McoEE] FOUNDING OF PUEBLO SEEI 1742 73 



protection of tbe settlements against Seri sorties. These ontposts 

 bronglit tlie missionaries and their soldier snpporters a day's journey 

 nearer Seriland, i. e., to within some 27 leagues (71 miles), or two days' 

 journey, from Bahia Kino and the desert boundary of the Seri strong- 

 hold; and although neither fort nor mission was continuously main- 

 tained, the event marked a practically permanent advance on the "des- 

 pohlado" previously desi)oiled and desolated by the wandering Seri. 



Even before this date friction between missionaries and laymen had 

 grown out of the ecclesiastical charity for a people whose repeated atroci- 

 ties placed them outside the pale of sympathy on the part of the indus- 

 trial settlers; and this friction was felt especially about the new presidio. 

 In 1749 Colonel Diego Ortiz Parilla became governor of Sonera, and 

 began a rigorous rule over civilians, soldiers, ecclesiastics, and Indians; 

 and when the 80 families (classed as Seri, but ihainly of Tepoka and 

 other tribes) domiciled at Populo were dissatisfied with his transfers 

 of land and people, he promptly met their protests by arresting them 

 and transporting the greater part of them, including all the women and 

 children, to various places, "some even in Guatemala and other very 

 distant parts of America.'"' Naturally this was resented, not only by 

 the Seri messmates at the missions, but to son)e extent by their kins- 

 men over the plains and along the coast, with whom sporadic commu- 

 nication was maintained — chiefly through spies, but partly by occasional 

 escapes of the practically imprisoned x^roselytes and the less frequent 

 but more numerous captures of new converts; and the Seri raids 

 became more extended and vindictive, reaching northward to Gaborca, 

 northeastward to Santa Ana and Oucurpe, and eastward into the fertile 

 valley of Ivio Opodepe at several points. Deeply incensed in his turn, 

 Parilla undertook a war of externdnation — a war interesting not merely 

 as an episode in Seri history, but still more as a type of the Seri 

 wars of two tenturies. Organizing a force of .500 men, and bringing 

 canoes from Rio Yaqui, he i)lanned an expedition to Tiburon, to cover 

 two months — and returned with 28 x^risoners, " all women and children 

 and not a single Seri man"; though he reported killing 10 or 12 warriors 

 in action (according to other accounts the slain comprised only 3 or 4 

 oldsters). These women and children were domiciled at the pueblo of 

 the Conquest of the Seri, which in current thought thenceforth became 

 the pueblo of the Seri, and gradually passed into lore and later into 

 history as the home of the tribe rather than the mere penitentiary 

 which it was i7i fact. The padres waxed satirical over this quixotic 

 conquest: Alegre recounts that — 



The good jfoveruor returned so vainglorious over his expedition that it was even 

 said he would punish anyone intimating that there was a Seri left i« llic world, and 

 jiroclaimed through all America and Europe that ho had extirpated hy the roots 

 that inianious race. . . , The truth is that the force, on reaching Tiburon, 

 ascertained that the enemy had retreated to the mountains; that none of the 75 

 Spaniards who accompanied the governor could he induced, either hy entreaties or 



' Rudo Ensajo, p. 194; Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 535. 



