representatives of the Seri to gain a shocking character for sloth, filth, thievery, treachery, obstinacy, and drunkenness. Assuming that a quarter of the converts were Seri (and this ratio is larger than any of the known records would indicate), there could hardly have been more than a hundred of the tribe gathered about the several missions at this palmiest time of Jesuit missionizing; and the records show that by far the greater portion of these were women, children, cripples, and vieillards, the warriors being commonly slain in the vigorous proselyting expeditions conducted by the civil and military coadjutors of the padres. If at this time the Seri population reached the 2,000 estimated by Dávila[96] and others, the proportion of proselytes (or apostates from Seri naturalism) was but 5 per cent of the tribe and naturally comprised the less vigorous and characteristic element. The writer of “Rudo Ensayo” reckons that during six years preceding 1763 the Seri stole from the settlers (for eating, the sole use to which they put such stock) “more than 4,000 mules, mares, and horses”,[97] i. e., enough to sustain two or three hundred people, or a full thousand if this meat formed no more than a fourth or a fifth of their diet, as the contemporary records imply—and this was after the “extermination” of the Seri by Parilla in 1750. [92] Diario y Derrotero de lo Caminado, Visto, y Observado en el Discurso de la Visita general de Precidios, situados en las Provincias Ynternas de Nueva España; Guathemala, 1836, leg. 1514-1519. [93] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, vol. III, p. 290. [94] Rudo Ensayo, p. 193. [95] Bancroft, op. cit.. vol. I, pp. 532-533. The former were annihilated or driven into the Yaqui country by 1763 (Rudo Ensayo, p. 166). [96] Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, p. 319. [97] Ibid., p. 140. Evidently the good padres greatly overestimated their knowledge of and influence on this savage yet subtle tribe; actually they touched the Seri character only lightly and temporarily, contributing slightly to spontaneous acculturation, but never coming into relation with the tribe as a whole. And despite the efforts of both soldiers and priests, the savages continued to ravage the settlements, to repel pioneering, to decimate the herds and murder the vaqueros who sought to protect them, to plunder everything portable and ambuscade punitive parties, and even to engage in open hostilities. “In 1730 the Seris, Tepocas, Salineros, and Tiburon islanders kept the province in great excitement, killing twenty-seven persons and threatening all the pueblos with a general conflagration”;[98] and both before and after this date the recorded sanguinary episodes were too frequent for even passing mention, while the indications between lines point to robberies and assassinations and minor conflicts too many for full record even by the patient chroniclers of the time. [98] Bancroft, op. cit., p. 517. * * * * *