112 THE SERI INDIANS rEniANN.IT 



by tbe state and federal authorities (themselves confessedly unable suc- 

 cessfully to cope with the condition), Don Pascual reluctantly adopted 

 a severer regime. Sending out as messengers several Seri still remain- 

 ing at the rancho, he convened the leading chiefs and clanniothers 

 of the tribe iu a council, and announced that the stock-killing must 

 cease, on pain of a Seri head for each head of stock thereafter slain. 

 The Indians seemingly acquiesced, and separated; but within two 

 days a group of Seri women "milled" a band of horses, caught and 

 threw one in such wise as to break its neck, and immediately sucked 

 its blood, gorged its intestines, and buried its quarters to "ripen", 

 after their former fashion. Thereupon a matron remaining near the 

 rancho was sent to demand the delivery of the perpetrators; and, 

 when she failed to return, the vaqueros were instructed to shoot the 

 first Seri seen on the llano. Within two days more, the tribe were on 

 the warpath for revenge — and the war raged for a decade. 



During the early months of the Encinas war Don PascuaFs vaqueros 

 sought merely to enforce the barbaric law of a head for a head: but, as 

 they found themselves beset by ambush, assailed and wounded by night, 

 despoiled of favorite animals, and kei)t constantly in that most nerve- 

 trying state of eternal vigilance, their rancor rose to an intensity nearly 

 ecjnal to the savage passion for blood- vengeance; and thenceforth the 

 Seri were hunted from the pliiin east of Desierto Enciuas precisely as 

 were the stealthy jaguar and sneaking coyote — and the ghastly details 

 were better spared. There were few open battles; commonly the 

 va(iueros rode in groups and guarded against ambuscades, and the Seri 

 were picked off one by one; but once in tlie early sixties Don Pascual, 

 at the head of some 30 vaqueros, fell into an ambush on the frontier, 

 and several of his horses were killed and some of his men wounded, 

 while tiO or 70 Seri warriors were left on the field. Don Pascual's 

 horse received a slight arrow wound, to which little attention was paid; 

 next morning the gash was swollen and inflamed and the beast too stiff 

 and logy for use ; in the afternoon the glands under the jaw were swollen, 

 and there was a purulent discharge from eyes and nostrils. On the 

 second morning the animal was hardly able to move, its head was enor- 

 mously swollen, there were fetid ulcers about the jaws and throat, and 

 the swelling extended to the legs and abdomen. On the third morning 

 there were suppurating ulcers on various parts of the body, while rags 

 of putrefied flesh and stringy pus hung from the head aud neck, and 

 the animal was unapproachable because of the stench; during the day 

 it dropped dead, and even the coyotes and buzzards shrank from the 

 pestilential carcass. This and parallel incidents impressed Don Pascual 

 with the dangers incident to Seri war; but fortunately the fact that 

 he — the leader of the party, the first to fall into the ambush, and the 

 target of most of the arrows — had escaped unscathed impressed still 

 more deeply the surviving savages, and they soon sued for peace. 

 Tiienceforth he was revered as a shaman greater than those of the tribe, 

 feared as an invulnerable fighter, and honored as a just lawgiver; aud 



