110 THE SEKI LNDIANS [etii. ann. IT 



iiickiiaiiii'd 101 (jraii Pelado ("The Great SLorn"), survives as subchief 

 ;\Iashciii, long since relapsed into his native savagery, save that he 

 remeniLiers the Spanish, att'ects a hat, cuts his hair to the neck (whence 

 his nickname), and prefers footgear to the fashion of his fellows. 



Industrially, Don Pascual's venture proved successful; the fertile 

 soil, periodically watered from below by the underflow of the semi- 

 annual freshets, yielded incredible crops; reveling in the exceptional 

 floral wealth of the delta and tided over bad seasons by the artificial 

 forage, the stock increased and multiplied beyond precedent; and so 

 the rancho became a flourishing establishment, housing a score or more 

 of families and harboring a hundred or two dependents, in addition to 

 the tliousands of half-wild horses and cattle. Meantime, the industrial 

 lines ramifying IVoni the rancho formed a drag net for Seri raiders, prac 

 tically cutting off forays eastward toward Hermosillo and Horcasitas, 

 and greatly reducing the sallies southeastward toward Guaymas and 

 northeastward toward Bacuachito and Caborca; and Don Pascual 

 began to receive recognition and state and federal concessions as a 

 public benefactor. For a decade the industrial and evangelical influ- 

 ence and the effect of the bold kindness of El Patron extended and 

 became felt throughout the tribe, and most of the families visited the 

 rancho at least occasionally. Yet even the best of them remained 

 averse to labor save in sporadic spurts, and indifferent to the religious 

 teaching, save when sweetened by substantial largess; while all but 

 the decrepit and tlie two carefully restrained neophytes came and went 

 capriciously, and were much given to decamping incontinently by 

 night to return shanxefacedly one by one in the course of a week or 

 two, without consistent or adequate excuse for tlieir stampede — indeed 

 the vaqueros habitually classed these nocturnal flights of the Seri and 

 the reasonless stampedes of their stock in the same category. Osten- 

 sibly a few of the larger boys and girls and a still smaller number 

 of the adults were helpers about the rancho; actually they were scav- 

 engers, consuming the waste of the shambles and the earth-mixed 

 scatterings from the thrashing floors, and saving the rancheros the 

 noisome duty of removing the carcasses of animals dead by disease or 

 accident; and as their indolence increased under the easy regime, they 

 grew into more and more open thievery. By no means deficient in 

 shrewdness and cunning, they adopted numberless devices for impos- 

 ing on the credulity of the majordomo and other otticials of the rancho. 

 When coin-like tokens of stamped copper were used in the transactions 

 of the rancho as equivalents of labor, the Seri ingeniously obtained 

 sheet copper by stealth or barter, systematically counterfeited the 

 tokens, and exchanged them for supplies at the rancho store; it was a 

 favorite trick to surreptitiously break the neck or a leg of a horse, cow, 

 or burro, and report finding the dead or cripjded animal, at the same 

 time begging for the carcass; and, whenever opportunity ofl'ered, they 

 slyly slaughtered a head of stock, consumed it to the hoofs and horns 



