HOUSE COVERING, TIBURON ISLAND
During this period of mutual toleration the Seri were so deeply influenced by the white contact that, for probably the only time in their history, they voluntarily allowed an alien free entry into their territory; and Don Pascual explored the coast of Bahia Kino, projected a port, and even visited Isla Tiburon twice or thrice. In one of these visits he was ferried over Boca Infierno on a balsa, but, finding himself unable to keep pace with the swift-footed Seri on their hilly pathways, he returned for his saddle mule; halfway across, the poor animal swimming behind the balsa suddenly plunged and struggled, and, on landing, hobbled out on three legs—the fourth having being snapped by a shark. Warned by this incident, Don Pascual abandoned a half-formed plan of stocking the island, and afterward brought up a small vessel from Guaymas in which he carried across a dozen caballeros (including Don Ygnacio Lozania, who had visited the island with the Andrade expedition); and this party examined the southeastern quarter of the island, watering two or three times at Tinaja Anita, and pushing as far westward as Arroyo Carrizal. On this trip he studied the Seri house-building, and was the first to note the large use of turtle-shells and sponges in the process.[217]
About the middle fifties it became apparent that the Seri were dividing into a parasitical portion clustered about the rancho (as their forbears gathered about Populo and Pueblo Seri long before), and a more independent faction clinging to their rugged ranges and gale-swept fishing grounds; and it became evident, too, that the thievery of the dependent faction would soon ruin the rancho if not checked, or at least greatly diminished. Accordingly the passive policy was modified by introducing a more active police service. At first the penalties for theft and misdemeanors were light, and the system promised well—especially as even a slight punishment was equivalent to banishment, the criminal fleeing to Tiburon on his escape or immediately after the crime; yet the experience of a year or two proved that the escaped parasites seldom resumed the hard customs of their tribal life, but generally returned to the borderland and there preyed on the wandering stock from the rancho. Finally, driven to extremity, and supported by the state and federal authorities (themselves confessedly unable successfully to cope with the condition), Don Pascual reluctantly adopted a severer régime. Sending out as messengers several Seri still remaining at the rancho, he convened the leading chiefs and clanmothers of the tribe in a council, and announced that the stock-killing must cease, on pain of a Seri head for each head of stock thereafter slain. The Indians seemingly acquiesced, and separated; but within two days a group of Seri women “milled” a band of horses, caught and threw one in such wise as to break its neck, and immediately sucked its blood, gorged its intestines, and buried its quarters to “ripen”, after their former fashion. Thereupon a matron remaining near the rancho was sent to demand the delivery of the perpetrators; and, when she failed to return, the vaqueros were instructed to shoot the first Seri seen on the llano. Within two days more, the tribe were on the warpath for revenge—and the war raged for a decade.
During the early months of the Encinas war Don Pascual’s vaqueros sought merely to enforce the barbaric law of a head for a head; but, as they found themselves beset by ambush, assailed and wounded by night, despoiled of favorite animals, and kept constantly in that most nerve-trying state of eternal vigilance, their rancor rose to an intensity nearly equal to the savage passion for blood-vengeance; and thenceforth the Seri were hunted from the plain east of Desierto Encinas precisely as were the stealthy jaguar and sneaking coyote—and the ghastly details were better spared. There were few open battles; commonly the vaqueros rode in groups and guarded against ambuscades, and the Seri were picked off one by one; but once in the early sixties Don Pascual, at the head of some 30 vaqueros, fell into an ambush on the frontier, and several of his horses were killed and some of his men wounded, while 60 or 70 Seri warriors were left on the field. Don Pascual’s horse received a slight arrow wound, to which little attention was paid; next morning the gash was swollen and inflamed and the beast too stiff and logy for use; in the afternoon the glands under the jaw were swollen, and there was a purulent discharge from eyes and nostrils. On the second morning the animal was hardly able to move, its head was enormously swollen, there were fetid ulcers about the jaws and throat, and the swelling extended to the legs and abdomen. On the third morning there were suppurating ulcers on various parts of the body, while rags of putrefied flesh and stringy pus hung from the head and neck, and the animal was unapproachable because of the stench; during the day it dropped dead, and even the coyotes and buzzards shrank from the pestilential carcass. This and parallel incidents impressed Don Pascual with the dangers incident to Seri war; but fortunately the fact that he—the leader of the party, the first to fall into the ambush, and the target of most of the arrows—had escaped unscathed impressed still more deeply the surviving savages, and they soon sued for peace. Thenceforth he was revered as a shaman greater than those of the tribe, feared as an invulnerable fighter, and honored as a just lawgiver; and gradually the condition of mutual tolerance was restored, to rest on a firmer basis than before.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. VIII
SPONGE USED FOR HOUSE COVERING, TIBURON ISLAND
Don Pascual estimates that during the dozen years of strife between his men and the Seri forces about half of the tribe were slain. The horror of the history of this period may be passed over; it may merely be noted as a casual fact that one of the two Mexicans accompanying the 1895 expedition was credited with 17 Seri heads. When he pointed out the site of his last exploit, a mile or two south of Rancho Libertad, and some incredulity was expressed, he immediately galloped to the spot and brought back a silent witness in the form of a bleached Seri skull.[218]
At the close of the war Don Pascual continued the industrial development of the plains lying east of the desert border of Seriland, received new concessions in recognition of his conquest, and developed the ranches of Santa Ana and Libertad; but the evangelical arm of his vigorous mission gradually withered. For a dozen years the Seri looked up to “El Patron” as a quasi ruler, whose approval was requisite for the ratification of chieftainship, and through him ran a slender thread of nominal fealty to the state and the republic; yet few parasites gathered about the rancho. Mashém had gone back to his clan; and when depredations were committed at Bacuachito or elsewhere and the criminals were caught, usually through Don Pascual’s instrumentality, they were sometimes haled to Hermosillo for trial, and Kolusio was kept there as the official interpreter of charges and evidence and findings. Sometime during the sixties a few Seri youths were coaxed to Pueblo Seri for education, but when they were instructed to cut their hair they slunk dejectedly to their temporary domicile, only to decamp during the ensuing night; again, in 1870, Kolusio was commissioned to bring in a few young people and a matron or two of the tribe, and succeeded in doing so just in time to encounter an epidemic of measles, from which some died, while the others shook the dust of the pueblo from their feet forever; and this last straw, added to his alien residence and his presence at the dreaded trials, broke down the tribal toleration of Kolusio and made him an outlaw forever.