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]
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:
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]
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.
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.
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:
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.