Plagues of Witches

Halloween special: Brujos & brave women!

Happy Halloween from the Land of Enchantment, where dealing with witches and ghosts and monsters has been the work of legendary heros, regular citizens, and governments for well over four centuries. Witches, man! They’re bad for business!

In the time of the cottonwood, there was a man who had two beautiful wives, Blue Corn Maiden and Yellow Corn Maiden. These women both fell under the spell of some terrible witches. The witches caused them to be unfaithful to their husband and to become promiscuous and lying.

The stories about what happened next differ, but in no version of the tale do things turn out well for the wives. Their husband followed them to Uwaalaka and saw them having sex with the witches (who were mostly male). In some stories, the husband killed one wife, so the other wife decided to be faithful to him. In other stories, he killed both wives.

Witches didn’t leave the Taos girls alone, either. A witch boy had his eye on a certain pretty girl, but she refused him, so he killed her. The witches stole her body and then used magic to pull the bewitched arrows, spikes and stones out of her body while laughingly comparing their skills at sorcery. The girl’s little sister witnessed the theft of the corpse and followed the witches. She watched from behind a rock in mounting horror. The witches revived her dead sister only to turn her into a deer so they could hunt her and kill her again. As the witches rained arrows down on the terrified doe, the little sister ran home, appalled, helpless to stop the evil acts.

In the morning, a neighbor woman stopped by the girl’s house with a basket of fresh venison. The sister bravely drove the woman away, shouting, “We don’t eat people! Only witches eat people! You eat it yourself, you cannibal!”

Heeding the girl’s cries, the people of the Pueblo drove the woman and the other witches out. In revenge, the witches caused many people to sicken and even die. The witches had discovered a way to make themselves invisible so hunters could not find them. Finally, the Taos people trekked up to where Deer Woman lived in the mountains and asked her for help. She suggested that the witches could not resist a bet. If her two strong and fleet sons ran against the witches, they would surely prevail, and then the witches would have to leave.

As predicted, the witches agreed to the bet but insisted the race be around the whole world. When the Deer Woman’s sons showed up, the people’s hearts sank. The boys were nothing but skeletons with a little flesh. How could these skinny boys possibly outrun witches? The old men decided that all they could do was pray for victory.

The witches turned themselves into falcons, and soon they flew ahead of the Deer Boys, laughing and taunting them. The boys had been expecting this and took out little bags of medicine that they used to create a brutal thunderstorm. The thunder frightened the witch falcons, the rain soaked them and the lightning finally drove them to seek shelter. The birds huddled under a tree miserably, By the time the witches’ feathers were dry enough to fly, the Deer Boys were almost all the way around the world. The witch falcons doubled their speed until they could see the boys and flew even faster. The people and the witches were waiting at the finish line with their clubs, each waiting for their team to cross the finish line before killing the others. The Deer Boys finished just ahead of the witches, and the people fell on the witches with their clubs before the falcons could even cross the line themselves. The people killed all the witches except one, an old man.

He fell on his knees and pleaded for mercy, promising to change his ways and do only good for the rest of his days. Many disbelieved the words of the witch and were in favor of killing him. Some kindhearted souls argued that he was an old man and could do little harm. In the end, mercy won the day, and the old man was allowed to leave. Treacherously, he did not give up his evil ways, and today all witches on the earth are descended from the one witch allowed to survive.

Eventually, people learned effective ways of catching witches. The most common method entailed killing and skinning all stray animals. One night at Taos Junction, a man killed a witch in this way. While he was riding home, a huge black dog came bounding out of the brush and menaced him. He drew his bow and shot the dog with arrows until it fell dead. Cautiously, he used a knife to skin the dog and discovered a man curled up inside the dog skin. The Taos man recognized the dead brujo as one of a group of witches from Santo Domingo and Tesuque.

Another innovative Taos technique for capturing witches was making a “Juan circle.” First, a big circle is drawn. Then, a man named Juan enters the circle and turns his shirt inside out. The witches are irresistibly drawn into the circle and can be easily killed. Two men from Taos named Juan made quite a name for themselves as witch hunters and caught dozens of witches with this method.

Witch problems persisted in New Mexican pueblos and villages long after the Americans came. To their horror, New Mexicans came to discover that they could no longer prosecute witches under the new judicial system.

In 1853, four men from Nambé were hauled into Santa Fe on charges of murdering two others, who were believed to be witches. The accused, who included the governor of the pueblo and the fiscal, or constable, asserted that the alleged witches had been eating babies. They further claimed that they had seen the witches draw infant bones out of their mouths and noses. The baffled judge dismissed the charges for lack of jurisdiction.

About the same time, a man was arrested in Taos on charges of witchcraft. Officials bound the prisoner over to the United States District Court so that justice could be served, American style. They were soon to be disappointed. The district attorney explained to the frustrated prosecutor that witchcraft was not a crime under American law. When the people of Taos realized that their new government would not protect them from sorcery, they ultimately took matters into their own hands and simply lynched suspected witches.

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The images in this piece were created by Taos artists such as Ila McAfee, Dorothy Brett and Frieda Lawrence from as illustrations and decorations for the local newspaper, El Crepusculó. My talented and delightful neighbor, Jane Abrams, found the original wood blocks, and recreated the charming, long-lost images of Taos as the American artists found it in the early 20th century.

You can find these stories and more in Wicked Taos, published by the History Press.