Disapproving of this undignified and inhuman crusade, the acting governor, General Francisco Ponce de Leon, planned a still more vigorous campaign by land and sea for the purpose of capturing the entire tribe and transporting them to Pueblo Seri, where a few of their kin were still harbored.[154] The command was intrusted to Colonel Francisco Andrade, who took personal charge of the land force, including 160 infantry from Guaymas, 60 infantry and 30 cavalry from Hermosillo, and considerable corps from Horcasitas and Altar. The naval auxiliary, in charge of Don Tomás Espence,[155] pilot, comprised a schooner of 12 tons; two launches, one carrying a 4-pound cannon and the other a 2-pound falconet; and one rowboat. On August 11, 1844, Espence sailed from Guaymas, and six days later cast anchor at the embarcadero (apparently a convenient place on the coast of Bahia Kino due west of Pozo Escalante—the Embarcadero Andrade of figure 1) opposite Tiburon. Andrade marched from Hermosillo August 13, reached Carrizal August 16, and had detachments at the coast to meet the squadron the next day. Both the vessels and this detachment were out of water, and next morning Espence, taking a few soldiers and an Indian guide, made his way to Tiburon in search of springs; but “on arriving it turned out that the Indian had deceived the party or did not wish to reveal the water.” Nevertheless they landed, and Espence hoisted the Mexican flag, “taking possession of the island in the name of the Mexican Government, as the first civilized person to touch the soil.” Afterward he divided his force, and he and the sailors wandered far, spending the entire day in vain search for water. Toward evening he “made the men wade into the sea up to their necks, and in this manner mitigated somewhat their burning thirst.” Meantime the soldiers had traveled inland some 6 or 8 miles, and found water at the head of an arroyo (apparently a temporary tinaja west of Punta Narragansett), but it was surrounded by Indians, who at once gave battle. Such was their thirst that the soldiers held their ground, drinking one at a time under the protection of their comrades. At length they killed two chiefs (one of whom wore a jacket taken from one Hijar, robbed on the Cienega road a few days before), and succeeded in withdrawing to a small eminence and sheltering themselves behind a rock. Later they effected a retreat without loss, and of course without water, so that they arrived at the shore even thirstier than the sailors. Making their way back to the mainland during the night, the party were relieved the following day by mule-loads of water sent over from Carrizal. On August 20 Colonel Andrade marched to the coast with most of his force, leaving a detachment to guard the route; and the next day Espence transported to the island 125 troops, 16 horses, and some mules and cattle, without other accident than the drowning of a mule and a steer “by the strength of the current”. Suffering much from thirst, the troops pressed inland to the watering-place already discovered, where they camped. The next day Colonel Andrade, with Lieutenant Jesus Garcia, worked northward, finding another watering-place (doubtless Tinaja Anita) 3½ leagues distant from the first; and this was made headquarters for the force. Several parties were sent out in search of water and Indians. A few watering-places were found, and a number of women and children with a few men were captured, though the journals indicate that the excursions were of limited extent only. Meantime Espence brought over the baggage and provisions; and on August 24, leaving a launch and a rowboat for the use of the troops, he sailed northward through the strait, and three days later, after passing many bars of sand, entered the bay at the extreme north (Bahia Agua Dulce), opposite Punta Tepopa, finding sharks swarming in thousands. Here he found fresh water 250 paces from the beach—the water which sustained Hardy eighteen years before, and Ugarte over a century earlier still. He found no Indians here, but a number of jacales and balsas (which he immediately burned), as well as bones and other remains of horses.[156] On August 28 and 29 Espence skirted the abrupt and rocky coasts of Tiburon, west and south of the northern bay, without seeing trace of natives; on the 30th he reached the western bay, where he found huts and fresh tracks, and captured a woman disabled by snake-bite. Farther down the bay he encountered a considerable party, who first prepared to attack, and then, overawed by his bold front, sued for peace; whereupon he accepted their submission, and sent them with a letter to Colonel Andrade. This affair concluded, and escaping currents so contrary that he was nearly locoed (“por las corrientes encontradas que me volvian loco”),[157] he coasted southward; and on September 1, at the southwestern point of the island, he found another rancheria, and made peaceful conquest of the occupants, whom he also sent with a letter to Andrade. Thence he coasted eastward, and, on September 3, returned to his starting point, “having navigated the island in the period of nine days, having in this time burned 64 huts and 97 balsas, and reduced to peace 104 Indians with their families.” The next day he transported the captives to the mainland, “their number, comprising men, women, and children, reaching 384, besides about 37 remaining at large on the island.”[158] On September 5 the remaining troops were transferred to the mainland, with the exception of a small detachment, which remained for an unspecified, but evidently short period, in the vain hope of corralling the warriors, with the families to which they belonged, supposed (on grounds not given) to remain on the island. The troops and their captives immediately moved to Laguna de los Cercaditos (probably Laguna la Cruz) to rejoin the cavalry guard; thence, suffering much from thirst, they marched toward Hermosillo, arriving at that place September 12,[159] where the troops and captives formed a triumphal procession, met on the highroad by the merchants and the civil and military authorities, and greeted by the ringing of bells and the firing of rockets, and with music and refreshments.
The captives were imprisoned over night in the mint, the children weeping, the women chattering angrily or humbly, and the men sulking. Next day the Hermosilleños began distributing the children among themselves, some families taking three and many two, while the adults were transferred to Pueblo Seri, placed in charge of a single keeper, and set to gathering fuel, etc. Naturally this unstable status did not long persist; “within two months they began to disappear, fleeing to their respective and native haunts, stealing and carrying with them the children from whom they had been separated”;[160] and, according to Espence, they committed “many murders on the Pitic and Guaimas roads” as they returned to Tiburon.[161]
While the Tiburon captives were escaping, the campaigning continued; and, in November, 1844, several Seri families, comprising 63 men, women, and children, who had been scavengering Rancho del Burro (“manteniéndose allí á merced de los desperdicios de dicho rancho”),[162] were captured and transported to the mint at Hermosillo, and soon afterward transferred to Pueblo Seri. During the same month a report came from Rancho del Pocito, on the Guaymas road, that Seri marauders (assumed to belong to the 16 families left on the island) had killed 10 head of stock; and a detachment of 15 cavalry was sent to inflict punishment. Early in December this party met a Seri force of over seventy warriors, including some of those captured on Tiburon and escaped from Pueblo Seri; after a battle of four hours the troops found their ammunition exhausted, several of their carbines out of order, and all but four or five of their horses winded; so that they were driven to parley with the Indians and to procure their surrender by pacific means—especially promises of good treatment.[163] Subsequently a municipal commission from Hermosillo reminded the defeated Seri of their surrender, and “three, four, or eight” of them presented themselves (“presentándose tres, cuatro ú ocho hombres”), and were probably added to the colony at Pueblo Seri.
Espence’s journal clearly indicates a complete circumnavigation of Tiburon, the second in history (that of Ugarte in 1721 being the first); and naturally some of his notes are of ethnologic value:
The Ceris Indians are tall, well formed, not very corpulent; the women are remarkable for small breasts and feet and high insteps. At night they travel ill; this is to be attributed to the reflection of the sun on the sand, which is quite white, and as they all live on the shore where they gain sustenance, which is fish and plankton [marisco], they are daily exposed to a glare which injures their vision. Their favorite food is turtles and horses.... They are all in the most savage condition it is possible to conceive. Their language is guttural, and they are most filthy in their persons, as in their food, which is mostly eaten raw, or at the best half cooked; they endure a thousand miseries on the island, yet the love they have for it is incredible. They are always accompanied by innumerable dogs, ... which they have domesticated.[164]
Velasco adds:
The Ceris subsist on fish, the seeds of grass, and coastwise shrubs, as well as on the flesh of horses and deer, which they kill. There is no better proof of this fact than this—on approaching the said Ceris, one instantly perceives that their bodies exhale an intolerable stench, like that of a corpse of eight or more days, totally rotten, so that it is necessary to withdraw far as possible from them.[165]
Of all the Indian tribes known in Sonora, none are more barbarous and uncivilized than the Ceris. They are perverse to the limit, vicious beyond compare in drunkenness, infinitely filthy, the bitterest enemies of the whites, like the worst of the Indians.[166]
He adds also that the men wear a pelican-skin robe and a breechclout of cotton cloth, with most of the body uncovered; “they have their faces painted or barred with prominent black lines. They use no foot-gear of any kind, and many have the nasal septum pierced and adorned with pieces of greenstone or ordinary glass.” “They are robust in stature, tall and straight, generally with bright black eyes. The women are not uncomely, and of bronzy color [de color abronzado]. Their clothing is made of pelican skins fastened together, retaining the feathers; with this they are covered from the waist downward”, the remainder of the body being bare. The women of Hermosillo provide them with cast off garments when they approach the city, and these they wear, unwashed, until they fall to pieces. “The said tribe, in addition to being the vilest and most brutal known in the country, are preeminently treacherous and traitorous, so that forty of their outbreaks may be counted during the efforts to reduce them to civilized life.” At the time of the Cimarrones outbreak, the Seri of Tiburon and Tepoka numbered 2,000; “to day [about 1846 or 1847], counting the 259, which are all that inhabit Tiburon and the most that can be presented, including the Tepoka Seri [los Ceris Tepocas], who have always been much fewer, their whole number will not amount to 500 persons of all sexes and ages, and the warriors can not exceed 60 or 80 at the most.” The Seri are not polygamous, though apparently promiscuous (“se nota en sus matrimonios mucha tolerancia mútuamente”). They “adore the moon, which they venerate and respect as a deity; when they see the new moon, they kneel and make obeisance; they kiss the earth and make a thousand genuflections, beating their breasts.”[167]
The remarkably vigorous expedition of Andrade and Espence occurred within the memory of men still active, and naturally it lives in tradition at Hermosillo and Bacuache, and among the ranchos lying toward the border of Seriland; indeed, one of the two Mexicans accompanying the 1895 expedition, Don Ygnacio Lozania, retained shadowy impressions of participating in an invasion of the island, which could have been none other than that planned by Governor De Leon and executed by Colonel Andrade. Yet it is not uncharacteristic of Sonoran history that the wave of anti-Seri activity culminating in 1844 hardly outlasted its own breaking; certainly Escudero, writing less than five years later, declared of “la nacion Seri”: “During thirty-three years they have committed not a single act of hostility and live in peace and perfect harmony with the Sonorenses.” He added that they occupied the islands of Tiburon and Tepoca (sic) and the coasts of the gulf contiguous to Sonora and California, and from the most remote antiquity had been known by the names of “tiburones” or “seris”. Describing Pueblo Seri, he observed: “It now contains hardly a dozen aged Seris of both sexes”; and he forecast the early extinction of the tribe, since the people were incapable of abandoning their independent and solitary existence.[168]