MCGEE] REMOTENESS OF MISSIONS 1700-1768 71 



tbe ministrations of " los Padres de la Compafiia de Jesvs ". He added : 

 "Besides the above-named Indians there are found in the middle part 

 of the province of Ostiniuri, in the western part bordering on the Gnlf 

 of (Jalitbriiia, certain nations of pagans in small numbers; they are 

 the Salineros, Oocomaques, and Guaymas." ' Neither the numbers of 

 Seri and Tepoka at the missions, nor the respective proportions at the 

 missions and on the native habitat, were recorded by the brigadier. 

 According to Alegre, eighty families (including those transferred 

 from Pitic) were gathered at Poi>ulo and Angeles, under the specially 

 sedulous eflbrts of Judge Jose Rafael Gallardo, in 174!);-' although 

 Padre Nicolas de Perera, "who for the longest time bore with their 

 insolent behavior, . . . did not see more than 300 hundred 

 persons when they had all come together".'' It would appear that the 

 great majority of the Populo and Angeles converts belonged to the 

 Tepoka, while others belonged to the Guayma and Upanguayma, with 

 whom the Seri were at war about that time ; * yet there were enough 

 representatives of the Seri to gain a shocking character for sloth, filth, 

 thievery, treachery, obstinacy, and drunkenness. Assuming that a 

 quarter of the converts were Seri (and this ratio is larger than any of 

 the known records would indicate), there could hardly have been more 

 than a hundred of the tribe gathered about the several missions at this 

 ])almiest time of Jesuit missioniziug; and the records show that by far 

 the greater portion of these were women, children, cripples, and vieil- 

 lards, the warriors being commonly slain in the vigorous proselyting 

 expeditions conducted by the civil and military coadjutors of the 

 padres. If at this time the Seri population reached the 2,000 estimated 

 by Diivila" and others, the proportion of proselytes (or apostates from 

 Seri naturalism) was but 5 per cent of the tribe and naturally comprised 

 the less vigorous and characteristic element. The writer of '-Eudo 

 Ensayo" reckons that during six years preceding 1763 the Seri stole 

 from the settlers (for eating, the sole use to which they jyut such stock) 

 "more than 4,000 mules, mares, and horses"," i. e., enough to sustain 

 two or three hundred people, or a full thousand if this meat Ibrmed no 

 more than a fourth or a iifth of their diet, as the contemporary records 

 imply — and this was after the "extermination" of the Seri by Parilla 

 in 1750. 



Evidently the good padres greatly overestimated their knowledge of 

 and influence on this savage yet subtle tribe; actually they touched 

 the Seri character only lightly and temporarily, contributing slightly 



' Diario y Derrotero de lo Caminado, Visto, y Obcervado en el Discurso de la Visita general de Pre- 

 cidius, sitoadus en las Provincias Ynternas de Nueva Espana; Giiathemala. 18;i6, leg. 1514-1519. 



2 Hifitoria de la Compafiia de Je.sus. vcd. in, p. 290. 



'Rudo Ensayii, p. 193. 



•l Bancroft, np. cit., rol. I, pp. .')32-.o;i:t. The former were annihilated or driven irtio file Vaqui coun- 

 try by 1763 (Kudo Ensayo, p. 106). 



^Sonora Historico y De.scriptivo, ]>. 319. 



« Ibid., p. 140. 



