The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))
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Title: The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))
Author: W J McGee
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THE SERI INDIANS
BY
W J McGEE
Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-96, Government Printing
Office, Washington, 1898, pages 1—344*
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction 9
Salient features 9
Recent explorations and surveys 12
Acknowledgments 20
Habitat 22
Location and area 22
Physical characteristics 22
Flora 31
Fauna 36
Local features 39
Summary history 51
Tribal features 123
Definition and nomenclature 123
External relations 130
Population 134
Somatic characters 136
Demotic characters 164
Symbolism and decoration 164
Face-painting 164
Decoration in general 169
The significance of decoration 176
Industries and industrial products 180
Food and food-getting 180
Navigation 215
Habitations 221
Appareling 224
Tools and their uses 232
Warfare 254
Nascent industrial development 265
Social organization 269
Clans and totems 269
Chiefship 275
Adoption 277
Marriage 279
Mortuary customs 287
Serial place of Seri socialry 293
Language 296
Comparative lexicology
Index
Footnotes
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Plate I. Seriland 9
II. Pascual Encinas, conqueror of the Seri 13
III_a_. Seri frontier 40
III_b_. Sierra Seri, from Encinas desert 40
IV_a_. Sierra Seri, from Tiburon island 42
IV_b_. Punta Ygnacio, Tiburon bay 42
V_a_. Western shore of Tiburon bay 44
V_b_. Eastern shore of Tiburon bay 44
VI_a_. Recently occupied rancheria, Tiburon island 80
VI_b_. Typical house interior, Tiburon island 80
VII_a_. House framework, Tiburon island 110
VII_b_. House covering, Tiburon island 110
VIII. Sponge used for house covering, Tiburon island 112
IX_a_. House skeleton, Tiburon island 114
IX_b_. Interior house structure, Tiburon island 114
X. Typical Seri house on the frontier 117
XI. Occupied rancheria on the frontier 119
XII. Group of Seri Indians on trading excursion 121
XIII. Group of Seri Indians on the frontier 137
XIV. Seri family group 139
XV. Seri mother and child 142
XVI. Group of Seri boys 144
XVII. Mashém, Seri interpreter 146
XVIII. “Juana Maria”, Seri elderwoman 150
XIX. Typical Seri warrior 154
XX. Typical Seri matron 156
XXI. Seri runner 158
XXII. Seri matron 160
XXIII. Youthful Seri warrior 162
XXIV. Seri belle 164
XXV. Seri maiden 166
XXVI. Characteristic face-painting 168
XXVII. Face-painting paraphernalia 170
XXVIII. Seri archer at rest 200
XXIX. Seri archer at attention 202
XXX. Seri bow, arrow, and quiver 204
XXXI. Seri balsa in the National Museum 217
XXXII. Painted olla, with olla ring (Museum number 155373) 222
XXXIII. Plain olla (Museum number 155373) 226
XXXIV. Domestic anvil, side (Museum number 178858) 234
XXXV. Domestic anvil, top (Museum number 178858) 234
XXXVI. Domestic anvil, bottom (Museum number 178858) 234
XXXVII. Domestic anvil (reduced), top and side (Museum number
178838) 237
XXXVIII. Metate (reduced), top and edge (Museum number 178839) 237
XXXIX. Long-used metate (reduced), top (Museum number 178840) 238
XL. Long-used metate (reduced), bottom (Museum number
178840) 238
XLI. Natural pebble bearing slight marks of use (Museum
number 178841) 240
XLII. Natural pebble used as bone-crusher (Museum number
178842) 240
XLIII. Little-worn pebble used for all domestic purposes
(Museum number 174570) 243
XLIV. Natural pebble used as crusher and grinder
(Museum number 178843) 243
XLV. Natural pebble slightly used as hammer and anvil
(Museum number 178844) 244
XLVI. Natural pebble slightly used as grinder
(Museum number 178845) 247
XLVII. Natural pebble slightly used as domestic implement
(Museum number 178846) 247
XLVIII. Natural pebble slightly worn by use
(Museum number 178847) 249
XLIX. Natural pebble considerably worn in use as grinder
(Museum number 178848) 249
L. Natural pebble considerably worn as cutter and grinder
(Museum number 178849) 251
LI. Natural pebble considerably used as hammer, grinder,
and anvil (top and edge) (Museum number 178850) 253
LII. Natural pebble considerably used as hammer, grinder,
and anvil (bottom and edge) (Museum number 178850) 253
LIII. Hammer and grinder (Museum number 178851) 255
LIV. Implement shaped by use
(Museum number 178853) 255
LV. Implement perfected by use (Museum number 178853) 257
LVI. Perfected implement found in use (Museum number 178854) 259
Figure 1. Nomenclatural map of Seriland 16
2. Gateway to Seriland—gorge of Rio Bacuache 27
3. Tinaja Anita 29
4. Beyond Encinas desert—the saguesa 33
5. Embarking on Bahia Kunkaak in la lancha _Anita_ 48
6. Anterior and left lateral aspect of Seri cranium 142
7. Snake-skin belt 170
8. Dried flower necklace 171
9. Seed necklace 172
10. Nut pendants 172
11. Shell beads 172
12. Wooden beads 172
13. Necklace of wooden beads 173
14. Rattlesnake necklace 174
15. Seri olla ring 184
16. Water-bearer’s yoke 184
17. Symbolic mortuary olla 185
18. Symbolic mortuary dish 185
19. Shell-cup 186
20. Turtle-harpoon 187
21. Fish-spearhead 193
22. African archery posture 202
23. Desiccated pork 205
24. Seri basket 208
25. Scatophagic supplies 213
26. Seri marlinspikes 217
27. The balsa afloat 218
28. Seri balsa as seen by _Narragansett_ party 219
29. Seri hairbrush 226
30. Seri cradle 226
31. Hair spindle 227
32. Human-hair cord 228
33. Horsehair cord 228
34. Mesquite-fiber rope 229
35. Bone awl 230
36. Wooden awls 230
37. Seri arrowheads 246
38. Diagrammatic outline of industrial development 253
39. Mortuary olla 289
40. Woman’s fetishes 290
41. Food for the long journey. 291
42. Mortuary cup 291
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. I
SERILAND]
THE SERI INDIANS
By W J MCGEE
INTRODUCTION
SALIENT FEATURES
Something has been known of the Seri Indians (Seris, Ceris, Ceres,
Heris, Tiburones) since the time of Coronado, yet they remain one
of the least-studied tribes of North America. The first systematic
investigation of the tribe was made in the course of expeditions by the
Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894 and 1895; it was far from complete.
The Seri Indians are a distinctive tribe in habits, customs, and
language, inhabiting Tiburon island in Gulf of California and a limited
adjacent area on the mainland of Sonora (Mexico). They call themselves
_Kun-kaak_ or _Kmike_: their common appellation is from the Opata, and
may be translated “spry”. Their habitat is arid and rugged, consisting
chiefly of desert sands and naked mountain rocks, with permanent fresh
water in only two or three places; it is barred from settled Sonora by
a nearly impassable desert. Two centuries ago the population of the
tribe was estimated at several thousands, but it has been gradually
reduced by almost constant warfare to barely three hundred and fifty,
of whom not more than seventy-five are adult males, or warriors.
The Seri men and women are of splendid physique; they have fine chests,
with slender but sinewy limbs, though the hands and especially the feet
are large; their heads, while small in relation to stature, approach
the average in size; the hair is luxuriant and coarse, ranging from
typical black to tawny in color, and is worn long. They are notably
vigorous in movement, erect in carriage, and remarkable for fleetness
and endurance.
The Seri subsist chiefly on turtles, fish, mollusks, water-fowl, and
other food of the sea; they also take land game, and consume cactus
fruits, mesquite beans, and a few other vegetal products of their
sterile domain. Most of their food is eaten raw. They neither plant
nor cultivate, and are without domestic animals, save dogs which are
largely of coyote blood.
The habitations of the Seri are flimsy bowers of cactus and shrubbery,
sometimes shingled rudely with turtle-shells and sponges; in some
cases these are in clusters pertaining to matronymic family groups;
in other cases they are isolated, and are then often abandoned and
reoccupied repeatedly, and are apparently common property of the tribe.
The habitations afford some protection from sun and wind, but not from
cold and wet, which are hardly known in winterless and nearly rainless
Seriland.
The Seri clothing consists essentially of a kilt or skirt extending
from waist to knees; sometimes a pelican-skin robe is worn as a blanket
or mantle, and used also as bedding; the head and feet, as well as
the bust and arms, are habitually bare, though a loose-sleeved wammus
reaching not quite to the waist is sometimes worn. These garments were
formerly woven of coarse threads or cords made from native vegetal
fibers; the belt is generally of twisted human hair, of horse hair, of
dressed deerskin, or of snake skin; the robe consists of four, six, or
eight pelican skins sewed together with sinew. The pelican-skin robes
are still used, though the aboriginal fabric is commonly replaced by
cotton stuffs obtained through barter or plunder. Cords of human hair
and skins of serpents are used for necklaces.
The sports and games of the Seri Indians include racing and dancing,
and there are ceremonial dances at the girls’ puberty feasts,
accompanying the rude music of improvised drums. Decoration is
ordinarily limited to symbolic face-painting, which is seen especially
among the females, and to crude ornamentation of the scanty apparel.
A peculiar pottery is manufactured, and the pieces are sometimes
decorated with simple designs in plain colors.
The bow and arrow are habitually used, especially in warfare, and
turtles and fish are taken by means of harpoons, shafted with cane and
usually tipped with bone, charred wood, or flotsam metal. The arrows
are sometimes provided with chipped stone points, though the art of
chipping seems to be accultural and shamanistic. The ordinary stone
implements are used for crushing bone and severing sinew or flesh,
and also for mulling seeds and other food substances; they are mere
cobbles, selected for fitness, and retained only if their fitness is
increased by the wear of use, after the manner of protolithic culture.
Graceful balsas are made from canes, bound together with mesquite-fiber
cords; and on these the people freely navigate the narrow but stormy
strait separating Tiburon and the neighboring islets from the mainland.
They make a distinctive pottery, which is remarkably light and fragile.
Its chief use is carrying water to habitations (always located miles
from the spring or tinaja) or on desultory wanderings. Shells are used
for cups, and to some extent for implements. They have a few baskets,
which are not greatly different from those made by neighboring tribes.
The modern Seri are loosely organized in a number of maternal groups
or clans, which are notable for the prominence given to mother-right
in marriage and for some other customs; and there are indications
that the clan organization was more definite before the tribe was so
greatly reduced. The leading clans are those of the Pelican, the chief
tribal tutelary, and the Turtle, a minor tutelary. At present polygyny
prevails, professedly and evidently because of the preponderance of
females due to the decimation of warriors in battle; but both custom
and tradition tell of former monogamy, with a suggestion of polyandry.
The primary marriage is negotiated between the mothers of the would-be
groom and the prospective bride; if the mother and daughter in the
latter family look with favor on the proposal, the candidate is
subjected to rigorous tests of material and moral character; and if
these are successfully passed the marriage is considered complete,
and the husband becomes a privileged and permanent guest in the
wife’s household. Family feeling, especially maternal affection, is
strong; but petty dissensions are common save when internal peace is
constrained by external strife. The strongest tribal characteristic
is implacable animosity toward aliens, whether Indian or Caucasian;
certainly for three and a half centuries, and probably for many more,
the Seri have been almost constantly on the warpath against one alien
group or another, and have successfully stayed Spanish, Mexican, and
American invasion. In their estimation the brightest virtue is the
shedding of alien blood, while the blackest crime in their calendar is
alien conjugal union.
The Seri vocabulary is meager and essentially local; the kinship terms
are strikingly scanty, and there are fairly full designations for
food materials and other local things, while abstract terms are few.
Two or three recorded vocables seem to resemble those of the Yuman
languages, while the numerals and all other known terms are distinct.
The grammatic construction of Seri speech appears not to differ greatly
from that of other tongues of Sonora and Arizona; it is highly complex
and associative. The speech is fairly euphonious, much more so than
that of the neighboring Papago and Yaqui Indians.
The Seri Indians appear to recognize a wide variety of mystical
potencies and a number of zoic deities, all of rather limited powers.
The Pelican, Turtle, Moon, and Sun seem to lead their thearchy.
Creation is ascribed to the Ancient of Pelicans—a mythical bird of
marvelous wisdom and melodious song—who first raised Isla Tassne,
and afterward Tiburon and the rest of the world, above the primeval
waters. Individual fetishes are used, and there is some annual ceremony
at the time of ripening of cactus fruits, and certain observances at
the time of the new moon. The most conspicuous ceremony is the girls’
puberty feast. The dead are clothed in their finest raiment, folded
and fastened in small compass like Peruvian mummies, placed in shallow
graves, and covered with turtle-shells, when the graves are filled with
earth and heaped with stones or thorny brambles for protection against
beasts of prey. Fetishes, weapons, and other personal belongings are
buried with the body, as well as a dish of food and an olla of water,
and there are curious customs connected with the place of sepulture.
There is a weird, formal mourning for dead matrons, and suggestions of
fear of or veneration for the manes.
Seriland is surrounded with prehistoric works, telling of a numerous
population who successfully controlled the scant waters for irrigation,
built villages and temples and fortresses, cultivated crops, kept
domestic animals, and manufactured superior fictile and textile wares;
but (save possibly in one spot) these records of aboriginal culture
cease at the borders of Seriland. In their stead a few slightly worn
pebbles and bits of pottery are found here and there, deeply embedded
in the soil and weathered as by the suns of ages. There are also a few
cairns of cobbles marking the burial places, and at least one cobble
mound of striking dimensions but of unknown meaning; and there are
a few shell-mounds, one so broad and high as to form a cape in the
slowly transgressing shoreline (Punta Antigualla), and in which the
protolithic implements and other relics are alike from the house-dotted
surface to the tide level, 90 feet below.
The absence of relics of a superior culture, and the presence of Seri
relics throughout deposits of high antiquity, suggest that the tribe
is indigenous to Seriland; and this indication harmonizes with the
peculiar isolation of the territory, the lowly culture and warlike
habits of the people, the essentially distinct language, the singular
marriage custom, and the local character of the beast-gods. And all
these features combine to mark the Seri as children of the soil, or
autochthones.
RECENT EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS
Present knowledge of Seriland and its inhabitants is based primarily
on the work of two expeditions by the Bureau of American Ethnology,
conducted in 1894 and 1895, respectively; and, secondarily, on
researches into the cartography and literature (descriptive,
historical, and scientific) of the region. Both of the expeditions
were projected largely for the purpose of making collections among
little-known native tribes in the interests of the National Museum, and
the general ethnologic inquiries were ancillary to this purpose.
The 1894 expedition was directed chiefly toward work among the Papago
Indians in the vaguely defined territory known as Papagueria, lying
south of Gila river and west of the Sierra Madre in southwestern
Arizona and western Sonora (Mexico). Outfitting at Tucson early
in October, the party moved southward, visiting the known Papago
rancherias and seeking others, and thus defining the eastern limits
of the Papago country. On the approach to the southern limits of the
tribal range toward Rio Sonora, the evil repute of the Seri Indians
sounded larger and larger, suggesting the desirability of scientific
study of the tribe; and it was decided to attempt investigation.
Accordingly the party was reorganized at Hermosillo, and, with the
sanction of the Secretary of State and Acting Governor, Señor Don Ramón
Corral, proceeded to Rancho San Francisco de Costa Rica, where a
temporary Seri rancheria was found occupied by about sixty of the
tribe, including subchief Mashém, who speaks Spanish. In this part of
the work the expedition was accompanied by Señor Pascual Encinas, the
owner of the rancho visited, and doubtless the best informed white
man concerning the habits, customs, personnel, and habitat of the
tribe. About a week was spent in intercourse with the occupants of
the rancheria, when the studies were brought to an end through the
illness of Señor Encinas, and the consequent necessity for return to
Hermosillo. The expedition then proceeded northwestward and northward
along a route so laid as to define the western limits of Papagueria
proper, and reached Tucson near the end of the year. In addition to the
leader, the party comprised Mr William Dinwiddie, photographer; José
Lewis, Papago interpreter, and E. P. Cunningham, teamster. The outfit
was furnished chiefly by Mr J. M. Berger, of San Xavier (near Tucson).
On the visit to the Seri frontier the party was accompanied by Señor
Encinas, Don Arturo Alvemar-Leon (who acted as Spanish interpreter),
and two or three attachés of Molino del Encinas.[1]
[1] The more noteworthy details of the organization and work of the
two expeditions are set forth in the administrative reports of the
Bureau for the fiscal years 1894-95 and 1895-96. Certain members of
this party are shown in the accompanying half-tone, forming plate II:
Señor Encinas seated at the end of the table; his son, Don Manuel
(bareheaded), and Don Ygnacio Lozania at his right; a grandson behind
him, and Señor Alvemar-Leon seated at his left, with Mashém kneeling
over the table in the foreground.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. II
PASCUAL ENCINAS, CONQUEROR OF THE SERI]
The second expedition was directed primarily toward investigation of
the Seri, and only incidentally to continuation of the researches among
the Papago. Outfitting at Tucson in October (again with the aid of Mr
Berger), the expedition proceeded southward by a route different from
those previously traversed, and carried forward a plane-table route
survey covering a considerable zone from the international boundary
at Sasabe to Rio Sonora. Descending the previously unmapped course of
Rio Bacuache, the expedition reached the Rancho de San Francisco de
Costa Rica on December 1, 1895, and, although conditions were found
unfavorable in that the Seri were on the warpath, immediately prepared
for the extension of the work into Seriland.
A preliminary trip was made into the mainland portion of the Seri
habitat, terminating at the crest of Johnson peak, the highest point
in Sierra Seri. The triangulation and topographic surveys were carried
over the territory traversed, and several points were fixed on Isla
Tiburon; but the natives, agitated by a skirmish with vaqueros on the
frontier a day or two earlier, had withdrawn to remoter parts of the
territory, and were not encountered. The party returned to Costa Rica,
a rude boat was completed, transported across the desert via Pozo
Escalante to Embarcadero Andrade, and launched in Bahia Kunkaak. The
surveys were extended to the southern portion of Sierra Seri and Isla
Tassne, and, after various difficulties and delays due to dearth of
fresh water, to gales, and to other causes, the party (enlarged for the
purpose) finally landed on Tiburon. Many Seri rancherias were found
on both sides of Bahia Kunkaak and El Infiernillo. Some of these had
been occupied almost to the hour of the visit, but the occupants had
taken flight, leaving most of their unattached possessions behind, and
were not seen, though it was evident that, like wary birds and game
animals, they kept the invaders in sight from points of vantage and
hidden lairs. The eastern scarps and foot-slopes of Sierra Kunkaak
were traversed extensively and repeatedly; its crest was crossed by Mr
Johnson with a small party at a point west of Punta Narragansett, and
the triangulation and topographic sketching were connected with the
work on the mainland and carried over practically the entire surface
of the island, being tied to the work of the Hydrographic Office about
the coasts. Then, despairing of finding the wary natives, and having
exhausted food supplies, the party returned to the mainland and thence
to Costa Rica, arriving in the evening of December 31.
The original party comprised, in addition to the leader, Mr Willard D.
Johnson, topographer; Mr J. W. Mitchell, photographer; Hugh Morris,
Papago interpreter, and José Contrares, teamster. The party engaged
in the expedition to Sierra Seri comprised the leader, Messrs Johnson
and Mitchell, Mr L. K. Thompson of Hermosillo, Don Andrés Noriega of
Costa Rica, José Contrares, and two Papago Indian guards, Miguel and
Anton, of Costa Rica. The Tiburon party was made up of the leader,
Messrs Johnson and Mitchell, S. C. Millard of Los Angeles, and Señores
Andrés Noriega and Ygnacio Lozania, together with Ruperto Alvarez,
a Yaqui Indian guard, and Miguel, Anton, Mariana, Anton Ortiz, and
Anton Castillo, Papago guards; while Hugh Norris and José Contrares,
with half a dozen Papago guards and other attachés of the rancho at
Costa Rica, maintained an intermittent supply station at Embarcadero
Andrade. Señor Encinas cooperated in the work of the expedition, part
of the time at Costa Rica and part at Molino del Encinas, his principal
hacienda in the outskirts of Hermosillo; while Mr Thompson and Dr W. J.
Lyons aided in the work, the former at both Hermosillo and Costa Rica
and the latter at Hermosillo.
The return trip from Costa Rica lay via Hermosillo, and permitted the
extension of the plane-table surveys to this longitude. While at the
city advantage was taken of the opportunity to obtain linguistic and
other data from “El General” Kolusio, a full-blood Seri retained at
the capital by the State for occasional duty as a Seri interpreter,
who was obligingly assigned to the service of the party by Señor Don
Ramón Corral, then governor of Sonora. At Hermosillo the leader of the
expedition left the main party, which then proceeded northwestward
and northward along the route followed by the 1894 expedition on the
return journey, the party comprising Mr Johnson, in charge, with
Messrs Mitchell and Millard, Hugh Norris, and José Contrares; and the
plane-table surveys were continued and combined with the route surveys
made on the outward journey.
The principal ethnologic results of both expeditions relating to
the Seri Indians are incorporated in the following pages; the data
concerning the Papago are reserved for further study. The topographic
surveys of the 1895 expedition covered a zone averaging 50 miles in
width, extending from the international boundary to somewhat beyond
Rio Sonora. Mr Johnson, by whom these surveys were executed, was on
furlough from the United States Geological Survey, and his resumption
of survey work prevented the construction of finished maps, except
that of Seriland (plate I), which forms but a small fraction of the
area surveyed. The results of the remaining, and by far the greater,
part of the topographic surveys are withheld pending completion of the
inquiries concerning the Papago Indians.
* * * * *
The geographic nomenclature found requisite in the field and in writing
is partly new and partly restored, yet conforms with general and local
custom so far as practicable; and nearly all of the new names have been
applied in commemoration of explorers or pioneers. Most of the names
pertaining to Seriland proper are incorporated in the map forming plate
I; the others (including a few minor corrections) appear in the outline
map forming figure 1, prepared after the larger sheet was printed.[2]
[2] The larger map was drawn early in 1896, and a preliminary edition
in the form of a photolithograph of the drawing was published in
the National Geographic Magazine, vol. VII, 1896. It is proper—and
historically desirable—to explain that while a considerable part of the
copy for this paper was prepared at about the same time, circumstances
prevented the completion of the manuscript and the final rectification
of the nomenclature and bibliographic references until September 1,
1900.
The following list of place-names is designed primarily to give
the meaning and raison d’être of the nomenclature; with a single
exception,[3] the names are Hispanized or Mexicanized in accordance
with local usage.
[3] Johnson peak. It is proper to say that this name was applied by the
author (and leader of the expedition) after the drawing was completed
and submitted by Mr Johnson, as a meager tribute to his excellent work
in the field and on the drawings named.
_Nomenclature of Seriland._[4]
[4] An asterisk indicates new names, an obelisk old names restored or
colloquial names adopted.
*SERILAND: Extra-vernacular name of tribe, with English
locative.
MAR DE CORTÉS (Sea of Cortés=Gulf of California): Customary
Sonoran designation, applied by Ulloa (1539) in honor of
Hernando Cortés, first discoverer of the gulf.
*PASAJE ULLOA (Ulloa passage): Generic Spanish; specific
applied in honor of Captain Francisco de Ulloa, first navigator
of the passage and the upper gulf, 1539.
*ESTRECHO ALARCON (Alarcon strait): Named in honor of Hernando
de Alarcon, second navigator of the gulf; 1540.
EL INFIERNILLO (The Little Hell): Local designation, retained
by the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N. (miswritten “Estrecho
Infiernillo” on larger map).
†BOCA INFIERNO (Mouth of Hell): A colloquial local designation
(miswritten “Puerto Infierno” on larger map).
*BAHIA KUNKAAK (Kunkaak bay): Generic Spanish; specific the
vernacular name of the Seri tribe (miswritten “Tiburon bay” on
plates IV and V).
[Illustration: FIG. 1—Nomenclatural map of Seriland.]
BAHIA KINO (Kino bay): Long-standing name given in honor of
Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, an early Jesuit missionary (the
“Bahia San Juan Bautista” of various early maps); adopted in
Anglicized form by the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
†BAHIA TEPOPA (Tepopa bay): Specific a corruption of Tepoka,
the extra-vernacular name of a local tribe related to the Seri;
applied in 1746 by Padre Consag, and used by most navigators
and cartographers of later dates, though it does not appear on
the charts of the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
BAHIA AGUA DULCE (Freshwater bay): Named by Lieutenant R. W.
H. Hardy, R. N., 1826; name retained (in Anglicized form) by
Hydrographic Office, U. S. N. (The name is misplaced on Hardy’s
map, but the bay is correctly located in his text, p. 293.)
†BAHIA BRUJA (Witch bay): Named (in honor of his vessel) by its
discoverer, Lieutenant Hardy, 1826.
*BAHIA ESPENCE (Spence bay): Named in honor of Pilot Tomás
Espence (Thomas Spence), second circumnavigator of the island,
who landed in the bay in 1844.
†ESTERO COCHLA (Cockle inlet): Named by Lieutenant Hardy, 1826.
*BAJIOS DE UGARTE (Ugarte shoals): Named in honor of Padre Juan
de Ugarte, first visitor to the shoals and circumnavigator of
Tiburon, 1721.
*RADA BALLENA (Whale roadstead): Named from the stranding of a
whale about 1887, an incident of much note among the Seri.
*ANCLAJE DEWEY (Dewey anchorage): Named in honor of its
discoverer, Commander (now Admiral) George Dewey, in charge of
the surveys by the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N., 1873.
LAGUNA LA CRUZ (Lagoon of the Cross): Name adopted (Anglicized)
by Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.; the “Laguna de los
Cercaditos” (Lagoon of the Little Banks) of Colonel Francisco
Andrade, 1844.
ISLA TIBURON (Shark island): Name of long standing; used
alternatively with “Isla San Agustin” since the seventeenth
century, both names being apparently applied to Isla Tassne
by several writers, and also to Isla Angel de la Guarda (the
second largest island in the gulf) by Kino and others, while
the present Tiburon was regarded as a peninsula.
ISLA SAN ESTEBAN (Saint Stephen island): Name of long standing;
in consistent use since early in the seventeenth century.
*ISLA TASSNE (Pelican island): Name recast by the use of the
Seri specific in lieu of the Spanish (Alcatráz), which is too
hackneyed for distinctive use.
ISLA TURNER (Turner island): Name used (and probably applied
in honor of Rear-Admiral Thomas Turner, U. S. N.) by the
Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
ISLA PATOS (Duck island—i. e., Island of Ducks): Name of long
standing; adopted by the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
ROCA FOCA (Seal rock): Name used (and probably applied) by the
Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
PEÑA BLANCA (White crag): Name used (and probably applied) by
the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
PUNTA TEPOPA (Tepopa point): Named (probably corruptly) from
a local tribe related to the Seri; used by the Hydrographic
Office, U. S. N.
PUNTA SARGENT (Sargent point): Name applied by Lieutenant Hardy
in 1826 to what is now known as Punta Tepopa; adopted for the
minor point by the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
*PUNTA PERLA (Pearl point): Name applied in commemoration of
the traditional pearl fisheries of the vicinity.
*PUNTA ARENA (Sand point): A descriptive designation.
*PUNTA TORTUGA (Turtle point): Name applied in recognition of
the extensive turtle fisheries of the Seri in the vicinity.
*PUNTA TORMENTA (Hurricane point): Name applied in recognition
of the nearly continuous gales and tide-rips by which
navigation is rendered hazardous, and by which the long
sand-spit has been built.
PUNTA MIGUEL (Miguel point): Recast from “San Miguel point”,
partly through association with the name of a Papago guard
accompanying the expedition of 1895; in the old form the name
is of long standing, was probably applied by Escalante in 1700,
and was adopted by the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N., 1873.
*PUNTA GRANITA (Granite point): A descriptive designation.
*PUNTA BLANCA (White point): A descriptive designation.
*PUNTA NARRAGANSETT (Narragansett point): Specific (of
Algonquian Indian derivation) applied in commemoration of the
vessel employed in the surveys by the Hydrographic Office, U.
S. N., in 1873, the point being that at which the commander of
the _Narragansett_ located the principal Seri rancheria of that
time and made observations on the tribe.
*PUNTA YGNACIO (Ygnacio point): Specific applied in honor of
Don Ygnacio Lozania, a trusted aid in the 1895 expedition,
who had visited this point in connection with the Andrade
expedition of 1844; described as “Dark bluff” on charts of the
Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
*PUNTA ANTIGUALLA (Antiquity point—i. e., Point of
Antiquities): Name applied in recognition of a great
shell-mound which has retarded the transgression of the sea and
produced the point.
PUNTA KINO (Kino point): Name of long standing; specific in
honor of the early missionary; used by the Hydrographic Office,
U. S. N.
*PUNTA MASHÉM (Mashém point): Specific in honor of the Seri
chief Mashém (sometimes called Francisco Estorga or Juan
Estorga), who speaks Spanish and acted as Seri-Spanish
interpreter in 1894.
PUNTA MONUMENTA (Monument point): Named by the Hydrographic
Office, U. S. N.
PUNTA COLORADA (Red point): Recast from the “Red Bluff point”
of the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
PUNTA WILLARD (Willard point): Origin of name unknown; used by
the Hydrographic Office, U. S. N.
*EMBARCADERO ANDRADE (Andrade landing): Named in memory of the
embarcation for Tiburon of Colonel Francisco Andrade, 1844.
*CAMPO NAVIDAD (Christmas camp): Named in memory of a camp
occupied December 24-26 by the expedition of 1895.
*SIERRA SERI (Seri range): Generic Spanish, specific the
extra-vernacular tribe name.
*SIERRA KUNKAAK (Kunkaak range): Specific the vernacular tribe
name.
*SIERRA MENOR (Minor range): A descriptive designation.
*CERROS ANACORETOS (Anchorite hills): A designation suggested
to Topographer Johnson by the solitary series of spurs rising
singly or in scattered groups from the sheetflood-carved desert
plain.
*JOHNSON PEAK: Name applied in commemoration of the first and
only ascent of the peak, and of its occupation as a survey
station, December 7 and 8, 1895, by Willard D. Johnson,
accompanied by John Walter Mitchell and Miguel (Papago Indian).
*DESIERTO ENCINAS (Encinas desert): Generic Spanish, specific
in honor of the intrepid settler on the outskirts of the
desert, Señor Pascual Encinas.
*PLAYA NORIEGA (Noriega playa): Generic Spanish, specific in
honor of Don Andrés Noriega, kinsman of Señora Anita Encinas,
a resident on the outskirts of the desert, and the leading
Mexican aid in the expedition of 1895.
*ARENALES DE GIL (Gil sandbanks): Generic Spanish, specific in
honor of Fray Juan Crisóstomo Gil de Bernabe, sole missionary
to Seriland, massacred at this point in 1773.
*RIO SONORA (Sonora river): Generic Spanish, specific a long
standing and originally colloquial corruption of Señora, a
designation said to have been applied by Spanish pioneers
to a hospitable native chieftainess; afterwards apparently
fixed through the name of an early mining camp and garrison
and perhaps by similarity to a local aboriginal (Opata) term
connoting maize, i. e., _sonot_.
RIO BACUACHE (Bacuache river): Name of long standing; specific
doubtless from the Opata term _bacot_, “snake”, with a locative
termination, i. e., “Snake place”.
†ARROYO CARRIZAL (Reedy arroyo): Generic and specific Spanish;
colloquial designation used by the Seri chief Mashém in
describing the island; a traditional name of long standing.
†ARROYO AGUA DULCE (Freshwater arroyo): A traditional name like
the former, also used by Mashém.
*ARROYO MILLARD (Millard arroyo): Named in memory of S. C.
Millard, aid and interpreter in the expedition of 1895 (died
1897).
*ARROYO MARIANA (Mariana arroyo): Named in honor of Mariana
(Papago Indian), a guard accompanying the 1895 expedition, who
had once approached this arroyo on a hunting expedition.
*ARROYO MITCHELL (Mitchell arroyo): Named in honor of John
Walter Mitchell, photographer of the 1895 expedition.
†POZO ESCALANTE (Escalante well): Generic Spanish, specific
in honor of Sergeant Juan Bautista de Escalante, the first
Caucasian to cross El Infiernillo (in 1700), who is reputed to
have dug the shallow well still existing; the name has been
retained ever since alternatively with “Agua Amarilla” (Yellow
water); doubtless the “Carrizal” of certain early maps; the
site of the only mission ever established in Seriland, and of
the massacre of Fray Crisóstomo Gil in 1773.
*POZO HARDY (Hardy well): Named in honor of Lieutenant R. W. H.
Hardy, R. N., second known Caucasian visitor to the spot, 1826.
*AGUAJE ANTON (Anton water, or water-hole): Generic a common
Mexican term; specific applied in memory of Anton (Papago
Indian), a guard and visitor to the spot in the expedition of
1895.
*AGUAJE PARILLA (Parilla water): A traditional water (not found
by the expedition of 1895) named in memory of Colonel Diego
Ortiz Parilla, the vaunted destroyer of the Seri in 1749, whose
imposing expedition may have reached this point.
*BARRANCA SALINA (Saline gorge): Generic colloquial Mexican,
specific denoting the character of the practically permanent
water; the designation applied by Mexican vaqueros and Papago
hunters, who occasionally visit the locality.
*TINAJA ANITA (Anita basin): Generic a useful Mexican term for
a water-pocket, or rock basin containing water supplied by
storms or seepage; specific a tribute to Anita Newcomb McGee,
M. D., Actg. Asst. Surg. U. S. A.; perhaps the “Aguaje de
Andrade” of 1844.
*TINAJA TRINCHERA (Entrenched basin): Specific a common Mexican
term for the ancient entrenchments found on many mountains of
Papagueria; applied in recognition of a few low, loose-laid
stone walls about the tinaja, the only structures of the kind
known in Seriland.
RANCHO SAN FRANCISCO DE COSTA RICA: Name applied by the
founder, Señor Pascual Encinas, about 1850.
RANCHO SANTA ANA: Name applied by the founder, Señor Encinas,
about 1870.
RANCHO LIBERTAD: Name applied by the founder, Señor Encinas,
about 1875.
The fairly full geographic nomenclature of Seriland merely expresses
the necessity for place-names, felt in some measure by all intelligent
beings, and realized especially by explorers and describers of the
region. Excepting the ranchos and perhaps Pozo Escalante, they denote
natural features only, and, with the same exceptions, the features are
seen but rarely or from great distances by enlightened men. Despite
the wealth of place-names and the strongly accentuated configuration
which the nomenclature expresses, Seriland is one of the most hopeless
deserts of the American hemisphere.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Since most of the field work of the two expeditions lay in the
neighboring Republic of Mexico, it became necessary to ask official
sanction for the operations from the Mexican government; and it is
a pleasure to say that every possible privilege and courtesy were
extended by both federal and state officials. Especial acknowledgments
are due to the Mexican minister (and afterward ambassador) to the
United States, his Excellency Don Mateo Romero (now deceased); to
the Ministro de Fomento of the Mexican Republic, Excelencia Don
Fernando Leal; and to the governor of the State of Sonora, Señor Don
Ramón Corral. Equal acknowledgments are due to various United States
officials, notably Honorable W. Woodville Rockhill, First Assistant
Secretary of State when the expeditions were planned; and it is a
pleasure to advert to the active interest taken in both expeditions by
Honorable S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and
to the careful attention given the 1894 expedition by the late Dr G.
Brown Goode, Assistant Secretary of the Institution.
Mr Willard D. Johnson did invaluable service in connection with the
second expedition, particularly in the execution of surveys and the
construction of maps in inimitable style. Mr William Dinwiddie is
to be credited with the excellent photographs made during the 1894
expedition, with the representation of the devices used in Seri
face-painting, and with various other aids to the investigation; while
Mr J. W. Mitchell is to be credited with the photographs made on Isla
Tiburon, and with other contributions to the success of the 1895
expedition. Acknowledgments are due also to all of the participants
in both expeditions, whose names appear in other paragraphs. Their
contributions were not primarily intellectual, yet were of a kind and
amount to be forever remembered among men who have worked and hungered
and thirsted and stood guard together. The deepest debt connected with
the field work is to the now venerable but ever vigorous pioneer,
Señor Pascual Encinas; and no small part of this debt goes over to
his estimable spouse, Señora Anita Encinas, who twice traversed the
long road from Hermosillo to Costa Rica in the interest of the 1895
expedition.
The scientific results of the researches have been enriched by
invaluable contributions from Director Powell’s store of ethnologic
knowledge, and by suggestions from Messrs Frank Hamilton Cushing,
F. W. Hodge, James Mooney, and other collaborators in the Bureau of
American Ethnology. The qualities of the colored illustrations are
due largely to the artistic skill of Mr Wells M. Sawyer, by whom
they were designed, and of Mr DeLancey Gill, by whom the proofs were
revised. The Spanish translations are due chiefly to Colonel F. F.
Hilder, ethnologic translator of the Bureau, partly to Mr Emanuele
Fronani; though neither can be charged with errors of interpretation
or of Englishing, both finally shaped by the author. The somatic
determinations and discussions were by Dr Ales Hrdlička, of New York;
the tests for arrow poison were made by Dr S. Weir Mitchell, of
Philadelphia; while the philologic comparisons were made almost wholly
(with notable thoroughness and perspicacity, and in such wise as to
illustrate the wealth and utility of the linguistic collections of the
Bureau) by Mr J. N. B. Hewitt. Finally, it has become due, probably
for the first time in the nearly four centuries of their history, to
make public acknowledgment of services by Seri Indians, viz., subchief
Mashém, the real sponsor for the Bureau vocabulary and many other data,
and “El General” Kolusio, the outlaw interpreter of Hermosillo and
contributor to certain historical identifications.
HABITAT
LOCATION AND AREA
Seriland, the home from time immemorial of the Seri Indians, lies
in northwestern Mexico, forming a part of the State of Sonora. It
comprises Tiburon island, the largest and most elevated insular body in
Gulf of California, together with a few islets and an adjacent tract
of mainland; the center of the district being marked approximately by
the intersection of the parallel of 29° with the meridian of 112°.
The territory is divided by the narrow but turbulent strait, El
Infiernillo. It is bounded on the west and south by the waters of the
gulf with its eastward extensions to Kino bay, on the east by a nearly
impassable desert, and on the north by a waterless stretch of sandy
plains and rugged sierras 50 to 100 miles in extent.
Tiburon island is about 30 miles in length from north to south and 12
to 20 miles in width; its area, with that of the adjacent islets, is
barely 500 square miles. The mainland tract held by the Seri is without
definite boundary; measured to the middle of the limiting desert on
the east and halfway across the waterless zone on the north, its area
may be put at 1,500 square miles. To this land area of 2,000 square
miles may be added the water area of the strait, with its northern and
southern embouchures, and the coastwise waters habitually navigated by
the Seri balsas as far as Kino bay, making half as much more of water
area. Such is the district which the Seri claim and seek to control,
and have practically protected against invasion for nearly four
centuries of history and for uncounted generations of prehistory.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Seriland forms part of a great natural province lying west of the
Sierra Madre of western Mexico and south of an indefinite boundary
about the latitude of Gila river, which may be designated the Sonoran
province; it differs from Powell’s province of the Basin ranges in that
it opens toward the sea, and also in other respects; and it is allied
in many of its characteristics to the arid piedmont zone lying west of
the Andes in South America.
In general configuration the province may be likened to a great
roof-slope stretching southwestward from a comb in the Sierra Madre
to a broad eaves-trough forming Gulf of California, the slope rising
steeper toward the crest and lying flatter toward the coast; but the
expanse is warped by minor swells, guttered by waterways, and dormered
by outlying ranges and buttes. The most conspicuous inequality of the
slope (partly because of its coincidence with tide-level) is offered by
the rugged ranges of Seriland. These may be considered four in number,
all approximately parallel with each other and with the coast; the
first is a series of eroded remnants (Cerros Anacoretos) from 600 to
1,200 feet in height; the second is the exceedingly rugged Sierra Seri,
culminating in Johnson peak 5,000 feet above tide; the third is Sierra
Kunkaak, attaining about 4,000 feet in its highest point; the fourth is
Sierra Menor, some 2,000 feet high, with the northern extremity sliced
off obliquely by marine erosion. The principal arm of Desierto Encinas
lies between the first two ranges, El Infiernillo separates the second
and third, while a subdesert valley divides the third from the fourth.
The valleys correspond more closely than the ranges; if the land level
were 100 feet higher the strait and its terminal bays would become
an arid valley like the others, while if the sea-level were 500 feet
higher the four ranges would become separate islands similar to Angel
de la Guarda and others in the gulf.
The Sonoran province is notably warm and dry. The vapor-laden
air-currents from the Pacific drift across it and are first warmed by
conduction and radiation from the sun-scorched land, to be chilled
again as they roll up the steeper roof-slope to the crest; and the
precipitation flows part way down the slopes, both eastward and
westward from the Sierra Madre—literally the Mother (of waters)
range. A climatal characteristic of the province is two relatively
humid seasons, coinciding with the two principal inflections of the
annual temperature-curve, i. e., in January-February and July-August,
respectively. In the absence of meteorologic records the temperature
and precipitation maybe inferred from the observations at Yuma
and Tucson,[5] which are among the warmest and driest stations in
America, or indeed in the world; though it is probable that such
points as Caborca, Bacuachito, and Hermosillo are decidedly warmer
and perhaps slightly moister than Yuma. The ordinary midday summer
temperature at these points may be estimated at about 110° in the
shade (frequently rising 5° or 10° higher, but dropping 20° to 50°
in case of cloudiness); the night temperature at the same season is
usually 50° to 75°, though during two-thirds of the year it is liable
to fall to or below the freezing point. The sun temperature is high in
comparison with that measured in the shade, the exposed thermometer
frequently rising to 150° or 160°, according to its construction, while
black-finished metal becomes too hot to be handled, and dark sand and
rocks literally scorch unprotected feet. The leading characteristic of
the temperature is the wide diurnal range and the relatively narrow
annual range; another characteristic is the uniformity, or periodic
steadiness, of the maxima, coupled with variability and nonperiodicity
of the minima.
[5] The following monthly and annual meteorologic summaries, compiled
from United States Weather Bureau records at these stations, have
been kindly furnished by Prof. Willis L. Moore, Superintendent of the
Bureau. The tabulated records represent the observations of twenty
years at Yuma and ten years at Tucson.
Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Year
Absolute
maximum
temper-
ature,
Fahr.:
Yuma 81 91 100 105 112 117 118 115 113 108 92 83 118
Tucson 84 85 95 101 106 111 110 109 106 97 89 82 111
Absolute
minimum
temper-
ature,
Fahr.:
Yuma 22 25 31 40 44 52 61 60 50 41 31 25 22
Tucson 14 20 24 32 38 39 64 60 46 31 23 11 11
Mean
maximum
temper-
ature,
Fahr.:
Yuma 65.1 70.7 78.5 85.4 93.2 101.2 106.7 104.9 99.6 87.2 75.0 67.4 86.6
Tucson 62.9 67.0 74.5 81.4 91.4 100.2 99.0 94.8 92.2 82.8 71.5 63.7 81.8
Mean
minimum
temper-
ature,
Fahr.:
Yuma 42.0 46.1 50.8 55.1 61.4 68.3 77.2 77.6 70.5 58.5 48.8 44.7 58.4
Tucson 34.9 41.5 44.0 48.1 55.3 63.8 75.0 73.6 67.3 52.1 42.5 35.1 52.8
Mean
temper-
ature,
Fahr.:
Yuma 54.1 58.8 64.5 69.8 77.2 84.9 91.5 90.7 84.4 73.0 61.9 56.0 72.2
Tucson 49.4 53.2 59.5 65.6 74.0 82.3 87.2 83.5 77.7 68.5 57.0 52.0 67.4
Mean
precip-
itation
inches
and
hundredths):
Yuma 0.42 0.51 0.26 0.07 0.04 T. 0.14 0.35 0.15 0.28 0.29 0.46 3.04
Tucson 0.75 0.98 0.90 0.17 0.16 0.19 2.86 3.08 1.16 0.33 0.37 0.95 12.26
Prevailing
winds:
Yuma N. N. W. W. W. SW. S. S. NE. NE. N. N. N.
Tucson S. S. S. W. S. SW. SE. SE. S. S. S. SE. S.
Average
cloudiness
(scale 0-10):
Yuma 2.4 2.4 2.4 1.6 1.3 0.8 1.8 2.3 1.1 1.3 1.7 2.5 1.8
Tucson 3.0 3.2 3.2 1.8 1.6 1.5 4.5 4.4 1.9 1.6 1.6 2.9 2.6
The precipitation on the Sonoran province is chiefly in the form of
rain; in the winter humid season snow falls frequently on the Sierra
Madre and rarely on the outlying ranges; in both humid seasons (and in
humid spots at all seasons) dew forms in greater or less abundance. Fog
frequently gathers along the coast, especially during the winter and in
the midsummer wet season, and sometimes drifts inland for miles. The
mean annual precipitation may be estimated at 20 or 25 inches toward
the crest and half as much toward the base of the high sierra; thence
it diminishes coastward, probably to less than 2 inches; the mean for
the extensive plains forming the greater part of the province may be
estimated at 3 or 4 inches. The greater part of the precipitation is
in local storms, frequently accompanied by thunder-gusts or sudden
tempests, though cold drizzles sometimes occur, especially at the
height of the winter humid season. Except where the local configuration
is such as to affect the atmospheric movements, the distribution of
precipitation is erratic, in both time and space; some spots may
receive half a dozen rains within a year, while other spots may remain
rainless for several years; and the wet spot of one series of years may
be the dry spot of the next.
The climatal features of Seriland are somewhat affected by the
pronounced topographic features of the district. Snow sometimes falls
on Sierra Seri, and probably on Sierra Kunkaak; gales gather about
the rugged ranges at all seasons, and sometimes produce precipitation
out of season; the extreme heat of midday and midsummer is tempered
by the proximity of the tide-swept gulf; and since most of the local
derangements tend to augment precipitation and reduce temperature, it
would seem safe to estimate the mean annual rainfall of the tract at 4
or 5 inches, and the mean temperature at about 70°, with a mean annual
range of some 30° and an extreme diurnal range of fully 80°.
The configuration and climate combine to give distinctive character to
the hydrography of the Sonoran province. The melting snows and more
abundant rains of the high sierras form innumerable streams flowing
down the steeper slopes toward the piedmont plains, or soak into the
pervious rocks to reappear as springs at lower levels; sometimes the
streams unite to form considerable rivers, flowing scores of miles
beyond the mountain confines; but eventually all the running waters
are absorbed by the dry sands of the plains or evaporated into the
drier air; and from the mouth of the Colorado to that of the Taqui,
500 miles away, no fresh water ever flows into the sea. During the
winter wet season, and to a less extent during that of summer, the
mountain waterways are occupied by rushing torrents, rivaling great
rivers in volume, and these floods flow far over the plains; but during
the normal droughts the torrents shrink to streamlets purling among
the rocks, or give place to blistering sand-wastes furlongs or even
miles in width and dozens of miles in length, while beyond stretch
low, radially scored alluvial fans, built by the great freshets of
millenniums. Only a trifling part of the rainfall of the plains ever
gathers in the waterways heading in the mountains, and only another
small part gathers in local channels; the lighter rains from higher
clouds are so far evaporated in the lower strata of the air as to reach
the earth in feeble sprinkles or not at all; the product of moderate
showers is absorbed directly by earth and air; while the water of
heavy rains accumulates in mud-burdened sheets, spreading far over the
plains, flowing sluggishly down the slopes, yet suffering absorption
by earth and air too rapidly to permit concentration in channels.
These moving mud-blankets of the plains, or sheetfloods,[6] are often
supplemented by the discharge from the waterways of adjacent sierras
and buttes; they are commonly miles and frequently dozens or scores
of miles in width, and the linear flow may range from a fraction of
a mile to scores of miles according to the heaviness of the rainfall
and the consequent dilution of the mud. Such sheetfloods, especially
those produced by considerable rains, are characteristic agents of
erosion throughout most of the province; their tendency is to aggrade
depressions and corrade laterally, and thus to produce smooth plains of
gentle slope interrupted only by exceptionally precipitous and rugged
mountain remnants. A part of the sheetflood water joins the stronger
mountain-born streams, particularly toward the end of the great storm
whereby earth and air are saturated; another part forms ground-water,
which slowly finds its way down the slopes toward the principal
valleys, perhaps to reappear as springs or to supply wells. These with
certain other conditions determine the water-supply available for
habitation throughout Seriland and adjacent Papagueria.
[6] Defined and described in Sheetflood Erosion, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.,
vol. VII, 1897, p. 87.
Another condition of prime importance arises in a secular tilting of
the entire province southwestward. This tilting is connected with the
upthrust of the Sierra Madre and the uplifting of the plateau country
and the southern Rocky mountain region north of the international
boundary. Its rate is measured by the erosion of the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado and other gorges; and its dates, in terms of the geologic
time-scale, run at least from the middle Tertiary to the present, or
throughout the Neocene and Pleistocene. Throughout this vast period the
effect of the tilting in the Sonoran province has been to invigorate
streams flowing southward, and to paralyze streams flowing toward the
northerly and easterly compass-points; accordingly the streams flowing
toward the gulf have eroded their channels effectively during the ages,
and have frequently retrogressed entirely through outlying ranges; so
that throughout the province the divides seldom correspond with the
sierra crests.
A typical stream of the province is Rio Bacuache, one of the two
practicable overland ways into Seriland (albeit never surveyed until
traversed by the 1895 expedition). Viewed in its simple geographic
aspect, this stream may be said to originate in a broad valley parallel
with the gulf and the high sierra, 200 miles northeast of Kino bay;
its half-dozen tributary arroyos (sun-baked sand-washes during three
hundred and sixty days and mud-torrents during five days of the average
year) gather in the sheetflood plain and unite at Pozo Noriega, where
the ground-water gives permanent supply to a well; then the channel
cleaves a rocky sierra 3,000 feet high in a narrow gorge, and within
this canyon the ground-water gathered in the valley above seeps to the
surface of the sand-wash and flows in a practically permanent streamlet
throughout the 4 or 5 miles forming the width of the sierra; then the
liquid sinks, and 25 miles of blistering sand-wash (interrupted by
a single lateral spring) stretch across the next valley to Pueblo
Tiejo, where another sierra is cleft by the channel, and where the
water again exudes and flows through a sand-lined rock-bed (figure
2). In the local terminology this portion alone is Rio Bacuache, the
upper stretches of the waterway bearing different names; it supplies
the settlement and fields of Bacuachito, flowing above the sands 5
to 15 miles, according to season; then it returns to the sand-wash
habit for 50 miles, throughout much of which distance wells may find
supply at increasing depths; finally it passes into the delta phase,
and enters northeastern Seriland in a zone marked by exceptionally
vigorous mesquite forests. Normally the 200 miles of stream way is
actual stream only in two stretches of say 5 miles each, some 25 miles
apart, and the farther of these stops midway between the head of the
channel and the open sea toward which it trends and slopes; but during
and after great storms it is transformed into a river approaching the
Ohio or the Rhine in volume, flowing tumultuously for 150 miles, and
finally sinking in the sands of Desierto Encinas, 30 to 50 miles from
the coast. Viewed with respect to genesis, Rio Bacuache has responded
to the stimulus of the southwestern tilting, and has retrogressed up
the slope through two sierras, besides minor ranges and 100 miles of
sheetflood-carved plains; while the debris thus gathered has filled the
original gorge to a depth of hundreds of feet, and has overflowed the
adjacent sheetflood-flattened expanses to form the great alluvial fan
of eastern Seriland. The genetic conditions explain the distribution
of the water: the product of the semiannual storms suffices to form
a meager supply of ground water, which is diffused in the sands and
softer rocks of the plains, and concentrated in the narrow channels
carved through the dense granites of the sierras; and enough of the
flow passes the barriers to supply deep wells in the terminal fan, as
at the frontier ranchos Libertad (abandoned) and Santa Ana, just as
the subterranean seepage from the Sonora more richly supplies the deep
well at San Francisco de Costa Rica. In these lower reaches the mineral
salts, normally present in minute quantities, are concentrated so that
the water from these wells is slightly saline, while deeper in the
desert the scanty water is quite salt.
[Illustration: FIG. 2—Gateway to Seriland—gorge of Rio Bacuache.]
* * * * *
In Seriland proper the distribution of potable water is conditioned by
the meager precipitation, the local configuration (shaped largely by
sheetflood erosion), and the disturbance of equilibrium of the scanty
ground-water due to the tilting of the province. The most abundant
permanent supply of fresh water is that of Arroyo Carrizal, which is
fed by drainage and seepage from the broad and lofty mass of pervious
rocks forming the southern part of Sierra Kunkaak, the abundant supply
being due to the fact that the eastern tributaries are energetically
retrogressing into the mass in deep gorges which effectually tap the
water stored during the semiannual storms. The arroyo and valley of
Agua Dulce are less favorably conditioned by reason of a trend against
the tilting of the province and by reason of the narrower and lower
mass of tributary rock in the northern part of the range, and the
flow is impermanent, as indicated by the absence of canes and other
stream plants; yet four explorers (Ugarte, 1721; Hardy, 1826; Espence,
1844; Dewey, 1875) reported fresh water, apparently in a shallow well
tapping the underflow, at the embouchure of the arroyo. On the eastern
slope of Sierra Kunkaak there are several arroyos which carry water
for weeks or even months after the winter rains, and sometimes after
those of summer; but the only permanent water—Tinaja Anita—is at the
base of a stupendous cliff of exceptionally pervious and easily eroded
rocks, so deeply cut that ground-water is effectually tapped, while
an adjacent chasm—Arroyo Millard—is so situated that the cliff-faced
spur of the sierra above the tinaja absorbs an exceptional proportion
of the surface flowage from the main crest. The tinaja (figure 3) is
permanent, as indicated by a canebrake some 20 by 50 feet in extent,
and by a native fig and a few other trees—though the dry-season
water-supply ranges from mere moisture of the rocks to a few gallons
caught in rock basins within the first 50 yards of the head of the
arroyo. No other permanent supplies of fresh water are known on the
island, though there are a few rather persistent tinajas along the
western base of Sierra Menor above Willard point.
On the mainland tract there is a cliff-bound basin, much like that of
Tinaja Anita, at the head of Arroyo Mitchell and base of Johnson peak,
christened Tinaja Trinchera; but the range is narrow and the rocks
granitic, and hence the supply is not quite permanent.[7] A practically
permanent supply of water is found in one or more pools or barrancas
at the head of Playa Noriega in Desierto Encinas. The liquid lies in
pools gouged by freshets in the bottoms of arroyos coming in from the
northward, just where the flow is checked by the spread of the waters
over the always saline playa; and, since they are modified by each
freshet, they are sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, sometimes entirely
sand-filled. When the barrancas are clogged, or when their contents
are evaporated, coyotes, deer, horses, and vaqueros obtain water by
excavating a few feet in the sand lining the larger arroyos. Commonly
the barranca water is too saline for Caucasian palates save in dire
extremity, but the salinity diminishes as the arroyos are ascended.
An apparently permanent supply of saline and nitrous water is found
in a 10-foot well, known as Pozo Escalante, or Agua Amarilla (yellow
water), near the southern extremity of Desierto Encinas, reputed to
have been excavated by Juan Bautista de Escalante in 1700, and still
remaining open; its location is such that it catches the subterranean
seepage from both Bacuache and Sonora rivers. The water is potable
but not palatable. Among the vaqueros of San Francisco de Costa Rica
there is a vague and ancient tradition of a carrizal-marked tinaja or
arroyo (Aguaje Parilla) at the eastern base of the southern portion of
Sierra Seri; and both vaqueros and Indians refer to one or more saline
barrancas about the western base of the same semirange, probably in
Arroyo Mariana.
[7] Tinaja Trinchera was entirely dry and without trace of carrizal in
December, 1894.
[Illustration: FIG. 3—Tinaja Anita.]
In brief, Arroyo Carrizal, Tinaja Anita, and Pozo Escalante are the
only permanent waters, and Pozo Hardy, Barranca Salina, and Tinaja
Trinchera the only subpermanent waters actually known to Caucasians in
all Seriland, though it seems probable that permanent water may exist
at Aguaje Parilla and in Arroyo Mariana, and impermanent supplies
near Bahia Espence. There may be one or two additional places of
practically permanent water in smaller quantity, and a few other places
in which saline water might be found either at the surface or by slight
excavation, and which may be approximately located by inspection of
the map under guidance of the principles set forth in the preceding
paragraphs; but this would seem to be the limit of trustworthy water
supply. During the humid seasons the waters are naturally multiplied,
yet it is improbable that any of the arroyos except Carrizal and Agua
Dulce and a few minor gulches along the more precipitous shores shed
water into the gulf save at times of extraordinary local flood.[8]
[8] The physiographic features of the Sonoran province in general are
treated in greater detail in a paper on Sheetflood Erosion, Bull. Geol.
Soc. Am., vol. VIII, 1897, pp. 87-112, and in a paper on Papagueria,
Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. IX, 1898, pp. 345-371; while certain local
features are described in a paper on Seriland, prepared jointly with
Willard D. Johnson, Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. VII, 1896, pp. 125-133. The
aggregate available fresh water of Seriland is estimated on p. 181*.
* * * * *
The geologic structure of the Sonoran province is complex and not
well understood. So far as the meager observations indicate, the
basal rocks are granites, frequently massive and sometimes schistose,
sometimes intersected by veins of quartz, etc. The granitic mass is
upthrust to form the nuclei of Sierra Madre and other considerable
ranges; it also approaches the surface over large areas of plains.
Resting unconformably on the granites lie heavy deposits of shales
and limestones, commonly more or less metamorphosed; these rocks
outcrop on the slopes of most of the main ranges and form the entire
visible mass of some of the lower sierras and buttes, while they,
too, sometimes approach the surface of the sheetflood-carved plain.
The rocks, both calcareous and argillaceous, combine the characters
of the vast Mesozoic limestone deposits of eastern Mexico and the
immense shale accumulations of corresponding age in California, and
hence probably represent the later half of the Mesozoic. This is the
only sedimentary series recognized in the province. Both the granites
and the sedimentary beds are occasionally overlain by volcanic
deposits, chiefly in the form of much-eroded lava-sheets and associated
tuff-beds, which sometimes form considerable ranges and buttes (notably
Sierra Kunkaak, of Isla Tiburon); these remnantal volcanic deposits
are probably late Mesozoic or early Tertiary. Newer volcanics occur
locally, forming mesas, as about Agua Nueva (40 miles northwest of
Hermosillo), or even coulees apparently filling barrancas of modern
aspect, as in the vicinity of Bacuachito,[9] or rising into cinder
cones surrounded by ejectamenta, as at Pico Pinacate, in northwestern
Sonora. The various rocks are usually bare or meagerly mantled with
talus in the mountains; over the greater part of the plains they are
commonly veneered with sheetflood deposits, ranging from a few inches
to a few yards in thickness; while the central portions of the larger
valleys are lined with alluvial accumulations reaching many hundreds of
feet in thickness.
[9] Noted by Willard D. Johnson.
The clearly interpretable geologic history began with extensive
degradation and eventual baseleveling of a granitic terrane in
Paleozoic or early Mesozoic time; then followed the deposition of
the shales and associated limestones during the later Mesozoic; next
came elevation, accompanied or followed by corrugation, chiefly in
folds parallel with the present coast, whereby the granite-based
sierras were produced, and accompanied also by the earlier vulcanism
to which the volcanic sierras owe their existence. A vast period of
degradation ensued, during which the land stood so high as to induce
greater precipitation than that of today and to permit the streams
to carve channels far below the present level of tide, and during
which the present general configuration was developed; then came the
southwestward tilting and consequent climatal desiccation, the filling
of the deeper valleys, the inauguration of sheetflood erosion, some
local vulcanism, and the progressive shifting of the divides.
The geologic structure affects the hydrography, especially that factor
determined by subterranean circulation, or ground-water; for the
superficial sheetflood and alluvial deposits are highly pervious and
many of the volcanics hardly less so, while the shales and limestones
are but slightly pervious and the granites nearly impervious. The
geologic structure also determines the character of the soil with
exceptional directness, since the dryness of the air and the dearth
of vegetation reduce rock decay to a negligible quantity. The
characteristically precipitous sierras and cerros are of naked ledges,
save where locally mantled with a mechanical débris of the same rocks
(much finer than the frost product of colder and humider regions); the
soil of the normal plains is but the little-oxidized upper surface of
sheetflood deposits made up of the mechanical debris of local rocks and
varying in coarseness with the slope; while the soil of the valleys is
detrital sand and silt, derived from tributary slopes, passing into
adobe where conditions are fit, and essentially mechanical in texture
and structure save where cemented by ground-water solutions at the
lower levels.
FLORA
The flora of the Sonoran province affords a striking example of
the adjustment of vegetal life to an unfavorable environment. The
prevailing vegetation is perennial, of slow growth and of stunted
aspect; and it is not distributed uniformly but arranged in separate
tufts or clusters, gathering into a nearly continuous mantle in wetter
spots, though commonly dotting the plains sparsely, to completely
disappear in the driest areas. Nearly all of the plants have roots
of exceptional length, and are protected from evaporation by a glazed
epidermis and from animal enemies by thorns or by offensive odors and
flavors; while most of the trees and shrubs are practically leafless
except during the humid seasons. Grasses are not characteristic, and
there is no sward, even in oases; but certain grasses grow in the
shadow of the arborescent tufts and in the fields of the farmer ants,
or spring up in scattered blades over the moister portions of the
surface. The arborescent vegetation represents two characteristic
types, viz., (1) trees and shrubs allied to those of humid lands, but
modified to fit arid conditions; and (2) distinctive forms, evidently
born of desert conditions and not adapted to a humid habitat, this type
comprising the cacti and related forms, as well as forms apparently
intermediate between the cacti and normal arborescent type. The various
plants of the district, including those of the distinctive types, are
communal or commensal, both among themselves and with animals, to a
remarkable degree; for their common strife against the hard physical
environment has forced them into cooperation for mutual support. The
tufts or clusters in which the vegetation is arranged express the
solidarity of life in the province; commonly each cluster is a vital
colony, made up of plants of various genera and orders, and forming a
home for animal life also of different genera and orders; and, although
measurably inimical, these various organisms are so far interdependent
that none could survive without the cooperation of the others.[10]
[10] The vital characteristics of the region have been described in
some detail in The Beginning of Agriculture, American Anthropologist,
vol. VIII, 1805, pp. 350-375; The Beginning of Zooculture, American
Anthropologist, vol. X, 1897, pp. 215-230; and Expedition to Seriland,
Science, vol. III, 1898, pp. 493-505.
In Seriland proper, as in other parts of the Sonoran province, a
prevailing tree is the mesquite (_Prosopis juliflora_); on the alluvial
fan of Rio Sonora it grows in remarkable luxuriance, forming (with
a few other trees) a practically continuous forest 20 to 40 feet in
height, the gnarled trunks sometimes reaching a diameter of 2 or
3 feet; over the Rio Bacuache fan and much of the remaining plain
surface it forms the dominant tree in the scattered vital colonies;
and here and there it pushes well into the canyon gorges. The roots
of the mesquite are of great length, and are said to penetrate to
water-bearing strata at depths of 50 to 75 feet; its fruit consists
of small hard beans embedded in slender woody pods. Associated with
the mesquite in most stations are the still more scraggy and thorny
cat-claw (_Acacia greggii_) and ironwood (_Olneya tesota_), both
also yielding woody beans in limited quantity. Similarly associated,
especially in the drier tracts, and characteristically abundant over
the plains portions of Isla Tiburon, are the paloverdes (_Parkinsonia
torreyana_, etc.), forming scraggy, wide-branching, greenbark trees 5 to
15 feet high, and commonly 3 to 10 inches in diameter of trunk. Over
the mountain sides, especially of Sierra Seri and Sierra Kunkaak, grow
sparsely the only straight-trunk trees of the region, rooted in the
rocks to the average number of a few score to the square mile; this is
the palo blanco (_Acacia willardiana_). Associated with it along rocky
barrancas of permanent water supply is a fig tree (_Ficus palmeri_),
which has a habit of springing from the walls and crests of cliffs,
and sending white-bark roots down the cliff-faces to the water 50 or
100 feet below, and which yields a small, insipid, and woody fruit.
Interspersed among the larger trees, and spreading over the intervening
spaces, particularly in the drier and more saline spots, grow a number
of thorny shrubs, much alike in external appearance and habit, though
representing half a dozen distinct genera (_Cassia_, _Microrhamnus_,
_Celtis_, _Krameria_, _Acacia_, _Randia_, _Stegnospherma_,
_Frankenia_, etc.), while considerable tracts are sparsely occupied by
straggling tufts of the Sonoran greasewood, or creosote bush (_Larrea
tridentata_), whose minute but bright green leafage relieves that
prevailing gray of the landscape in which the lighter greens of the
paloverde and cactus stems are lost.
[Illustration: FIG. 4—Beyond Encinas desert—the saguesa.]
Intermingling with the woody trees and shrubs in most stations, and
replacing them in some, are the conspicuous and characteristic cacti
in a score of forms. East of Desierto Encinas, and sometimes west of
it, these are dominated by the saguaro (_Cereus giganteus_), though
throughout most of Seriland the related saguesa (_Cereus pringleii?_)
prevails. The saguaro is a fluted and thorn-decked column, 1 foot to
3 feet in diameter and 10 to 60 feet in height, sometimes branching
into a candelabrum, while the still more monstrous saguesa (figure
4) usually consists of from three to ten such columns springing from
a single root; both are masses of watery pulp, revived and renewed
during each humid season, and both flower in a crown of fragrant and
brilliant blossoms at or near the top of column or branch, and fruit in
fig-like tunas (or prickly pears) during late summer or early autumn.
Ordinarily the saguesa, like the saguaro, is sparsely distributed; but
there is an immense tract between Desierto Encinas and the eastern
base of Sierra Seri in which it forms a literal forest, the giant
trunks close-set as those of trees in normal woodlands. Hardly less
imposing than the giant cactus is the wide-branching species known
as pitahaya (_Cereus thurburi_?), in which the trunks may be ten to
fifty in number, each 4 to 8 inches in diameter and 5 to 40 feet in
height; and equally conspicuous, especially in eastern Seriland, is the
cina (_Cereus schotti_), which is of corresponding size, and differs
chiefly in the simpler fluting of the thorn-protected columns. Both
the pitahaya and the cina flower and fruit like the saguaro, the tunas
yielded by the former being especially esteemed by Mexicans as well
as Indians. Another important cactus is the visnaga (_Echinocactus
wislizeni lecontei_), which rises in a single trunk much like the
saguaro, save that it is commonly but 3 to 6 feet in height and is
protected by a more effective armature of straight and curved thorns;
it yields a pleasantly acid, pulpy fruit, which may be extracted from
its thorny setting with some difficulty; but its chief value lies in
the purity and potability of the water with which the pulpy trunk
is stored. The visnaga is widely distributed throughout the Sonoran
province and beyond, and extends into eastern Seriland; it is rare west
of Desierto Encinas and is practically absent from Isla Tiburon, where
it may easily have been exterminated by the improvident Seri during the
centuries of their occupancy. Most abundant of all the cacti, and less
conspicuous only by reason of comparatively small size, is the cholla
(an arborescent _Opuntia_); on many of the sheetflood-carved plains it
forms extensive thickets 5 to 8 feet high, the main trunks being 2 to 6
inches in diameter, while dozens or hundreds of gaunt and thorn-covered
branches extend 3 to 8 feet in all directions; and it occurs here and
there throughout the district from the depths of the valleys and the
coast well up to the rocky slope of the sierras. It yields quantities
of fruit, somewhat like tunas, but more woody and insipid; this fruit
is seldom if ever used for human food, but is freely consumed by
herbivores. Much less abundant than the cholla is the nopal, or prickly
pear; and there are various other opuntias, often too slender to stand
alone and intertwined with stiffer shrubs which lend them support, and
many of these yield small berry-like tunas. Another characteristic
cactus, widespread as the cholla and abundant in nearly all parts
of Seriland save on the rocky slopes, is the okatilla (_Fouquiera
splendens_). It consists of half a dozen to a score of slender, woody,
and thorn-set branches radiating from a common root, usually at angles
of 30° to 45° from the vertical, and ordinarily reaching heights of 10
to 20 feet.
The pulp masses of the larger cacti, especially the saguaro, saguesa,
pitahaya, and cina, are supported by woody skeletons in the form
of vertical ribs coincident with the external flutings; within a
few years after the death and decay of these desert monsters the
skeletons weather out, and the vertical ribs form light and strong and
approximately straight bars or shafts, valuable for many industrial
purposes; while the slender arms of okatilla are equally valuable, in
the fresh condition after removal of the spiny armament, and in the
weathered state without special preparation.
On many of the higher plain-slopes, especially in eastern Seriland,
there are pulpy stemmed shrubs and bushes, sometimes reaching the
dignity of trees, which present the normal aspect of exogenous
perennials during life, but which are so spongy throughout as to
shrink into shreds of bark-like debris shortly after death. These
are the torotes of the Sonoran province—common torote (_Jatropha
cardiophylla_), torote amarillo (_Jatropha spathulata_), torote blanco
(_Bursera microphylla_), torote prieto (_Bursera laxiflora_), torotito
(_Jatropha canescens_?), etc. These plants grow in the scattered and
scraggy tufts characteristic of arid districts (a typical torote tuft
appears in left foreground of figure 4); they are protected from
evaporation by the usual glazed epidermis, and maintained by the water
absorbed during the humid seasons; but they are thornless and are
protected from animal enemies by pungent odors, and at least in some
cases by toxic juices. Like various plants of the province they are
measurably communal—indeed, the torotito appears to be dependent on
union with an insect for reproduction, like certain yuccas, and like
the cina and (in some degree at least) the saguaro and other cacti.
Along the lower reaches of Rio Bacuache, and in some of the deeper
gorges of Sierra Seri and Sierra Kunkaak, grow a few veritable trees
of moderately straight trunk and grain and solid wood, such as the
guaiacan (_Guaiacum coulteri_) and sanjuanito (_Jacquinia pungens_);
both of these fruit, the former in a wahoo-like berry of medicinal
properties, and the latter in a nut, edible when not quite ripe and
forming a favorite rattle-bead when dry. On the flanks of such gorges
the slender-branched baraprieta (_Cæsalpinia gracilis_) grows up in
the shelter of more vigorous shrubs, its branches yielding basketry
material, while its fruit is a woody bean much like that of the
cat-claw. In like stations there are occasional clumps of yerba mala
or yerba de flecha (_Sebastiana bilocularis_), an exceptionally leafy
bush growing in straight stems suitable for arrowshafts, and alleged
to be poisonous from root to leaf—with inherent probability, since
the plant is without the thorny armature normal to the desert. Along
the sand-washes, especially about their lower extremities wet only in
floods, springs a subannual plant (_Hymenoclea monogyra_) which shrinks
to stunted tussocks after a year or more of drought, but flourishes in
close-set fens after floods; though of acrid flavor and sage-like odor,
it is eaten by herbivores in time of need, and it yields abundant
seeds, consumed by birds, small animals, and men. About all of the
permanent waters not invaded by white men and the white man’s stock
there are brakes of cane or carrizal (_Phragmites communis_?); the
jointed stems are half an inch to an inch in thickness and 8 to 25 feet
in height; the seeds are edible, while the stems form the material for
balsas and afford shafts for arrows, harpoons, fire-sticks, etc., and
the silica-coated joints may be used for incising tough tissues.
The coasts of Seriland, both insular and mainland, are skirted by
zones of exceptionally luxuriant shrubbery, maintained chiefly by fog
moisture. Along the mountainous parts of the coast the zone is narrow
and indefinite, but on the plains portions it extends inland for
several miles with gradually fading characters; this is especially true
in the southern portion of Desierto Encinas, where the fog effects may
be observed in the vegetation 12 or 15 miles from the coast. Most of
the fog fed species are identical with those of the interior, though
the shrubs are more luxuriant and are otherwise distinctive in habit.
On the Tiburon side of gale-swept El Infiernillo, and to some extent
along other parts of the coast, some of these shrubs (notably _Maytenus
phyllanthroides_) grow in dense hedge-like or mat-like masses, often
yards in extent and permanently modeled by the wind in graceful
dune-like shapes. Somewhat farther inland the flatter coastwise zones
of Tiburon are rather thickly studded with shrubby clumps from 6 inches
to 2 feet high, made up of _Frankenia palmeri_ with half a dozen minor
communals; while still farther inland follows the prevailing Sonoran
flora of mesquite, scrubby paloverde, and chaparral (_Celtis pallida_),
etc., only a little more luxuriant than the normal.
Throughout Seriland proper, and especially in the interior valleys
of Tiburon, grasses are more prevalent than in other portions of the
Sonoran province, their abundance doubtless being due to the rarity of
graminivorous animals during recent centuries.
FAUNA
Considered collectively, the fauna of the Sonoran province is
measurably distinctive (though less so than the flora), especially in
the habits of the organisms. The prevailing animals, like the plants
of extraneous type, evidently represent genera and species developed
under more humid conditions and adjusted to the arid province through a
long-continued and severe process of adaptation; and no fundamentally
distinct orders or types comparable with the cacti and torotes of
the vegetal realm are known. The prime requisite of animal life in
the province is ability to dispense with drinking, either habitually
or for long intervals, and to maintain structure and function in the
heated air despite the exceptionally small consumption of water;
the second requisite is ability to cooperate in the marvelously
complete solidarity of animal and vegetal life characteristic of
subdesert regions. No systematic studies have been made of special
structures in the animal bodies adapting them to retention of liquids,
either by storage (as in the stomach of the camel) or by diminished
evaporation, though the prevalence of practically nonperspiring
mammals, scale-covered reptiles, and chitin-coated insects suggests the
selection, if not the development, of the fitter genera and species
for the peculiar environment. Much more conspicuous are the characters
connected with cooperation in the ever severe but never eliminative
strife for existence in the sub-desert solidarity; the mammals are
either exceptionally swift like the antelope, exceptionally strong
like the local lion, exceptionally pugnacious and prolific like the
peccary, or exceptionally capable of subsisting on waterless sierras
like the bura and mountain goat; the reptiles are either exceptionally
swift like the rainbow-hued lizards, exceptionally armed like the
sluggish horned toads, exceptionally venomous like the rattlesnake,
or exceptionally repulsive, if not poisonous, like the Gila monster;
even the articulates avoid the mean, and are exceptionally swift,
exceptionally protective in form and coloring, exceptionally venomous
like the tarantula and scorpion and centipede, or exceptionally
intelligent like the farmer ant and the tarantula-hawk; while there is
apparently a considerable class of insects completely dependent on the
cooperation of plants for the perpetuation of their kind, including the
yucca moth and (undescribed) cactus beetle. Among plants the intense
individuality (which is the obverse of the enforced solidarity) is
expressed in thorns and heavily lacquered seeds and toxic principles;
among animals it is expressed by chitinous armament, as well as by
fleetness and fangs and deadly venom.
The larger land animals of Seriland proper are the mountain goat in
the higher sierras, the bura (or mule-deer) and the white-tail deer on
the mid-height plains and larger alluvial fans, with the antelope on
the lower and drier expanses. Associated with these are the ubiquitous
coyote, a puma, a jaguar of much local repute which roams the higher
rocky sites, and a peccary ranging from the coast over the alluvial
fans and mid-height plains of the mainland (though it is apparently
absent from Tiburon). Of the smaller mammals the hare (or jack-rabbit)
and rabbit are most conspicuous, while a long-tail nocturnal squirrel
abounds, its burrows and tunnels penetrating the plains of finer
debris so abundantly as to render these plains, especially on Tiburon,
impassable for horses and nearly so for men. The California quail
and the small Sonoran dove are fairly common; a moderate number of
small birds haunt the more humid belts, and there is a due proportion
of Mexican eagles and hawks of two or three forms, with still more
numerous vultures. Ants abound, dominating the insect life, while wasps
and spiders, with various flies and midges, gather about the vital
colonies of the drier plains and swarm in the moister belts. Horned
toads and various lizards—bright-colored and swift, or earth-tinted
and sluggish—are fairly abundant, while black-tail rattlesnakes haunt
the more luxuriant vegetation of fog zones, permanent waters, and
cienegas. On the whole, the land fauna of Seriland is much like that
of the province in general, though the various forms of life are less
abundant than the average, since all (except the abounding squirrel)
are sought for food by the omnivorous Seri; and the distribution, even
when relatively abundant, is woefully sparse, as befits the scant and
scattered vegetal foundation for the animal life.
Strongly contrasted with the meagerness of the land fauna is the
redundant aquatic fauna of that portion of the gulf washing the shores
of Seriland. Tiburon island is named from the sharks, said by some
explorers to have been seen by thousands along its coasts; these
voracious feeders find ample food in literal shoals and swarms of
smaller fishes; a not inconsiderable number of whales have survived the
early fisheries (one, estimated at 80 feet in length, was stranded in
Rada Ballena about 1887); while schools of porpoises play about Boca
Infierno and elsewhere, making easy prey of slower swimmers caught in
the tide-rips and gale-swept breakers. Proportionately abundant and
varied is the crustacean life; littoral mollusks cling to the ledges
exposed along all the rocky coast stretches, and the entire beach from
Punta Antigualla to Punta Ygnacio is banded by a practically continuous
bank of wave-cast molluscan shells, the shell-drift being often yards
in width and many inches in depth. Common crabs abound in many of the
coves, and a large lobster-like crab frequently comes up from deeper
bights and bottoms; oysters attach themselves to rocks and to the roots
of shrubby trees skirting protected bays like Rada Ballena, while
clams are numerous in all broad mud-flats, such as those of Laguna
la Cruz; and the pearl oyster was fished for centuries toward Punta
Tepopa, until the ferocity of the Seri put an end to the industry.
Especially abundant and large are the green turtles on which the Seri
chiefly subsist, leaving the shells scattered along the shore and about
rancherias in hundreds; while two land tortoises (_Gopherus agassizii_
and _Cinosternum sonorense_) range about the margins of the lagoons,
and one of these is alleged to enter the water freely.
The abundance of water-fowl is commensurate with that of the submarine
life. The pelican leads the avifauna in prominence if not in actual
numbers, breeding on Isla Tassne (Pelican island), and periodically
patrolling the whole of Bahia Kunkaak and El Infiernillo in lines and
platoons of military regularity; gulls are always in sight, and the
cormorant is common; while different ducks haunt several of the islets,
and the shores are promenaded by curlews, snipes, and other waders.
There is a corresponding wealth of plankton, which at low spring tide
with offshore gale covers acres of shallow littoral with squirming or
inert but always slimy life, the substratum for that of higher order;
and jellyfish and echinoids are cast up by nearly every wave, while
at night the surf rolls up the smooth strands in shimmering lines of
phosphorescent light. On the whole, the aquatic life teems in tropic
luxuriance and more than ordinary littoral variety; for the waters of
the gulf are warmed by radiation and conduction from its sun-parched
basin, while the concentrated tides distribute and stimulate the
species and keep the vital streams astir.
LOCAL FEATURES
Considered as a tribal habitat, Seriland comprises four subdivisions
of measurably distinct character, viz., (1) the broad desert bounding
the territory on the east; (2) the mountainous zone of Sierra Seri;
(3) Tiburon island and the neighboring islets; and (4) the navigable
straits and bays contiguous to island and mainland.
1. So far as its marginal portions are concerned, Desierto Encinas is
a typical valley of the Sonoran province, sparsely dotted with vital
colonies of the prevailing type and variegated by the exceptionally
luxuriant mesquite forests of the Bacuache and Sonora fans; but the
interior of the valley is rendered distinct by the fact that it lies
near, if not below, the level of the sea.[11] The central feature
is Playa Noriega—a film of brackish water for a few days after each
considerable semiannual freshet, a sheet of saline mud for a few weeks
later, and for the greater part of the year a salt-crusted sherd 20
square miles in area, level as a floor and unimpressionable as a brick
pavement. The playa is rimmed by dunes 10 to 40 feet in height, and
about these and along the arroyos which occasionally break into it
there is some aggregation of salt-enduring shrubs, evidently sustained
in part by the semiannual freshet with its meager vapors and fogs.
Outside this rim the surface is exceptionally broken; low dunes and
irregularly wandering banks of soft and dust fine sand are interspersed
with meandering salt flats much like the central playa, ranging from a
few feet in width and a few yards in length up to mappable dimensions,
as in the lesser playa lying east of the great one; and many of the
dustbanks are honeycombed with squirrel burrows. This annulus of broken
surface is narrow on the west, soon passing into okatilla scrub and
then into the saguesa forests of the eastern base of Sierra Seri; on
the east it is miles in breadth, passing gradually into the normal
Sonoran plain; on the south it widens still farther, stretching all
the way to Arenales de Gil and Pozo Escalante, and merging into the
playa-like mud-flats bordering Laguna la Cruz, into which the gulf
waters are sometimes forced by southwesterly gales at high spring
tides. Throughout this portion of the desert, marine shells are
scattered over the playa-like flats or lodged in the adjacent banks,
sometimes in great beds; the vegetation is scantier than usual and
largely of salt-loving habit; the mud-flats are usually coated with
saline and alkaline crusts, while the dunes are soft and fluffy, and
expand into broad belts perforated with the tunnels of the surprisingly
abundant rodents. Across this plain of bitter sand-dust lie the two
hard land routes to Seriland—the supposed Escalante route of 1700, down
the fan of Rio Bacuache and thence by Barranca Salina; and the Encinas
route, down the northern border of the Rio Sonora fan and thence by
Pozo Escalante to the shores of Bahia Kino.[12]
[11] The expedition of 1895, during which Seriland was surveyed, was
not provided with apparatus for accurate vertical measurement, and
hence altitudes were only approximately determined. The determinations
by Mr Johnson, who executed the topographic surveys, indicated that
even the lowest part of the valley is somewhat above sea-level; but
other facts indicate that it actually lies below the level of the
waters of the gulf, and forms a miniature homologue of Colorado desert
(in southern California): in the first place the central playa, which
is undoubtedly flooded occasionally if not semiannually, does not
embouch into, and has no channels extending toward, the sea; in the
second place it is highly saline; again, the alluvial fans of Rio
Bacuache and (especially) of Rio Sonora are so placed as to intercept
and dam the trough occupied by Laguna la Cruz in its southern portion,
and Playa Noriega in its northern portion; concordantly, the detail
configuration of the coast indicates marine transgression, apparently
due to secular subsidence of the land—though the abundant marine shells
of recent species toward the valley-bottom attest recent displacement
of the sea. On the whole, the facts seem to indicate that, during
recent geologic times, the lower portion of this valley was a shallow
gulf extending northward (and probably also southward) from the eastern
limit of Bahia Kino; that the importation and deposition of sediment,
chiefly by Rio Sonora, outran the secular subsidence of the land so
far as to displace the waters of the gulf in its central portion and
to separate the northern arm from the sea; and that the waters of this
northern arm were subsequently evaporated, disappearing finally in the
central playa in which local inflow and evaporation are balanced by the
usual mechanism of interior basins.
[12] Both the routes were traversed by the expedition of 1895, the
former from the headwaters of Rio Bacuache to the upper portion of its
alluvial fan, and then from the abandoned Rancho Libertad on the lower
portion of the fan across Desierto Encinas by way of Barranca Salina.
In the northern crossing a light vehicle (the first to traverse this
portion of the desert), drawn by four horses and aided by several
horsemen, was taken from Rancho Libertad across the northern portion of
Playa Noriega and thence up Arroyo Mitchell to a point midway between
Barranca Salina and Johnson peak, and was brought back over the same
route. The Encinas trail from Rancho San Francisco de Costa Rica was
traversed four times each way by the same outfit, and once each way by
the running gear of a heavy wagon carrying the rude craft (about 1,000
pounds in weight) in which the Seri waters were navigated, this vehicle
being drawn by 8 to 12 horses, frequently changed. Typical aspects of
both routes are shown in plate III, the upper figure representing the
Encinas trail and the lower a distant view of Sierra Seri, taken from
Playa Noriega, in the depths of Desierto Encinas.
Desierto Encinas is an impossible human habitat in any proper sense; it
is merely a broad and hardly passable boundary between habitats. The
hardy stock of the frontier ranchos, pasturing partly on the thorny
fruit of the cholla, push far out on the plains, and are sometimes
watered for short periods, under strong guards of heavily armed
vaqueros, at Barranca Salina; yet the greater part of the expanse is
trodden only by the Seri. Two or three ruined frames of Seri jacales
and a few graves crown the low knoll near Pozo Escalante, and there
are one or two house remnants near Barranca Salina; these are notable
not only as the easternmost remaining outposts of Seri occupancy, but
because they represent the only known instances in all Seriland of the
erection of even temporary houses adjacent to water. Distinct paths,
trodden deep by bare Seri feet, radiate from both waters toward the
Seriland interior, but no traceable trails extend eastward.
The southern limit of Desierto Encinas is marked either by the broad
mud-flats opening into Laguna la Cruz or by the coast of the gulf,
the coast cutting the lower portions of the plain being accentuated
by a sand-bank 30 or 40 feet high, against which the surf thunders
in nearly continuous roar, audible halfway or all the way to Pozo
Escalante. A Seri trail skirts the crest of this bank, sending
occasional branches into the interior. At Punta Antigualla the bank
expands and rises into a great mammillated shell-mound nearly 100
feet high, with several of the cusps occupied by more or less ruined
jacales; and occasionally occupied houses occur midway thence to the
southernmost point of Sierra Seri, and again at the base of the first
spur east of Punta Ygnacio. Beyond Punta Antigualla the sweep of the
waves is stronger than in Bahia Kino, and the coastal sand-bank is
generally higher. Between the rocky buttresses of Punta Ygnacio and
the next spur eastward the sand-ridge rises fully 50 feet above mean
low tide, and here, as elsewhere, its verge is protected by a fog-fed
chaparral thicket with occasional clumps of okatilla and other cacti.
Behind the coast barrier lie lagoon-like basins, generally dry and
floored with saline silt-beds, though sometimes occupied by briny
pools formed through seepage during southwesterly gales; and there are
physiographic indications that the northwestward extension of Laguna la
Cruz formerly stretched some miles farther than now and lay in the rear
of Punta Antigualla in such wise as to form a source of supply of the
clam-shells of which the eminence is built.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. III
SERI FRONTIER]
[Illustration: SIERRA SERI FROM ENCINAS DESERT]
2. Sierra Seri is a double range, divided mid-length by a broad saddle
barely 2,000 feet in height.[13] Like other Sonoran ranges, the nucleal
portions are exceedingly rugged and precipitous—at least two of its
picachos shoot so boldly that they commonly seem to overhang, and have
been called leaning peaks. In large part the precipices rise abruptly
from a symmetrical dome molded by sheetflooding, much as the insulated
buttes rise from the Bacuache fan in northeastern Seriland; so that the
tract lying between Desierto Encinas and El Infiernillo is a composite
of exceptionally precipitous and exceptionally smooth mountain slopes.
One of the Seri trails radiating from Barranca Salina lies across the
mid-sierra saddle; others push into several mountain valleys, and the
largest leads to Tinaja Trinchera, at the base of Johnson peak, where
there are a few low walls of loose-laid rubble, somewhat like those
of the trincheras (entrenched mountains) farther eastward—the only
structures of the sort seen in Seriland. Toward the southern end of
the range lie various trails, the most conspicuous paralleling the
coast, either near the shore or over the steep salients, according
to the configuration; while here and there ruinous jacales a few
yards from the coast attest sporadic habitation. The eastern shore of
Bahia Kunkaak from Punta Ygnacio northward reveals a typical geologic
section of the Sonoran province: the transgressing waves have carved
in the granitic subterrane a broad shelf lying just below mean low
tide and usually stretching several furlongs offshore; this shelf
is relieved here and there by remnantal crags of obdurate rocks,
cumbered by bowlders and locally sheeted with sand and arkose derived
from mechanically disintegrated granite; while the inner margin of
the shelf is a sea-cliff, usually 30 to 50 feet high, of which the
lower half is commonly granite and the upper half unconsolidated and
recent-looking mechanical debris collected by sheetflood erosion.
Sometimes the granite of the subterrane is replaced by volcanics;
sometimes ancient and firmly cemented talus deposits separate the
superficial mantle from the subterrane, as shown in the lower part
of plate V; sometimes the line of sheetflood planation passes below
tide-level, when the waves beat against the unconsolidated deposits in
a deep embayment; sometimes the sharply defined planation surface ends
abruptly at the sides of subranges or buttes shooting upward in the
abrupt slopes characteristic of the sierra proper; yet this 10-mile
stretch of coast is a nearly continuous revelation of the structure of
sheetflood-carved plains and of modern marine transgression. The debris
of the combined processes forms an abundant and varied assortment of
bowlders, cobbles, and pebbles, whence the inhabitants readily derive
their simple implements without need for studied forethought or manual
cunning.
[13] The northern portion, as seen from the east, is shown in plate
III; the southern portion, as seen from the west, appears in the upper
part of plate IV, while the southwesternmost point is shown in the
lower part of the same plate.
The long sand-spit terminating in Punta Miguel and the shorter one
terminating in Punta Arena are the product of geologically recent
wave building, and consist of irregular series of V-bars, backed by
lagoon-like basins and enclosing considerable bodies of brine in
the central portions; and the bars and basins become successively
higher outward, in such wise as to attest the secular subsidence of
this coast. Several jacales are located on the higher portion of the
southern sand-spit, midway between Punta Granita and Punta Miguel,
while footpaths traverse the flat and skirt the coast. Toward the
terminal portion of the spit the sand is blown into hummocks, held
by clumps of salt-enduring and sand-proof shrubbery; but there are
no rancherias here, despite the fact that it is a natural point of
embarkation—doubtless because no Seri structure could withstand the
sand-drifting gales and storm inundations of this exposed spot.
The more protected lagoons behind the outer bars harbor abundant
waterfowl, within bowshot of shrub-clumps and dunes well adapted to
the concealment of hunters, while the mud-flats open to the tide
abound in clams and other edible things. The features of the Punta
Miguel sand-spit are repeated with variations along the eastern shore
of El Infiernillo; and Seri jacales, evidently designed for temporary
occupancy, occur here and there, usually on higher banks above reach of
the severer storms.
3. Tiburon island itself is apparently the chosen home of the
Seri—a habitat to which the mainland tract is at once a dependency,
an alternative refuge, and a circumvallation. Its dominant range,
Sierra Kunkaak, mates Sierra Seri in its essential features, though
the rocks are for the greater part ordinarily obdurate eruptives
rather than exceptionally obdurate granites, as in the mainland
sierra; accordingly the range is somewhat lower and broader, while
the sheetflood sculpture, with its sharp transition into precipitous
cliffs, is somewhat less trenchant. Sierra Menor is a third term in
the mountain series, in structure and geomorphy as in altitude; while
the interior plain is a homologue of that portion of Desierto Encinas
lying north of Playa Noriega—i. e., of its (potentially) free-drained
portion. Almost the entire perimeter of Tiburon is suffering marine
transgression, and is faced with seacliffs overlooking wave-carved
shelves; and in both form and structure the greater part of the coast
repeats, with minor variations, the features of the mainland coast
from Punta Ygnacio northward. Partly because of the superior magnitude
and height of its debris-yielding sierra, partly because of protection
from the wave-beat of the open gulf, the eastern shore is skirted
with a talus-shape slope, usually two to four miles wide; and while
there are unmistakable evidences of sheetflood carving in the higher
portions of this plane, the coastal cliff commonly reveals nothing
but heterogeneous debris, sometimes rising thirty or forty feet above
tide. Somewhat the greater part of the volume of this debris is fine—i.
e., sand and silt and nondescript rock-matter; but there is always a
considerable element of larger rock-fragments, which gather along the
shore in a pavement of bowlders and cobbles (upper figure of plate V).
These coarse materials—important factors in aboriginal industry—are
harmoniously distributed; more conspicuously on the ground than on
the map, the coast is set with salients (of which Punta Narragansett
is a type), consisting merely of exceptional accumulations of debris
from gorges in the sierra and from shallow arroyos, or pebble washes,
traversing the coastwise plain. These salients owe their prominence
partly to the relative coarseness, partly to the abundant supply, of
fragmental material from the heights; and about their extremities the
beach is paved with bowlders, which grade to cobbles or even to pebbles
along the reentrant shores on either hand. This distribution of cobbles
is one of the conditions governing the placement of Seri rancherias;
and in many cases the jacales are located, either singly or in groups,
where the coastal salients and reentrants meet, and where there is an
abundant supply of cobbles of convenient size and wave-tested hardness.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PLATE IV.
SIERRA SERI FROM TIBURON ISLAND]
[Illustration: PUNTA YGNACIO, TIBURON BAY]
The coastwise plain skirting eastern Tiburon has a few wave-built
projections analogous to those east of El Infiernillo; the most
conspicuous of these are Punta Tormenta, Punta Tortuga, and Punta
Perla with its tide-swept extensions, Bajios de Ugarte. All of these
are located primarily by sierra-fed arroyos, but all are greatly
extended by wave-borne material laid down along lines determined by
the prevailing currents of this best-protected portion of the coast.
The long outer face of Punta Tormenta, shaped by the storms of Bahia
Kunkaak, is strikingly regular and symmetric; its broad extremity and
inner face are diversified by subordinate bars and lagoons, evidently
tending to connect with the main coast toward Punta Tortuga, and
thereby to transform the whole of Rada Ballena into a lagoon. Already
the narrow embayment is so shallow that, although a comfortable haven
at high tide, it is mostly mud-flat and sand-waste at extreme low
tide—a condition which explains the stranding of an 80-foot whale in
this treacherous harbor about 1887. The rada is between two and three
miles in length. It abounds in marine life of kinds preferring quieter
waters: clams are plentiful in its mud-flats, a sponge lines portions
of the bottom toward its inner extremity, oysters cluster numerously
on bowlders and on the mangrove-like roots and trunks of a large shrub
along the outer shore, and various fishes find refuge here from the
fierce currents and the hungry sharks and porpoises of the open strait;
these and other creatures form food for innumerable waders and other
water-fowl that seek shelter in the quiet bay, which is still further
protected by salt-enduring shrubbery on the bars of the point and by
the shrubby thickets and wave-cast banks and wind-built dunes on the
mainland side.
The combination of conditions renders this portion of the Tiburon coast
the optimum habitat of the Seri Indians. There are, indeed, no houses
or other traces of permanent habitation on Punta Tormenta itself,
which is not only swept by gales but must sometimes be inundated by
gale-driven waters at high spring tide; but at the inner end of the
long sand-spit, and also on the mainland opposite the outer portion of
Rada Ballena, there are extensive and well-kept rancherias, capacious
enough to accommodate comfortably thirty or forty Seri families, i.
e., 150 or 200 persons. Toward its landward end the sand-spit is built
largely of pebbles and cobbles, of which thousands of tons are adapted
to industrial use; sea-food is practically unlimited and is readily
taken; water-fowl literally crowd the protected rada within arrow-shot
of natural cover; the outer slope of the bar is admirably suited for
landing and embarking balsas in calm weather, while the bay is an
ideal harbor for the portable craft, and the shrub-grown shores give
unlimited opportunity for concealing them when not in use; the dunes
and banks are high enough to protect the low jacales from storm-winds,
while the abundant sponges and turtle-shells afford material for
thatching and shingling the more exposed walls and roofs; and finally,
it is but a favorite distance (about 4 miles) to the permanent fresh
water of Tinaja Anita. From this Seri metropolis well-trod trails
radiate toward all other parts of the island; the best beaten leads
to the tinaja, sending branches into all the neighboring gorges, in
which game is sometimes taken; next best-worn is the trail laid across
Sierra Kunkaak to strike Arroyo Carrizal mid-length of its permanently
wet portion; others pass northward to rancherias at different points
on the coast, and still another skirts the coast southward by several
smaller rancherias to the considerable jacal collection near Punta
Narragansett—this, like other longshore routes, having alternative
trails, the evanescent fair-weather one following the beach, while
the permanent path threads the thorn-set thickets marking the crest
of the sea-cliff or cuts across the longer salients. The Narragansett
rancheria is also a center for radiating trails, the best-beaten
of these leading toward the fresh waters of Tinaja Anita and Arroyo
Carrizal; and even the rancherias half-way thence to Punta Mashém
send their most permanent paths over 15 miles of intervening ranges
and spall-strewn valleys toward the same waters. According to
Mashém’s cautious statements, there is a minor Seri metropolis at
the northwestern spur of Sierra Kunkaak, within reach of Pozo Hardy
and Arroyo Agua Dulce, and two or three smaller rancherias along the
western shore; but these were not reached by the 1895 expedition.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. V
WESTERN SHORE OF TIBURON BAY]
[Illustration: EASTERN SHORE OF TIBURON BAY]
4. The seas washing Seriland are notably troubled by tides and winds.
Gaping toward the Pacific, and narrowing and shoaling for the 800 miles
of its length (measured from midway between Islas de Tres Marias and
Cabo San Lucas), Gulf of California approaches Bay of Fundy, Bristol
channel, and Broad sound as a tide accumulator; while the semidiurnal
sweep of the waters in the upper half of the gulf is conditioned by the
constriction of the basin to a fraction of its average cross-section at
the narrows between Isla Tiburon and Punta San Francisquito. Toward the
head of the gulf the ordinary spring tides range from 20 to 25 feet,
and may be much increased by favoring winds; the debacles culminate
there, but the currents culminate off Seriland in the great tide-gate
half dammed by the islands of Tiburon, San Esteban, San Lorenzo, and
Salsipuedes,[14] with their marine buttresses, and through the breaches
of Pasaje Ulloa, Estrecho Alarcon, and Canal de Salsipuedes flow, four
times daily, some two or three cubic miles of water in tremendous tidal
floods, probably unsurpassed in vigor elsewhere on the globe. Naturally
the islands and the adjacent coasts afford extraordinary examples of
marine transgression; and while exceptional wave-work is a factor, the
transgression is undoubtedly due mainly to the extraordinary tidal
currents in this gateway of the gulf. The fierce currents and the
frequent storms of the region condition local navigation, and have
undoubtedly contributed to the development of the peculiarly light,
strong, and serviceable water-craft of the aboriginal navigators among
the islands.
[14] Originally the name Islas Sal-si-puedes (Get-out-if-canst) was
applied to the various islands of this gateway of the gulf, including
San Lorenzo, San Esteban, and San Agustin (now Tiburon), together with
the smaller islets, as shown in the map of Padre Fernando Consag (in
Noticia de la California y de su Conquista, etc., por el Padre Miguel
Venegas, 1757, tomo III, p. 194); and Padre Consag’s account of the
currents encountered in 1746 explains the designation: “The great sea
which runs here even in fair weather would not allow us to stay, and it
was with great difficulty we took in a little water. We now attempted
to weather the Cape of San Gabriel de Sal-si-puedes, so greatly dreaded
by seamen on account of those islands, several contiguous points of
land and many ledges of sunken rocks extending a great way from the
land. Here the sea is so agitated by the current that a gale or a calm
makes but little difference” (English translation of Venegas’ Noticia,
titled A Natural and Civil History of California, 1759, vol. II, pp.
312-313). Hittell speaks of “the group of islands known as Salsipuedes,
the largest of which is now called Tiburon” (History of California,
1898, vol. I, p. 225). Dewey restricted the name to a single small
island near the Baja California coast. Further references to the
islands and their designations are noted postea, p. 65.
El Infiernillo derives its distinctive characteristics largely from
the local character of the tides. Bahia Kunkaak is a funnel-shape
embayment so placed as to catch half the volume of the incoming tide
and to concentrate the flow into a bore hurtling through Boca Infierno
and thence throughout the shoaling strait with greatly accelerated
velocity; meantime the body of the tidal stream is diverted around
Tiburon, and then enfeebled in its northward flow by the expansion
of the gulf above the Tiburon-San Francisquito gateway, so that the
entire strait is flooded (to the limit fixed by the capacity of Boca
Infierno) before the main tide flows into its head past Isla Patos and
through Bahia Tepopa; and with this unobstructed inflow the strait
is reflooded with a counterbore, whereby the waters are heaped and
pounded into an unstable, swirling, churning mass.[15] The flooding
is little less than catastrophic in magnitude and suddenness; indeed,
the volume of water in the body of the strait between Punta Perla and
Boca Infierno is approximately doubled at neap tide and tripled at
spring tide twice in each twenty-four hours. Then, as the crest of the
main debacle advances into the upper gulf beyond Punta Tepopa, the
trough of the ebb is already approaching the Tiburon-San Francisquito
constriction; and even before the final flooding of El Infiernillo from
the north is completed, the waters of Bahia Kunkaak are receding and a
tiderip is tearing through Boca Infierno at a rate sufficient to half
empty the reservoir of its accumulated volume before the ebb trough
has rounded the island to the head of the strait. Thus the effect
of the exceptional tides of the gulf and the peculiar configuration
of Seriland is to concentrate and accentuate tidal currents in El
Infiernillo, and to convert the channel into a raceway for nearly
continuous tide rips. According to Dewey, the spring tides are 10 feet
and the neaps 7 feet about the northern end of the strait;[16] in
December, 1895, the tides about Punta Blanca and Punta Granita were
roughly determined as 13 or 14 feet at spring and 7 or 8 at neap, the
range varying considerably with the direction and force of the wind;
and the consequent current through Boca Infierno was estimated at 4
to 8 miles per hour, the higher velocity of course coinciding with
the spring tide. The change in direction of the current is almost
instantaneous—indeed, the run is in opposite directions on opposite
sides of the narrow strait when the wind sets obliquely—so that the
tidal flow is practically continuous. The currents are of course
slacker in the body of the strait, but even here suffice to transport
coarse sediments; and it is to this agency that the “shoals and sand
spits” noted by Dewey[17] and the maintenance of a deep channel through
Boca Infierno are chiefly to be ascribed. The materials of Punta
Tormenta and Punta Tortuga attest the transportation of pebbles up
to 3 or 4 inches in diameter by the combined work of waves and tidal
currents.
[15] Unquestionably the clearest view of El Infiernillo ever enjoyed
by Caucasian eyes was that of Messrs Johnson and Mitchell from the
culminating point of Sierra Seri (Johnson peak), which they occupied
for about twenty-three hours on December 7 and 8, 1895. Mr Johnson’s
notes on the appearance of the strait are as follows: “On the occasion
of the ascent of Sierra Seri, which rises from the coast, shutting
off the view of Isla Tiburon from the desert on the east, I received
a striking impression of the elaborate and beautifully symmetrical
plan of the long swirling currents of El Infiernillo. The climb had
been made from the east direct to the summit peak, so that the first
sight of both island and gulf was not only from close at hand, but
from an elevation of about a mile. The crest of the ridge was reached
at the instant of sunset, and the spectacle of the innumerable
current-markings was brief. Our position was nearly opposite the
northern end of the strait; and its elevation was so great that the
opposite mainland and island shorelines were seen in map effect rather
than in perspective. The entire strait, to its northern end at Punta
Perla, was in the shadow of the island; and the current design was
revealed only in the shadow. At the shadow-margin extending from the
northern tip of the island the lines were sharply cut off; and beyond,
along the westward bend of waters forming Bahia Tepopa and opening into
the gulf in full sunlight, there was no suggestion of them. Within the
shadow the effect was that of a film of oil on a water-surface which
had been stirred and allowed to come to rest—though the regularity
of the lines was as though the stirring had been orderly. Not the
slightest motion was perceptible from the peak during the minute or
two that the spectacle lasted before the sun disappeared and twilight
fell, though the suggestion from configuration alone was that of
violent swirling. The general movement was evidently southward toward
Boca Infierno, and the swirls were apparently the result of frictional
resistance along both shores; the system of curving lines as a whole
was very much that which would be presented by a broad feather thrust
into a bottle. There were central lines in great number, somewhat
sinuous though never crossing, diverging one by one toward the shores
on either hand, where they curved backward with complex interferences
in large reversing arcs and many minute circlings. The straightening
out of the curves in perspective was quite perceptible toward Boca
Infierno, and beyond it was pronounced. The air appeared to be still,
so that the current pattern was not at all obscured by waves; and the
spectacle of the broad strait, appearing almost beneath me, incised
with a crowded design of sweeping fine lines, the delicate clearness
of which recalled a steel engraving, was peculiarly impressive.
That we had been fortunate in the moment of reaching the summit was
apparent next day. The spectacle was, indeed, repeated at sunrise
and for a short period thereafter, though the general design was
markedly different, and less intricacy of pattern was discernible,
while the general effect was comparatively vague; perhaps the shadow
of Sierra Seri was too heavy, or, more probably (as was my impression
at the time), our position was not favorable for that direction of
illumination. In full light during the day up to the hour of our
departure in late afternoon, no hint or vestige of the current design
remained. It was evident that the lines were brought out with especial
clearness by the favorable illumination and comparative stillness of
air; and it was particularly evident that the lines marked movements in
the water, even if there were corresponding air-currents, since they
harmonized perfectly with the configuration of the shores and with
the trend of spits and bars and offshore markings seen through the
shallow waters, especially toward the northern end of the strait. The
accord between shore curves and the current lines seen in the evening
indicated a southward motion much more vigorous than the reverse
movement witnessed next morning; for the marked variation in the design
noted in the morning was of a character strongly suggesting a reversed
movement of the water, while the faintness of the markings then may
perhaps have been due to comparative feebleness of current rather than
to unfavorable lighting. Certainly the close agreement between the
elaborate system of markings, so clearly revealed in the evening, and
the prevailing curves of the shores would seem to indicate unmistakably
that, whatever the direction and strength of flow, the markings were a
product of current motion.”
[16] Publication No. 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of
Navigation, 1880, p. 142.
[17] Op. cit., p. 143.
Like other mountain-bound water bodies, the portion of the gulf washing
Seriland is exceptionally disturbed by winds of given velocity by
reason of the high angle of incidence; and moreover the exceptionally
prominent local configuration disturbs the atmospheric currents in
a manner somewhat analogous to that in which the tidal currents are
disturbed; so that the winds are highly variable but generally strong.
Under the combined action of tide and wind the waters are normally
ruffled; choppy seas freely flecked with whitecaps are rather the rule
than the exception,[18] and are replaced less frequently by calms
than by steadier billows breaking in continuous surf on sand-beaches
(figure 5) and dashing into foam-flecked and rainbow-tinted spray-jets,
bathing the rocky cliffs for 50 feet above their bases. Sometimes
the wind stills suddenly, when the sea sinks to rhythmic swells,
soon extinguished by reaction from the irregular shores and by the
interference of tide-currents; but the swell seldom dies away before
the gale springs again. The broad valley between Sierras Seri and
Kunkaak, bottomed by El Infiernillo, is especially beset by fierce
and capricious gales; the general atmospheric drift is disturbed by
the leading and lesser sierras, as well as by temperature convection
from the gulf, and eddies are developed in such wise as to send
air-currents directly or obliquely up or down the valley. These local
or sublocal winds are characteristic. Judging from observations
covering several weeks, the valley is wind-swept longitudinally for
an average of eighteen or twenty hours daily, the winds ranging from
strong breezes to gales so stiff as to load the air with sand ashore
and spray asea; and even the calms may be broken any minute by sudden
gusts and williwaws, passing rapidly as they arrive. Not only waves
but wind itself combines with tides to shape the structural features
of the valley; nowhere within it do flour-fine sands like those of
Desierto Encinas occur, save as a hardly perceptible constituent of the
dunes and banks of coarser sand—they have been blown into the sea or
beyond the limits of the valley. Throughout the strait so expressively
named by its explorers, the capriciousness of the sea culminates,
despite the shoalness and the protection from easterly and westerly
winds; the storm currents and tide-currents are half the time opposed,
raising breakers even when the air is nearly still; eddies and whirls
and cross-currents arise constantly, and even at the stillest hours
tumultuous waves come and go sporadically, while about the mile-wide
boca the choppy sea sometimes takes the form of spire-like jets,
spurting 5 or 10 feet high and breaking into aigrettes of glittering
spray in most unwaterlike and wholly indescribable fashion. Dewey
described the strait as “unsafe for navigation by any except the
smallest class of vessels”; it is safe, indeed, only for portable and
indestructible craft like the Seri balsas, which may be put off or
carried ashore at will by craftsmen willing to wait for wind and tide,
and unpossessed of impedimenta of a sort to be injured by wetting. Of
such an environment the balsa is a natural product.
[18] A stiller and navigable condition of the sea is shown in the view
of Punta Ygnacio, plate IV.
[Illustration: FIG. 5—Embarking on Bahia Kunkaak in la lancha _Anita_.]
The adjunct islets of Seriland are miniatures of Tiburon in all
essential respects, save that they are without fresh water. The largest
is San Esteban, a somewhat complex butte rising sharply from the waters
in a nearly continuous sea-cliff recording vigorous work by storms and
tides; it is occasionally visited by the Seri, chiefly in search of
water-fowl and eggs. The most important of the series in Seri economy
and mythology is Isla Tassne, off the mouth of Bahia Kino; it is a
rugged butte some 600 feet high, rising in wave-cut cliffs on the sea
side and pedimented by low spits and banks of sand toward the lea;
the sand-banks are literally flocked with pelicans, while other fowl
cover the flatter ledges and crowd the crannies of the pinnacle. Isla
Turner is a somewhat smaller and still more rugged butte, bounded on
both sides by precipitous cliffs, while Roca Foca is merely a great
rock shelving upward from the storm-swept waters off the most exposed
angle of Tiburon; in the crannies of the former birds nest abundantly,
while the lower ledges of both are haunted by seals. Isla Patos, north
of Tiburon, is a breeding-place for different water-fowl, and is
especially noted as a refuge for ducks; it, too, is for the most part a
rocky butte, with a sandy shelf at the eastern base. Beyond San Esteban
lies the similar but smaller Isla San Lorenzo, while Isla Salsipuedes
and a few other islets stretch thence northward half way to the
southern point of Isla Angel de la Guarda, the second-largest island of
the gulf. San Lorenzo and the smaller islets are occasionally visited
by the Seri, partly for a mineral pigment used in face-painting,
partly in quest of game; and they sometimes push on to the larger
island to enjoy its fairly abundant game, including the easily taken
iguana, amid the ruins of an ancient culture apparently akin to that
of southern Mexico. Even the most frequented islets, Tassne and Patos,
can be reached only by crossing miles of open sea; but in their way the
Seri are as canny navigators as they are skilful boat-builders—it is
their habit to hug the shore in threatening weather, to await wind and
tide for hours or days together, to set out on distant journeys only
when all conditions favor, and in emergency to seize inspiration from
the storm like the vikings of old, and bend supernormal power to the
control of their craft.
* * * * *
Summarily, the prevailing features of Seriland may be said to be
characterized by extreme development or intensity, many of them being
of such sort as to be adequately described only by the aid of strong
comparatives or superlatives. Seriland is the most rugged portion of
piedmont Sonora, and is bounded by its most forbidding desert; the
territory is nearly if not quite, the most arid and inhospitable of
the Sonoran province; the diurnal and sporadic temperature-ranges
are apparently the widest, and the gales and other storms apparently
the severest of the entire province; the flora is among the most
meager and least fruitful, and the mountains are among the craggiest
of the continent; the tides are among the strongest and the tidal
currents among the swiftest of the world; and, as shown by the limited
direct observations and by the extraordinary marine transgression,
the waters are among the most turbulent known. At the same time, the
waters washing Seriland are among the richest of America in sea-food,
so that the habitat is one of the easiest known for a simple life
depending directly on the product of the sea. It is but natural that
these extreme factors of environment should be measurably reflected in
pronounced characteristics on the part of the inhabitants.
SUMMARY HISTORY
There is some doubt as to who was the first among the Caucasian
explorers of the Western Hemisphere to set eyes on the Seri Indians.
Nuño de Guzman, rival of Cortés and invader of Jalisco and Sinaloa,
must have approached the southern boundary of Seri territory about
1530, though there is no record of contact with these tribesmen. Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza, one of Cortés’ captains, coasted along southern
Sonora in 1532 to a point considerably beyond Rio Yaqui, where he was
massacred on his return, and hence left no record of more northerly
natives.[19] Both of these pioneers must accordingly be eliminated from
the list of probable discoverers of the Seri.
[19] Theodore H. Hittell, History of California, 1898, vol. I, pp.
43-44.
In the course of their marvelous transcontinental journey, Alvar
Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions also approached Seriland, and
apparently skirted its borders shortly before meeting Captain Diego
de Alcaraz, of Guzman’s party; this was in April, 1536, according to
Bandelier.[20] Vaca wrote: “On the coast is no maize: the inhabitants
eat the powder of rush and of straw, and fish that is caught in the sea
from rafts, not having canoes. With grass and straw the women cover
their nudity. They are a timid and dejected people.”[21] He added half
a dozen ambiguous sentences, of which only a part, apparently, refer to
the “timid and dejected people”; half of these describe a poison used
by them “so deadly that if the leaves be bruised and steeped in some
neighboring water, the deer and other animals drinking it soon burst”.
The people were identified as Seri (Ceris) by Buckingham Smith and
General Stone,[22] and the identification may be considered as strongly
probable, provided the Tepoka be classed with the Seri.
[20] Contributions to the History of the Southwestern Portion of the
United States (Hemenway Southwestern Archæological Expedition), Papers
of the Archæological Institute of America, American series, V, 1890, p.
44.
[21] Relation of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, translated from the
Spanish by Buckingham Smith; New York, 1871, p. 172.
[22] Ibid, p. 178.
The next Caucasians to approach Seriland appear to have been the two
Spanish monks, Fray Pedro Nadal and Fray Juan de la Asuncion, who, in
1538, sought to retrace Vaca’s route, and traveled northward to a river
somewhat doubtfully identified as the Gila;[23] but the meager accounts
of this journey contain no clear reference to the Seri Indians.
[23] Cf. Bandelier, Magazine of Western History, IV, 1886, p. 660.
On March 7-19, 1539, the Italian friar Marcos de Niza left San Miguel
de Culiacan under instructions from the Viceroy, Don Antonio de
Mendoza, to explore the territory traversed by Vaca, under the guidance
of the negro Estevanico, the only one of Vaca’s three companions
remaining in Mexico; in good time he reached a point probably not far
from the center of the present state of Sonora, whence messengers
were sent coastward to return duly accompanied by certain “very poor”
Indians wearing pearl-oyster (?) ornaments, who were reputed to inhabit
a large island (almost certainly Tiburon) reached from the mainland
by means of balsas. Bandelier identified these coastwise Indians with
the Guayma tribe, a supposed branch of the Seri;[24] but if the “large
island” were Tiburon, it would seem more probable that the Indians
belonged to the tribe now known as Seri, while both description and
location suggest the Tepoka. This record is of questionable weight,
partly by reason of the doubtful identification of the Indians, and
partly because the friar’s itinerary was found to be misleading by
his immediate successors, because of the fact that portions of his
narrative were based on hearsay; though it is just to note that
Bandelier, after critical study, deemed the record about as trustworthy
as others of the time, and to add that the disparagement of Niza’s
discoveries by his followers was in accord with the fashion of the
day—indeed it was little more severe relatively than the criticism of
the strikingly trustworthy Ulloa by his first follower, Alarcon.
[24] Ibid, pp. 661-663; Papers of the Archæological Institute of
America, American series, V, p. 118.
On July 8-19, 1539, according to the collection of Ramusio, three
vessels sent out by Cortés to discover unknown lands—“Of Which Fleete
was Captaine the right worshipfull knight Francis de Vlloa borne in
the Citie of Merida”—sailed from Acapulco.[25] Skirting the mainland
northwestward, they explored Mar de Cortés, or Gulf of California;
and on September 24 (as fixed by interpolation from Ulloa’s excellent
itinerary) they descried and described the features of the coast in
such fashion as to locate their vessels (one was already lost) off the
southern point of Tiburon, and in sight of the islands of San Esteban
and San Lorenzo, as well as locally prominent points on the mainland
of Lower California. Here they “discerned the countrey to be plaine,
and certaine mountaines, and it seemed that a certaine gut of water
like a brooke ran through the plaine” (p. 322). Judging from other
geographic details, this “gut of water” was certainly the tide-torn
gateway now named Boca Infierno; while the next day’s sailing (it is
noteworthy that this was “north” instead of northwestward as usual)
carried them by “a circuit or bay of 6 leagues into the land with
many coones or creeks”, evidently Bahia Tepopa with the northern end
of the turbulent strait El Infiernillo. The record shows clearly that
Ulloa discovered Tiburon, but failed (quite naturally, in view of the
route pursued and the peculiar configuration at both extremities of
the strait) to perceive its insular character. No mention is made of
inhabitants or habitations on this land-mass, though both are described
on the neighboring island of Angel de la Guarda in terms that would be
applicable to the Seri.
[25] The Voyages of the English Nation to America, collected by Richard
Hakluyt and edited by Edmund Goldsmid, 1890, vol. III, p. 317.
On Monday, February 23, 1540, according to Winship,[26] Captain-General
Francisco Vazquez Coronado set out on his ambitious and memorable
expedition to the Seven Cities of Cibola. His course lay from
Compostela along the coast of Culiacan, and thence northward through
what is now Sinaloa and Sonora. On May 9-20, 1540, Hernando de Alarcon
set sail on the ancillary expedition by sea; he followed the coast from
Acapulco to Colorado river, and although he undoubtedly saw and was
the first to name Tiburon,[27] and claimed to have “discouered other
very good hauens for the ships whereof Captaine Francis de Vlloa was
General, for the Marquesse de Valle neither sawe nor found them”,[28]
he made no specific record of any of the features of Seriland or of
contact with the Seri Indians. Meantime Coronado’s forces were divided,
a considerable part of the army falling behind the leader; and some
time during the early summer the belated army, under Don Tristan de
Arellano, founded the town of San Hieronimo de los Corazones, which in
the following year (1541) was transferred to a place in Señora (Sonora)
not now identifiable. From Corazones Don Rodrigo Maldonado went down to
the seacoast to seek the ships, and brought back with him “an Indian
so large and tall that the best man in the army reached only to his
chest”, with reports of still taller Indians along the coast.[29] It is
impossible to locate Maldonado’s route with close accuracy, but in view
of geographic and other conditions it is evident (as recently shown
by Hodge[30]) that he must have descended Rio Sonora and approached
or reached the coast over the broad delta-plain of that stream south
of Sierra Seri, and thus within Seri territory. The reported gigantic
stature practically identifies the Indians visited by him with the
Seri, since no other gigantic tribes were consistently reported by
explorers of western North America, and since the 6-foot Seri warriors,
with their frequent Sauls of greater stature, are in fact gigantic in
comparison with the average Spanish soldiery of earlier centuries.
There are indications that the fame of these giants of the Southern sea
spread to Europe and filtered slowly throughout the intellectual world,
and that the fancy-clothed colossi grew with their travels, after the
manner of their kind—indeed, there is no slender reason for opining
that these half-mythical islanders were the real originals of Jonathan
Swift’s Brobdingnagians,[31] despite his location of their fabled land
a few degrees farther northward on the long-mysterious coast below the
elusive “Straits of Anian”.
[26] The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542, Fourteenth Annual Report of
the Bureau of Ethnology, 1896, p. 382.
[27] As a harbor or anchorage marked “del Tiburon” on the map of
“Domingo del Castillo, Piloto”, drawn in 1541, and reproduced in
Historia de Nueva-España, escrita por su esclarecido Conquistador
Hernán Cortés, aumentada con otras documentos, y notas, por el
ilustrissimo Señor Don Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Arzobispo de
Mexico; Mexico, 1770, p. 328.
[28] The Voyages of the English Nation to America, vol. IV, p. 6.
[29] Winship, op. cit., p. 484.
[30] Coronado’s March to Quivira, in J. V. Brower, Harahey (Memoirs of
Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi, vol. II), 1899, p. 36.
[31] Cf. The History of Oregon, California, and the other Territories
on the Northwest Coast of North America, by Robert Greenhow, 1845, p.
97; History of California, by Theodore H. Hittell, 1898, vol. I, p. 149.
About the middle of September, 1540, Captain Melchior Diaz, then in
command at Corazones, selected 25 men from the force remaining at that
point, and set out for the coast on what must have been one of the
most remarkable, as it is one of the least-known, expeditions in the
history of Spanish exploration; for he traversed either the streamless
coast or the hardly more hospitable interior through one of the most
utterly desert regions in North America, from the lower reaches of Rio
Sonora to the mouth of the Colorado. The record of this journey is
meager, ambiguous, and apparently inconsecutive; it indicates that he
encountered the Indian giants seen by Maldonado, but confused them with
the Indians of the Lower Colorado. On the return journey Diaz lost his
life through an accident, and his party reached Corazones on January
18, 1541, after encountering hostility from Indians not far from that
settlement. Word was sent to Coronado, then in winter quarters on the
Rio Grande, who dispatched Don Pedro de Tovar to the settlement for the
purpose of punishing the hostile natives; he, in turn, sent Diego de
Alcaraz with a force to seize the “chiefs and lords of a village”. This
Alcaraz did, but soon liberated his prisoners for a petty exchange.
“Finding themselves free, they renewed the war and attacked them, and
as they were strong and had poison, they killed several Spaniards and
wounded others so that they died on the way back.... They got back to
the town, leaving 17 soldiers dead from the poison. They would die
in agony from only a small wound, the bodies breaking out with an
insupportable pestilential stink.”[32]
[32] Winship, op. cit., p. 502.
The Coronado expedition had still further experience with (evidently)
the same Indians; for as the army approached Corazones on the return
a soldier was wounded, and was successfully treated, according to the
record, with the juice of the quince. “The poison, however, had left
its mark upon him. The skin rotted and fell off until it left the bones
and sinews bare, with a horrible smell. The wound was in the wrist, and
the poison had reached as far as the shoulder when he was cured. The
skin on all this fell off.”[33]
[33] Ibid., p. 538.
There is some question as to the identity of the Indians met by Diaz’s
men, Alcaraz and his force, and the Coronado army near Corazones; but
various indications point toward the Seri. In the first place, the
several Indian settlements mentioned in the records define what must
have been then, as it was two centuries later, the Seri frontier,
beyond which lay the “despoblado” of Villa-Señor, i. e., the immense
area hunted and harried by roving bands from Tiburon; so that the Seri
must frequently have crossed the paths pursued by the Spanish pioneers.
In the second place, the accounts themselves seem to be typical records
of contact with Seri Indians, which might be repeated for each
subsequent episode in their history or century in time. The description
of the effect of the poison is especially suggestive of the Seri; as
pointed out on a later page, the Seri arrow-venom is magical in motive,
but actually consists of decomposing and ptomaine-filled organic
matter, so that it is sometimes septic in fact, while the arrow-poison
of the neighboring Opata, Jova, and other Piman tribes was (so far as
can be ascertained) vegetal; and these accounts seem to attest septic
poisoning rather than the effects of any known vegetal toxic.[34]
[34] It should he noted that Mr. F. W. Hodge, whose large acquaintance
with the Southwest and its literature gives his opinion great weight,
is inclined to class the Indians in question as Opata.
Such (assuming the validity of the several identifications) are the
earliest records concerning the truculent tribesmen and the desolate
district known centuries later as the Seri and Seriland.
* * * * *
About 1545 began the Dark Ages in the history of northwestern Mexico;
the excursion of Guzman, and the journeys of Cabeza de Vaca and Friar
Marcos and of Coronado himself, died out of the memory of the solitary
adventurers and scattering settlers who slowly infused Spanish culture
and a strain of Caucasian blood into the Sonoran province; even the
route taken by Coronado’s imposing cavalcade was lost for centuries,
to be retraced only during the present generation, largely through the
determinations of Simpson, Bandelier, Winship, and Hodge.[35] It is
true that Don Francisco de Ibarra penetrated the territory in 1563, and
remained until rumors of gold in other districts drew him elsewhere;
it is also true that Captain Diego Martinez de Hurdaide pushed into
the province in 1584, and entered on a career of subjugation, waging
persistent war with the Yaqui, which resulted in the acquisition of the
territory of Sonora by treaty April 15, 1610;[36] yet few records of
exploration or settlement were written before the advent of the Jesuit
missionaries, toward the end of the seventeenth century.
[35] Op. cit., pp. 29-73.
[36] Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, por F. T. Dávila, 1894, p. 8.
Still more astounding was the eclipse of knowledge of the gulf. Despite
Ulloa’s survey of the entire coast, recorded in an itinerary so
detailed that every day’s sailing may readily be retraced, and despite
Alarcon’s repetition of the surveys and extension of the discoveries
far up Rio Colorado (where his work was verified by that of Melchior
Diaz), a mythic cartography arose to shadow knowledge and delude
exploration for a century and a half; for “upon the authority of a
Spanish chart, found accidently by the Dutch, and of the authenticity
of which there never were, or indeed could be, any proofs obtained,
an opinion prevailed that California was an island, and the contrary
assertion was treated even by the ablest geographers as a vulgar
error”;[37] and a mythic strait formed by cartographic extension of
the Gulf of California indefinitely northward haunted the maps of the
seventeenth century. This error was adopted by various geographers,
including Fredericus de Witt in 1662, Peter van der Aa in 1690, and
even Herman Moll so late as 1708; but it was consistently rejected by
Guillaume Delisle and other French geographers. The myth “was finally
punctured by Padre Kino in 1701; though even he and all his erudite
co-evangels were apparently unaware that his observations only verified
those of Ulloa, Alarcon, and Diaz.
[37] A Natural and Civil History of California; translated from the
original Spanish of Miguel Venegas; London, 1759, vol. I, preface.
During the stagnant sesquicentury 1545-1695 there was little record of
the Seri Indians, though that little indicates recognition of their
leading characteristics and their insular habitat. Writing especially
of the Yaqui before 1645, Padre Andrés Perez de Ribas declared (freely
translated):
There is information of a great people of another nation
called Heris; they are excessively savage, without towns,
without houses, without fields. They have neither rivers nor
streams, and drink from a few lagoonlets and waterholes. They
subsist by the chase, but at harvest time they obtain corn by
bartering salt extracted from the sea and deerskins with other
nations. Those nearest to the sea also subsist on fish; and
it is said that there is, in the same sea, an island on which
others of the same nation live. Their language is exceedingly
difficult.[38]
[38] Historia de los Trivmphos de Nvestra Santa Fee entre Gentes las
mas Barbaras y Fieras del Nueuo Orbe; Madrid, 1645, p. 358. The “Heris”
are identified as Seri by Bandelier (Final Report of Investigations
among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, in Papers Arch.
Inst. Am., American series, III, 1890, p. 74).
The same author mentions cannibalism among the aborigines of
northwestern Mexico, saying:
The vice of those called anthropophagi, who eat human flesh,
introduced by the devil, enemy of the human genus, among
nearly all these nations during their heathenism, is more or
less common. In the Acaxee and mountains this inhuman vice is
customary as eating of flesh obtained by the chase; it is of
daily occurrence among them; just as they sally in chase of
a deer, they go out over mountains and fields in search of
enemies to cut in pieces and eat roasted or boiled.[39]
[39] Op. cit., p. 11.
There is nothing to indicate that the anthropophagy was confined to, or
even extended to, the Seri—a fact of interest in connection with later
opinion. Ribas’ reference to an island inhabited by the Heris (Seri)
indicates that the occupancy of Tiburon was fully recognized by the
native tribes of the region.
Throughout the seventeenth century the western coast of Gulf of
California, and in lesser degree the eastern coast also, became
famous for pearl oysters, and expeditions were sent out and fisheries
established at different times. The earliest of these expeditions
was that of Captain Juan Iturbi in 1615; he sailed well up the gulf,
reaching latitude 30° according to his reckoning (though the accounts
imply between lines that he turned back at the Salsipuedes), collecting
many pearls along the western coast “so large and clear that for one
only he paid, as the King’s fifth, 900 crowns”;[40] and on his return
he carried the fame of the Californian pearls to Ciudad Mexico, whence
it resounded to Madrid and reverberated through all Europe. One of
the more noteworthy pearl-gathering expeditions was that of Admiral
Pedro Portel de Cassanate, which covered several years; he “took a
very careful survey of the eastern coast of the gulf” in 1618, but was
deterred from establishing a garrison by “the dryness and sterility of
the country”;[41] yet neither this voyage nor any of the others appears
to have resulted in any considerable rectification of the maps, or
in valuable records relating to the aboriginal inhabitants. Various
records indicate, however, that both pearl fishers by sea and gold
seekers by land must have met the warlike Seri—and sometimes survived
to enrich the growing lore concerning the tribe, and to establish the
existence of their island stronghold.
[40] Venegas, op. cit., vol. I, p. 182.
[41] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. I, p. 192.
* * * * *
New light dawned on Sonoran history with the extension of
evangelization by the Order of Jesuits into that territory under the
pilotage of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino (Kaino, Kuino, Kühn, Kühne,
Quino, Chino, etc.), who sailed from Chacala, March 18, 1683,[42] for
California, with the expedition of Admiral Isidro Otondo y Antillon.
This expedition failing, the padre returned to the mainland in 1686,
and during the same year obtained authority and means for establishing
missions in Sonora, of which one was to be “founded among the Seris
of the gulf coast”.[43] Although the record of the padre’s movements
is hardly complete, it would appear that several years elapsed before
he actually approached, and also (contrary to the opinion of two
centuries) that he never saw, the real Seri habitat. According to
the anonymous author of “Apostolicos Afanes” (identified by modern
historians as Padre José Ortega), Padre Kino made many journeys over
the inhospitable wastes now known as Papagueria during the years
1686-1701,[44] and must have seen nearly the whole of the northern
and eastern portions of the territory; but only a single journey led
him toward Seriland. In February, 1694, he, with Padre Marcos Antonio
Kappus, Ensign Juan Mateo Mange (chronicler of this expedition), and
Captain Aguerra, set out for the coast; and Mange’s itinerary is so
circumstantial as to locate their route and every stopping place, with
a possible error not exceeding 5 miles in any case.
[42] Venegas, Noticia de la California, vol. I; Madrid, 1757, p. 219.
[43] The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. XV (History of the North
Mexican States, vol. I, 1531-1800), 1884, p. 252.
[44] Apostolicos Afanes de la Compañia de Jesus, escritos por un Padre
de la misma Sagrada Religion de su Provincia de Mexico; Barcelona,
1754, p. 246 et seq.
According to Mange’s itinerary, the explorers left Santa Magdalena de
Buquibava, on the banks of Rio San Ignacio or Santa Magdalena, February
9, traveling northwestward down the valley of that river (for the most
part) 12 leagues to San Miguel del Bosna; the original party having
been enlarged at Santa Magdalena by the addition of Nicolas Castrijo
and Antonio Mezquita, with two Indians for guides. On February 10
they traveled from Bosna 5 leagues southward (evidently in the valley
of Rio San Ignacio, which is here 5 to 25 miles in width), to sleep
at the watering place of Oacue, or San Bartolome. The next day they
journeyed westward along the wash (of San Ignacio), stopping, as was
their custom, to baptize the sick and others, and after covering 10
leagues camped at a tanque. On February 12 they continued westward over
mesquite-covered plains for 4 leagues, and then turned northwestward
for 3 leagues along the San Ignacio to Caborca, where they spent the
remainder of the day in evangelical work. Next morning, after saying
mass, they again proceeded westward “por la vega del rio abajo” (down
the bank of the river); at 2 leagues distance they arrived at the place
at which the river “sinks”, but continued westward along the sand-wash
5 leagues farther, passing the night at a tanque of turbid water. On
February 14 they again celebrated mass, and then proceeded westward
over the plains (“prosiguiendo nosotros al Poniente por llanos”);
at 4 leagues they reached a rancheria which was dubbed San Valentin
(still persisting as a Papago temporale; the “Bisanig” of various
maps), watered from a well in the river bed; proceeding westward
(“prosiguiendo al Poniente”) 6 leagues farther, they ascended a sierra
trending from south to north (“trasmontada una sierra que sita de Sur á
Norte”) of which they named the principal peak Nazareno, in a dry and
sterile barranca in which they afterward slept; from this sierra they
saw “the Gulf of California, and, on the farther coast, four mountains
of that territory, which we named Los Cuatro Stos. Evangelistas, and
toward the northwest an islet with three cerritos named Las Tres
Marias, and in the southwest the Isla de Seris, to which they retreat
when pursued by soldiers for their robberies, which we call San Agustin
and others Tiburon.”[45] The record continues:
[45] Translated somewhat freely from Resumen de Noticias, in Documentos
para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo I, 1856, pp. 235-236.
On the fifteenth, after saying mass, we continued our route to
the west by a dry and stony ravine which there is between the
mountains, and at 3 leagues we met some Indians taking water
from a small well in earthen jars, who, on seeing us, ran away,
flying from fear; but at two musket shots we overtook them,
treated them kindly, and brought them back to the well that
they might assist in watering the horses, giving them all the
water necessary, for the reason that they had not drunk the
day before. For this reason we called this place Paraje de las
Ollas. They were naked people, and only covered their private
parts with small pieces of hare skin; and one of them was so
aged that by his looks he must have been about 120 years old.
We continued to the west over barren plains, arid and without
pasture, a country as sandy as a sea-beach, until we reached
the sand-banks, where the horses had great difficulty; and
after another 7 leagues Father Kappus and the other people
camped without water, and with only pasture of salt grass;
but Padre Kino and I [Mange], with guides, and the governor
of Los Dolores [Aguerra], in order to be forehanded, went
west 2 leagues farther, crossing the bed of Rio San Ignacio;
we arrived at the banks of an arm of the sea to which, in the
sixty years that the province of Sonora had been peopled, no
one had come, and we were the first who had the great privilege
of seeing the Island of the Seris and that of Tres Marias, as
well as the mountains of Cuatro Evangelistas, in California,
on the other side of the gulf, the width of which, according
to the measuring instruments at this position of 30° [actually
about 30° 35'], is some 20 leagues. We returned to the bed of
the river [San Ignacio], where we found a well nearly dry;
we drew from it water for the horses, who had had nothing to
drink, and took some ourselves, although it was turbid, muddy,
and disagreeable.
Now, this itinerary recounts, in definite and unmistakable terms,
the incidents and localities of a journey down the valley of Rio San
Ignacio (also called Santa Magdalena, Altar, Ascuncion, Pitiquito,
Caborca, etc., in different parts of its course), from the present
city of Santa Magdalena by the present town of Caborca to the coast
at a point almost directly west of both Caborca and Santa Magdalena.
Moreover, Kino’s map of 1702[46] locates “Nazareno” on this river, and
permits identification of the sierra with Dewey’s “three conspicuous
peaks” placed directly inland from the lagoon at the mouth of San
Ignacio river, on the Hydrographic Office charts; it also locates
Caborca (miswritten “Cabetka”) in approximate position. Furthermore, it
would have been physically impossible for the rather heavily outfitted
Kino party, with carriages and churchly equipage, to traverse the
untrodden and forbidding wastes from Caborca to even the nearest part
of Seriland within the period of two days and a fraction, and the
distance of 29 leagues (some 74 miles), detailed in the itinerary.
The direct way from Caborca to Tiburon would lie due southward, over
sierra-ribbed and barranca-cut plains never yet explored by white men,
nor even traversed by Indians so far as known, for more than 100 miles
in an air line; while the nearest practicable route, passing by way
of Cieneguilla, Las Cruces, Pozo Noriega, Bacuachito, Sayula, Tonuco,
Rancho Libertad, and Barranca Salina (or Aguaje Parilla) measures fully
200 miles, and requires at least six days for the passage with good
horses and light equipage. The Kino party might, indeed, have turned
southwestward at Caborca and pushed to the now abandoned landing at
the anchorage below Cabo Lobos;[47] but the directions and distances
specifically stated, and the specific identification of Rio San Ignacio
at the end and at other points of the journey, all prove that this was
not the route actually traveled. The terminus of the trip so clearly
fixed by the itinerary is over 100 miles from the nearest point of
Seriland proper; moreover, Tiburon is rendered invisible both from the
coast and from Cerro Nazareno not only by distance, but by intervening
sierras, notably those projecting into the Gulf to form Cabo Lobos
and Punta Tepopa. It follows that Kino and Mange completely missed
Seriland in their expedition to the coast, and there is nothing to
indicate that they ever saw the Seri tribesmen. Their descriptions of
the Indians encountered fairly fit the peaceful Papago of the interior
and the timid Tepoka of the coast; and neither Mange’s narrative nor
other contemporary records suggest contact between the exploring party
and the distinctive holders of Tiburon. The specific and repeated
references in the itinerary to the island of San Agustin, or Tiburon,
evidently relate to the ancient Isla de Santa Inez, the modern Isla
Angel de la Guarda,[48] one of the most prominent geographic features
visible either from Cerro Nazareno or from the adjacent coast. There
is no reason to infer that Kino or any of his party ever detected
their error in identification of geographic features which must have
been conspicuous in the lore of the aborigines and settlers of Sonora;
indeed, the error well attests the prominence of the Seri and their
habitat in the local thought of the time.[49]
[46] Tabula California, anno 1702 (Via terrestris in Californiam
comperta et detecta per R. Patrem Eusebium Fran. Chino è S. I.
Germanum. Adnotatis novis Missionibus ejusdem Soctis ab anno 1698 ad
annum 1701), in Stocklein, Der Neue Welt-Bott, Augsburg und Grätz, 1726.
[47] Elaborately mapped and established (on paper) as the “Puerto
y Villa de la Libertad” in 1861 (Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana
de Geografia y Estadistica, 1863, X, p. 263 et seq.), and actually
maintained from 1875 to 1884 as the port of Libertad (not the abandoned
Rancho Libertad on the border of Seriland), or Serna, according to
Dávila (Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, pp. 140, 309).
[48] Identified by Alexandre de Humboldt in his Carte Générale du
Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, of 1804 (in Atlas Géographique et
Physique, Paris, 1811). So late as 1840 the old name was sometimes
retained, e. g., on Robert Greenhow’s map accompanying his History of
California and Oregon.
[49] In one of the last letters from his pen, dated November 25, 1899,
the late Dr Elliott Cones wrote, “I find you trailing Kino and Mange in
1694 precisely as I had them, and I make no doubt of the substantial
accuracy of your typewritten MS. I accept your position that the large
island they sighted and named San Agustin was not Tiburon, but Angel de
la Guarda Isl.”
* * * * *
An effect of the Jesuit invasion was to give record to episodes
growing out of alien contact with the Seri. One of the earliest of
these records recounts nocturnal raids by the “Seris Salineros” for
robbery and murder in the pueblos of Tuape, Cucurpe, and Magdalena (de
Tepoca).[50] In January, 1700, Sergeant Juan Bautista de Escalante set
out with fifteen soldiers to this mission of Santa Magdalena de Tepoca
on an expedition of protection and reprisal; and here he learned that
the “Seris Salineros” had killed with arrows three persons. Taking
their trail, he reached Nuestra Señora del Populo only to find that ten
families of converts had deserted to steal cattle, whereupon he started
in search of them; he overtook them 20 leagues away, and, despite
armed resistance on their part, arrested and whipped them and returned
them to the pueblo. Among the captives were two “Seris Salineros”
concerned in the murders at Tepoca, and three others guilty of similar
outrages at the Pueblo de los Angeles de Pimas Cocomacagües; these he
executed as a warning to the others, after taking their depositions
and confessions, and after they were shrived by Padre Adano Gilo (or
Adan Gilg), the priest of Populo. This duty performed, he resumed the
trail of the Seri, accompanied by the padre; and, approaching the sea,
he found a port, as well as an island to which most of the Seri had
escaped in balsas, leaving eight of their number, who were arrested and
turned over to the priest.[51]
[50] A mission founded in 1699 by Padre Melchor Bartiromo (Historia
de la Compañia de Jesus en Nueva España, que esta escribiendo el P.
Francisco Javier Alegre, 1842, tomo III, p. 117), of which the location
has long been lost.
[51] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., tomo I, p. 321.
This is the first record of actual invasion of Seriland by Caucasians.
According to Bancroft, it “may be deemed the beginning of the Seri wars
which so long desolated the province”.[52]
[52] Op. cit., p. 275 (the year is misprinted 1800 on this page and in
the index).
The next noteworthy episode occurred when Sergeant Escalante, who had
returned to Tuape and Santa Magdalena (de Tepoca), again set out for
the coast on February 28, 1700, taking a new route (probably down Rio
Bacuache). He traveled 30 leagues, passing four watering places, and on
March 6 arrived at the Paraje de Aguas Frias (probably Pozo Escalante
or Agua Amarilla of recent maps); there, three nights later, he was
attacked by archers, who discharged arrows into the soldiers’ camp and
immediately fled. Subsequently, seeking their enemies close to the sea
20 leagues away (probably on the eastern shore of El Infiernillo),
Escalante and his men were joined by 120 Tepoka people; and, failing to
find their assailants, they gave these allies a supply of provisions
and turned them over to Padre Melchor Bartiromo, who allotted to
them, in conjunction with 300 deserters from the missions who had
been captured by the soldiers, not only lands but corn for sowing and
eating. Having thus disposed of the Indians, Escalante and his soldiers
returned to the coast on March 28, 1700, to punish the boldness and
pride of the Indians in their stronghold (“los indios seris de la
ranchería del medio”). Passing by balsas to the island, “they overtook
those who caught up bows and arrows to fight, of whom they slew nine as
an example to the others”; and these others they captured and sent to
the priest at Populo—after which the party returned to Cucurpe in time
to celebrate Holy Thursday on April 8.[53]
[53] Resumen de Noticias, op. cit., tomo I, pp. 321-322.
This contemporary recital, written by Escalante’s acquaintance and
rival in exploration and subjugation, Juan Mateo Mange, bears both
internal and external evidence of falling well within the truth. It
is corroborated and extended by Alegre’s version, written forty or
fifty years later on data at least partially independent: according to
Alegre, Escalante and his soldiers went on balsas to the “Isla de los
Seris, which is called San Agustin by some, but more commonly Tiburon”.
He added that the retreats of the Seri after the murders and robberies
committed at the pueblos of Pimeria, as well as the abundant pearl
fisheries, have made this place highly noted (“muy famosa”); and he
correctly described the strait and the projecting sand-banks opposite
the center of the island, which reduce the open water to a width of
barely half a league: “At this constriction the Seri cross in balsas
composed of many slender reeds, disposed in three bundles, thick in
the middle and narrowing toward the ends, 5 and 6 varas in length.
These balsas sustain the weight of four or five persons, and with light
two-bladed paddles 2 varas in length cut the water easily.” He remarked
also that while a part of the Seri seen on the island by Escalante were
captured the major portion escaped, “fleeing with great swiftness”.[54]
[54] Op. cit., tomo III, pp. 117-119.
The early record is also corroborated, in a manner hardly credible in
regions of more rapid social and physiographic development, by local
tradition and by the survival of the well excavated by the party and
still bearing Escalante’s name.
On the whole it may be considered established that Sergeant Escalante
crossed El Infiernillo and visited Tiburon in 1700; and, although it
may be possible that pearl fishers or others preceded him, he must be
credited with the first recorded exploration of strait and island by
white men.
The specific references to the Seri and their insular habitat by
Ribas, by Kino and his chronicler, and by the various recorders of
Escalante’s expeditions, establish the extent of the lore concerning
people and place, even before the end of the seventeenth century. This
lore found measurable expression in maps prepared in Europe, even by
those cartographers who purposely or otherwise ignored the surveys of
Ulloa and Alarcon. In his “newest and most accurate” map of America,
1662, Fredericus de Witt depicted the Gulf of California (“Mare Ver
mio olim Mare Rvbrvm”) as extending northward to connect with the
mythic Strait of Anian (“Fretum Aniani”), yet he located Rio Colorado
(“R. de Tecon”) and Rio Gila (“R. de Coral”) approximately, placing
the largest island in the gulf, named “I. Gigante”, just off their
(common) embouchure;[55] and an anonymous map of the Pacific ocean,
apparently by the same author and of closely corresponding date, is
essentially similar.[56] The map of the northern part of America by
Peter van der Aa, about 1690, is also similar, though on smaller
scale;[57] and the same may be said of that cartographer’s new map of
America, issued about the same time, in which the island is designated
“I. de Gigante”.[58] A somewhat later map by Van der Aa (although
supposed to have been issued in 1690) is greatly improved; the “Mer
de Californie” is brought to rather indefinite end a little above the
mouth of Rio Colorado (“R. de bona guia”); the “Pimases” are placed
in proper position with respect to the Gila (“R. de Coral”), and the
“Herises” are located a third of the way and the “Ahomeses” halfway
down the gulf; while a greatly elongated island stretches from the one
to the other off the province of “Sonora”.[59] The origin of the name
“Gigante” is uncertain; it may be borrowed from a land feature. As used
in some cases it apparently connotes the size of the island, while the
use in other cases evidently connotes gigantic inhabitants.
[55] Novissima et Accuratissima Septentrionalis ac Meridionalis
Americæ, Amsterdam. (In American Maps, 1579-1796, Library U. S.
Geological Survey, 135.)
[56] Mar del Zvr, Hispanis, Mare Pacificum. (Ibid., 129.)
[57] ’T Noorder Deel van Amerika, Leyden. (Ibid., 178.)
[58] Nouvelle Carte de l’Amerique, Leyden. (Ibid., 156.)
[59] L’Amerique Septentrionale Suivant les Nouvelles Observations,
etc., Leyden. (Ibid., 181.) This island is not named, but is
undoubtedly the Santa Inez of several other maps—the Angel de la Guarda
of the present.
Naturally, in view of the slow and imperfect diffusion of knowledge
characteristic of early times, cartographers were dilatory in
introducing the observations of Kino and Escalante. The map of America
by Herman Moll, about 1708,[60] represents the “Gulf of California or
Red Sea”, connecting the “South Sea” with the “Straits of Anian”, and
depicts Rio Colorado (“Tison R.”) and a composite river apparently
designed to represent Rio Gila (made up of “R. Sonaca”, “R. Azul”,
and “R. Colorado”, with two other long tributaries from the south)
embouching separately a little below midlength of the gulf. Somewhat
above these are three islands, one of which is designated “Gigate
Isle”, while “Pimeria” is located correctly with respect to Rio
Gila, though too close to the sea, and “R. Sonora” is located too
far southward, with a province of the same name just north of it.
There is no reference to the Seri, but a locality in Lower California
opposite Sonora is named “Gigante”.[61] Quite similar is the map of
North America drawn and engraved by R. W. Seale about 1722, though the
provinces of Pimeria and Sonora are brought closer together, while the
magnified Gila is named Colorado (“Tison R.” also being retained).[62]
The map of North America presented to the Duc de Bourgogne by H.
Iaillot about 1720 is much the same; the “Isle de Californie” is
separated from the continent by “Mar Vermejo ou Mer Rouge” with four
islands, of which the southernmost, “I. de Gigante”, lies somewhat
below the separate mouths of “R. de Tecon” and “R. de Coral”, while the
extravagantly magnified Gila of previous maps is partially replaced
by a still more extravagant “R. del Norte”, rising in a mythical
lake above the fortieth parallel and falling into the gulf under the
thirtieth.[63] The map of Mexico and Florida by Guillaume “De l’Isle”,
published in Amsterdam by Covens and Mortier, 1722, patently begs the
question as to the northern extension of “Mer de Californie” by cutting
off the cartography at the critical point. “R. del Tison” is retained
as a subordinate river, while the separate and greatly magnified Gila
corresponds with that of the Iaillot map, the upper tributary being “R.
Sonaca ou de Hila”; “R. di Sonora” is depicted in approximate position,
with the province of the same name extending northward and “Seris”
located a little above the mouth of the river. No islands are shown in
the vicinity, but the name “Gigante” appears on the western coast of
the gulf, about latitude 26°.[64] The map of North America by the same
author, supposed to date about 1740 though probably earlier, recalls
the Van der Aa map of 1690 (?); “Mer de Californie ou Mer Vermeille”
ends doubtfully about latitude 34°, where “R. de bona guia” and “R. de
Coral” bound the “Campagne de bona guia”, and fall separately into the
gulf near its head; the “Pimases”, “Herises”, “Sumases”, “Aibinoses”,
and “Ahomeses” are distributed thence southward along the coast to
about the twenty-eighth parallel, while a nameless island stretches
parallel with the coast of “Sonora” from about 28° to 32°.[65]
[60] North America, according to ye Newest and most Exact Observations,
etc., London. (Ibid., 93.)
[61] Doubtless the mountain “La Giganta”, named by Admiral Otondo
toward the end of the seventeenth century (Documentas para la Historia
de Mexico, cuarta série, 1857, tomo V, p. 122), and noted by Hardy in
1820 (Travels in Interior of Mexico in 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828,
London, 1829, p. 243).
[62] A map of North America, with the European Settlements and whatever
else is Remarkable in ye West Indies, from the latest and best
Observations. (American maps, loc. cit., 110.)
[63] Amerique Septentrionale Divisée en Ses Principales Parties.
(Ibid., 109.)
[64] Carte du Mexique et de la Floride, des Terres Angloises et des
Isles Antilles, etc. (Ibid., 136.)
[65] L’Amerique Septentrionale ... par G. de l’Isle: Amsterdam, Chez
Pierre Mortier. (Ibid., 172.) The island is, of course, Santa Inez, i.
e., Angel de la Guarda.
With one or two exceptions, these maps demonstrate the prevailing
neglect or ignorance of the classic explorations along the western
coast of America early in the sixteenth century; yet they introduce
features representing vague knowledge of the Seri Indians and their
insular habitat, undoubtedly derived (like that of Padre Kino and
Sergeant Escalante anterior to their expeditions) from native sources.
The Kino map of 1702 gradually came to be recognized as trustworthy in
important particulars, and brought to an end the baseless extension
northward of the gulf; yet it was seriously inaccurate in details,
particularly those affected by the erroneous identification of the
second-largest island in the gulf with the largest. Accordingly Isla
Santa Inez (the modern Isla Angel de la Guarda) is omitted from its
proper position, and replaced by “I. S. August” close to the eastern
coast; yet the land-mass of Tiburon is roughly defined as a peninsula
bounded on the north by “Portus S. Sabina” (Bahia Tepopa) and on the
south by “Baya S. Ioa. Bapt.” (Bahias Kunkaak and Kino). Two other
considerable islands are represented as dividing the width of the bay
west-southwest of “I. S. August”, and are named “2. Saltz-Insel”;
although evidently traditional, their positions correspond roughly with
those of San Esteban and San Lorenzo. The map locates the “Topokis”
between Rio San Ignacio and Rio Sonora, with the “Guaimas” immediately
below the latter.[66] Kino’s three pier-like islands bridging the gulf
were adopted in Delisle’s map of America, published in Amsterdam by
Jean Cóvens and Corneille Mortier about 1722, in greatly reduced size,
though larger islands are shown farther northward; and an ill-defined
peninsula corresponding to Tiburon is retained.[67] The D’Anville map
of 1746 embodies Kino’s discoveries about the head of the gulf and
retains his pier-like islands, yet not only corrects his error in
omitting the second greatest island of the gulf, but perpetuates equal
error in the opposite direction: “I. de S. Vicente” is made the largest
of the islands and located near the western coast a little below the
mouth of Rio San Ignacio, while “I. de Sta. Inés” is made second
largest and is located southeast of it and near the eastern coast. The
third island in size is named “Seris”, while the fourth and fifth,
completing the Kino trio, are called “Is. de Sal”, and the mainland
projection remains defined on the south by “B. de S. Juan”.[68] The
Vaugondy map of 1750 locates the transverse trio of islands in greatly
reduced size, and omits the larger islands of the gulf.[69] The
islands, etc., of the Covens and Mortier map of 1757 correspond closely
with D’Anville’s map of 1746, and a nameless bay defines a peninsula in
the position of Tiburon.[70] The Pownall map of 1783 also follows that
of D’Anville so far as the islands are concerned, though the position
of that corresponding to the present Angel de la Guarda lies beyond the
limit of the sheet; “I. de Inez” lies some distance below the mouth of
“Sta. Madalena” river, off the territory of the “Sobas” and “Seris”;
“Seris I.” is smaller, the two “Sall Is.” are smaller still, and there
is an ill-defined projection of the mainland, bounded on the south by
“B. de S. Juan”.[71]
[66] Map in Stocklein, op. cit.
[67] Carte d’Amerique, etc. (American maps, loc. cit., 20.)
[68] Amérique Septentrionale ... par le Sr. d’Anville, Paris. (Ibid.,
50 and 51.)
[69] Amérique Septentrionale ... par le Sr. Robert de Vaugondy, Paris.
(Ibid., 27.)
[70] L’Amerique Septentrionale, etc., Amsterdam. (Ibid., 160.)
[71] A new map of North America, with the West India Islands.... Laid
down according to the Latest Surveys, and Corrected from the Original
Materials of Goverʳ Pownall, London. (Ibid., 22.)
While the makers of the later of these maps were engaged in
perpetuating the vestigial features, erroneous and otherwise, of the
Kino map, the Jesuits of peninsular California employed themselves
in reexploration of the western coast of the gulf, a particularly
productive expedition being that of Padre Ferdinando Consag, in 1747.
The padre’s map represents the western coast in considerable though
much distorted detail, and depicts “I. del Angel de la Guarda” as a
greatly elongated body, a third of the way across the gulf from the
western coast; next in size is “I. d S. Lorenzo”; then come “ I. d
S. Esteban” in the middle of the gulf, and in the same transverse
line, but quite near the eastern coast, “I. d S. Agustin”, the two
being approximately equal in size, while above and about equidistant
from them is “I. de S. Pedro”, about half so large as either.
These, with four smaller islands near the western coast, bear the
general designation “Islas de Sal, si puedes”, which in this case
may be translated “Salt (possibly) islands,” though later forms
of the name imply a quite different meaning, i. e., “Islands of
Get-out-if-(you-)can”, or “Get-out-if-canst”.[72] The eastern coast
shows two deep indentations named “Tepoca” and “Bahia d S. Juan
Bautista” bounding a peninsula corresponding in position to insular
Seriland.[73] It is evident that the cartography of the eastern coast
is based on that of Kino, that the island of San Agustin is hypothetic,
and that the land-mass of Tiburon proper is not separated from the
mainland, while San Pedro island is apparently the Isla Patos of the
present. The more general map by Venegas combines details of the
Consag, Kino, and other maps; “I. del Angel de la Guarda” is greatly
magnified and placed somewhat too far northward, while both San Lorenzo
and San Esteban are made much larger than “I. San Agustin”, which is
represented as scarcely larger than “I. de S. Pedro”; the mainland is
indented to great depth by Kino’s “Pto. de Sta. Sabina” and “Bahia
de Sn. Juan Baptista”, in such wise as to define a decided peninsula,
while the “Seris” are located 2° farther southward and below Rio
Sonora, and the “Guaimas” still farther down the coast.[74] Another
illustration of the chaotic notions of the time is afforded by the
Baegert map, published in 1773, and credited largely to Consag.[75]
The sheet locates the author’s routes of arrival (1751) and departure
(1768), the former overland from far down the coast to the mouth of
“Torrens Hiaqui,” and thence directly across “Mare Californiae”, via
“Tiburon” (lying just off the mouth of the river, in latitude 28°),
with the usual congeries of islands, headed by “I. S. Ang. Gart” (Angel
de la Guarda), in latitude 30°-31°, and the usual shore configuration
above the debouchure of Rio Sonora; “Los Seris” are located in the
interior between Rio Sonora and “Torrens Hiaqui”, while just above
the mouth of the latter lies “Gua mas M.[ission] destr. per Apostatas
Seris”. The Pownall map of 1786 incorporates Padre Consag’s results on
reduced scale, but omits the islands toward the eastern shore of the
gulf.[76]
[72] It seems probable that various early cartographers were misled
by the traditional lore of “salineros”, or salt-making Indians, in
combination with the unusual designation of these islands. In his text
Padre Consag rendered the term “Sal-si-puedes”, and strongly emphasized
the violent tidal currents and consequent dangers to vessels which
suggested the vigorously idiomatic designation to early navigators
(Venegas. Noticia de la California, III, p. 145); in the Venegas map
(ibid., tomo I, p. 1) the name is used without the qualifying comma,
and in the text it is hyphenated “Sal-si-puedes”, the author observing
concerning the local currents, “These currents run with astonishing
rapidity, and their noise is equal to that of a large rapid river
among rocks; nor do they run only in one direction, but set in many
intersected gyrations” (A Natural and Civil History of California,
p. 63). And the “Sacerdote Religioso”, whose letters place him among
the authorities on Lower California, wrote: “In the narrows of the
gulf are a multitude of islets, for the passage being so dangerous to
vessels they are called _Sal si puedes_” (Noticias de la Provincia
de Californias, Valencia, 1794, p. 11); while Hardy, who navigated
this portion of the gulf early in the present century (Travels in the
Interior of Mexico, London, 1829, p. 279), mentioned a passage “between
the islands called ‘Sal si Puedes’ (get back if you can)”. So, too,
Duflot de Mofras wrote of “les îles de Sal si puedes (Sors si tu peux)”
in his Explorations du Territoire de l’Orégon, Paris, 1814, p. 219.
Bancroft properly reduced the obscure connotive phrase to the single
denotive term “Salsipuedes,” and noted the signification as “Get out if
thou canst” (North Mexican States, vol. I, p. 444). In 1873-1875 Dewey
restricted the name to a single island and a channel, and emphasized
the currents in the latter “against which sailing vessels found it
almost impossible to make any headway” (The West Coast of Mexico,
Publication 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of Navigation, 1880,
p. 113), and rendered the name “Sal-si-puedes” in the text, “Sal si
puedes” on the charts. Hittell’s reference to “the group of islands
then known as Salsipuedes, the largest of which is now called Tiburon”
(History of California, vol. I, p. 225), doubtless expresses the early
use of the term precisely, save that the present Tiburon was long
treated as a part of the mainland, while its names were applied to Isla
Tassne or some other islet. Vide postea, p. 45.
[73] Seno de California, etc., in Venegas, Noticia de la California,
tomo III, p. 194.
[74] Noticia de la California, tomo I, p. 1.
[75] California, per P. Ferdinandum Consak, S. I., et alios, in
Nachrichten von der amerikanischen Halbinsel Californien....
Geschrieben von einem Priester der Gesellschaft Jesu (identified as
Jacob Baegert by Rau, Smithsonian Report, 1863, p. 352); Mannheim, 1773.
[76] A New Map of the Whole Continent of America, London. (American
maps, loc. cit., 4.)
On the whole the cartography of a century indicates that the striking
explorations of Ulloa, Alarcon, and Diaz were utterly neglected; it
indicates, too, that Kino’s observations were promptly adopted, but
that his erroneous identification of the island seen from Nazareno
occasioned confusion; yet there is nothing to indicate definite
knowledge of Escalante’s discoveries. Apparently the cartographic
tangle began with the failure to discover the narrow strait traversing
Seriland, coupled with hearsay notions of an insular Seri stronghold;
it was complicated by Kino’s erroneous identification of the hearsay
island; and it grew into the mapping of a traditional islet about the
position of Tiburon, and the extension of the mainland into a peninsula
embracing the actual land-mass of that island[77]—the islet lying
about the site of the modern Isla Tassne, and often appearing under
the name San Agustin.[78] Accordingly, so far as maps are concerned,
Escalante’s discoveries were no less completely lost than those of
Ulloa.
[77] This cartography reappeared occasionally up to about the middle of
the nineteenth century, as illustrated by the Greenhow map accompanying
the edition of his history issued in 1845.
[78] This condition is revealed in Mühlenpfordt, Versuch einer getreuen
Schilderung der Republic Mejico, etc.; Hannover, 1844.
* * * * *
The recorded, history of the Seri Indians during the earlier
two-thirds of the eighteenth century is largely one of zealous effort
at conversion on the part of the Jesuit missionaries, who repeatedly
approached the territory by both land and sea; yet the records touch
also on events of exploration and on the characteristics of the tribe.
One of the earliest chroniclers was Padre Juan Maria de Sonora, who
in 1699-1701 inspected many of the missions of Lower California and
Sonora and acquainted himself in exceptional degree with the neophytes
and their wilder kindred. About the beginning of 1701 he crossed with
great danger (“pasé con grande peligro”) from Loreto to the eastern
coast, and, accompanied by two “Indios Guaymas, caciques,” proceeded
among the Sonoran settlements.[79] On February 18 he was at the new
town of Magdalena (de Tepoca), “where, with great labor, Padre Melchor
Bartiromo had gathered more than a hundred souls of the maritime nation
of Tepocas”, and where the visitors were accorded an enthusiastic
reception. He went on to say:
[79] Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo V;
Mexico, 1857, pp. 125-126.
It is notable that where the Tepocas and Salineros are located
the sea is populous with islands [muy poblado de islas], and
the first of these toward the coast contains foot-folk [gente
de á pié], who live on it. Then there are two islands much
nearer the mainland of California, and it is said that they
[the Tepoka] are able to navigate in their barquillas [balsas]
to the adjacent coast; and the possession of these Tepocas, who
are all Seris by nation, of certain words of the Cuchimies of
[Lower] California, who occupy the opposite coast, indicates
that they have communicated in other times.[80]
[80] Ibid., p. 132.
This record is especially significant as indicating the affinity
between the Seri and the Tepoka, as establishing the transnavigation
of the Gulf by the Seri craft, and as explaining the possible passage
of loan words from the Cochimi to the Seri, and presumptively from the
Seri to the Cochimi.
A notable visitor to the shores of Seriland was Padre Juan Maria
Salvatierra, who had previously “made a peace betwixt the Seris
cristians, and the Pimas”, soon violated by the former “in the murder
of 40 Pimas”. In August, 1709, he essayed the recovery of a vessel
wrecked “on the barren coast of the Seris”, which these Indians were
engaged in looting and breaking up for the nails; and, by dint of his
“persuasive elocution ... not a little forwarded by the respectable
sweetness of his air”, aided by timely explosions of the bark’s
pateraroes (mortars), he induced restitution, the restoration of peace,
and the reinstatement of several of the robbing and murdering Seri as
communicants.[81] Padre Salvatierra observed the distinctive character
of the Seri tongue, but made no extended exploration of Seriland,
either coastwise or interior.
[81] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. I, pp.
405-411.
The next noteworthy visitor was Padre Juan de Ugarte, who, at the
instance of Salvatierra, undertook an exploration of the gulf coast
complementary to Kino’s land explorations about its northern terminus.
Ugarte was the Hercules of Baja California history; he awed the natives
by slaying a California lion, unarmed save with stones, and enforced
orderly attention to his catechizing by seizing an obstreperous
champion by the hair, lifting him at arm’s length, and shaking him
into submission; and under incredible difficulties due to absence
of material and distance of timber, he built the first vessel ever
constructed in California, the bilander (two-master) _El Triunfo
de la Cruz_—a fit prototype of the _Oregon_ of nearly two centuries
later—which proved to be the finest craft ever seen on the coast, and
played an important role in later history.[82]
[82] Hittell, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 191-193, 219-221.
On May 15, 1721, Ugarte embarked at Loreto (Lower California) and
skirted the coast northward to the Islas de Salsipuedes, whence
he crossed the gulf to “Puerto de _Santa Sabina, ó Bahia de San
Juan Bautista_” near the islands “en la Costa de los _Tepoquis_,
y _Seris_”.[83] The Indians soon appeared and, in excess of amity
(ascribed to the display of the cross), threw themselves into the sea
and swam to the ship, and afterward aided in taking water; for “early
next day the Indians appeared in troops, and all with water-vessels;
the men each with two in nets hanging from a pole across their
shoulders, and the women with one.”[84] After watering, the Ugarte
party, accompanied by two of the Indians, set sail in the bilander with
a pinnace and a canoe, and in the early morning found themselves in a
narrow channel apparently separating the island from the mainland; the
pinnace and the canoe were dispatched to courier the larger craft; but
“the channel, besides being narrow and crooked, was so full of shoals
that ... the bilander stuck and was in danger of being lost”, while
the canoe and the pinnace were caught by the currents and carried “to
such a distance as not to be seen”. Finding it impossible to return,
the party pushed on, and “after three days of continual danger, they
reached the mouth of the channel, where they found the boat and
pinnace”; when they were surprised to find the strait opening, not into
the gulf, but into a great and spacious bay. Approaching a landing,
they were met by Indian archers wearing feather headdresses and
comporting themselves in a threatening manner; but these were pacified
by the two Indians brought from the watering-place. Here Ugarte was
taken ill, and the islanders made thirteen “balsillas” on which fifty
Indians passed to the bilander and urged him to land on the island,
where they had prepared a house for his reception; this he did, despite
severe suffering, and was received with great ceremony. After a short
stay, the party explored the coast northward, stopping off Caborca to
lay in supplies, and discovered (anew and independently) the mouth of
the Colorado; then, despite repeated risk and much suffering from the
exceeding tides, severe storms, and the terrible tiderips off Islas
Salsipuedes, they finally made return to Loreto.
[83] Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo II, p. 343.
[84] Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. II, p. 48.
The itinerary of this voyage recounts the first recorded navigation
through El Infiernillo; and, while it is too meager to permit retracing
the trip in detail, it seems practically certain that the vessels
entered Bahia Tepopa, watered at Pozo Hardy, passed around Punta
Perla and thence southward through the strait, and emerged through
Boca Infierno into Bahia Kunkaak, afterward proceeding westward and
northward around the outer coast, and thus circumnavigating Tiburon.
While Ugarte’s pilot, Guilermo Estrafort (or Strafort),[85] displayed
great energy and courage in charting the coast, the voyage neither
yielded published maps nor affected current and subsequent cartography;
for, although Ugarte’s narrative and Estrafort’s map and journal were
sent to Mexico to be presented to the viceroy, they were apparently
lost.[86] Nor does the itinerary indicate recognition of Kino’s error
in identification of the Seri island, though several days were occupied
in voyaging from the island to the latitude of Caborca; indeed,
it seems probable that it was either Salvatierra, Kino’s intimate
associate, or Ugarte, Kino’s colleague and Salvatierra’s intimate
friend, who fixed the name of the pioneer padre on the geographic
features still known as Bahia Kino and Punta Kino—features which Kino
never knew, as already shown.
[85] An Englishman named (probably) William Strafford, according to
Bancroft; op. cit, vol. I, p. 444.
[86] Venegas, Noticia de la California, tomo II, p. 370.
Although both Salvatierra and Ugarte were on superficially amicable
terms with the Seri, the amity was evidently of the shallowest and most
evanescent sort. Venegas says:
Of the _Seris_ and _Tepocas_, although the padre passed
among them with the pay in his hand, he could not induce
them to assist him in any way, even when they saw the party
in the greatest distress; while others toiled, they reclined
with the greatest serenity, nor have they shown the priests
the slightest civility during the forty years of their
acquaintance—they utterly refused to part with ollas of coarse
ware, even for a liberal exchange.[87]
[87] Ibid., p.
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