94 THE SERI INDIANS [eth.ann.17 



Here may be said to end, too, the local chronicles of the Seri; for 

 although the state archives are crowded with charges, petitions, com 

 missions, reports, and other papers pertaining to the irrepressible Seri; 

 although these materials have overliowed to Oiudad, Mexico, and even 

 to Washington, in official documents both numerous and voluminous; 

 although Davila in 1804 increased Yelasco's forty Seri wars to fifty; 

 and although the weightiest events in the internal history of the Seri 

 have occurred since 1844, little attempt has latterly been made to 

 reduce the abundant data to print. 



The Mexican geographic knowledge of the time was surprisingly 

 vague, as is shown by the current maps, for example, the Tanner maps 

 which appeared in several editions: the 184t5 edition recalls and evi- 

 dently reflects the Humboldt map of the beginning of the century; -'E. 

 Ascencion" is represented as embouching through an estuary about 

 30° iiO ', with the "Seris Indians" north of its lower half-length and west 

 of "Pitic" and "Ft. del Alter"; Ures is located 3 or 4 miles southeast of 

 this fort, and "Racuach" (the Bacuachito of the present) is 20 miles 

 farther southeastward. Neither Rio Sonora nor any of its important 

 branches are indicated, while "Pitic" is placed several times too far 

 from the coast and from Guaymas, in a featureless expanse of paper; 

 "Rio Hiaqui" is shown as a branchless and conventional stream of a 

 single crescentic curvature, embouching in about the right latitude. 

 The coast of the gulf is distorted, and "Tiburon" is shown as an island 

 much too large and nearly a degree too far north, separated from the 

 mainland by a greatly exaggerated strait, with an elongated mesa 

 ("Mt. del Picu") skirting the mainland coast — in short, the cartography 

 is largely traditional if not fanciful.' 



The career of the Seri during the half century 1844-1894 is traceable 

 by aid of (1) unxjublished documents, (2) published results of scientific 

 inquiries and surveys, and (3) personal reminiscences of men living on 

 the Seri frontier; but in a summary touching only salient points the 

 first-named source may be passed over. 



One of the first foreign visitors to follow Baron Humboldt in sys- 

 tematic inquiries concerning the aborigines of northwestern Mexico 

 was Henri Ternaux-Compans; his information, too, was secondhand 

 and remote, yet he correctly recognized Isla Tibui'on as "inhabited 

 by the Seris, who have some huts also on the mainland".^ 



Later came Eduard Miihlenpfordt,an attache of a German commercial 

 company and later a Mexican state oflQcial, who traveled extensively and 

 wrote partly at first hand, though there is little indication of personal 

 acquaintance with Seriland or the Seri : he described " Bahia de San 



'A Map of the United States of Mexico, as organized and defined by the several Acts of the (Con- 

 gress of that Republic, constructed from a great variety of Printed and Slanuscrijit Documents, by 

 H. S. Tanner. Third edition, IS46. The map in Do Mofras (op. cit., atlas) is little better. 



^Nouvelles Annalcs des A'oyages, tome III, 1842, p. 320 (cited by liuschmann. Die Spuren der 

 aztekischen Sprache im nordliclien Mexico iind hdberen anierikanischcu Norden, in Abhandlungen 

 der Kiiuiglichcn Akademie der Wi.s.senschaften zn Berlin, aus dcm Jabre 1854. zweiter Supplement 

 Band; Berlin, 1859, p. 219). 



