[121] Historia de la Compañia de Jesus, p. 216.
[122] The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. III (The Native Races, vol. III), 1882, p. 704.
As an extraordinary trapping [Zierde] the Seris pierce the nasal septum and hang small colored stones, which swing in front of the mouth, thereto by strings. A few carry, suspended from the nose, little blue-green pebbles, in which they repose great faith. They prize these very highly, and one must give them at least a horse or a cow in exchange for one.[125]
[125] Nachrichten von verschiedenen Ländern des Spanisches Amerika, aus eigenhändigen Aufsätzen einiger Missionare der Gesellschaft Jesu, herausgegeben von Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, erster Theil; Halle, 1809, p. 255.
It is significant fact, and one attesting the physical and intellectual distance of the padres from the normal Seri, that so few notes of ethnologic value were made during the Jesuits’ régime. With a single exception, so far as is known,[126] they recorded not a word of the Seri tongue, not a distinctive custom beyond those evidently of common knowledge, none of the primitive ceremonies and ideas such as attracted their coadjutors in Canada and elsewhere. They made no reference to the alleged cannibalism so conspicuous in later lore; but their silence on this point cannot be regarded as evidential, since they were equally silent concerning nearly all the characteristic customs and traits. The neighboring Papago tribe met the invaders frankly as man to man, displaying a notable combination of receptivity and self-containment which enabled them to assimilate just so much of the Caucasian culture as they deemed desirable, yet to maintain their purity of blood and distinctiveness of culture for centuries; the Seri, on the other hand, met the invaders as enemies, to be first feared, then blinded, balked, and bled by surreptitious and sinister devices, and finally to be assassinated through ambuscade or remorseless treachery; and it is manifest that they surpassed the gentle padres in shrewdness and strategy, using them as playthings and tools, and carefully concealing their own characters and motives the while.
[126] The Noticia de las Personas qua han escrito ó publicado algunas obras sobre Idiomas que se hablan en la Republica (of Mexico), by Dr José Guadalupe Romero, includes a MS. “Vocabulario de las Lenguas Eudeve, Pina y Seris”, written by Padre Adamo Gilg (Bol. Soc. Mex. Geog. y Estad., 1860, tomo VIII, p. 378).