Ralph Twitchell, a lawyer for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, was trained in history and law at the University of Michigan. In the early twentieth century, he indexed the surviving Spanish archives in Santa Fé and in the Library of Congress.
He included the Royal Judiciary investigations of Leonor Domínguez’s witchcraft accusations "in full," because he thought the "record of the this trial, of consuming interest, and showing the manner in which proceedings of this sort were conducted."
They also are the most complete window we have into the social relations in Santa Cruz during the period when Spain was being transferred from the Hapsburgs.
In the years before he died, Charles II had questioned the value of the Inquisition. The man who replaced him in 1700, Philip V, was from the French House of Bourbon. Its progenitor was Henry III of Navarre who became Henry IV of France in 1589. He had been raised a Protestant Huguenot, converted when he was crowned, and assassinated as unreliable in 1610.
The fate of the women in the pueblo lay in the hands of three men who no longer saw prosecuting witchcraft as likely to further their careers. One was an admiral from Spain, the others soldiers from New Spain.
The governor treated it as a routine matter. His procedures were rooted in medieval Castilian law understood in Spain, México, and the colony. In 1550, the methods had been modernized to emphasize investigation over presumption of guilt, and to consider the well-being of the community, the equidad, over individual interests.
The governor, José Chacón de Medina Salazar y Villaseñor, was the first appointed by the new king of Spain, Philip V. He could trace his family back to medieval Navarre. At least one ancestor had died at Acre during the Fourth Crusade.
By the time his grandfather came of age, his branch of the family had moved to Andalusia and were supporters of the Spanish monarchy. Before Charles V ascended the Spanish throne, he had inherited Flanders from his father. When he was elevated to king in 1515, the King of France, who claimed the lowlands, expected him to pay homage. War ensued.
Gonzalo Chacón de Narváez y Alarcón served in Flanders where he fought a duel with his superior. He left for the Indies. Eventually he became capitán alcalde of one of the fortresses protecting Havana harbor, Castillo San Salvador de la Punta, in 1516.
His son, Gonzalo Chacón de Narváez y Treviño Guillamás, was born in Cuba where he became Almirante y General de Galeones, the great sailing ships of trade and war. He retired to Seville and Andalusia in 1655. He was named Marquis of Peñuela in 1692 by Charles II. The title went to his older son, who died in 1705 with no heirs.
José Chacón was also an admiral. He had married Antonia Torres de Navarra and Monsalve in Seville. Since nothing more is heard of him, he must have returned to Spain in 1712 where their son, Luis, eventually succeeded to the title.
At the time he dismissed the case Chacón may have been aware that one, if not both, of the men he had appointed as investigators had developed ties with Domínguez’s family. It certainly is the sort of thing members of her husband’s family, the Martín Serranos would have let be known.
Juan García de la Riva’s wife, Feliciana Rael de Aguilar, was the daughter of Leonor Domínguez’s aunt. Josefa García de Noriega had married Alonso Rael de Aguilar in Guadalupe del Paso. He had come from Lorca in Múrcia, Spain, probably as a solider.
His father, Miguel García de la Riva, had come in 1693 from Mexico City with his family. Juan apparently enlisted as a soldier. The family aligned itself with the governors. One sister, Teodora, married Vargas’s aide. Juan Páez Hurtado rose to governor in 1704. Another sister, María Francisca, entered the household service of the next governor, Francisco Cuervo y Valdés.
Miguel and many other family members returned to New Spain. In 1716 his widow, Micaela Velasco, returned to Santa Fé to collect affidavits to support the paternity claim for María’s children by Cuervo. Juan returned with her and died in México in 1717.
Juan de Ulibarrí’s connections are harder to decipher. He had come from San Luis Potosí as a solider. By 1704, he was second in command of the Santa Fé garrison.
He married Juana Hurtado, who may have been the daughter of Andrés Hurtado and Bernardina de Salas y Orozco. Angélico Chávez says that Juana had been captured by the Indians in 1680 and freed in 1682. However, he gives no more information on her fate. Her brother, Andrés Hurtado, was the first husband of Leonor’s sister Antonia Domínguez de Mendoza.
It’s no wonder Chacón decided to dismiss a case that might have the undesirable consequence of attracting the attention of Franciscans still loyal to his predecessor. Chacón knew from Spain, the necessity of building useful alliances. Although he seemed to side with one side over the other in the matter, both had signaled in their depositions they would prefer to keep the family matter private.
Notes:
Chacón, José Luis Diaz. Geneología del Apellido Chancón, available on-line. The chronology is confusing because there are no death dates, and the first marquis isn’t always listed.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.
Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 2, 1914; names standardized to those used by Chavez.
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