72 THE SERI INDIANS [eth.ann. 17 



to spontaneous acculturation, but never coming' into relation with the 

 tribe as a whole. 



And despite the efforts of both soldiers and priests, the savages 

 continued to ravage tiie settlements, to repel pioneering, to decimate 

 the herds and murder the vaqueros who sought to protect them, to 

 plunder everything portable and ambuscade punitive parties, and even 

 to engage in open liostilities. "In 1730 the Seris, Tepocas, Salineros, 

 and Tiburon islanders kept the province in great excitement, killing 

 twenty-seven persons and threatening all the pueblos with a general 

 conflagration";' and both before and after this date the recorded san- 

 guinary ejnsodes were too frequent for even passing mention, while the 

 indications between lines point to robberies and assassinations and 

 minor conflicts too many for full record even by the patient clironiclers 

 of the time. 



Sometime about the beginning of tbe eighteenth century the Spanish 

 settlements pushed down Rio Sonora beyond the confluence of the 

 Opodei^e to the last water gap, made conspicuous by a marble butte in 

 its throat and by the fact that here the sometimes subterranean flow 

 always rose to the surface in a permanent stream of pure and cool 

 water. Here, according to Padre Dominguez, "it was attempted to 

 locate the Presidio of Cinaloa against the rapacity of the Zeris, 

 Tepocas, and Pimas; and here General Idobro, of Cinaloa, wished to 

 found a pueblo of Tiburon Indians, brought for the purpose [probably 

 from Populo and Angeles] that they might be kept in subjection, but 

 most of them returned to their island and attempted to make attacks 

 from their hiding places."^ Nevertheless, the padre found 29 married 

 persons, 14 single, and 99 children of these "races" at the rancho. At 

 the time of his visit the place was known as Kancho del Pitquiu; later 

 it became the Pueblo of Pitic, or Pitiqui, or Pitiquin, or San Pedro de 

 Pitic,^ and long afterward the city of Hermosillo, while the beautiful 

 marble butte was christened Cerro de la Cami)aua. 



By 114:2 tbe settlements were so far extended as to warrant the 

 establishment of a royal fort in the water-gap at Pitic;* and the 

 ecclesiastics kept pace with the military movement by founding the 

 mission of San Pedro de la Conquista,'' or "Pueblo de San Pedro'de la 

 Conquista de Seris'"' (now abbreviated to "Pueblo Seris", or merely 

 "Seris"); both fort and mission being designed ijrimarily for better 



' Bancroft, op. cit., p. 517. 



2Diario del Padre DomiDguez en Sonora y Sinaloa, 1731; manuscript in' archives of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology. 



3 This place on Rio Sonora is not to be confounded with the Rancho (afterward Pueblo) of Pitiqui or 

 San Diego de Pitiqui (The Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America and tbe West Indies 

 * * * of Colonel Don Antonio de Alcedo, by (?. A. Thompson, Loudon, 1814, vol. IV, p. 153), or Pitic 

 chiquito (IjoI. Soc. Mex. Geog. y Est., vol. vill, 1860. p. 454). or Pitiquin, now tlie town of Pitiquito on 

 Rio San Ignacio. 



"^Alegre. Historia de la Compafiia de Jesus, tomo in. p. 288; Villa-Seuor. Theatro Americano, 

 segunda ])arte, p. 392 ; Rudo Ensayo, p. 193. 



^ Bancroft, op. cit., vol. i, p. 528. 



^ Reise-Erinnerungen und Abenteuer aiis dor neueu Welt, von C. A. Pajeken. Bremen, 1861, p. 97. 



