116 THE SERl INDIANS [eth. ann. 17 



ber of ill-advised prospecting parties, coming by land or water, paid 

 tbe i)eiialty of foolliardiness. Writing about 18{)4, Historian Yelasco 

 recurred to the Seri to say : 



This haudful of bandits, assassins, tliieves, brutes [inhumauos], infinitely vile 

 and cowardly, on February 23 last, on the Guayiuas road, at the place called Huer- 

 fano, assassinated 4 unhappy women, inclnding a girl of 9 years, and 7 men who 

 were conducting them in a cart toward that port. 



He bitterly denounced the apparent apathy of the state and federal 

 authorities, adding: 



When it is read in history fifty years hence that a handful of murderous Ceris, 

 certainly not more than 80 of the tribe able to bear arms, was able to domineer in 

 the midst of their crimes with unexampled audacity on account of the debility of 

 the government and the inhabitants, it will be regarded as a romance or a fable; 

 for it seems impossible that in the nineteenth century such a condition of things 

 could exist to degrade the reasou, the morality, and the dignity of civilized man. 



Yet a final note, apparently added in press, recorded that — 



In consequence of the last incident of the Ceris, the prefect of Guaymas, Don 

 Cayeta .o Navarro, took the field, returning with 12 women and 16 children pris- 

 oners; also 2 striplings and a vieillard. He slew 9 among those who had no leader. 

 This was on Isla Tiburon. The Indians ded thence, and are supposed to be at 

 Tepococ. ' 



These may be considered as characteristic skirmishes attending tlie 

 Enciuas war. Other episodes followed, including the outbreaks of 

 1879, noted in part by M Pinart. Bacuachito suffered in viirioas 

 locally important events that will never be written : when Don Jesus 

 Omada, a water guide to tbe expedition of 1805, was asked about the 

 Seri at Bacuachito, he answered witli cumulative vehemence, "They 

 killed my fatlier. They killed my brother ! They killed my brother's 

 wife ! ! They have killed half my friends ! ! !" As he spoke he was fever- 

 ishly baring his breast; displaying a frightful scar over the clavicle, he 

 exclaimed, "There struck a Seri arrow"; then he stripped his arm 

 with a single sweep to reveal a ragged cicatrix extending nearly from 

 shoulder to wrist, and added in a tone tremulous with pent bitterness, 

 " Tbe Seri have teeth ! " 



In the coarse of the half century from 1844 onward, the population 

 of Sonora increased materially, and carried more than a proportionate 

 increase in tbe development of agricultural and mineral resources; and, 

 especially under the beneficent Diaz regime, the state passed from the 

 condition of a remote frontier province into that of a well-governed 

 commonwealth, i^aturally this progress carried the Caucasian element, 

 including that of blended blood, farther and farther away from the 

 nonprogressive Seri ; and thereby the horror and detestation awakened 

 by the very utterance of the name of the lowly tribe were intensified 

 beyond description or ready understanding. The traditions of arrow 

 poisoning were kept alive, and, doubtless, growing; the recitals of car- 

 rion eating were repeated, and possibly — just jjossibly — magnified 

 beyond the reality; the accounts of offense and defense by nails and 



' Boletin de la Sociedad Mexioana de Geografia y Eatadiatica, tomo xi, 1862, pp. 124-125. 



