MCGKE] CONQUEST OF THE SERI CIRCA 1870 113 



gradually the condition of mutual tolerance was restored, to rest ou a 

 firmer basis than before. 



Don Pascual estimates that during the dozen years of strife between 

 bis men and the Seri forces about half of the tribe were slain. The 

 horror of the liistory of this period may be passed over; it may merely 

 be noted as a casual fact that one of the two Mexicans accompanying 

 the 1895 expedition was credited with 17 Seri heads. When he pointed 

 out the site of his last exploit, a mile or two south of Rancho Libertad, 

 and some iueredulitj' was expressed, he immediately galloped to the 

 spot and brought back a silent witness in the form of a bleached Seri 

 skull.' 



At the close of the war Don Pascual continued the industrial devel- 

 opment of the plains lying east of the desert border of Seriland, 

 received new concessions in recognition of his conquest, and developed 

 the ranchos of Santa Ana and Libertad; but the evangelical arm of 

 his vigorous mission gradually withered. For a dozen years the Seri 

 looked up to "El Patron" as a quasi ruler, whoscapproval was requisite 

 for the ratification of chieftainship, and through him ran a slender 

 thread of nominal fealty to the state and the republic; yet few para- 

 sites gathered about the rancho. Mashem had gone back to his clan; 

 and when depredations were committed at Bacuachito or elsewhere 

 and the criminals were caught, usually through Don Pascual's instru- 

 mentality, they were sometimes haled to Hermosillo for trial, and 

 Kolusio was kept there as the otticial interpreter of charges and evi- 

 dence and findings. Sometime during the sixties a few Seri youths were 

 coaxed to Pueblo Seri for education, but wlien they were instructed to 

 cut their hair they slunk dejectedly to their temporary domicile, only 

 to decamp during the ensuing night; again, in 1S70, Kolusio was 

 commissioned to bring in a few young people and a matron or two of 

 the tribe, and succeeded in doing so just in time to encounter an epi- 

 demic of measles, from which some died, while the others shook the 

 dust of the pueblo from their feet forever; and this last straw, added 

 to his alien residence and his presence at the dreaded trials, broke 

 down the tribal toleration of Kolusio and made him an outlaw forever. 



In the later seventies Don Pascual's energies began to wane, wliile the 

 Seri population was waxing again ; and, although the Encinas frontier 

 was protected, raids began to recur toward Bacuachito, on the ranchos 

 southwest of Caborca, and sometimes toward Guaymas; and the hostili- 

 ties then engendered have never terminated. In the eighties Don 

 Pascual suffered from cataract, gradually losing his sight, and his rule 

 relaxed still further; Eancho Libertad was abandoned, and a condition 

 of armed neutrality supervened at San Francisco de Costa Kica and 

 Santa Ana; and this condition still persists, save as occasionally modi- 

 fied byacrudesortof diplomacy on the part of the Seri: when blood feud 

 is not burning (and it is usually extinguished by the killing of an alien 

 on the coast or some remote part of the frontier), and when no stock have 



' The specimeD described by Dr HrdliCka, postea, p. 141. 

 17 ETH 8 



