The Seri of Sonora, Mexico, are today associated with an ejido (or communal lands registered with the Mexican Registro Agrario Nacional) on the arid eastern coast of the Gulf of California and the communities of El Desemboque and Puenta Checa. Special Collections, University of Arizona Libraries, is home to a substantial Seri collection in the Papers of William Neil Smith (MS 316), currently measuring 24 linear feet, with additions to follow.
Synonymy
“Seri” is an Anglicization of the Spanish terms Heris, Ceris, Cereas, Sadi, and Sori, whose ultimate origin remains indeterminate. The autonym is koŋkáak. Prescott College’s Indigenous Community Partnerships Program, working closely with the Seri, renders this as Comca’ac. See also Bowen in Handbook of North American Indians, v. 10, pp. 247‐48.
Includes diaries and photographs from Sheldon’s expeditions to secure specimens for natural history museums. Sheldon employed Seri guides on his Sonoran hunts and journey to Tiburón Island. His diaries and photographs have been published as The Wilderness of Desert Bighorns & Seri Indians: A Historical Classic of the Southwest: The Southwestern Journals of Charles Sheldon (Phoenix: Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society, 1977), and The Wilderness of the Southwest: Charles Sheldon’s Quest for Desert Bighorn Sheep and Adventures with the Havasupai and Seri Indians (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993), edited by Neil B. Carmony and David E. Brown.
Contains materials that document mid‐twentieth‐century Seri life in voluminous research notes, films, and thousands of photographs. Smith’s research, first undertaken while a student, continued for decades. He published little but compulsively collected information. His interests varied over time, and his materials include correspondence with scholars, reports of his fieldwork, and drafts of histories and broad cultural descriptions; accounts of filmmaking and attempts to sell his films; an extensive Seri census, with updates over several years, including genealogies of several generations; and notes on one of his few published research areas: Seri ceramic and bone figurines. His collection of Seri face painting designs is exceptional. Smith’s activities as a dealer in cultural materials, and later repatriations under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of items sold to American institutions, raise concerns about his activities. Researchers should be alert for sensitive materials retained or documented by the collection, and share findings with UA Special Collections staff.
Includes Seri information in conjunction with the research of Mary Elizabeth Moser, including her research on blue pigment which shed light on similar
Mesoamerican pigments. Fontana’s correspondence with Ed and Becky Moser sheds light on their difficult relationship with William Neil Smith, concern over his behavior, and Fontana’s struggle to see Smith’s work on Seri figurines to publication.
Includes more than four dozen images of late‐nineteenth‐century Seri and Seri life taken near Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.
Arizona Historical Society Materials
The materials located in this section can be found at the Arizona Historical Society Tucson location, an institution separate from the University of Arizona. There you can find manuscript materials, photographs, oral histories and books that highlight Indigenous life in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. This selection represents only a small fraction of the Arizona Historical Society's materials related to Indigenous life in the borderlands. Please contact their archivists for questions about additional materials.
