| Book lifts veil on state's witch trial past
By Sue Vorenberg
Tribune Reporter
April 21, 2006
New Mexicans didn't burn witches at the stake or hang them, that just wasn't their style.
In New Mexico's largely unknown witch trials - from 1756 to 1766 - the accused were mostly thrown in jail, although some punishments were a bit harsher, said Rick Hendricks, co-author of a new book "The Witches of Abiquiu" from University of New Mexico Press.
Hendricks, a historian at New Mexico State University, and his co-author, Malcolm Ebright, director of the Center for Land Grant Studies in Guadalupita, kick off a book tour on the subject today from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at Zimmerman Library at UNM.
"One woman was tied to a carriage wheel until she confessed," Hendricks said. "Another woman was made to appear in Santa Fe Plaza and was the equivalent of tarred and feathered. Instead of putting tar on the individual, she was stripped to the waist and covered in honey, then the feathers were put on the honey."
Hendricks and Ebright started researching the trials a few years ago after a friend found documents and suggested the two study them further, Hendricks said.
The witch trials, which lasted 10 years, were launched by Juan Jose Toledo, a Franciscan priest who believed a group of American Indians living in the area had bewitched him and made him sick.
"A lot of what was going on was just Native American ceremonies, but it wasn't what Franciscans were used to," Hendricks said. "All those elements were pretty much viewed by this particular priest as witchcraft."
The American Indians were from several tribes - mostly from the Great Plains - and joined together in a Hispanicized colony called Genizaros, which lived near an outpost at Abiquiu during that time.
Witches or not, the American Indians may have wanted to harm the priest, because Toledo and the Spanish were suppressing their religious traditions, Hendricks said.
"The descriptions of some of the activities would be familiar to anyone familiar with some forms of black magic," Hendricks said. "They would make little dolls that would represent people. They would cause injury people by, say, twisting the legs of the doll."
There were tales of witches taking the form of animals and running around the community, or flying to meetings via broomsticks, Hendricks said.
Still, a bit more than 50 years after the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, culture had evolved enough that Spanish authorities in Mexico City were reluctant to get involved in the squabble, Hendricks said.
"They were just sort of hoping it would go away," he said.
The priest performed exorcisms on some of the Genizaros; others were jailed or tortured.
"One of the things that's really interesting about it is that it's very late in time for that sort of thing," Hendricks said. "Salem was 1692. The middle of the 18th century, because of intellectual enlightenment, people didn't find those sorts of outbreaks of supernatural events as credible."
Carriage wheel torture and honey and feathers seems cruel today, but they were mild compared to the hangings and burnings in Salem, said Patty MacLeod, director of the Salem Witch Museum.
"There's kind of a formula for a witch hunt," MacLeod said. "You need an existing fear in a group or a community. Then you need an accusation of a trigger that plays into that fear. And then you have a scapegoat."
In 1692, the Anglos in Salem lived in a culture of fear, surrounded by American Indian tribes they didn't understand, MacLeod and Hendricks said.
"Salem was an area where there was a lot of Indian unrest," Hendricks said. "There was a lot of tension in the area. Most of the recent scholarship on Salem indicates that climate of fear had a lot to do with the outbreak there."
One of the more famous stories from Salem focused on the case of Giles Corey, who had rocks piled upon him in an effort to elicit his confession. Corey refused to confess to something he didn't do and right before he was crushed to death, he told his accusers "more weight," MacLeod said.
"He was a tough old bird," MacLeod said. "He was old and in his 80s, and he decided he wasn't going to give in to all this."
In Salem, fear of what was outside prompted accusations of witchcraft. In New Mexico, the priest was part of a small non-Indian group blaming the larger population of American Indians for his illness.
It was a culture of fear, but because the source was seen as outside the Spanish population, the authorities probably didn't take it as seriously, Hendricks said.
"Had it been Europeans, the Inquisition might have gotten involved from Mexico," Hendricks said.
"They wanted to know how many Spaniards were involved," but there weren't any, he added.
Eventually, the priest - who had some sort of growth in his abdomen - was cured by an American Indian healer, Hendricks said.
"He shouldn't have been involved with that sort of thing technically, as a priest," Hendricks said. "He didn't apologize to them after, not that we're aware of, but he came around to a different view."
While New Mexico's and Salem's witch trials are long past, the phenomenon of witch trials continues to plague society, MacLeod said.
It just takes different forms now.
"I think we've had some witch trials in the 20th century - like McCarthyism," hate crimes and racism, MacLeod said. "The fear comes from not understanding or ignorance of a person or culture. If you don't understand, then you become fearful and then you want to throw stones at it. I think that's how that happens."
abqtrib.com  |
|
