FOREST AND STREAM 
77 
Government that in his personal war with them 
he killed over half of the entire race. One of 
his vaqueros had a record of seventeen Seri 
heads and this only a few hours travel from the 
American line—true material for a thousand 
dime novels of the most lurid character. These 
continued raids and murders, the fact that the 
Seris seemed to really enjoy slaughtering 
aliens, men, women and children, either with 
rocks or poisoned arrows, their horrible, indeed 
revolting, personal habits and lack of cleanli¬ 
ness amounting to positive aversion to water, 
produced in the centuries since the conquest a 
racial aversion which I found all over Sonora. 
The very name Seri made one man instinctively 
reach for his gun, and the average vaquero of 
northwestern Sonora up to within a year or two 
would shoot a Seri on sight just as they would 
a Gila monster. 
Dr. Magee of the Smithsonian, Who has made 
the most careful scientific study of the Seris, 
says regarding the relations of the Seris and 
the whites: “The toleration was almost pre¬ 
cisely on a par with that between the ranchero 
and the vulture flock that scavengers his cor¬ 
rals, and when depredations began, the tolera¬ 
tion was of a piece with that between the house¬ 
holders and their unwillingly domiciled rodents.” 
In a word, they were rounded up and killed like 
rats, the survivors stealing away to begin their 
raids as sure again as the sun rose. As fighters 
they cast a spell of terror on many enemies. 
They had no especial system of fighting except 
low cunning, stealing into a camp at night, and 
crushing the heads of sleepers with stones. When 
they fought in the open they first shot their 
poisoned arrows, the slightest wound of which 
meant horrible death; then with wooden clubs 
or rocks rushed upon the enemy, demons crazed 
by the lust for blood and actuated by a can- 
abalistic desire beyond question. 
Concerning their ferocious appearance at this 
time wtien they attempted to brain their enemies 
with rocks, break their necks or crush their 
chests by jumping on them, Senor Encinas 
states, according to Magee, that the “rushing 
warriors are transfigured with frenzy, their eyes 
blaze purple and green, their teeth glisten through 
snarling lips, their hair half rises, like a bristling 
mane, while their huge chests swell, and their 
lithe limbs quiver in a fury, sudden and blind 
and overpowering, as that of a puma springing 
or charging peccary.” Of the successful 
assaults says Magee, “the ghastly end is rarely 
recorded though whispered, large in the lore of 
Sonora.” In a word, the consensus of opinion 
among the Sonorans, is that the Seris are canni¬ 
bals who make no invidious distinction between 
a gringo, a Mexican or a horse in their dietary 
when alone and in the fastness of the Sierra 
Seris. A survivor of a hand to hand fight with 
the Seri, one Jesus Omada of Bacuachito, was 
attacked by one warrior who nearly tore his 
arms to shreds before he killed him. The 
Seri had no weapon but his teeth Which he used, 
as would a coyote, with terrible results, and 
but for timely aid would have torn Omada in 
pieces, and, doubtless, had they been alone 
Omada would have “disappeared.” 
In appearance the Seris are tall, well built, 
powerful and large in proportion. Many of the 
men are not ill looking but nearly all have a 
surly, snarling expression, which is not mislead¬ 
ing, as when approached men, women and 
children snarl, mutter and growl like dogs, while 
their beady black eyes glitter in a menacing 
fashion. It is precisely the feeling of aversion 
a dog exhibits and doubtless is just as natural. 
In trying to induce an old Seri women to lower 
her zerape for my photographer she drew it 
over her head hissing all the time exactly like 
a Gila monster and every bit as venomous. At 
least from what I know of the two I would 
rather take my chances with the poisoned-tooth 
lizard than the poisoned-arrow Seri. 
No very old Seris are seen and it is believed 
they dispose of them. Cripples and useless men 
or women and drones also disappear, so that 
the clan or tribe always represents men and 
women perfect physically. The women are 
sometimes comely, some even attractive, in fea¬ 
ture, though their square shoulders give them a 
masculine type. The men have no ornaments 
but the women paint the face in a peculiar way, 
depending upon the clan they belong to—the 
Turtle, Pelican, etc. This is often a broad 
black or white winged band across the face or 
a snake patter of red, blue and white, effective 
against the deep-copper skin. The women build 
the huts and appear to have more recognition 
as women than the sex obtains in many tribes, 
older women especially being the advisors and 
seemingly the owners of the homes. They do 
most of the work; building huts, carrying water 
for miles, preparing food and acting at times as 
decoys to trap enemies within reach of the 
arrows of the men. As to their habits and cus¬ 
toms almost nothing is known, due to the com¬ 
plete isolation of their lives and the ferocity with 
which they resent any attempt to interfere with 
them or their privacy. Parties landing with an 
armed guard are not molested, but the unwary 
prospector or the unfortunate mariner cast on 
their shores even to-day would in all likelihood 
“disappear.” 
The Seris stole thousands of horses, but never 
had the wit to ride or use them, in fact they did 
not use them as a Seri cannot ride a horse. 
With a quick motion they would break the ani¬ 
mal’s neck and with rocks, hand and teeth tear 
and lacerate the flesh, piling great masses of 
flesh on their backs and run so swiftly that even 
the vaqueros of Don Encinas in a posse on the 
best horses could not catch them, in a word, the 
Seris from their wandering, walking habit have 
undoubtedly become the most remarkable run¬ 
ners in the world. They have been known to 
run down horses, coyotes, deer and other game. 
Magee cites an illustration of a number of Seri 
boys who caught a flying bird by the tail al¬ 
though the bird had the advantage of a start. 
Half grown boys catch jack rabbits by running 
them down while half a dozen Seris can throw 
a horse, breaking its neck, a scene often wit¬ 
nessed at the ranch of Senor Encinas. The lat¬ 
ter saw a Seri run a deer down and drive him 
to the Encinas ranchero. The native with 
marvelous speed continually headed the deer off 
driving on and on, until when near the ranch 
the Seri rushed in on it, seized the stricken ani¬ 
mal and carried it to the corral—a story almost 
beyond belief. 
At the Encinas ranch the experiment was 
made to test the speed of a Seri, a horse being 
offered to them if they could catch it, single 
handed within six hundred feet of the start. The 
animal was frightened by a vaquero in a corral, 
then suddenly released through the bars at full 
speed. The runner the Seris had selected, 
dashed after it, and despite the fact that the 
frightened animal was running away, caught up 
to it, leaped like a jaguar to its withers and 
with one hand on the jaw, the other in its mane, 
bore it down and broke its neck at the fall, 
while the rest of the brood crowded around suck¬ 
ing its blood, tearing it like coyotes, and 
buzzards. Indeed there is much of the buzzard 
in the Seri. They like decayed meat. A putri- 
fying leg of a horse was seen on the top of a 
hut which was to be taken down, and torn by 
the teeth of the Seri women. Senor Encinas 
states that a Seri squaw whose child was sick, 
ran from the hacienda Costa Rica to Molino del 
Encinas between dusk and sunrise, forty-five 
miles, bearing the child, hoping to find medical 
aid. To pay -the white medicine man she had in 
the night run down a jack rabbit. These women 
thought nothing of going from the hacienda of 
Costa Rica, thirty miles in a night with a child 
on the hip and a heavy olla of water on the 
head, to the coast. 
In Mexico on the Sonoran coast and in the 
vicinity of the Seri country about Hermosillo, 
I heard remarkable stories of the running 
powers of the people. Governor Torres of 
Sonora as we were walking through its attrac¬ 
tive garden related an incident when a coach 
ran for one hundred and fifty miles, or more, 
and there being no room for the men inside 
they ran often at the top of their speed, wore 
out the horses and were evidently in no way 
disconcerted at the finish. It is believed that 
the word Seri- Se- erreroi means the speed of 
the person who runs. Magee likened their run¬ 
ning that of the antelope; refers to their 
peculiar lightness of feet, “skimming the plain 
m recurrent impulses of unseen hoof touches, 
or that of the alert coyote, seemingly floating 
early about the slumbering camp. It is the habit 
of the errant Seri to roam spryly and swiftly on 
soundless tiptoes, to come and go like fleeting 
shadows of passing cloudlets, and on detection 
to slip behind rock or shrub and into the dis¬ 
tance so lightly as to make no audible sign or 
visible trail, yet so fleetly withal as to evade the 
hard riding horseman.” 
Some of the natives of Sonora have records 
that would put modern marathon runners to the 
blush. The Yaqui runner which Major Burn¬ 
ham took with him as a guide on one of our 
trips through the cactus forest thought nothing 
of running thirty miles in a few hours carrying 
his water and zerape. The Yaqui, Opata and 
Tarahumaei (foot runners) are all famous 
racers. According to Bartlett, they have been 
known to run two hundred miles in twenty-four 
hours. One man ran from Guazapares to 
Chihuahua with a letter and back in five days. 
The distance was eight hundred miles. They 
think nothing of running down wild horses and 
deer, all of which is accomplished by keeping at 
it with almost superhuman endurance, and when 
they come in, fresh and by no means “winded,” 
the horses are exhausted. 
Just how many Americans and Mexicans have 
been murdered and utilized in an enonomic sense 
by Seris in modern times it would be difficult to 
say, but the list of the killing is a long and 
ominous one. In 1896 five prospectors landed 
in Tiburon; one escaped to tell the story. Later 
two Americans landed and were shot down, but 
not before they had killed five Seris. The ex- 
