With the passing of the Jesuits, the publication of Sonoran records received a check from which the province has never completely recovered. True, the place of the order was partly taken by the Colegio Apostólico de Querétaro, which promptly dispatched fourteen Franciscan friars to Sonora, early in 1768, to take possession of the old missions and to found others;[127] it is also true that civil enactments and commissions, as well as military orders and reports, increased with the growth of population; but comparatively few of the events and actions found their way to the press. Seri episodes continued to recur with irregular frequency; according to Dávila, the Seri outbreaks and wars “exceed fifty in number since the conquest of Sonora”,[128] and there are decisive indications that the Franciscan régime was not without its due quota of strife. Moreover, the period was one of somewhat exceptionally vigorous pioneering, of the initiation of mining and agriculture, and of conquest over the “despoblado” formerly ranged and inhabited by the Seri. It was during this period that the Seri were permanently dislodged from their outlying haunts and watering-places in Cerro Prieto; and it was during this period, too, that exploration and settlement were extended to Rio Bacuache with such energy as to displace the Seri from their other outlying refuge in the barrancas of this stream. But, as the events and lines of progress multiplied, the burden for the contemporary chronicler augmented without corresponding increase in incentive to writing, and it is little wonder that the custom of writing, copying, manifolding, and printing the contemporary records fell into desuetude.
[127] Dávila, Sonora Histórico y Descriptivo, p. 10; Bancroft, op. cit., p. 672.
Despite the meagerness of the Franciscan chronicles, the friars of this order are to be credited with making and recording one of the most noteworthy essays toward the subjugation of the Seri—an essay involving the first and last actual attempt to found a Caucasian establishment within Seriland proper. The ecclesiastical corps, sent out from Querétaro college under the presidency of Fray Mariano Antonio de Buena y Alcalde, reached Sonora early in 1768, and were distributed among the missions to which they were respectively assigned before the end of June; and Fray Mariano participated in the efforts to subdue the Seri ensconced in Cerro Prieto. After some months of apparently nominal siege, the hostiles straggled out of their retreat, whereupon “the governor, seeing them assembled and peaceful, besought the friar to instruct and baptize them”;[129] the friar promptly acquiesced, with the provision that he should be furnished with the requisite appurtenances of a mission, including not only a church and sacred ornaments, but a house and living for a resident minister. The requirements delayed procedure, but resulted in the appointment of Fray Juan Crisóstomo Gil de Bernabe (already designated by the Querétaro college as Fray Mariano’s successor) to take charge of the Seri mission. “The new president, desiring to gratify his proper zeal and the insistence of the governor as to the need of those miserable Indians for the bread of doctrinism”, obtained candles and wine from private benefactors, and, despite his inability to find even a hut for shelter, established a sanctuary in the Rancheria de los Seris (Pueblo Seri) on November 17, 1772: