56 THE SERI INDIANS [eth. ann. 17 



de Witt in 1662, Peter van der Aa in 1690, and even Herman Moll so 

 late as 1708; but it was consistently rejected by Guillaume Delisle and 

 other French geographers. The myth was finally punctured by Padre 

 Kino in 1701; though even he and all his erudite co-evangels were 

 apparently unaware that his observations only verified those of Ulloa, 

 Alarcon, and Uiaz. 



During the stagnant sesquicentury 1545-1695 there was little record 

 of the Seri Indians, though that little indicates recognition of their 

 leading characteristics and their insular habitat. Writing especially 

 of the Yaqui before 1645, Padre Andr(5s Perez de Eibas declared 

 (freely translated): 



There is information of a great people of another nation called Heris; they are 

 excessively savage, without towns, withont houses, without fields. They have 

 neither rivers nor streams, and drink from a few lagoonlets and waterholes. They 

 subsist by the chase, but at harvest time they obtain corn by bartering salt extracted 

 from the sea and deerskins with other nations. Those nearest to the sea also subsist 

 on fish; and it is said that there is, in the same sea, an island on which others of 

 the same nation live. Their language is exceedingly ditficult.' 



The same author mentions cannibalism among the aborigines of 

 northwestern Mexico, saying: 



The vice of those called anthropophagi, who eat human flesh, introduced by the 

 devil, enemy of the human genus, among nearly all these nations during their 

 heathenism, is more or less common. In the Acaxee and mountains this inhuman 

 vice is customary as eating of flesh obtained by the chase; it is of daily occurrence 

 among them; just as they sally in chase of a deer, they go out over mountains and 

 fields in search of enemies to cut in pieces and eat roasted or boiled.- 



There is nothing to indicate that the anthropophagy was confined 

 to, or even extended to, the Seri — a fact of interest in connection with 

 later opinion. Ribas' reference to an island inhabited by the Heris 

 (Seri) indicates that the occupancy of Tiburon was fully recognized by 

 the native tribes of the region. 



Throughout the seventeenth century the western coast of Gulf of Cali- 

 fornia, and in lesser degree the eastern coast also, became famous for 

 pearl oysters, and expeditions were sent out and fi.sheries established 

 at different times. The earliest of these expeditions was that of Cap- 

 tain Juan Iturbi in 1615; he sailed well up the gulf, reaching latitude 30° 

 according to his reckoning (though the accounts imply between lines 

 that he turned back at the Salsipuedes), collecting many pearls along 

 the western coast "so large and clear that for one only he paid, as 

 the King's fifth, 900 crowns";' and on his return he carried the fame of 

 theCalilornian pearls to Ciudad Mexico, whence it resounded to Madrid 

 and reverberated through all Europe. One of the more noteworthy 



' Hi3toria de los Trivmphoa de Nvestra Santa Fee entre Gentes las mas Barbaras y Fieras del Niieiio 

 0rl)e : Madrid, 1645, p. 358. The " Heris " are identified as Seri by liandelier (Final Report of Investi- 

 jjations amiinK tbe Indians of the Southwestern United States, in Papers Arch. Inst. Am., American 

 series, lll, 1890, p. 74). 



^Op. cit.,p.ll. ■ 



' Venegas, op. cit., vol. i, p, 182. 



