[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SPONGE USED FOR HOUSE COVERING, TIBURON ISLAND]
Don Pascual estimates that during the dozen years of strife between his men and the Seri forces about half of the tribe were slain. The horror of the history of this period may be passed over; it may merely be noted as a casual fact that one of the two Mexicans accompanying the 1895 expedition was credited with 17 Seri heads. When he pointed out the site of his last exploit, a mile or two south of Rancho Libertad, and some incredulity was expressed, he immediately galloped to the spot and brought back a silent witness in the form of a bleached Seri skull.[218]
[218] The specimen described by Dr Hrdlička, postea, p. 141.
At the close of the war Don Pascual continued the industrial development of the plains lying east of the desert border of Seriland, received new concessions in recognition of his conquest, and developed the ranches of Santa Ana and Libertad; but the evangelical arm of his vigorous mission gradually withered. For a dozen years the Seri looked up to “El Patron” as a quasi ruler, whose approval was requisite for the ratification of chieftainship, and through him ran a slender thread of nominal fealty to the state and the republic; yet few parasites gathered about the rancho. Mashém had gone back to his clan; and when depredations were committed at Bacuachito or elsewhere and the criminals were caught, usually through Don Pascual’s instrumentality, they were sometimes haled to Hermosillo for trial, and Kolusio was kept there as the official interpreter of charges and evidence and findings. Sometime during the sixties a few Seri youths were coaxed to Pueblo Seri for education, but when they were instructed to cut their hair they slunk dejectedly to their temporary domicile, only to decamp during the ensuing night; again, in 1870, Kolusio was commissioned to bring in a few young people and a matron or two of the tribe, and succeeded in doing so just in time to encounter an epidemic of measles, from which some died, while the others shook the dust of the pueblo from their feet forever; and this last straw, added to his alien residence and his presence at the dreaded trials, broke down the tribal toleration of Kolusio and made him an outlaw forever.