Читать книгу The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*)) - W J McGee - Страница 18

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Hodge30) 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”.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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:

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 170246 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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 “Guaÿmas 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

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 island77—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.

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:

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

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.

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

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.