Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [90]
Source: A plaque located at Witchduck Road, Virginia Beach, Virginia, on the Grace Sherwood statue.
New Worlds
The documents in this section focus on how Europeans, Indians, and Africans lived together in North America. They allow us to glimpse the power dynamics of colonial societies and how witch accusations featured in those relationships. The first document, a witchcraft case from New Mexico in 1708, reveals complex ties between Spanish colonists and Pueblo Indians, in addition to delineating ideas about witches and witchcraft. The second set of documents in this section focuses on poisonings carried out by slaves. A variety of short excerpts from a travel account in West Africa, colonial law books, colonial newspapers, and the letters of Thomas Jefferson invite readers to debate whether they think that poisoning should be thought of as witchcraft.
12. A Case of Witchcraft in New Mexico, 1708
What starts as an accusation of witchcraft lodged by a Spanish colonist against three Indian women reveals itself as a complicated web of interactions, in which the accuser, Doña Leonor Dominguez, believed her husband, Miguel Martin, to be sexually involved with one of the accused women, Angelina Pumazho. The trial exposes the entangled lives of Spaniards and Indians in colonial New Mexico, only a few years after the Spanish returned to the province following their expulsion in the wake of the Pueblo Revolt. Witchcraft featured in these new relationships, providing a way for Doña Leonor to articulate her anger. How might the power dynamics of colonial society explain these witchcraft accusations—who lodged them, against whom, and why? The trial also gives us a glimpse of the inquisitorial method, common on the European continent, in which charges were brought forward by judicial authorities. Compare the process with the trial of Grace Sherwood in document 10. What important differences do you see? How might the legal process in each case have affected the outcome?
Santa Fe, May 13, 1708
Doña Leonor Dominguez, native resident of this Province, wife of Miguel Martin, appears before your lordship in due form and manner according to law, and of my own will affirm: that being extremely ill with various troubles and maladies which seemed to be caused by witchcraft, having been visited by persons practiced and intelligent in medicine, who gave me various remedies, which experiments were followed not only by very slight improvement but also every day increased my sufferings and supernatural extremity, and although I am a catholic christian, by the goodness of God, I know that there have been many examples in this Province of persons of my sex who have been possessed by witchcraft with devilish art, as is well known and perceptible in Augustina Romero, Ana Maria, wife of Luiz Lopez, and Maria Lujan, my sister-in-law, and other persons, the effect being the same in one case as in the others, which has been seen to ensue in some of them [by means of some small inquiry] upon their health, as they declare: Wherefore, I cite them, and having just suspicions of certain [persons] notorious for this crime [mutilated] some things and claiming the protection of your lordship’s zeal, I ask that you may be pleased to [order?] one of your agents [to come] to the house and habitation where I am staying, to take my legal declaration and solemn oath of what passed between me and the three Indian women of the village of San Juan, whom I suspect, promising to declare the occasion, cause and reasons for my suspicion, and in order that likewise it may be seen from the condition in which I find myself, which is also a matter of public knowledge and notoriety. . . .
This declarant, being on Holy Thursday last in the church of the Town of Santa Cruz, praying, saw beside her an Indian woman of San Juan, called Catherina Lujan, and further off [she saw] another, who is the wife of Zhiconqueto, the painter; that she heard this Catherina Lujan say to the wife of the said Indian: “Is this the wife of Miguel Martin?” and she answered: “Yes, it is”; and that