MCGEE] CLOSE OF THE CHRONICLES 1844 93 



Leon and executed by Colonel Audrade. Yet it is not uncharacteristic 

 of Sonoran history that the wave of anti-Seri activity culminating in 

 1844: hardly outlasted its own breaking; certainly Escudero, writing 

 less than five years later, declared of "la naciou SerV: "During 

 thirty-three years tliey have committed not a single act of hostility and 

 live in peace and perfect harmony with the Sonorenses." He added 

 that they occupied the islands of Tiburou and Tepoca (sic) and the 

 coasts of the gulf contiguous to Sonora and California, and from the 

 most remote antiquity had been known by the names of ^•tihurones" 

 or "ser/s". Describing Pueblo Seri, he observed: "It now contains 

 hardly a dozen aged Seris of both sexes"; and he forecast the early 

 extinction of the tribe, since the people were incapable of abandoning 

 their independent and solitary existence.' 



Here ends, practically, the history of Pueblo Seri as a Seri settle- 

 ment, for, although one of the tribe survived for half a century and a 

 few others may have survived for a decade, the "aged Seris of both 

 sexes" melted away so rapidly as to leave no later record, and were 

 apparently never replaced by others. Briefly, the history of the pueblo 

 began with the establishment of a presidio or military i)Ost in 1741 in 

 the natural gateway and watering- jilace leading into the settled valleys 

 of the Opodepe and upper Sonora, for the sole purpose of protecting 

 the settlements against the wandering Seri, who used this typical 

 Sonora watergap as a way-station on forays but never as a place ol' 

 residence. The historj' grew definite when the Jesuits obtained the 

 allotment of lands for the Seri and established for them a mission, 

 which was at the same time a place of catechizing for Seri neophytes, 

 a place of detention for Seri captives, a place of refuge for Seri weak- 

 lings, and a x^lace of resort for Seri sneaks and spies. The history 

 proceeded with many vicissitudes, as the presidio was alteriuitely 

 abandoned under Seri attacks and reoccuiiied when the attacks were 

 repulsed, and as the neophytes alternately escaped and suffered recap- 

 ture; the formal history waned in relative importance as the i)opula- 

 tion and interests of Pitic and afterward of Hermosillo waxed, and as 

 the lands originally allotted to the Seri were gradually taken and held 

 by Mexican settlers, and ended when the Seri tenure was formally 

 extinguished in 1844, as described by Cabrera and Velasco; and the 

 general history dropped into unimportance with the escape of Andrade's 

 captives, after temporary quartering on the legally established land- 

 holders and householders of the Mexicanized pueblo. For a centui'y 

 and a half the name of the pueblo has continually raised and renewed 

 the assumjjtion that it marks a site of aboriginal Seri habitation or 

 has played some other leading role in Seri history, and this assumption 

 has shaped opinion i)ast and present; yet its error is clearly shown by 

 scrutiny of the historical records, as well as by collateral ethnologic 

 and archeologic evidence. 



'Koticiaa Estadisticas, pp. 141-142. 



