The “Upanguaima” (a very small tribe occupying the Seri border) and the “Guaimas”, as well as the “Cocomagues” were combined chiefly on the authority of Jesuit writers.[189] In describing the State of Sonora he further wrote:
The Séris, bounded by the sea on the west, the Pimas Altos on the north, the Opatas and the Pimas Bajos on the east, and the pueblos of Rio Yaqui on the south, form the smallest nation of Sonora, but at the same time the most cruel and deceitful and the least capable of reduction to political organization. Hardly uniting with the smaller pueblos as at Populo and Belen, the rest of the nation engaged so constantly in cruel warfare that it was necessary to persecute and exterminate them.... Small as was the tribe, three divisions are known: the Salineros, extending to the confines of Pimeria Alta; south of them the Tepocas, nearest to the island of Tiburon; the Guaymas and Upanguaymas occupying the territory adjacent to the harbor of the same name, afterward added to the pueblo at Belen and blended with the Indians of Rio Yaqui. Ferocious and savage, they preferred to die in war against the whites rather than adopt their usages and customs; lazy and indolent, they so surrendered themselves to the passion of intoxication that mothers conveyed aguardiente from their mouths to the smallest babes. They are tall and well formed, the women not lacking in beauty. The poison with which they envenom their arrows is proverbial for deadly effect; they compound the venomous juice from a multitude of ingredients and fortify the compound by superstitious practices.[190]
The classifications by Pimentel and Orozco were widely accepted, and were given still wider currency by republication in standard works, such as the classic dictionary of the Nahuatl tongue by Rémi Siméon, in which is defined “La famille Seri, dans la Sonora, avec 3 idiomes: le Seri, le Guaima et l’Upanguaima.”[191] In his ethnographic tableau of the nations and languages of Mexico, M. V. A. Malte-Brun followed Orozco almost literally, save that he emphasized the suggested Caribbean affiliation of the Seri, saying:
They make use of poisoned arrows, and when one studies their manners, their habits, their modes of life, one is tempted to find in them a strong affinity [grande affinité] with the Caribs of the continent and the islands.[192]
During the seventies Hubert Howe Bancroft was engaged in collecting material for his monumental series of works, and in arranging the ethnologic data for publication. Of the Seri he wrote:
East of the Opata and Pima bajo, on the shores of the Gulf of California, and thence for some distance inland, and also on the island of Tiburon, the Ceri language with its dialects, the Guaymi and Tepoca, is spoken. Few of the words are known, and the excuse given by travelers for not taking vocabularies is, that it was too difficult to catch the sound. It is represented as extremely harsh and guttural in its pronunciation and well suited to the people who speak it, who are described as wild and fierce. It is, so far as known, not related to any of the Mexican linguistic families.[193]
The only vocabulary of this language which Bancroft was able to find was added (without reference to the aboriginal source); it comprised the eleven words collected by Lavandera and discussed by Ramirez in 1850.[194]
The Seri, with their affines, the Tepoka, Salinero, Guayma, and Upanguayma, were included by Bancroft in his arbitrarily defined “Northern Mexican family”.[195] The accompanying map (which is highly inaccurate) located the “Salineros” on the gulf coast, considerably north of the common embouchure of “R. de Horcasitas” and “Rio de Sonora”; while the “Seris” were more conspicuously represented about the broad estuary into which the rivers embouch, and the “Tepocas” were located still farther southward on both Tiburon and the mainland, the island being placed too far southward and the river much too far northward.[196] Numerous data relating to the Seri were incorporated in his text; all were second-hand, though many were taken from unique or rare manuscripts. The coastwise natives of Sonora were said to “live on pulverized rush and straw, with fish caught at sea or in artificial enclosures”; mention was made of the allegation that “the Salineros sometimes eat their own excrement”; anthropophagy was noted, but as pertaining rather to the interior than to the coastwise tribes;[197] and prominence was given to the Seri arrow poison, of which an early author wrote:
The poison with which they envenom the points of their arrows is the most active that has ever been known here.... It has not been possible to ascertain with certainty the deadly materials of which this pestilential compound is brewed. Many things are alleged, e. g., that it is made from the heads of vipers, irritated and decapitated at the moment of striking their teeth into a piece of lung or of half putrefied human flesh.
Reference was made also to the “magot” (probably the yerba mala of the modern Mexicans) as a source of arrow poison.[198] The girls’ puberty feast was said to be kept up for several days among the Seri and Tepoka, and the former were said to “superstitiously celebrate the new moon, and bow reverentially to the rising and setting sun”, and also to “employ charms in their medical practice”.[199] Finally, the constituent tribes were discriminated in a manner recalling the persistent assumption that the parasite-converts at the missions fairly represented the Seri: