Advice to sojourners in the early-modern era who are trying to avoid execution for witchcraft: be sure you are born male and have a high social rank. These inheritances helped ensure the pardon of Jeronimo Dirucaca, alleged witch and onetime governor of Picuris Pueblo in northeastern New Mexico. In 1713 several men and women from Picuris accused Dirucaca of multiple crimes against the community, including sorcery. Four Puebloan women told Spanish investigators that the former governor, hoping to draw them to his bed or to punish their rejection of his advances, had either enchanted or magically sickened them. Dirucaca’s other crimes included several extramarital sexual liaisons and encouraging his constituents to ignore their priest and “live as your ancestors did.” This last was to the Spanish a chilling reminder of the great revolt of 1680, in which Puebloan warriors killed 400 colonists and liberated New Mexico for the next decade.
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| Picuris Pueblo, 1941 (Museum of N. Mexico) |
Investigators in Picuris determined, however, that Ser Jeronimo’s rebelliousness extended little further than his own person. One of the Tewa Puebloans’ ancestral practices was polygyny, another of the crimes of which Dirucaca stood accused, and in aid of which he had allegedly employed his forbidden supernatural arts. For such a venial transgression Spanish officials were willing to grant leniency, particularly since the transgressor still retained his high rank in the community - the Puebloans allowed former governors to remain ranking elders or “notables,” and town leaders had even let Dirucaca retain his cane of office. Patriarchal rule hath its privileges.
Dirucaca’s willingness to pay a large bribe proved even more decisive in determining his fate. The defendant agreed to trade for a gubernatorial pardon an important piece of information: “the location of a hidden silver mine” in Picuris Canyon. Officials confirmed that the mine - probably the first actual source of silver the Spanish ever located in New Mexico - was real, and released Dirucaca after his payment of court expenses. More advice to time-travelers trying to elude witchcraft charges: be sure you own or have access to a silver mine.
Sources: Malcolm Ebright, “Advocates for the Oppressed: Indians, Genizaros and their Spanish Advocates in New Mexico, 1700-1786,” New Mexico Historical Review 71 (1996): 305-39, quote 312; Tracy Brown, Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth Century New Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 2013), 46; Maurice Crandall, These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 36-37.
