MCGEE] PASSING OF THE JESUITS — 1707 79 



It is significant fact, and one attesting the physical and intellectual 

 distance of the padres from the normal Seri, that so few notes of ethno- 

 logic value were made during the Jesuits' regime. With a single excep- 

 tion, so far as is known,' they recorded not a word of the Seri tongue, not 

 a distinctive custom beyond those evidently of common knowledge, none 

 of the primitive ceremonies and ideas such as attracted their coadjutors 

 in Canada and elsewhere. They made no reference to the alleged canni- 

 balism so conspicuous in later lore; but their silence on this point can- 

 not be regarded as evidential, since they were equally silent concerning 

 nearly all the characteristic customs and traits. The neighboring Pap- 

 ago tribe met the invaders frankly as man to man, displaying a notable 

 combination of receptivity and self-containment which enabled them to 

 assimilate just so much of the Caucasian culture as they deemed desir- 

 able, yet to maintain their i)urity of blood and distinctiveness of culture 

 for centuries; the Seri, on the other hand, met the invaders as enemies, 

 to be first feared, then blinded, balked, and bled by surreptitious and 

 sinister devices, and finally to be assassinated through ambuscade or 

 remorseless treaciiery ; and it is manifest that they surpassed the gentle 

 padres in shrewdness and strategy, using them as playthings and tools, 

 and carefully concealing their own characters and motives the while. 



With the passing of the Jesuits, the publication of Souoran records 

 received a check from which theprovince has never completely recovered. 

 True, the place of the order was partly taken by the Colegio Apostolico 

 de Queretaro, which promptly dispatched fourteen Franciiscan friars to 

 Sonora, early in 17G8, to take j)Ossession of the old missions and to found 

 others;- it is also true that civil enactments and commissions, as well as 

 military orders and reports, increased with the growth of population ; 

 but comi)aratively few of the events and actions found their way to 

 the press. Seri episodes continued to recur with irregular frequency; 

 according to Davila, the Seri outbreaks and wars "exceed fifty in num- 

 ber since the conquest of Sonora",^ and there are decisive indications 

 that the Franciscan regime was not without its due quota of strife. 

 Moreover, the period was one of somewhat exceptionally vigorous pio- 

 neering, of the initiation of mining and agriculture, and of conquest over 

 the "despoblado'' formerly ranged and inhabited by the Seri. It was 

 during this period that the Seri were permanently dislodged from their 

 outlying haunts and watering-places in Cerro Prieto; and it was during 

 this period, too, that exploration and settlement were extended to Kio 

 Ijaeuaidie witli such energy as to displace the Seri from their other out- 

 lying refuge in tlie barrancas of this stream. But, as the events and 

 lines of progress multiplied, the burden for the contemporary chronicler 



^Tlie Noticia d© las Peraonas que ban escrito 6 ]mblicado algunas obras sobre Idiomas ouo se 

 hablan en la Republica (of Mexico), by I)r Jose Guadalupe Kouiero, includes .a MS. "Vocabulario 

 de laa Lenguas Eudeve, Pina y Seris ", written by Padre Adamo Gilg ( Bol. Soe. Mex. Geog. y Estad., 

 1860, touio VIII, p. 378). 



*I>;ivila. Sonora Historico y Deacriptivo. p. 10; Bancrol't, op. cit., p. 672. 



^Ibid., p. 319. 



