Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [80]
The Declaration of Sergeant Major Luis de Quintana, at the Hacienda of Luis de Carbajal, December 22, 1681
. . . [H]e . . . heard some rumors among the Spaniards to the effect that the Indians had complained of the present secretary, of Sargento Major Diego López, of this declarant, and of other persons, letting it be understood that they had rebelled because of them. This was because the said secretary, this declarant, and Sargento Mayor Diego López had been justices during the government of the señor general, Don Juan Francisco Treviño, in the case of a punishment which he ordered administered to forty-seven Indian sorcerers and idolaters for having killed seven religious and three Spaniards by witchcraft. Actually, when the iniquity was uncovered, it was found that they had bewitched the reverend father preacher, Fray Andrés Durán, minister of the district of San Ildefonso, who is living today very infirm from the spell which they brought upon him; and a brother of his; the wife of his said brother; and the Indian interpreter of the pueblo, who denounced them, and as soon as they rebelled they killed him, as is well known. The said señor general also had other notices to the effect that some clerical ministers, among them those of the districts of Teguas, Taos, Acoma, and Zuñi, being unable to work and fulfill completely their obligations as ministers in the midst of so much idolatry, were living very disconsolately because of the said superstitions, and it having come to the notice of the said señor general, he gave a plenary commission . . . to seize the suspects and investigate and substantiate the said crimes, which he did. Having arrested the Indians in various pueblos, he brought them into the presence of the said señor general, who sentenced four of them to death, and some of the rest to lashings and being sold as slaves and others to imprisonment. It was discovered also that some Indians were plotting a conspiracy as they had done during the time of other governors, in which many Indians were hanged on different occasions without the others being cured of the bad vice of witchcraft and idolatry. As a result of this occurrence they have borne ill will toward this declarant as secretary and later as son-in-law of the said maestre de campo, toward Sargento Mayor Diego López as interpreter and as collector of the idols and superstitious herbs which he took from their houses and from the fields, as well as toward the said maestre de campo as the chief executor of their punishment, who has always had a commission to act against them, and toward the rest as persons occupied in the said business. . . .
Source: Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682, trans. Charmion Clair Shelby (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1942), v. 2, 245–49, 289–90.
English Witch Beliefs Cross the Atlantic
These documents explore the transmission of English witch beliefs across the Atlantic. What did English colonists think that witches did? How did their beliefs compare to those of Indians and Spaniards (see documents 1 through 5)? With the exception of the witchcraft law of Connecticut (document 7), the documents focus on a region that historians have not associated with witchcraft—the Chesapeake colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Yet the very first known case of witchcraft in the English colonies took place in Virginia in 1626, and the last known ducking of an accused witch transpired in Virginia as well, in 1706.
6. The English Act against Conjuration, 1604
Because