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Isaac Jogues, on his first journey after the conclusion of peace, of having concealed some spells in a small chest, or little box, that he left with his host as pledge of his return. The Father, seeing them disturbed, took that box, opened it before them, and showed them and left with them everything that was in it. Sickness having fallen upon their bodies after his departure, as we have learned from the Savage prisoners who have escaped, and the worms having perhaps damaged their corn, as the letter of the Dutch testifies,—these poor blind creatures have believed that the Father had left the Demon among them, and that all our discourses and all our instructions aimed only to exterminate them. These are the reasons for which they have resumed the war; insomuch that the good Father Jogues, murdered on the eighteenth of October, has had the honor to be a symbol of Jesus Christ,—being regarded as a man who had the Devil with him, and who employed Beelzebub for driving out the Demons from their souls and from all their country. . . .

Source: Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations, v. 30, 227–29.

Resistance and the Devil

This section contains three documents concerning two major Indian rebellions in North America, one (the Tepehuan revolt of 1616) in the province of Nueva Vizcaya and the other (the Pueblo revolt of 1680) in New Mexico. The second event expelled the Spanish from New Mexico for over a decade. Europeans associated those who worshipped the Devil with obstinacy and connected Indians who resisted evangelization and Spanish occupation with Satan. In document 1, we saw a priest blame sorcerers for Indian resistance to Christian conversion. In documents 4 and 5, the sorcerers resisted the entire Spanish colonial enterprise. Was witchcraft an important aspect of resistance to colonial rule, as the Spanish believed it to be? Were they, in fact, correct in their assessment? Why was it important to the Spanish that those who resisted their enterprise be described as demons?

4. Andrés Pérez de Ribas Explains the

Origins of the Tepehuan Revolt, 1616

Andrés Pérez de Ribas (1575–1655) was a Jesuit priest who entered the order in 1602 and sailed immediately for Mexico, where he spent fifteen years working as a missionary. His massive History of the Triumphs of our Holy Faith Amongst the Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples of the New World, which he worked on intermittently for some twenty-five years, offers this account of the origins of the Tepehuan revolt, a major uprising against the Spanish in northern New Spain that lasted from 1616 to 1620. What was Pérez de Ribas’s opinion of the Tepehuanes? How did Pérez de Ribas understand the revolt? How might the Tepehuanes have explained their own experience? What role did witchcraft play in this event, both according to Pérez de Ribas’s account and in your own assessment of the uprising? Compare Pérez de Ribas’s account of witches with that of Benavides in document 1. What important differences do you see in the two descriptions of sorcery in Indian society? How might you account for them?

Before writing about the fierce, barbarous, and infidel decision made by this nation, I must explain the motive and cause of this—one of the greatest uprisings, disturbances, and ravages of war in Nueva España. We could even say that this was the greatest [rebellion] since the conquest. . . . [W]e must record here that which was well known concerning the Tepehuan nation, namely that they could not allege that the Spaniards, far less their missionary priests, had mistreated or maligned them in such a way that they should have any reason to fail in the Faith that was their duty to God. Nor did they have reason to break the peace that they had established with the Spaniards and their king, under whose protection they had placed themselves. There was only one cause of what happened here—it was a scheme invented by Satan and welcomed by these blind people. [The scheme] enraged their spirits to take up arms against the Faith of Christ and all things Christian. . . . This was demonstrated even more clearly