[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
[Illustration: INTERIOR HOUSE STRUCTURE, TIBURON ISLAND.]
Even during the Encinas régime the Seri came in occasional contact with aliens on other parts of the frontier: on Hacienda Serna, the somewhat remoter borderland outpost on the north, the relations between the landholders and the Seri were analogous to those on the Encinas plains, though less acute in the ratio of relative distance. Occasionally small parties of warriors journeyed to Guaymas[220] on balsas or on foot to barter pelican-skin robes for Caucasian commodities, chiefly aguardiente and manta; still more rarely similar pilgrimages were made to the outskirts of Hermosillo; a few marauding raids were made to the ranches lying near Cieneguilla and Caborca; and a number of ill-advised prospecting parties, coming by land or water, paid the penalty of foolhardiness. Writing about 1864, Historian Velasco recurred to the Seri to say:
[220] The accompanying plate XII is reproduced, from a photograph of a small group of Seri traders taken near Guaymas, probably during the eighties. It was kindly furnished by F. A. Ober, who purchased it in Guaymas.
This handful of bandits, assassins, thieves, brutes [inhumanos], infinitely vile and cowardly, on February 28 last, on the Guaymas road, at the place called Huerfano, assassinated 4 unhappy women, including a girl of 9 years, and 7 men who were conducting them in a cart toward that port.
He bitterly denounced the apparent apathy of the state and federal authorities, adding:
When it is read in history fifty years hence that a handful of murderous Ceris, certainly not more than 80 of the tribe able to bear arms, was able to domineer in the midst of their crimes with unexampled audacity on account of the debility of the government and the inhabitants, it will be regarded as a romance or a fable; for it seems impossible that in the nineteenth century such a condition of things could exist to degrade the reason, the morality, and the dignity of civilized man.
Yet a final note, apparently added in press, recorded that—
In consequence of the last incident of the Ceris, the prefect of Guaymas, Don Cayetano Navarro, took the field, returning with 12 women and 16 children prisoners; also 2 striplings and a vieillard. He slew 9 among those who had no leader. This was on Isla Tiburon. The Indians fled thence, and are supposed to be at Tepococ.[221]