Among the more useful contemporary records is an unpublished manuscript report by Don José Cortez, dated 1799, found in the Force library, translated by Buckingham Smith, and abstracted by Lieutenant A. W. Whipple for the Report of the Pacific Railway Survey. A subsection of this report is devoted to “the Seris, Tiburones, and Tepocas”. It runs: The _Seri_ Indians live towards the coast of Sonora, on the famous Cerro Prieto, and in its immediate neighborhood. They are cruel and sanguinary, and at one time formed a numerous band, which committed many excesses in that rich province. With their poisoned shafts they took the lives of many thousand inhabitants, and rendered unavailing the expedition that was set on foot against them from Mexico. At this time they are reduced to a small number; have, on many occasions, been successfully encountered by our troops; and are kept within bounds by the vigilance of the three posts (_presidios_) established for the purpose. None of their customs approach, at all, to those of civilization; and their notions of religion and marriage exist under barbarous forms, such as have before been described in treating of the most savage nations. The _Tiburon_ and _Tepoca_ Indians are a more numerous tribe, and worthy of greater consideration than the Seris, but their bloodthirsty disposition and their customs are the same. They ordinarily live on the island of Tiburon, which is connected with the coast of Sonora by a narrow inundated isthmus, over which they pass by swimming when the tide is up, and when it is down, by wading, as the water then only reaches to the waist, or not so high. They come onto the continent, over which they make their incursions, and, after the commission of robberies, they return to the island; on which account no punishment usually follows their temerity. It is now twenty-three or twenty-four years since the plan was approved by His Majesty, and ordered to be carried out, of destroying them on their island; but, until the present season, no movement has been made to put it into execution. To this end the troops of Sonora are being equipped; a corvette of the department of San Blas aids in the expedition and two or three vessels of troops from the companies stationed at the port of that name on the South sea.[136] [136] Reports of Explorations and Surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, vol. III, part 3: Report upon the Indian Tribes, 1855, pp. 122-123. The original Cortez manuscript is now in the Library of Congress.