MCGKE] THE SILENT SESQUICENTURY — 1545-1695 55 



subsequent episode in their history or century in time. The descrip- 

 tion of the eft'ect of the poison is especially suggestive of the 8eri; as 

 pointed out on a later page, the Seri arrow- venom is magical in motive, 

 but actually consists of decom[)osing and ptomaine-filled organic mat- 

 ter, so that it is sometimes septic in fact, while the arrow-poison of the 

 neighboring Opata, Jova, and other Pimau tribes was (so far as can be 

 ascertained) vegetal; and these accounts seem to attest septic poison- 

 ing rather than the effects of any known vegetal toxic' 



Such (assuming the validity of the several identifications) are the 

 earliest records concerning the truculent tribesmen and the desolate 

 district known centuries later as the Seri and Seriland. 



About 1545 began the Dark Ages in the history of northwestern 

 Mexico; the excursion of Guzman, and the journeys of Gabeza de Vaca 

 and Friar Marcos and of Coronado himself, died out of the memory of 

 the solitary adventurers and scattering settlers who slowly infused 

 Spanish culture and a strain of Caucasian blood into the Sonoraii 

 province; even the route taken by Coronado's imposing cavalcade was 

 lost for centuries, to be retraced only during the present generation, 

 largely through the determinations of Simpson, Bandelier, Winship, 

 and Hodge.^ It is true that Don Francisco de Ibarra penetrated the 

 territory in 1563, and remained until rumors of gold in other districts 

 drew him elsewhere; it is also true that Captain Diego Martinez de 

 Hurdaide pushed into the province in 1584, and entered on a career 

 of subjugation, waging persistent war with the Yaqui, which resulted in 

 the acquisition of the territory of Sonera by treaty April 15, 1610;^ yet 

 few records of exploration or settlement were written before the advent 

 of the Jesuit missionaries, toward the end of the seventeenth centurj-. 



Still more astounding was the eclipse of knowledge of the gulf. 

 Despite Ulloa's survey of the entire coast, recorded in an itinerary so 

 detailed that every day's sailing may readily be retraced, and despite 

 Alarcon's repetition of the surveys and extension of the discoveries far 

 up Eio Colorado (where his work was verified by that of Melchior Diaz), 

 a mythic cartography arose to shadow knowledge and delude explora- 

 tion for a century and a half; for " upon the authority of a Spanish 

 chart, found accidently by the Dutch, and of the authenticity of which 

 there never were, or indeed could be, any proofs obtained, an opinion 

 prevailed that California was ati island, and the contrary assertion 

 was treated even by the ablest geographers as a vulgar error"; ^ and a 

 mythic strait formed by cartograi)hic extension of the Gulf of California 

 indefinitely northward haunted the maps of the seventeenth century. 

 This error was adopted by various geographers, including Fredericus 



' It should be noted that Mr. F. W. Hodj^e, whose large acquaintance with tlie Southwest and its 

 literature gives his opinion great weight, is iucliued to class the Indians in question as Opata. 



'Op.cit.,pp. 29-73. 



3 Sonora Historico y Descriptive, por F. T. Davila. 1894, p. 8, 



*A Natural and Civil History of California; translated from the original Spanish of Miguel 

 Venegas; London. 1759. vol. i, pi-eface. 



