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.