Another curtailment of the range of the Seri dates from the refounding of the mission of “San José de Guaimas”[106] (on the site of the present Guaymas) in 1751, and the establishment of a “rancho called Opan Guaimas” some distance up the coast about the same time; the site of the mission being that of a sanctuary located by Kino in 1701, and revisited by Salvatierra and Ugarte, though never continuously maintained. True, the padre and the ranchero suffered from the Seri, who displaced the former, killed eight of his converts, burned the church, and scattered the hundred families of the pueblo, afterward keeping the Spaniards at a distance for ten years;[107] yet the settlers only returned with new vigor, and gradually gained the strength requisite for holding the town. Naturally the belligerency of the Seri in this vicinity impressed the state authorities with the desirability of further “extermination”; and when in 1756 a band of the Seri, after a hypocritical suit for peace, entrenched themselves among the all but inaccessible rocks and barrancas of Cerro Prieto (a ragged sierra midway between Pitic and San José de Guaimas, which for this reason came to be regarded—erroneously—as the headquarters of the tribe), Don Juan Antonio de Mendoza, then governor of Sonora, sent out a strong body of soldiery to dislodge or destroy them; but after 200 of the soldiers were ambushed and 24 of them wounded, the expedition returned to the capital, San Miguel de Horcasitas. Stung by this defeat, Mendoza reorganized his force and led the way in person to Cerro Prieto, where one of the four parties into which the force was divided wrought such execution that, in the following May, there were seen the bodies of enemies “dead and eaten by animals, dead and partly buried in the earth, dead lying in caves, and dead in the water-pockets of the sierra”.[108] In this battle Mendoza himself was ambushed and attacked by three Seri archers, escaping only by the mediation of his saint (“por medio de mi santo”); but during the ensuing night he carried out the ingenious ruse of beating drums in different parts of the canyon, which reechoed from the rocky heights with such terrifying effect that the enemy fled, leaving him in victorious possession of the field. [106] Rudo Ensayo, p. 229 (misspelled “Guiamas”). [107] Bancroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 554. [108] Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, cuarta série, tomo I, p. 85.