Summary

Belief in the supernatural permeated the fabric of rural life in colonial Mexico (officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain), particularly in areas where Indigenous peoples outnumbered Spanish clergy, Spanish officials, or American-born criollos of Iberian descent. Colonial testimony from commoners and local Indigenous leaders in criminal and Mexican Inquisition case files offers much detail about popular views of healing and magic in diverse places such as Chiapas, Central Mexico, and New Mexico. Criminal cases from southern New Spain in Chiapas show how the belief in tonalli, an Indigenous concept of the soul, continued to thrive locally among Maya peoples like the Zoque. Other sources reveal a continued belief in a local deity known as Poxlon among the Tzotzil peoples in the 17th and 18th centuries. Clerical writings such as sermons, treatises, and missives, including those of Bishop Francisco Núñez de la Vega, also provide insight into agrarian rituals and their cosmological importance.

Belief in the efficacy of prayers, spells, divination, and other forms of magic placed many Indigenous ritual specialists in direct competition with parish priests who might negatively label traditional healing practices as “idolatry,” “superstition,” or “false beliefs.” For example, clerical writings from New Mexico reveal ongoing traditional dances in public spaces in the 17th century. Here, the Pueblo peoples danced the catzinas (modern-day kachina) to provide bountiful harvests and to ensure prosperity for future generations. Priests and friars worried that these traditional forms of spiritual engagement would invite divine retribution like the condemned cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Consequently, Native ritual specialists who inhabited traditional spaces like caves in Chiapas and kivas in New Mexico seemingly lured erring neophytes to perdition.