Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [48]
Religious zeal is a critical component of outbreaks of possession, which is most often found among people in highly religious societies. Collective possession in North America, like that at Salem, emerged when this religious zeal (at Salem, embodied in the catalyzing figure of Samuel Parris) combined with other challenges to survival—with assaults on colonial communities being one crucial ingredient. Such was the case in Salem, and seems also to have been true in two other mass possessions in New Spain, in Abiquiu and Querétaro.
Abiquiu, first explored by the Spanish in the 1720s, was formally established in 1754 as a buffer between the aggressive and predatory nomadic tribes and the settled villages.197 It was a community born in violence. The Indians who lived there, called genizaros, were a mixture of plains Indians, Pueblos, and Hopis. They practiced a variety of religious beliefs, both Christian and indigenous. Many had spent their lives as servants in Spanish households, and indeed the name genizaro connoted a status as a slave or captive. The presence of genizaros points to one of the important features of New Mexico society in these decades: renewed conflict with the independent tribes who surrounded the Spanish-claimed territory. Genizaros often had special roles in the frontier defense of New Mexico, and were a critical force in the heightened violence during the 1740s–1770s. A 1747 Ute and Comanche attack on Abiquiu was so devastating that the colonists most exposed to violence abandoned their homes, and the area was not resettled until 1750.198 In the 1750s, Plains Indians and Apaches intensified their attacks on Pueblo and Spanish communities, wreaking havoc on the people, their resources, and their livelihoods.199
A new Franciscan priest, Fray Juan José Toledo, reached Abiquiu in 1756, and stepped into this situation of heightened apprehension about violence. He had read the Dominican witch-hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, in addition to a manual for priests that contained detailed information about idolatry, witchcraft, and the Devil’s pact. By 1760, Toledo reported that the region had been beset by witchcraft since he first arrived four years earlier. He told of a sect of Devil worshippers, led by a sorcerer who was trying to hinder Toledo’s evangelical efforts. The sorcerer, El Cojo (meaning the Cripple) used sympathetic magic, putting pins in dolls, for example, to inflict pain and suffering in others. He also concocted potions. Toledo accused El Cojo of killing another Indian with poison. When confronted by Toledo, El Cojo acknowledged that he had indeed made a pact with the Devil. Toledo had El Cojo placed in the stocks, and he agreed in this uncomfortable position to renounce Satan.
Toledo, who believed in the power of El Cojo’s magic, went to a Ute healer to consult her about what he should do. In doing so, Toledo followed the advice in his manual, which recommended consulting a sorcerer as one countermeasure in cases of witchcraft. But this strategy failed, too, and Toledo sought permission to torture El Cojo. It took some three years for legal proceedings to begin; not until April 1763, when a woman said she had been poisoned by another sorcerer, did authorities intervene. Their attention turned well beyond El Cojo to all of the alleged witches and sorcerers. The accused named others, and the accusations spread. The witches confessed to a variety of practices, including using love magic, turning into other creatures, and flying. Toledo was ready—indeed, eager—to do battle with the Devil, whom he was certain had taken up residence in Abiquiu, and he started to perform exorcisms. The evidence of possession was readily apparent to Toledo. When he performed mass in church, some women started writhing, shrieking, and howling like animals (see document 18). One woman even attacked Toledo, slapping him in the face. When he performed his exorcisms, the possessed replied to him in Latin, showing the unnatural knowledge of languages that was one