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Also they poison the water-holes. Nielsen told of some men who were massacred by Seris on the mainland opposite Tiburon Island. One man, who had gone away from camp, returned to hear the attack upon his companions. He escaped and made his way to Gyamus.
The savages made ambushes, but they had only bows and arrows, and the vaqueros fought bravely with their guns. Every ambush turned out disastrously for the Indians. Finally, the Seris made a great ambush, and there was a battle which resulted in the killing of sixty-five savages.
Procuring assistance this man returned to the scene of the massacre, only to find stakes in the sand, with deep trails tramped around them, and blackened remains of fires, and bones everywhere. Nielsen went on to say that once from a hiding place he had watched Seris tear up and devour a dead turtle that he afterward ascertained was putrid.
The president of a province is introduced, by Prudentius as thus addressing a martyr: Tu qui Doctor, ait, seris novellum Commenti genus, ut Leves Puellae, Lucos destituunt, Jovem relinquant; Damnes, si sapias, ANILE DOGMA. The Christian Fathers confess, and glory in it, that the greater part of their congregations consisted of women and children, slaves, beggars, and vagabonds.
The Seris often take birds in this fashion. Señor Encinas was the pioneer in that region. He found good grazing country in the territory claimed by the Seris, and so established his stock farm there. He brought priests with him to convert the savages, and caught a couple of the latter to educate as interpreters. The plan for civilizing the Indians proved a failure.
When one of the squaws wishes to make meal of mesquite beans, and she has no utensil for the purpose, she looks about until she finds a rock with an upper surface, conveniently hollow, and on this she places the beans, pounding them with an ordinary stone. The Seris live on the Island of Tiburon, in the Gulf of California. They also claim 5,000 square miles of the mainland in Sonora.
This was the land of the Seri Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were cannibals. I had read considerable about them, much of which ridiculed the rumors of their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of exceeding interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land of the Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data concerning them.
Illic omnes nudi incedunt, et fere omnia sunt singulis communia, nec vtuntur priuatis clauibus siue seris, imo et omnes mulieres sunt communes omnibus et singulis viris, dummodo violentia non inferatur: Sed et peior est ijs consuetudo, quod libenter comedunt teneras carnes humanas: vnde et negotiatores adferunt eis crassos infantes venales: quod si non satis pingues afferuntur, eos saginant sicut nos vitulum, siue porcum.
The most interesting ornament seen on any member of the tribe was a necklace of human hair, adorned with the rattles of rattlesnakes, which abound in the territory infested with these remnants of all that is most objectionable among the aboriginal red men of this continent. Physically speaking, the Seris are most remarkable.
Small as is the tribe of Seris they number only about 200 souls these savages are the most blood-thirsty in North America. For a long time they have terrorized Sonora, but the Mexican Government seems powerless to control them. The tribe was visited recently by an expedition from the Bureau of Ethnology, which has just returned to Washington with some very interesting information. Prof.
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