MOOEE] SLAUGHTER OP THE 8ERI 1780 83 



Amougtbe more useful compilations is that ofVelasco; and among the 

 more important episodes noted by him was' the Cimarrones-Migueletes 

 war of 17S0.' The Cimarrones included the greater part of the Seri 

 of Tiburou and the Tepoka (then estimated at 2,000 of both sexes),- to- 

 gether with the "Pimas called Piatos, of the pueblos of Cavorca, Tubu- 

 tama, Oquitoa, etc", and supposedly >!ertain other representatives of the 

 Pima aud Ajjache, who had shortly before marauded Magdalena and 

 sacked Saric, killing a dozen persons;^ the Migueletes were national 

 troops assigned to Sonora under the command of Colonel Domingo Eli- 

 zondo. The forces met iu several bloody battles in Cerro Prieto, at 

 Jupauguaimas, and at Presidio "Viejo; and the. former, or at any rate 

 the Seri, were once more" annihilated "("reducidos a nulidad"). Never- 

 theless, the hydra-headed tribe retained enough vitality in 1807 to 

 induce Governor Alejo Garcia Conde to send an army of a thousand 

 men to Guaymas, en route to Tiburon, to repeat the extirpation — though 

 the expedition came to naught for international reasons. 



Among the more useful contemporary records is an unpublished 

 manuscript report by Don Jose Cortez, dated 1799, found in the Force 

 library, translated by Buckingham Smith, aud abstracted by Lieuten- 

 ant A. W. Whipple for the Eeport of the Pacific Railway Survey. A 

 subsection of this report is devoted to "the Seris, Tiburoues, and 

 Tepocas ". It run s : 



The .Seri Indians live towards the coast of Sonora, on the famous Cerro Prieto, and 

 in its immediate neighborhood. They are cruel and sanguinary, and at one time 

 formed a numerous baud, which committed many excesses in that rich province. 

 With their poisoned shafts they took the lives of many thousand inhabitants, aud 

 rendered unavailinj; the exiiedition that was set on foot against them from Mexico. 

 At tliis time they are reduced to ,a small number; have, on many occasions, been 

 successfully encountered by onr troops; and are kept within bounds by the vigi- 

 lance of the three posts (jyresidios) established for the purpose. None of their cus- 

 toms approach, at all, to those of civilization; and their notions of religion and 

 marriage exist under barbarous forms, such as have before been described iu treating 

 of the most savage nations. The Tiburon and Tepoca Indians are a more numerous 

 tribe, and worthy of greater consideration than the Seris, but their bloodthirsty 

 disposition and tlieir customs are the same. They ordinarily live on the island of 

 Tiburon, which is connected with the coast of Sonora by a narrow inundated isth- 

 mus, over which they pass by swimming when the tide is up, and when it is down, 

 by -wading, as the water then only reaches to the waist, or not so high. They come 

 onto the continent, over which they make their incursions, and, after the commis- 

 sion of robberies, they return to the island ; on wliich acrouut no punishment 

 usually follovrs their temerity. It is now twenty-three or twenty-four years since 

 the phin was approved by His Majesty, and ordered to be carried out, of destroying 

 them on their island; but, until the present season, no movement has been made to 



' Koticiaa Estadisticas del Estado de Sonora; Mexico. 1850, p. 124 et aeq. 



nbid.,p. 132. 



* Bancroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 682. It is incredible that such a confederation of so incongruous elements 

 could ever have been efl"ected ; it is incomparably more probable that there was a succession of out- 

 breaks of the .Seri, Piato, and Apache, each stimulated by the removal of soldiers for defense against 

 the other enemies, just as Seri outrages follow Yaqui outbreaks today; but it was undoubtedly a 

 custom of the times (a custom still existing) to connect the several enemies in current thought and 

 speech. 



