The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))McGee, W J
History
The Seri Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 1-344*))
McGee, W J
Seri Indians; Seri language; Yuman languages
Even before this date friction between missionaries and laymen had
grown out of the ecclesiastical charity for a people whose repeated
atrocities placed them outside the pale of sympathy on the part of
the industrial settlers; and this friction was felt especially about
the new presidio. In 1749 Colonel Diego Ortiz Parilla became governor
of Sonora, and began a rigorous rule over civilians, soldiers,
ecclesiastics, and Indians; and when the 80 families (classed as
Seri, but mainly of Tepoka and other tribes) domiciled at Populo were
dissatisfied with his transfers of land and people, he promptly met
their protests by arresting them and transporting the greater part of
them, including all the women and children, to various places, “some
even in Guatemala and other very distant parts of America.”[104]
Naturally this was resented, not only by the Seri messmates at the
missions, but to some extent by their kinsmen over the plains and along
the coast, with whom sporadic communication was maintained—chiefly
through spies, but partly by occasional escapes of the practically
imprisoned proselytes and the less frequent but more numerous
captures of new converts; and the Seri raids became more extended and
vindictive, reaching northward to Caborca, northeastward to Santa Ana
and Cucurpe, and eastward into the fertile valley of Rio Opodepe at
several points. Deeply incensed in his turn, Parilla undertook a war
of extermination—a war interesting not merely as an episode in Seri
history, but still more as a type of the Seri wars of two centuries.
Organizing a force of 500 men, and bringing canoes from Rio Yaqui, he
planned an expedition to Tiburon, to cover two months—and returned
with 28 prisoners, “all women and children and not a single Seri man”;
though he reported killing 10 or 12 warriors in action (according to
other accounts the slain comprised only 3 or 4 oldsters). These women
and children were domiciled at the pueblo of the Conquest of the Seri,
which in current thought thenceforth became the pueblo of the Seri,
and gradually passed into lore and later into history as the home of
the tribe rather than the mere penitentiary which it was in fact. The
padres waxed satirical over this quixotic conquest: Alegre recounts
that—
[104] Rudo Ensayo, p. 194; Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 535.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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