In 1857 the gigantic surveying enterprise of Jecker & Co. was undertaken, under a concession from the Government of Mexico, and the scientific surveys were intrusted to a commission headed by El Capitan Carlos Stone (General Charles Pomeroy Stone, U. S. A.). The commission headquartered at Guaymas, purchased vessels for the survey of the coast, and began operations also in the interior; Bahia Pinacati and George island (named by Hardy in 1826) were surveyed, as well as the entire Sonoran coast south of Guaymas, and “one hundred miles of coast near Tiburon”, besides many hundred square miles of valuable lands. At this stage friction developed between the progressive commission and the conservative Sonorenses, which ended in the expulsion of the scientific commission by the State government.[181] By reason of the premature termination of the work, few of the observations and other results were ever published. General Stone himself traveled extensively in Sonora, and delved deeply in the historical records of northern Mexico; and, while there is no indication that he ever came in personal contact with the Seri, he collected and sifted current local information relating to the tribe with notable acumen. In certain “Notes” prepared in Washington in December, 1860, he wrote:
The Ceris are a peculiar tribe of Indians occupying the island of Tiburon and the neighboring coast. They are yet in a perfectly savage state, and live solely by fishing and hunting. Having been at war with the whites from the time of the first missions, they have become reduced in numbers to about 300, counting some 80 warriors. They are of large stature, well made, and athletic. In war and in the chase they make use of poisoned arrows, the wounds from which are almost always fatal. In preparing the poison, it is said they procure the liver of a deer or cow, and by irritating rattlesnakes and scorpions with it, cause it to be struck by a great many of these reptiles. They then hang up the mass to putrefy in a bag, and in the drippings of this bag they soak their arrowheads. I can not vouch for the truth of this statement, but it is current in Sonora. I was informed by a gentleman in Hermosillo that one of his servants, who was slightly shot by a Ceri’s arrow, died quickly from the effect of the wound (which mortified almost immediately) in spite of the best medical treatment. Their language is guttural, and very different from any other Indian idiom in Sonora. It is said that on one occasion some of these Indians passed by a shop in Guaymas, where some Welsh sailors were talking, and on hearing the Welsh language spoken, stopped, listened, and appeared much interested, declaring that those white men were their brothers, for they had a tongue like their own. They are very filthy in their habits, and are said to be worshipers of the moon.[182]
Another Mexican traveler of note who collected local and contemporary information concerning the Seri, though enjoying no more than slight inimical contact with them, was Herr Clemens A. Pajeken, of Bremen (for some time a resident of California). He classed as wild Indians (“Wilde Indianer, Indios broncos”) the Seri and Apache tribes. Of the former he wrote:
Ceris. This is a small tribe, their number not exceeding 400 souls, or rather head [dessen Seelenzahl oder besser Kopfzahl]; yet the government of the State could not restrain this little band of robbers and marauders that for more than twenty years have perpetrated their atrocities on travelers between the port of Guaymas and the city of Hermosillo, the metropolis of the State.... The Ceris appear not to grasp the idea that they are human. Like the prey-beasts of the wilderness, they go out to slay men and animals, sparing only their own kind. In many respects they are viler than the beasts, since they slay without need merely to satisfy a lust for slaughter. They are not only the stupidest and laziest of the Indians of Sonora, but also the most treacherous and deceitful. During the Spanish rule, from the time the first visit was made to lead them toward social life, they have rebelled more than forty times. Only a couple of families [ein paar Familien] still reside in the village [Pueblo Seri], where they make ollas and subsist on the offal of the shambles. The proper home of these barbarians is the island of Tiburon and the adjacent coasts, whither they return after their outbreaks, although it is an incredibly desert region. Thence they repair to the highways to kill travelers and arrieros, or to the ranges to steal cattle. They confine themselves to the bow and arrow, and the latter are poisoned, so that every wound made by them is deadly, or at best highly dangerous. On my second journey into the interior of the country my horse received an arrow in the hip; the arrow, which entered 4 inches, could not be withdrawn until the following day; and for seven months the wound suppurated.... Their chief food consists of oysters, mussels, snakes, with fish and other sea food, which they consume entirely raw and which surrounds them with an intolerable stench; though this may be partly due to their exceeding uncleanliness, since the process of washing is wholly unknown to them. Their clothing consists of a kilt of pelican skin. They tattoo their faces, and some pierce their noses to insert a certain green stone [obsidian]. They are of dark copper color, large and strongly built. Although in their faces no human sentiments can be discerned, yet they can not be called ugly. Their limbs are so beautifully proportioned that the Spanish ladies in Hermosillo view with envy the slender shapes and the comely hands and feet of the young Ceris maidens. They wear no headdresses, and as their coarse, shaggy hair is neither combed nor cleaned, it sticks out in tangled tufts in all directions like spines on a hedgehog; this alone gives them a forbidding appearance. Their speech is quite like their character; it is guttural, discordant, and meager, resembling more the howling of wild animals than human speech, wherefore it is difficult for a human to learn. They have no religion—at least, I do not deem the gambols and amusing capers in which they indulge at the new moon to be religious customs. The tribe is constantly diminishing in numbers, and it is hoped they may soon disappear from the earth by natural decrease—unless the State government sooner undertakes a war of extermination.[183]
Herr Pajeken’s record bears inherent evidence (at least to one familiar with the region) of reflecting the current local knowledge and opinion concerning the Seri with unsurpassed—indeed unequaled—fidelity; and it is also of value in that it indicates the approximate number of the tribe then surviving in Pueblo Seri, and in that it gives the contemporary estimate of the tribal population.
Among the more careful students of the Seri at second hand should be mentioned Buckingham Smith, an enthusiastic collector, translator, and publisher of rare Americana. In the introduction to an anonymous and dateless grammar of the Heve language he wrote in 1861:
The lower Pima are in the west of the province [of Sonora], having many towns extending to the frontier of the indomitable Seri, who live some 30 leagues to the north of the mouth of the Hiaqui, and have their farthest limit inland some dozen leagues from the sea, finding shelter among the ridges and in the neighboring island of Tiburon.
He added in a note:
The Guaima speak nearly the same language as the Seri, are few in number, and live among the Hiaqui in Belen and elsewhere, having retreated before the sanguinary fury of their conquerors.[184]
While the scientific knowledge of the Seri began with Bartlett’s visit, it assumed definite shape only through the classic researches of Don Francisco Pimentel (Count Herras) in the early sixties. His analysis and classification of the Seri tongue rest on a short vocabulary collected by Señor D. A. Tenochio and transmitted to the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. Noting the condition of the tribe at the time, Señor Pimentel wrote: