The original party comprised, in addition to the leader, Mr Willard D. Johnson, topographer; Mr J. W. Mitchell, photographer; Hugh Morris, Papago interpreter, and José Contrares, teamster. The party engaged in the expedition to Sierra Seri comprised the leader, Messrs Johnson and Mitchell, Mr L. K. Thompson of Hermosillo, Don Andrés Noriega of Costa Rica, José Contrares, and two Papago Indian guards, Miguel and Anton, of Costa Rica. The Tiburon party was made up of the leader, Messrs Johnson and Mitchell, S. C. Millard of Los Angeles, and Señores Andrés Noriega and Ygnacio Lozania, together with Ruperto Alvarez, a Yaqui Indian guard, and Miguel, Anton, Mariana, Anton Ortiz, and Anton Castillo, Papago guards; while Hugh Norris and José Contrares, with half a dozen Papago guards and other attachés of the rancho at Costa Rica, maintained an intermittent supply station at Embarcadero Andrade. Señor Encinas cooperated in the work of the expedition, part of the time at Costa Rica and part at Molino del Encinas, his principal hacienda in the outskirts of Hermosillo; while Mr Thompson and Dr W. J. Lyons aided in the work, the former at both Hermosillo and Costa Rica and the latter at Hermosillo.
The return trip from Costa Rica lay via Hermosillo, and permitted the extension of the plane-table surveys to this longitude. While at the city advantage was taken of the opportunity to obtain linguistic and other data from “El General” Kolusio, a full-blood Seri retained at the capital by the State for occasional duty as a Seri interpreter, who was obligingly assigned to the service of the party by Señor Don Ramón Corral, then governor of Sonora. At Hermosillo the leader of the expedition left the main party, which then proceeded northwestward and northward along the route followed by the 1894 expedition on the return journey, the party comprising Mr Johnson, in charge, with Messrs Mitchell and Millard, Hugh Norris, and José Contrares; and the plane-table surveys were continued and combined with the route surveys made on the outward journey.
The principal ethnologic results of both expeditions relating to the Seri Indians are incorporated in the following pages; the data concerning the Papago are reserved for further study. The topographic surveys of the 1895 expedition covered a zone averaging 50 miles in width, extending from the international boundary to somewhat beyond Rio Sonora. Mr Johnson, by whom these surveys were executed, was on furlough from the United States Geological Survey, and his resumption of survey work prevented the construction of finished maps, except that of Seriland (plate I), which forms but a small fraction of the area surveyed. The results of the remaining, and by far the greater, part of the topographic surveys are withheld pending completion of the inquiries concerning the Papago Indians.