Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [49]
When the governor finally intervened, he assembled a committee of priests to determine whether the people had in fact been possessed. The priests concluded that they had, and the governor resolved that the possessed were sorcerers who should be punished and denounced. He advocated several measures to improve evangelical efforts in the region: his investigation had revealed that the Franciscans did not know Indian languages, and so they preached in Spanish or Latin (one clue, perhaps, as to how the possessed could respond in this language), and they relied on interpreters who were not always faithful in their translations. The governor condemned rote learning as well, and complained that such practices resulted in new converts who did not understand Christian doctrine. When the governor made his report to the Inquisition in Mexico City, the tribunal was reluctant to act and loath to accept the veracity of the possessions. The governor was left to devise his own punishments of the accused witches who still remained in prison (four had died while incarcerated). All but three witches were released to live with Spanish masters, and these three were punished brutally, including one woman who had been accused of killing Spaniards. Her body was covered with honey and feathers, and she was compelled to stand for four hours in the sun.
Modern readers who study accounts of possession often wonder, as the Mexico City Inquisition did in 1764 as it perused reports from Abiquiu, if possessions were faked. Indeed, that was sometimes the case. An outbreak of possession in the city of Querétaro, located in the Bajío, in northern New Spain, provides an example of one such fraud. Like Salem and its neighboring communities, Querétaro was threatened by Indian revolts to the north. Like Salem Village, Querétaro endured economic setbacks as its mines declined. Like Samuel Parris in Salem, the Franciscans in the city observed the commercial decline and frontier violence of the region and saw Devils all around them.200
In 1683, a new group of Franciscans from a branch called Propaganda Fide reached this region where missionary enthusiasm had waned in the wake of epidemics and even idolatry.201 The Franciscans established a college, and they preached sermons that urged the inhabitants toward a more ascetic and rigorous expression of their belief. The sermons apparently had a powerful impact on auditors, and some women left their husbands. Beginning in 1691, the priests heard reports that these women had been possessed by demons. Like so many demoniacs before them, they recoiled from religious symbols, even spitting on the priests, the crucifix, and the church’s collection of relics. When the priests presented the Eucharist, the women resisted. They insulted Mary. In the winter months of 1691–1692, just as Salem, Massachusetts, started to be visited by some demons of its own on the other side of the continent, a Franciscan performed an exorcism on one possessed woman, who during the process discharged a remarkable collection of objects from her body; witnesses reported a snake that slithered out her ear, a toad, and some avocado pits. Soon the signs of possession spread, and so too did the expulsion of objects. One woman expelled a paper bag that contained twenty pins. Through the possessed, the Devil spoke to the Franciscans in Spanish (which gave the Franciscans pause, as the Devil customarily spoke Latin, but he still seemed to understand rudimentary forms of the language).202 The Franciscans concluded that a sorcerer was at work, and identified a mestiza curer named Josepha Ramos, called La Chuparratones (the mice-sucker), as the culprit. She was coerced into confessing that she had made a pact with the Devil and, in consort with other witches, was behind the entire affair.203
Like so many other cases