Local Landscape

Hopi cardinal directions are defined by the sun. Northwest is where the sun sets on the summer solstice and southwest is where it sets on the winter solstice. Southeast is where it rises in winter, and northeast where it rises in summer.

Western concepts of north come from the lodestone, an iron oxide that’s the only naturally magnetized mineral. When suspended, magnetite always points north. Pliny the Elder called it live iron.

Lodestones were employed for the compasses used by Columbus, and all the maritime explorers before and after him. Sun dials were modified. The iron oxide was placed in a circle divided into quarters, and divided and redivided until it could be measured in minutes and seconds of the clock.

It’s impossible to know how San Juan perceived directions before Juan de Oñate arrived in 1588. It would be one of the easiest words to translate without either recognizing differences. One points in a direction, and asks what it’s called. The other answers with the nearest equivalent. The two words are linked, even though north for one is based on a stone, and pim for the other on the sun.

San Juan defined itself by four sacred peaks in 1969, Canjilon to the north, Tchicoma to the west, Sandía Crest to the south, and Truchas Peak to the east. In 1910, John Harrington was told the four were San Antonio near Taos, Tchicoma, Sandía, and Lake Peak. The last is next to Baldy and has a sacred lake.

Jicarilla centered their geography around a single mountain. When the Hactcin where preparing the world above, Badger was sent to explore. He returned with muddy paws, so Beaver was sent. When he didn’t return, Black Weasel went to investigate. Beaver told him he was drying the land by damming the waters.

"When the people had emerged on the shores of a large lake called Big-Water-Lying-on-Top. They knew nothing about the rest of the world. They knew only the region immediately around this place. Four rivers ran west from this lake. One is called Big Water. This is the Río Grande. And the rivers are thought of as two married couples." Of the sacred rivers, the western Río Grande and the northern Arkansas were male, the southern Canadian and eastern Pecos were female.

When Diego de Vargas defined the territory for Santa Cruz in 1695, he used human settlements as his bounds. The grant lay between "the pueblos of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara" to the south and west, San Juan to the north. To the east it ran past "Hacienda de Moraga, and the farms of Captains Luis Martín and Juan Ruis" to a "tract of land called Chimayó."

That land he saw as empty between settlements once was defended by Santa Clara. Harrington was told, in the past, the pueblo ranged as far north as Ranchita where San Juan began, as far south as Mesilla above the Black Mesa, and as far east as Puebla.

In this history, I’m describing the communities between the northern and southern Black Mesas, between the badlands that parallel the Río Grande on the east and west. It encompasses most of the traditional worlds of San Juan and Santa Clara.

Notes: The pueblos and Apache give directions and move counterclockwise. Anglos work clockwise.

Harrington, John Peabody. The Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians, 1916. Ortiz, a member of San Juan, believed Harrington sometimes was given misleading information, perhaps to keep him from asking more questions.

Opler, Morris Edward. Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians, 1938. His sources were Cevero Caramillo, John Chopari, Alasco Tisnado, and Juan Julian.

Ortiz, Alfonso. The Tewa World, 1969.

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus). Naturalis Historia, book 36.

Vargas, Diego de. Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz, 1695, in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914. He decreed:

"those which extend beyond the pueblos of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara, on the other side of the Río del Norte, and, on this side, those which lie in front of the mesa de San Ildefonso and extend to the road which leads to the said pueblo of San Juan de los Caballeros, and those which extend from the latter in the direction of the highway which leads to Picuriés, to the Cañada called the Hacienda de Moraga, and the farms of Captains Luis Martín and Juan Ruis, in front of and at the place and tract of land called Chimayó."

Photographs: Murals on city-owned Hunter Ford buildings across from Cook’s Hardware, Paseo de Oñate, were sponsored by Cultura Cura/Culture Cures Collaborative. The group was formed by Lily Yeh and the New Mexico Community Foundation’s Collaborative Leadership Program. Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area, Inc. matched the NMCF funding. All imagery was based on collage of photographs by Alejandro López. My pictures were taken 29 October 2014, while they were finishing one mural.

1. Northern Black Mesa from Route 285, photograph, 15 November 2011.

2. Western Chicoma, detail from "Mother Corn," design by Rose B. Simpson of Santa Clara, with collaborative support from Warren Montoya of Santa Ana Pueblo.

3. Southern Black Mesa, detail from #2.

4. Eastern Truchas Peaks, detail from "Primavera" by Alejandro López, Roger Montoya of Velarde, and Arlene Jackson from Trinidad.

Scientific Explanations

Once physicists understood the nature of the atom and realized planets existed without water, they reenvisioned the formless void as an astral explosion. The Big Bang produced the first three elements in the periodic table - hydrogen, helium, and lithium - along with the hydrogen isotope deuterium.

Hydrogen burned to begat helium at temperatures greater than 50,000,000c degrees.

Helium burned to begat carbon and oxygen at temperatures greater than 100,000,000c degrees.

Carbon and oxygen burned to begat the elements up to silicon in the table, including sodium, magnesium and aluminum. The stellar core had contracted and temperatures had risen even more.

Silicon burned to begat the elements up to iron at 1,000,000,000c degrees, then the process stopped. At that point, heat no longer was generated. The production of additional elements would have used energy.

The original elements fell into three categories:
* Gases - hydrogen, helium
* Ices - water, methane, ammonia, nitrogen
* Rocks - magnesium-iron silicates

The ice, gas and dirt were circulating in a circumstellar disk where temperatures were falling. When they reached 700c, the iron began to become magnetic.

When the overall temperature fell into the range of 227c to 527c, the iron-magnesium silicates and iron-nickle began condensing.

Within the next 10,000 years, the small grains were kept buoyant by the gases, and began accumulating through nongravitational electromagnetic forces.

Then, when enough atoms had changed, gravitational forces took over. By the end of a million years, larger clusters (planetesimals) formed into planet embryos, a process that continued until all the material was absorbed into a larger body.

At that point, the gas had been dispersed, and no longer acted as a cushion between the embryos. They began colliding with one another to produce energy (heat) that began melting the material.

At the end of 100 million years the planet was formed, roughly 4,537 million years ago. The segregation of iron from silicon continued to form the core, which was complete about 4,535 million years ago.

Radioactive isotopes like uranium (²³⁸U and ²³⁵U), thorium (²³²Th) and potassium (⁴⁰K) were still in the core. They generated heat each time they underwent a decaying transformation. As the number and kinds of changes decreased, the temperature of the molten mass surrounding the core decreased. With time, it was low enough for parts on the surface to cool into crust.

Heat remained below, so the first crustal elements were unstable - forming, then melting, recycling their component materials. The oldest rocks on earth are recycled fragments of zircon found in Australia from 4,404 million years ago. The oldest in North America are in a greenstone belt near Hudson’s Bay dated to 3,800 million years ago.

The oldest rocks in New Mexico are found in volcanic rocks from Burned Mountain near Hopewell Lake and Gold Hill near Wheeler Peak, and in the greenstone belt near Pecos. Their zircons have been dated to 1,775, 1,750 and 1,720 million years ago.

Notes: Uranium decays to lead. Since zircons contain uranium, but not lead, they are used to date minerals.

Baldridge, W. Scott. Geology of the American Southwest, 2004; gives Pecos greenstone as 1,760 to 1,720 million years.

Daggett, M. Dewitt III. "Precambrian Geology and Metals Potential of the Twining-Gold Hill Area, Taos Range, New Mexico," New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook, 1984; gives Gold Hill as 1,750 million years.

Rollinson, Hugh. Early Earth Systems, 2007. He gives temperatures in Kelvin which are 237 degrees greater than Celsius, a meaningless difference at these temperatures; you could even think of them as Fahrenheit without loss of meaning. New quantities of metals like silver are produced when the right constituent elements are heated again to the right temperatures.

Whitmeyer, Steven J. and Karl E. Karlstrom. "Tectonic Model for the Proterozoic Growth of North America," Geosphere 3:220–259:2007; gives Pecos greenstone as 1,720 million years, and Moppin/Burned Mountain and Gold Hill as 1,770 to 1,750 years old.

Wobus, Reinhard A. "An Overview of the Precambrian Geology of the Tusas Range, North-Central New Mexico," New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook, 1984; gives Moppin/Burned Mountain as 1,775 to 1,725 million years ago.

Creation Tales

Creation tales attempt the impossible: imagining something outside the world we know.

The key metaphor used by King James’ translators of Genesis was formlessness:

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

They shared Francis Bacon’s view, mentioned in the last posting, that nothing was true until verified. The discovery the world wasn’t flat had shaken their faith in absolutes. They were willing to consider what once had been unthinkable.

The English College at Douay assumed a familiar world, one that had form but simply was vacant:

"And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters."

In both translations, God created light on the first day, the firmament on the second, and land on the third. When He created man on the sixth day, He placed Adam in a garden.

San Juan divided the primal world into "a big lake, Ohange pokwinge, Sand Lake" and the world underground. When humans emerged, they came through the water.

Morris Opler heard two versions from Jicarilla. In the first, Black Sky and Earth Woman created the Hactcin who lived in the underworld. In the second, there was nothing but darkness, water and cyclone. The spirits existed and they created the male Sky and female Earth, the one lying above the other.

Spirits in both versions created the sun and moon. When shamans amongst the group asserted they were the true creators, Black Hactcin threw the sun and moon out of the underworld. When those who would be human missed the light, the Hactcin created a mountain with a hole through which they climbed.

Some would say Native American groups borrowed the idea of primal water from the Roman Catholics, who translated Saint Jerome’s version of older Latin texts that came from Greek translations of Hebrew and Aramaic.

Biblical scholars have argued Jews borrowed their ideas from the Enuma elish epic of the Mesopotamians. The word "deep" in Hebrew is thought to refer to their evil ocean goddess, Tiamat, who was fighting for control with the supreme god Anu. Marduk slew her, and slit her body to create sky and earth.

Early Jewish codifiers weren’t as interested as San Juan or the Jicarilla in imaging a time before the present. They lavished more detail on Noah than they did the first chapter of Genesis. They wanted to establish their line of descent from the beginning, and were willing to accept the then current definition of that time. They kept the Persian narrative of the first seven days, but replaced references to a pantheon with a single god.

Freudian analysts would argue each group created a similar tale by extrapolating from a shared human experience, emergence from the watery, dark womb. Jungians treat water as a universal symbol for the unconscious each individual must explore to become fully human. For them, the general is a reflection of the inner life of the individual.

A few would simply say the similarities in origin tales arose from some common cultural core passed on since the stone age. Others would argue the shared parts were trivial compared to the differences that expressed the unique cultural heritage of each which had survived interactions with others. It doesn’t matter if people borrowed their visions of the unimaginable. What matters is how they conceived human experience.

Notes: P is generally considered to be the transcriber of the first two chapters of Genesis. He is thought to have been a priest around 500 bc, after the Jews returned from exile in Babylon where they would have been exposed to current Mesopotamian ideas.

Douay College. The Holy Bible, Holy Family edition of the Catholic Bible, Old Testament in the Douay-Calloner text, edited by John P. O’Connell, 1950. Sons of the Holy Family are responsible for the churches in Santa Cruz and Chimayó. Genesis 1:2.

Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, 1990.

James I. The Holy Bible, conformable to that edition of 1611, commonly known as the authorized or King James version, The World Publishing Company, nd. Genesis 1:2.

Opler, Morris Edward. Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians, 1938. His sources were Cevero Caramillo, John Chopari, Alasco Tisnado, and Juan Julian.

_____. "A Summary of Jicarilla Apache Culture," American Anthropologist 38:202-223:1936.

Parsons, Elsie Clews. Tewa Tales, 1926. She did not name her source for tale 1, but described him as "a man of about sixty" and added "his sister’s daughter, a woman of forty, was a good interpreter."

Speiser, E. A. Genesis, 1964.

Origin Tales

Origin tales explain how we humans came to be.

The ones of Spanish settlers in the Española valley, San Juan pueblo and Jicarilla Apache all began as oral traditions passed from generation to generation. Native American tales remained verbal. Those of the Españoles moved in and out of written tradition. At the time Juan de Oñate led them north into the wilderness, only priests had Bibles, and they were in Latin, not Spanish.

When James I issued an authoritative translation in 1611, twenty-three years after Oñate arrived at San Juan, the English king’s scholars wrote:

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breathe of life; and man became a living soul."

Roman Catholics at the English College of Douay in France had published an alternative translation in 1609 that read:

"And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul."

The account of Adam’s creation assumed a single, concentrated source of power that existed before humankind. By the time Genesis was translated into English, that power was male. It stretched in an unbroken line from the monarchs to the popes to the disciples to Christ. For Jews, it extended back through the kings to David and Solomon to Adam himself.

San Juan assumed a world of powers diffused among the unmade people under the lake and the spirit animals living below the ground. The future human the spirit people selected as a leader had to be both male and female, embody the gifts of each.

"Next, the people realized they needed a leader who was both male and female. When they found him, they sent him to explore. Kanyotsanyotse tetseenubu’ta, commonly called Yellow Boy, was the first made person."

The Jicarilla said "all the Hactcin were here from the beginning," but one spirit, Black Hactcin, was more powerful. After he made the animals, he "traced an outline of a figure on the ground, making it just like his own body, for the Hactcin was shaped just as we are today. He traced the outline with pollen" and brought it to life.

Genesis began with God creating a male and making a garden for him to inhabit. Next he formed "every beast of the field and every fowl in the air," but "for Adam there was not found an help meet for him."  So next:

"the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;"

Soon after he commissioned this translation, James made Francis Bacon his solicitor general. The intellectual world was poised for the great leap in thinking patterns signified by the Novum Organum Bacon would publish in 1620. The translators anticipated the neutral discourse of science when they chose the word "cause."

The Duoay version was closer to the Hebrew and the medieval world of witchcraft spells. They wrote:

"Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs and filled up flesh for it."

The Jicarilla used a trance. They told Morris Opler, the Hactcin used lice to make the first man sleepy.

"He was dreaming and dreaming. He dreamt that someone, a girl, was sitting beside him."

"He woke up. The dream had come true."

The older San Juan man who retold the origin tale for Elsie Clews Parsons did not feel the same need to explain the separation of male and female. They existed, coequal, from the beginning.

History begins in Genesis when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden for testing the tree of knowledge. Life in the outside world is a punishment for being sinful, for being curious, for being human. In San Juan and Jicarilla, the migration from the underworld is voluntary and desired, a reward for curiosity.

Notes:
Douay College. The Holy Bible, Holy Family edition of the Catholic Bible, Old Testament in the Douay-Calloner text, edited by John P. O’Connell, 1950. Sons of the Holy Family are responsible for the churches in Santa Cruz and Chimayó. Genesis 2:7 and 2:21.

James I. The Holy Bible, conformable to that edition of 1611, commonly known as the authorized or King James version, The World Publishing Company, nd. Genesis 2:7, 2:20 and 2:21.

Opler, Morris Edward. Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians, 1938. His sources were Cevero Caramillo, John Chopari, Alasco Tisnado, and Juan Julian.

Parsons, Elsie Clews. Tewa Tales, 1926. She did not name her source for tale 1, but described him as "a man of about sixty" and added "his sister’s daughter, a woman of forty, was a good interpreter."

Chronicles of Leonor: His Family

The physical problems that led Españoles to seek help from San Juan were ones beyond the ability of conventional medicine to handle.

Blindness was a pervasive problem, sometimes caused by aging, sometimes by accidents, sometimes from birth, and sometimes as a consequence of small pox or syphilis. Not only was Felipe Moraga having problems, but Cristóbal Martín, the husband of Antonia de Moraga, was losing his sight when he was in his late 40s. Cristóbal’s second cousin, Francisco Martín was already blind.

Three of the colonists recruited in Mexico City had lost the sight of one eye: Juana de Ávalos,

Francisco de Porras, and Diego Márquez de Ayala. She was 30 years old in 1693, the men were 40 and 19. The interpreter who accompanied Diego de Vargas to Santa Fé, Augustín de Salazar, also was blind.

The perceived cause of Felipe Moraga’s blindness was witchcraft done by Cristóbal el Caxa at the behest of Morgana’s wife, Catarina Varela.

The nature of the illnesses of the two women cured by Juan is never mentioned. The perceived cause is witchcraft done by Michaela when the two visited the pueblo.

Leonor Domínguez suffered some kind of convulsion in church, followed by physical collapse. She remembered someone had touched her back. She came to think she had been bewitched by contact with Catarina Rosa.

Antonia Luján said Francisca Caza offered her a potion made from powder stored in a shell. After she refused, she began to feel "grave pains." Antonia came to believe she had been bewitched.

Once Spaniards recognized witchcraft as the source for their medical problems, they all followed the solution used by the friars treating Charles II. They looked for a more powerful demon to overcome the work of the previous demon.

Leonor Domínguez was the exception. She was unhappy over rumors her husband was unfaithful. She tried to express her concerns in the available languages of witchcraft and of the new civil order. To the second, she called it a matter of "criminal intimacy," implying it was the kind that could threaten the welfare of the settlement.

She said she didn’t know if the women she accused were sorcerers. She probably came to that conclusion after listening to her in-laws. Everyone mentioned in the surviving records who sought help at San Juan was related to her husband.

Antonia de Moraga was married to her husband’s great-uncle, Cristóbal Martín. Her relationship with Felipe Morgana isn’t mentioned by Angélico Chávez, but the name was only introduced once into the colony.

The immigrant ancestor, Diego Morgana, was married to Juana Bernal, the sister of Isabel Bernal. Isabel was the great-grandmother of her friend, Ana María de la Concepción Bernal.

Antonia Luján was a cousin of Leonor’s husband.

The details in Leonor’s depositions probably came from family gossip. She thought Ana María was at San Juan with María and Augustina. Instead, she was probably the one who told her about it.

The language of witchcraft wasn’t natural to her. Like Augustina Romero, her family roots lay elsewhere. She had to learn about witchcraft from the Bernals and Martín Serranos.

Family Relationships:
Sons of Hernán Martín Serrano who lived in La Cañada before the Revolt

Hernán Martín Serrano II - María Montaño

    Cristóbal Martín - Antonia de Moraga

       María Martín - Manuel Antonio Domínguez

       Simón Martín - Petrona Domínguez

Luis Martín Serrano - Catalina de Salazar

    Pedro Martín Serrano de Salazar - Juana de Argüello

       Miguel Martín - Leonor Domínguez

       Sebastían Martín - María Luján

       Francisco Martín - Casilda Contreras

       Juana Martín - Felipe Arratia

    María Martín - Antonio Luján

       Antonia Luján - Mateo de Ortega

    Domingo Martín Serrano - Josefa de Herrera

       Matías Martín - Josefa Luján Domínguez

    Antonio Martín Serrano - Gertrudis Fresqui

Descendants of Juan Griego and Pascuala Bernal who lived in La Cañada before the Revolt

Juana Bernal - Diego de Morgana

?   Antonia de Morgana - Cristóbal Martín

     Place of Felipe Morgana unknown

Isabel Bernal and Sebastían González

     Juan González Bernal - Apolonia

       At least two sons, two daughters

          Ana María de la Concepción Bernal - Luis López

Descendants of Domingo López de Ocanto and Juana de Mondragón, who lived in Santa Fé before the Revolt; both of Augustina’s husbands were from Mexico.

María López de Ocanto-Salvador Romero

    Augustina Romero - Mateo Márquez 1702/Miguel Tenorio de Alba 1708

Notes: Caxa means lame. Caza means hunt.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Enbright, Malcolm and Rick Hendricks. The Witches of Abiquiu, 2006; discusses Antonia Luján.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 2, 1914.

Velázquez de la Cadena, Pedro. List of families going to New Mexico, 4 September 1693, reprinted in To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995, edited by John L Kessell, Rick Hendricks and Meredith Dodge.

Santa Cruz Medicine

In the early years after the Reconquest, Santa Cruz lacked the skills it needed to maintain Spanish medical culture.

No midwives were mentioned in the lists of Mexico City colonists, and there may have been none. Two women died in childbirth on the journey north: María López de Arteaga, wife of Manuel Vallejo González, and María Antonia Chirinos, wife of Juan Manuel Martínez de Cervantes.

In Spain, when the imbalance between blood and the other three humors was serious, a barber was engaged to bleed the person. One barber had come with the group from Mexico City, Nicolás Moreno Trujillo, but he returned south in 1705. Angélico Chávez said another, Antonio Durán de Armijo, came from Zacatecas. He lived in Santa Fé.

By 1715, Francisco Xavier Romero was working in Santa Cruz as a barber. When he came from Mexico City, he listed himself as a baker and miller. Chávez identified him as a shoemaker.

When one of the other humors was deemed the problem, the body was purged with a herbal emetic.

There probably were no herbalists. The abilities to identify and remember plants can be transferred, but not the lore. The first summer in Santa Cruz, men complained "poisonous herbs" were killing their stock.

Records of pueblo medical practice in 1700 probably do not exist. If members had been reticent before the trial of 47 medicine men in 1675, they would have been mute after the Reconquest. Popé had been one of those tried and freed.

A few reports have survived that describe medical relations between San Juan and its neighbors.

In 1704, Felipe Morgana filed a complaint against Juan Chiyo for failing to cure his blindness.

In 1708, Leonor Domínguez reported Augustina Romero, María Luján and Ana María de la Concepción Bernal had been bewitched. She said the healer was Juanchillo. He said he had treated the first two with beneficial herbs.

In the same deposition, Leonor said she had been bewitched, but she did not seek help from a native healer.

In 1715, Antonia Luján claimed Francisca Caza had bewitched her when she refused to drink a potion she had been offered to improve her lot. Soon after, she began to suffer pain. She paid the woman to cure her, but didn’t get well. She then paid another native woman to cure her with an herb from Galisteo. When that failed, she complained to the Santa Fé alcalde. He only took up the case when she added she believed her husband was seeing Caza.

In two cases, the herbal healer was the same man. Leonor identified him as Juanchillo, a carpenter and herbal healer. His wife was listed in one place as Chepa, and another as Josefa. Felipe Morgana called him Juan Chiyo. Tracy Brown identified him as "Juan el carpentero."

The one who dealt in potions, Francisca Caza, was from San Juan, but lived in Santa Fé. Her husband, Francisco Cuervo, was a Jumano Indian, perhaps from the Salinas area.

In the case mentioned in the posting for 25 March 2005, Ines de Aspeitia used a charm, not a herbal potion. She was described as a native of Mexico City and "dark skinned" in 1693.

Notes:
Angulo, José de Angulo. List of colonists from Mexico City, 7 September 1693, in Kessell.

Brown, Tracy L. Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority, 2013.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition; discusses Felipe Morgana.

Enbright, Malcolm and Rick Hendricks. The Witches of Abiquiu, 2006; discusses Antonia Luján.

Kessell, John L., Rick Hendricks and Meredith Dodge. To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 1914; volume 1 has the 1696 request to move because of poisonous herbs; volume 2 discusses Leonor Domínguez and Augustina Romero.

Velázquez de la Cadena, Pedro. List of families going to New Mexico, 4 September 1693, in Kessell.

Spanish Medicine

Political conflicts between religious and secular authorities carried over to medicine. In Europe, the medical school at Salamanca in the kingdom of León had become the most prestigious in 1252. It relied upon Arab translations of newly discovered works by Greek and Roman physicians.

Hippocrates and Galen believed the body contained four fluids that must be kept in balance. Each had specific qualities. The humors were considered extensions of the natural world where each plant embodied one of the traits.

Diseases were associated with each humor and treated by stimulating the opposing traits. Phlegm was cold and moist, yellow bile hot and dry. Thus, if one caught a common cold, one kept warm and drank hot liquids to warm the interior. Chicken soup or tea and honey is used today.

Blood was hot and moist, black bile cold and dry. Rhazes associated smallpox with blood. Individuals were most vulnerable at the age when the warm blood of childhood was changing to the cool blood of adults.

Once smallpox became an established disease in Mexico, it recurred about every fifteen to twenty years. At least fourteen colonists from Mexico City had pock marked faces. Most of the seven men were over 20 years old, most of the girls younger than 13.

When medicine failed to cure, the church offered an alternative. It argued diseases were caused by some invasion engineered by Satan that had to be removed. The most famous case in the years of the Reconquest was Charles II, king of Spain.

As was mentioned in the post of 8 March 2015, his biological condition was beyond the experience of any physician. Even today, medicine could no more than use dialysis when his kidneys began failing. It couldn’t change his genetics, and probably could do nothing to improve his sperm.

By the late 1690s, his failure to produce an heir was an international concern. Madrid was split between those lobbying for collateral branches in France and in Austria. In 1698, a Dominican, Pedro Matilla, seized power from the wife of Charles, Mariana of Neuburg. The archbishop of Toledo supported the French claims, and so maneuvered his replacement with Froilan Díaz, another Dominican.

The production of an heir was placed in his hands. He assumed the king had been possessed, and asked for help from Antonio Álvarez de Argüelles. At the time Argüelles was exorcizing demons from nuns in Oviedo in Asturias. It was hoped they could tell them who had bewitched the king.

The first demon consulted through the nuns said, indeed, the king had been bewitched when he was fourteen, just at he reached the age of legal maturity. It added, the spell was prepared by his mother and given him in a cup of chocolate. The solution was to oil and purge Charles.

Consultations continued in Oviedo, but the demons gave conflicting answers. One had the audacity to blame Mariana. The Austrian emperor, Leopold, sent his own exorcist, Mauro Tenda, who worked over Charles. Mariana was the sister of his third wife, Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg.

The treatments ended when Mariana plotted her return to power by using the Inquisition. Tenda was arrested in January of 1700, and Díaz dismissed. The king died in November.

Notes:
Lea, Henry Charles. A History of The Inquisition of Spain, volume 2, 1922, on the exorcisms of Charles.

McCaa, Robert. "The Peopling of Mexico from Origins to Revolution," in A Population History of North America, edited by Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel, 2000, on status of smallpox in Mexico.

Winslow, Charles-Edward Amory. The Conquest of Epidemic Disease, 1980. Rhazes full name was Muhammad ibn Zakariy R z .

Individuals identified with pockmarked faces in a 7 September 1693 list of colonists prepared by José de Angulo, reprinted in To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995, edited by John L Kessell, Rick Hendricks and Meredith Dodge.

Simón de Molina, age 40
José Velásquez Cortés, age 36
Juan de Gamboa, age 34
Tomás Palomino, age 26
     Georgia Ruiz, age 22
Cristóbal de Góngora, age 20
Bartolomé de Luna Bautista, age 18
      Gertrudis de la Candelaria y Herrera, age 12
      Magdalena de Esquibel, age 12
      Juana Cortés, age 11
      Josefa Antonia del Aguila, age 10
      María de Anzures, age 9
Juan de Sayago, age 4
      María de la Encarnación, married, no age given

Total: 14
Females: 7
Under 18: 7, 6 females

Language of Witchcraft

During the Salem witchcraft trials, Betty Parris and the other witnesses used the conventions of witchcraft when called to testify. Mary Warren accused Ann Pudeator of "biting me, pinching me, sticking pins in me and choking me." Mary Walcott said Sarah Wilde "did most grievously torment me by pricking and pinching me and [...] almost choke me to death."

Mary Beth Norton has noted the first confessions by Abigail Hobbs didn’t use such ritualized language. Instead, she used phrases then common to describe attacks by the Abnaki. Abigail accused her mother, Deliverance, who did use the approved language of witchcraft in hopes of leniency.

Carlos Ginsburg has described a similar progression in language in Friuli, a region in northeast Italy. When priests first noted the existence of pagan agricultural rituals in the 1500s, the accused tried to explain what they were doing.

The priests didn’t understand them, because they had been trained to believe in different causes. From their continued questions, the Friulians realized the answers they needed to give. With time, they may even have adopted some of the practices expected by their prosecutors.

The language of witchcraft had been developing for decades. In 1425, Bernardino Albizeschi began preaching in the countryside to revive the Catholic faith. The Franciscan, now Saint Bernardino of Siena, railed against Jews and witches.

In 1487, a Dominican codified beliefs in the Malleus Maleficarum that witches were aided by Satan. Heinrich Kramer described the forms witchcraft could take. The Roman Catholic Church condemned his work because the church claimed there were no such things as witches. Belief in them was the work of the devil.

The Spanish Inquisition was still rooting out vestiges of Judaism and Islam. The Papal Inquisition was concerned with Protestants, pagans, and heresy.

Kramer’s work gained credence through the activities of Charles V, the Hapsburg grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. He introduced uniform laws into the Holy Roman Empire of Austria in 1531. The Constitutio Criminalis Carolina defined witchcraft as a serious crime to be investigated by secular courts using torture and punished by fire.

The man most active in exorcizing demons within German-speaking lands was Francesco Maria Guazzo. In his Compendium Maleficarum of 1608 the Ambrosian brother wrote, "the attendants go riding flying goats, trample the cross, are made to be re-baptised in the name of the Devil, give their clothes to him, kiss the Devil's behind, and dance back to back forming a round."

Notes:
Essex County, Massachusetts. Records of the Salem trials are available on a University of Virginia website; spelling modernized for readability.

Ginsburg, Carlos. I Bernandanti, 1966; translated as The Night Battles by John and Anne Tedeschi, 1983.

Guazzo, Francesco Maria. Compendium Maleficarum, 1608, quotation from Wikipedia article on "Witches' Sabbath."

Norton, Mary Beth Norton. In the Devil’s Snare, 2002, from review by Jill Lepore, The New York Times Book Review, 3 November 2002.

Witchcraft

Reports of witchcraft are difficult to interpret because language obscures the component parts. Take the Salem witch trials that took place in the newly organized crown colony of New England between February of 1692 and May of 1693, just as Diego de Vargas was preparing for the Reconquest at El Paso del Norte.

The daughter of one of my immigrant ancestors, Sarah Wilde, was hung. Testimony of some witnesses included recitals of grievances of the kind that fester in small communities. In her case, two men were angry because she had refused to lend them scythes when they had broken theirs. Members of their family were affronted when one of her stepsons, Ephraim Wilde, began courting a cousin.

Sarah was denounced by Deliverance Hobbs, who had been arrested by Ephraim. He was the constable. Wilde’s first wife’s family resented his remarriage and accused them both of killing their chickens. In the past, others had accused her of adultery and dressing too gaudily

Witchcraft accusations often mask resentments or fears of envy that have no culturally accepted modes of expression. Scapegoats become their public face.

Another thread in the Salem trials was the feeling of impotence directed against a healer when loved one dies. Joseph Neal accused Ann Pudeator of speeding the death of his wife. The woman had smallpox, and Ann used a mortar to compound something. When questioned, Ann said she only used neatsfoot oil.

Then, healing women were targets of abuse. Today, malpractice suits abound.

The Massachusetts trials began when nine-year-old Betty Parris and her eleven-year-old cousin Abigail Williams began experimenting with spells they heard described by Betty’s family slave. When confronted, Tituba said she knew about the occult from Barbados, but that everything she knew was protective, not offensive.

The mother of the men who asked for the scythe reprimanded Sarah Wilde. She reported Sarah did "look back upon me and immediately I did fall into such a trembling condition that I was as if all my joints did knock together so that I could hardly go along."

The next time the mother saw Sarah Wilde she said, "I was immediately taken with such a pain in my back that I was not able to bear it and fell down in the seat and did not know where I was and some people took me up and carried me out of the meeting house."

The use of spells to influence human behavior filtered into the Americas with African slaves. They often were used by a woman who wanted to win the affections of a man, or harm him or a perceived rival. The most important sources for spells and herbal medicines in La Cañada before the Revolt had been two Mexican natives, Beatriz de los Ángeles and Pascuala Bernal. In the early years after the Reconquest, a woman from Mexico City, Ines de Aspeitia, used hidden bones against her husband.

Why the women in New England had the same physical symptoms as Leonor Domínguez is an interesting question. Does anyone have any information on the effects of fear on the body? Leave a comment or send me an email at nasonmcormic@cybermesa.com.

Notes: When I write about witchcraft, I try to distinguish between spells, failures of herbal medicine, communal jealousies, and witchcraft as defined by early modern European writers.

Essex County, Massachusetts. Records of the Salem trials are available on a University of Virginia website; spelling modernized for readability.

Chronicles of Leonor: Her Family

Behind the events that drove Leonor Domínguez to seek redress from the governor for the criminal intimacy between her husband, Miguel Martín, and a native woman lay a web of entrapping conditions and beliefs.

At the heart was the experience of the refugee camp at Guadalupe del Paso where they both were born. When other children hear scary tales collected by the brothers Grimm, they probably heard true tales of horror and betrayal from relatives still traumatized by the Revolt.

Even today, Donald Rivara knows the legends of the Domínguez family. He says the "Indians were led by their chief, Alonso Catití (our half-breed uncle, son of our ancestor Diego Márquez and a San Domingo Pueblo woman)."

Three of Leonor’s great-aunts on her father’s side "and their families were slaughtered in the revolt." Her uncle Lázaro on her mother’s side was killed at Galisteo. After the Reconquest, another maternal uncle, "Alonso, was later killed by Apaches in 1696."

Her father, Antonio Domínguez de Mendoza, died in 1689. Her mother, Juana de García y Noriega, refused to return with Diego de Vargas. Leonor must have come back with her sisters and her aunt Josefa de García y Noriega.

After the Entrada, the first generation of children tended to marry people they had learned to trust at Guadalupe. Outside their barricaded world were things they couldn’t control - illnesses, injuries, probably hunger and malnutrition in the early years. The harsh winter of 1706 had been followed by drought in 1707. Most of the crops had been lost. By the time Lent arrived on March 9 of 1708, the food supplies probably were low.

Since the counter Reformation, the church had emphasized fasting for forty days as a way to distinguish the faithful. Individuals were limited to one complete meal a day, with two smaller, meatless meals to maintain strength. Normal eating patterns were allowed on Sundays and for pregnant women. This exemption brought the number of fast days to the forty associated with Christ’s time in the wilderness.

While the deposition provides no dates for the events leading up to her attack on Holy Thursday, one comment by Catarina Rosa hints most things occurred during the Lenten period. When Leonor refused to eat anything provide by Catarina at San Juan, Leonor said it was because she was fasting. Catarina responded "What, today, Sunday you are fasting?"

Fear is a powerful agent. Leonor lived in fear of the dreaded enemy at San Juan, fear the church wouldn’t deem her a good Catholic if she didn’t fast, fear of infidelity when her husband away. Her in-laws didn’t help when they sided with her husband in disputes and spent their time gossiping about spells.

Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Rivara, Donald. Contributions related to Leonor Domínguez, Genealogy Trails website, 2009.

Scurlock, Dan. "Modern and Historical Climate," in From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998.

Chronicles of Leonor: The Chronology

Behind the legal progression of the investigation into witchcraft instigated by Leonor Domínguez, there were the events that led to her formal accusation. The chronology is confused because many witnesses denied their roles during the official investigation. As near as I can tell, this is what happened.

She and Miguel Martín were married in October 1707. She was 21, he 20. Nothing in the record indicates where they were living in 1708, but it may have been the rancho north of San Juan that Sebastían Martín had received the year before from the widow of his cousin, Matías Martín.

Leonor’s disquiet began when two members of her family told her Miguel was having intimate relations with native women.

One report came from her cousin, Alonso Rael de Aguilar, the son of her mother’s sister Josefa García de Noriega. He told her Miguel had bragged he had two women in Taos and one in San Juan. He claimed the last was Angelina Pumazjo, daughter of Catarina Rosa.

The other report was less reliable. The Domínguez family, like the Martín Serranos, had two layers, legitimate offspring and the half-recognized. María Domínguez, aged 23, had married Pedro de Ávila. He had come from Zacatecas in 1693, and was commonly referred to as El Piojo, the louse.

María told her about the woman at San Juan when the two were grinding corn. When questioned, she denied the conversion, but agreed they had ground corn together. She added what may have been half-remembered gossip. She said, Miguel Martín had brought her some beans, which she refused to eat because they came from "the house of his mistress."

Leonor then asked Miguel if the reports of adultery were true. He claimed he had said it as a joke.

Later, Leonor asked Miguel to take her to the San Juan home of Catarina Luján to get some lime. Instead, he took her to the home of Catarina Rosa. Leonor believed she was being tricked. He said she had changed her mind in route.

When they got there, Catarina Rosa offered her some meat and bean cakes. She refused because she was fasting. While they were there, Martín Fernández, age 25, entered and told her to eat. He says Leonor nearly fell trying to climb out, but refused to lie down. He made her eat some of the food.

Miguel’s behavior aggravated her fears. Sometime he returned from San Juan with his hands and arms so swollen he couldn’t eat. He told investigators he had fallen while "trying to mount to the house."

When he was asked if it were true his sister-in-law had been bewitched, he answered he’d been away at the time, and hadn’t heard anything after he returned. Nothing was said about his activities. Circumstantial evidence suggest it was more he likely he was working for one of his relatives who had land near Taos than it was he was away on militia duty.

The critical incident occurred on Holy Thursday, April 5. She attended mass with Casilda Contreras, wife of Francisco, another of Miguel’s brothers. She was wearing a mantle owned by Ana María de la Concepción Bernal.

In church, Leonor noticed some native women she thought were talking about her. She moved closer to hear, and said one touched her on the back. At the time, she thought the woman was trying to steal buttons from the mantle. Then she thought the woman was Catarina Rosa.

Catarina claimed she had gone to mass on Resurrection Sunday and seen Leonor then. She said she was home on Holy Thursday, because her grandchild was dying. Miguel’s brother Sebastían was at San Juan at the time.

When Leonor left church she saw her husband and slapped his face, accusing him of adultery. He told her not to be a fool. He later agreed the incident occurred on Holy Thursday.

Leonor turned to Casilda, who told her, "You are foolish to stay where you are; you will see they will do you harm." She later agreed she was there on Thursday, but denied saying anything.

Leonor returned to the church that night when "the agonies seized upon her." She had to be restrained by Juana Martín and Petrona Domínguez. Juana was Miguel’s sister and married to Felipe Arratia. Petrona was a sister of Leonor’s father. She had married Simón Martín, who was a son of Miguel’s uncle Cristóbal Martín.

After that Leonor was confined in the home of her sister, Antonia Domínguez de Mendoza, with the "violent pain of the disease newly acquired" and a "horror" of the church. Her sister had married Tomás Jirón de Tejeda, a painter from Mexico City.

Leonor filed her complaint on May 13. The depositions were taken in the homes of Tomás Jirón and Sebastían Martín. The investigators agreed she was ill, but only specified "in bed, ill and suffering" or "in bed, ill with many ailments."

What happened next is conjecture. Official sentencias were flexible according to Charles Cutter, and sometimes relied of subtle devices like humiliation. Leonor’s goal had been to stop any adultery on her husband’s part. Before she filed her denuncio, the women in the family had tried to dissuade her.

After the juicio plenario process began, and members of Miguel’s families were questioned, one suspects the men began to exert some pressure on him to at least be discrete. The brother and two cousins related to Leonor may have been prodded to act, or one of his many uncles may have talked to him, or some of his many brothers or cousins may have teased him into conformity.

All we know is she and Miguel appeared together in the church record in 1718 as witnesses for a marriage between María Martín and Luis Archuleta. No mention is made of children, but church records don’t exist for Santa Cruz between 1728 and 1751.

Notes:
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

_____. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982.

Cutter, Charles R. The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810, 1995.

Esquibel, José Antonio. "Descendants of Hernán (I) Martín Serrano in New Mexico: An Authoritative Account of the Five Generations," 2013, available on-line.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, two volumes, 1914.