neither the account of the
survivors nor that of the actors made mention of native weapons—save
the stones with which the second victim was finished according to the
local version. In short, most of the casual expressions and fuller
recitals alike indicate that while the Seri are famous fighters their
weapons—except the much-dreaded “poisoned” arrows—are incidents rather
than essentials to savage assaults, and that their prowess rests
primarily on bodily the strength and swiftness.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY