Here ends, practically, the history of Pueblo Seri as a Seri settlement, for, although one of the tribe survived for half a century and a few others may have survived for a decade, the “aged Seris of both sexes” melted away so rapidly as to leave no later record, and were apparently never replaced by others. Briefly, the history of the pueblo began with the establishment of a presidio or military post in 1741 in the natural gateway and watering-place leading into the settled valleys of the Opodepe and upper Sonora, for the sole purpose of protecting the settlements against the wandering Seri, who used this typical Sonora watergap as a way-station on forays but never as a place of residence. The history grew definite when the Jesuits obtained the allotment of lands for the Seri and established for them a mission, which was at the same time a place of catechizing for Seri neophytes, a place of detention for Seri captives, a place of refuge for Seri weaklings, and a place of resort for Seri sneaks and spies. The history proceeded with many vicissitudes, as the presidio was alternately abandoned under Seri attacks and reoccupied when the attacks were repulsed, and as the neophytes alternately escaped and suffered recapture; the formal history waned in relative importance as the population and interests of Pitic and afterward of Hermosillo waxed, and as the lands originally allotted to the Seri were gradually taken and held by Mexican settlers, and ended when the Seri tenure was formally extinguished in 1844, as described by Cabrera and Velasco; and the general history dropped into unimportance with the escape of Andrade’s captives, after temporary quartering on the legally established landholders and householders of the Mexicanized pueblo. For a century and a half the name of the pueblo has continually raised and renewed the assumption that it marks a site of aboriginal Seri habitation or has played some other leading rôle in Seri history, and this assumption has shaped opinion past and present; yet its error is clearly shown by scrutiny of the historical records, as well as by collateral ethnologic and archeologic evidence.
Here may be said to end, too, the local chronicles of the Seri; for although the state archives are crowded with charges, petitions, commissions, reports, and other papers pertaining to the irrepressible Seri; although these materials have overflowed to Ciudad, Mexico, and even to Washington, in official documents both numerous and voluminous; although Dávila in 1894 increased Velasco’s forty Seri wars to fifty; and although the weightiest events in the internal history of the Seri have occurred since 1844, little attempt has latterly been made to reduce the abundant data to print.
The Mexican geographic knowledge of the time was surprisingly vague, as is shown by the current maps, for example, the Tanner maps which appeared in several editions: the 1846 edition recalls and evidently reflects the Humboldt map of the beginning of the century; “R. Ascencion” is represented as embouching through an estuary about 30° 20', with the “Seris Indians” north of its lower half-length and west of “Pitic” and “Ft. del Alter”; Ures is located 3 or 4 miles southeast of this fort, and “Racuach” (the Bacuachito of the present) is 20 miles farther southeastward. Neither Rio Sonora nor any of its important branches are indicated, while “Pitic” is placed several times too far from the coast and from Guaymas, in a featureless expanse of paper; “Rio Hiaqui” is shown as a branchless and conventional stream of a single crescentic curvature, embouching in about the right latitude. The coast of the gulf is distorted, and “Tiburon” is shown as an island much too large and nearly a degree too far north, separated from the mainland by a greatly exaggerated strait, with an elongated mesa (“Mt. del Picu”) skirting the mainland coast—in short, the cartography is largely traditional if not fanciful.[169]
The career of the Seri during the half century 1844-1894 is traceable by aid of (1) unpublished documents, (2) published results of scientific inquiries and surveys, and (3) personal reminiscences of men living on the Seri frontier; but in a summary touching only salient points the first-named source may be passed over.
One of the first foreign visitors to follow Baron Humboldt in systematic inquiries concerning the aborigines of northwestern Mexico was Henri Ternaux-Compans; his information, too, was secondhand and remote, yet he correctly recognized Isla Tiburon as “inhabited by the Seris, who have some huts also on the mainland”.[170]
Later came Eduard Mühlenpfordt, an attaché of a German commercial company and later a Mexican state official, who traveled extensively and wrote partly at first hand, though there is little indication of personal acquaintance with Seriland or the Seri: he described “Bahia de San Juan Bautista”, with “the small island San Augustin” lying before it (in such manner as to identify this islet with Isla Tassne), and located “the large island Tiburon farther northward, opposite a mountainous coast”.[171] He added:
The waterless but cattle-stocked plains between the place Pitic and the coast, and thence up to the river Ascension, are inhabited by a meager remnant of the Seri tribe, while on Tiburon island, opposite this coast, the Tiburones dwell. The Seris were formerly very numerous, by far the fiercest of all the Indian tribes of northern Mexico, and very warlike. Through ceaseless war with the Tiburones and the troops from the Spanish presidios they are now nearly extinct.[172]
Elsewhere the Tiburones were characterized as enemies of the Seri,[173] while the “Heris” tribe was enumerated as a branch of the “Pimas Bajas” people. Herr Mühlenpfordt’s characterization of the Seri and the Tiburon islanders as enemies would appear to be groundless, yet not wholly incomprehensible; in the first place, the earlier literature indicates that the term Seri (Seris, Ceris, Heris, etc.) was an alien designation of lax application,[174] doubtless extended occasionally or habitually to marauding nomads, regardless of affinity; again there is conclusive evidence that in many instances Seri convert-captives attached to the missions and pueblos were often regarded as tribal apostates and outlaws whose lives were forfeit; and, moreover, the region in which Herr Mühlenpfordt gained his information was and still is one of abounding tale, whose frequent exaggeration and not infrequent invention conceal and distort the simple facts.
In 1850, Don Diego Lavandera transmitted to the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics, through the hands of Señor José F. Ramirez, certain documents, accompanied by a note to the effect that “The tribe of the Seris speak Arabic, and it is understood by the Moors at the first interview”—this note merely expressing a prevailing current opinion. Undertaking to test the opinion, Señor Ramirez sent to Lavandera, in Sonora, a number of words in three Arabic dialects, at the same time asking for the Seri equivalents; and the inquiry yielded a Seri vocabulary (probably the first ever printed) of eleven words. Of these none show the slightest affinity with the Arabic dialects; at least four (horse, chamber, population, wine) express concepts alien to the Seri; and only three or four can be identified with Seri terms recorded in later vocabularies. No reference is made to Señor Lavandera’s aboriginal informant; but there is a strong presumption that it was the official interpreter at Hermosillo and Pueblo Seri—a presumption warranted by coincident historical records and statements of contemporaries still living, to the effect (1) that an official interpreter was there then and for a long time later, (2) that neither then nor later were there other Seri representatives able to furnish vocabularies at Hermosillo, Pueblo Seri, or other towns, and (3) that at that time (as at most others) the relations between the Seri and the whites were such as to prevent amicable communication through casual meeting or otherwise.