While M Pinart failed to publish, his linguistic collections were compared, systemized, and made public by Dr Albert S. Gatschet in a notable memoir on “Der Yuma-Sprachstamm”, 1883. Comparing the Seri, as represented by the Pinart and Bartlett and Pimentel vocabularies, with the Yavapai, M’Mat, and incidentally with the Konino, Tonto, Cochimi, and other tongues, Dr Gatschet was led to adopt the suggestion of Professor Wilhelm Herzog[210] that the Seri is a dialect of the Yuman stock. In the comparative vocabulary, which comprises about a hundred and forty Seri words (selected from the 611 terms in the Pinart collection), there are perhaps a dozen terms presenting some similarity to those of one or more Yuman dialects; among these are terms for ax, tree, split, tobacco, heaven, pigeon, dog, and others of presumptively or certainly alien character.[211]
Herzog’s suggested classification, with Gatschet’s indorsement, was accepted even more promptly and widely than the earlier classifications of Pimentel and Orozco. It was tacitly adopted by Director J. W. Powell in his classic arrangement of Indian linguistic families of America north of Mexico;[212] it was explicitly approved by Adolph F. Bandelier in his “Final Report of Investigations”;[213] and it was implicitly accepted and fortified by Dr Daniel G. Brinton in his work on “The American Race”.[214] Brinton’s Seri words were “chiefly from the satisfactory vocabulary obtained by the late John Russell Bartlett”; of the 21 terms, about 8 (including that for the alien concept “house”) suggest affinity with the Yuman, chiefly in the Mohave dialect; the others are either wholly distinct or only superficially similar, e. g., in the concurrence of a consonant or two, or merely in the correspondence in number of syllables.[215]
Stated briefly, the scientific researches relating to Seriland and the Seri during the fifty years from the fourth decade of the century to the middle of the last decade resulted in (1) a satisfactory survey of the coast, (2) the collection of two excellent Seri vocabularies, with a few others of less extent, and (3) two discrepant linguistic classifications of the tribe, both widely quoted and accepted.
During the half century of historical silence from 1844 forward, and pending the progress of the desultory researches, the Seri suffered a succession of external shocks more serious in their internal effects than any of those of the three centuries preceding; indeed it is just to say that during this half century the Seri range was curtailed, the Seri customs were modified, and the Seri population was diminished more effectively than during the preceding sesquicentury of fairly definite record. The chief factor in this transformation was an intrepid pioneer, who pushed actual settlement toward the Seri frontier more vigorously than any predecessor—Señor Pascual Encinas, a son of Sonora.[216]
Born near Hermosillo in 1819, Don Pascual was in early maturity at the time of Colonel Andrade’s expedition, and was fully conversant with the later history of the Seri. Of adventurous disposition, and holding interests in Bacuachito, he was familiar with the Seri frontier; and in hunting deer and other large game over the vast delta plain of Rio Sonora he had perceived the agricultural possibilities of the region. During the struggle of 1844 he became impressed with the idea that the Seri might be controlled and gradually inducted into useful citizenship through a judicious combination of industrial, educational, and evangelical agencies; and before the end of the year he began the establishment of a rancho (the present Rancho San Francisco de Costa Rica) on the Seri borderland, with the double object of developing new resources and regulating the relations between tribesmen and settlers. Enlisting the aid of a corps of vaqueros, mechanics, and farmers, he excavated a deep well, erected corrals and adobe houses, cleared away the exceptionally luxuriant mesquite forests, fenced fields, and stocked the plains with horses, burros, and cattle. At the same time he sought Seri wanderers and treated them with such kindness and firmness as to gain their confidence; and while most of the tribe held aloof, some attached themselves to the rancho, and a few even were taught to labor; albeit in desultory fashion. In this stage, as for some years afterward, he was materially aided by his contemporary, Kolusio, then in his physical prime and still in good repute among his kinsmen. Meantime he obtained the assignment of two priests, who made it their chief duty still further to placate the tribesmen and their families and to induct them into religious observances and belief; and as the confidence of the Indians increased, he had two boys domiciled in the rancho and educated in the Spanish as well as in the faith, in the hope that they might pass into priesthood and so form a future bond with their kin. One of these neophytes disappeared in the troublous times of a later decade, though tradition indicates that he became a tribal outcast (like Kolusio still later) and slunk away to Pitiquito and Altar, and afterward to California; the other, christened Juan Estorga and nicknamed El Gran Pelado (“The Great Shorn”), survives as subchief Mashém, long since relapsed into his native savagery, save that he remembers the Spanish, affects a hat, cuts his hair to the neck (whence his nickname), and prefers footgear to the fashion of his fellows.
Industrially, Don Pascual’s venture proved successful; the fertile soil, periodically watered from below by the underflow of the semiannual freshets, yielded incredible crops; reveling in the exceptional floral wealth of the delta and tided over bad seasons by the artificial forage, the stock increased and multiplied beyond precedent; and so the rancho became a flourishing establishment, housing a score or more of families and harboring a hundred or two dependents, in addition to the thousands of half-wild horses and cattle. Meantime, the industrial lines ramifying from the rancho formed a drag net for Seri raiders, practically cutting off forays eastward toward Hermosillo and Horcasitas, and greatly reducing the sallies southeastward toward Guaymas and northeastward toward Bacuachito and Caborca; and Don Pascual began to receive recognition and state and federal concessions as a public benefactor. For a decade the industrial and evangelical influence and the effect of the bold kindness of El Patron extended and became felt throughout the tribe, and most of the families visited the rancho at least occasionally. Yet even the best of them remained averse to labor save in sporadic spurts, and indifferent to the religious teaching, save when sweetened by substantial largess; while all but the decrepit and the two carefully restrained neophytes came and went capriciously, and were much given to decamping incontinently by night to return shamefacedly one by one in the course of a week or two, without consistent or adequate excuse for their stampede—indeed the vaqueros habitually classed these nocturnal flights of the Seri and the reasonless stampedes of their stock in the same category. Ostensibly a few of the larger boys and girls and a still smaller number of the adults were helpers about the rancho; actually they were scavengers, consuming the waste of the shambles and the earth-mixed scatterings from the thrashing floors, and saving the rancheros the noisome duty of removing the carcasses of animals dead by disease or accident; and as their indolence increased under the easy régime, they grew into more and more open thievery. By no means deficient in shrewdness and cunning, they adopted numberless devices for imposing on the credulity of the majordomo and other officials of the rancho. When coin-like tokens of stamped copper were used in the transactions of the rancho as equivalents of labor, the Seri ingeniously obtained sheet copper by stealth or barter, systematically counterfeited the tokens, and exchanged them for supplies at the rancho store; it was a favorite trick to surreptitiously break the neck or a leg of a horse, cow, or burro, and report finding the dead or crippled animal, at the same time begging for the carcass; and, whenever opportunity offered, they slyly slaughtered a head of stock, consumed it to the hoofs and horns and larger bones, sucked up the blood stains, and buried the few remains in cactus thickets, impenetrable save by their own hardy limbs and bodies. Nor did any of the tribe except the two restrained neophytes ever really enter the collective life of the patriarchal group headed by Don Pascual; they attended no industrial or social or churchly function save in response to reminder and solicitation; they craved the white man’s medicines in slight disorders, but rejected them in extremis; and the dying or dead were spirited away to be inhumed and mourned, according to their wont, in their harsh but beloved motherland.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. VII
HOUSE FRAMEWORK, TIBURON ISLAND