Ceris. This is a small tribe, their number not exceeding 400 souls, or rather head [dessen Seelenzahl oder besser Kopfzahl]; yet the government of the State could not restrain this little band of robbers and marauders that for more than twenty years have perpetrated their atrocities on travelers between the port of Guaymas and the city of Hermosillo, the metropolis of the State.... The Ceris appear not to grasp the idea that they are human. Like the prey-beasts of the wilderness, they go out to slay men and animals, sparing only their own kind. In many respects they are viler than the beasts, since they slay without need merely to satisfy a lust for slaughter. They are not only the stupidest and laziest of the Indians of Sonora, but also the most treacherous and deceitful. During the Spanish rule, from the time the first visit was made to lead them toward social life, they have rebelled more than forty times. Only a couple of families [ein paar Familien] still reside in the village [Pueblo Seri], where they make ollas and subsist on the offal of the shambles. The proper home of these barbarians is the island of Tiburon and the adjacent coasts, whither they return after their outbreaks, although it is an incredibly desert region. Thence they repair to the highways to kill travelers and arrieros, or to the ranges to steal cattle. They confine themselves to the bow and arrow, and the latter are poisoned, so that every wound made by them is deadly, or at best highly dangerous. On my second journey into the interior of the country my horse received an arrow in the hip; the arrow, which entered 4 inches, could not be withdrawn until the following day; and for seven months the wound suppurated.... Their chief food consists of oysters, mussels, snakes, with fish and other sea food, which they consume entirely raw and which surrounds them with an intolerable stench; though this may be partly due to their exceeding uncleanliness, since the process of washing is wholly unknown to them. Their clothing consists of a kilt of pelican skin. They tattoo their faces, and some pierce their noses to insert a certain green stone [obsidian]. They are of dark copper color, large and strongly built. Although in their faces no human sentiments can be discerned, yet they can not be called ugly. Their limbs are so beautifully proportioned that the Spanish ladies in Hermosillo view with envy the slender shapes and the comely hands and feet of the young Ceris maidens. They wear no headdresses, and as their coarse, shaggy hair is neither combed nor cleaned, it sticks out in tangled tufts in all directions like spines on a hedgehog; this alone gives them a forbidding appearance. Their speech is quite like their character; it is guttural,