Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [107]
All of this went on the same night and day in full view of many people, and it became necessary to contain the sick women so they would not injure themselves with the major afflictions of this sickness, I mean sick woman. During the exorcisms, María shouted in an intelligible voice that the Indian Jacinta and her mother, the old woman called Atole Caliente, were suffocating her. This was apparent by the anxieties and demonstrations she made with her body and hands. She also said that they commanded her the other day, which was a Holy Day of Obligation and festival, not to attend Mass. I said she should be taken by force. She responded that I did not govern her, that she was subject to the two Indians referred to, who controlled her. Their motive was that she should not go to the church and report what she talked about, and she declared they would suffocate her more.
At daybreak, María had a short rest. On that same day, the sick women entered the church and, because people were there, I went to the altar and began to examine the missal before putting on the vestments. All the sick women fell to the floor, the first being María de Chávez. I turned my face to see her while some men held her down. The Indian Atole Caliente was above her head, holding the sick woman by the throat with one hand, and with the other, gesturing to suffocate her by inserting the point of a blanket into her mouth in the manner that an executioner does with a gag used for hanging. I heard someone try to quiet her by saying, “Mariquita, Mariquita,” which was the reason it was necessary for me to turn around and, leaving the altar, put myself in the middle of the disturbance in order to remove the Indian Atole Caliente, whose insolence caused me great indisposition. I was not so incapacitated that I could not celebrate the Mass. It was the Mass of Our Lady. Nevertheless, I should have done what Our Lord did when he whipped those who profaned the temple, by leaving part of the deserved penalty for this sort of boldness in full view of so much of the congregation. Instead I did it afterward outside the church in the presence of the lieutenant and many people, charging that the punishment was given for such irreverence committed in such a place and questioning Atole about her motives for committing such an act. Atole Caliente did not respond beyond saying she did it charitably to remove the evil. Immediately, she was prepared for the legal proceeding and entrusted to her daughter Jacinta. The Indian Joaquín went to the Lord Governor (whom he was referred to), so that he might participate in [the] situation he started, which was the exposure of the sorcery. This woman did not rest, nor did the others during the day or night until close to daybreak. (See figure 18.)
On the twenty first day of the same month, all these women were in place below the altar steps for the Mass and exorcisms. They were calm until I began to sing the first phrases of the gospel, which is when they let loose, one after the other, with grimaces, shaking, trembling, fainting, violent acts and other controversies. Because they exhibited so much cackling, annoyances, etc., which were horrifying, I had the good sense to perform the exorcism with the exposition of the sacrament and with the recital of “quomodo caecidisti Lucifer qui mane orievaris.”1 One of the possessed women responded “by way of insolence and arrogance,” and in the same instance her body fell to the floor and she remained exhausted until the exorcism entered her mind so that she could get up and then the exorcism was finished.
This same day, another young maiden furiously let loose inside the church exhibiting a certain spirit of illness discovered in the month of September of 1763 with such a powerful evil that