The Inquisition and the Indians

The question of the jurisdiction of the Holy Office of the Inquisition over the native populations in New Spain and the rest of the empire has been one of controversy and confusion since the earliest days of the conquest. The perplexing problem of enforcing orthodoxy among the recently converted Indians was linked with the debate over whether or not the Indian was a rational human being who had the capacity to comprehend the Roman Catholic faith and enjoy the full sacramental system of the Church. As in the case of the rationality controversy, the position of the Indian vis-à-vis the Holy Office of the Inquisition was not resolved articulately, and after the first decades of the spiritual conquest the question took on added importance as the Mexican clergy discovered recurrent idolatry and religious syncretism among their flocks.

Despite claims of traditional historiography, the Mexican Inquisition did try Indians from 1522 through 1571 as the friar inquisitors in Central Mexico and Yucatán prosecuted native transgressions against the faith and as the episcopal inquisition continued to discipline Indians. The Archivo General de la Nación published two important documentary compendia on the Indians and the Inquisition early in this century: Proceso inquisitorial del cacique de Tetzcoco (Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1910) and Procesos de Indios idólatras y hechiceros (Mexico

City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1912). Alberto María Carreño published in 1950 a documentary compendium Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga: Teólogo y editor, humanista e inquisidor (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1950) which gave some attention to the Indian trials and disputed Joaquin García Icazbalceta's claim in Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, primer obispo y arzobispo de México (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1948) that the bishop was never an inquisitor. Robert Ricard, Robert Padden, and Jacques Lafaye have made varied use of the printed procesos, while Greenleaf has preferred to use the original documents because he has found difficulty with the published paleographic transcriptions.^[25] France V. Scholes and Eleanor B. Adams edited the controversial Proceso contra Tzintzicha Tangaxoan el Caltzontzin formado por Nuño de Guzmán, año de 1530 (Mexico City: José Porrúa Hermanos, 1952) as civil authority also assumed jurisdiction over Indian idolatry and sacrifice among the Tarascans.

In 1965 Greenleaf began his analysis of Indian Inquisition manuscripts for the entire colonial period in "The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion," The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 22 (1965): 138–166, followed by a 1978 article with a selected documentary appendix in the same journal, "The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources for the Ethnohistorian," 34 (1973): 315–344. Even though the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was denied the right to hear Indian cases, an Indian Inquisition continued under an institutional framework quite similar to that of the formal Inquisition. After 1571 the Tribunal of the Holy Office acted as a fact-finding agency in the uncovering and disciplining of Indian transgressions against orthodoxy. Actual control over Indian orthodoxy reverted to the bishop's or archbishop's office and was placed under the care of the provisor, or vicar-general, of the diocese or archdiocese. The provisoratos contrived an entire bureaucracy of officials to cope with the new function, and they appointed delegates and commissaries in provincial areas. Following the tradition established during the period of the episcopal inquisition, the provisor and his commissaries often called themselves "inquisitors ordinary" and established tribunals and juzgados for Indians of the bishopric.

For several decades the provisorato set-up functioned without much competition or invasion of power by the Inquisition tribunal, but in actual operation of enforcement or orthodoxy there was still fusion and confusion of authority and responsibility of the inquisitorial and the ordinary functions. Quarrels over the competence of the provisorato and the tribunal in cases involving Indians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries occupy many pages of testimony in the actual procesos and

comprise several legajos of administrative documents sent to Spain for resolution. Often, because many of the colonial Mexican clergy occupied several portfolios or exercised a multiple function, the personnel of the provisorato and the Holy Office were mixed in the conduct of trials, thus adding to the confusion over jurisdiction, especially in the remote provincial areas.

Investigatory activities of the Inquisition into Indian affairs continued throughout the colonial period of New Spain. Of particular concern were studies of recurrent paganism and idolatry and violation of the degrees of carnal and spiritual relationship permitted by the Church in the sacrament of marriage. The Inquisition usually kept meticulous records of these investigations, but because of the burden of work for ministers of the spiritual flock, the provisor or his agent kept sparse records or none at all. Therefore we must conclude that only the more serious deviations from orthodoxy came to light in the archives. Oftentimes materials on heresy and crimes against the faith are mixed with data on the spiritual activities of the regular and secular clergy. Between 1620 and 1700 concern focused on evaluation of missionizing techniques seen against the background of continued pagan practices and the process of religious syncretism taking place in many of the Mexican provinces. Friars of several of the orders were charged to write full reports, and these relaciones document fears of the inquisitors and ordinaries as to the extent of paganism in the supposedly Christianized viceregal area.^[26]

In the aftermath of Zumárraga's Indian Inquisition, the Visitor to New Spain and apostolic inquisitor Francisco Tello de Sandoval launched a probe into paganism among the Mixtec Indians of Oaxaca.^[27] The voluminous documentation was partially extracted for ethnological materials by Wigberto Jiménez Moreno and Salvador Mateos Higuera for commentary in their edition of Códice de Yanhuitlán (Mexico City: Museo Nacional, 1940), but they counsel the ethnohistorian that much data was left untouched. Other anthropologists have cited some of the data, but it was left to Richard E. Greenleaf to prepare a complete study with introduction in his Mixtec Religion and Spanish Conquest: The Oaxaca Inquisition Trials, 1544–1547 (Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1991), and with ethnohistorical commentary by Maarten E. R. G. N. Jansen. Greenleaf's introduction also deals with the Oaxacan Inquisition of the Dominicans in 1560, when Indians from both Solá and Teticpac were subjected to an auto de fe. The Teticpac trials were examined from newly discovered archival documentation.

The climactic event of the sixteenth century Indian Inquisition came with the Landa idolatry trials in Yucatán during the period 1559–1562. In the 1930s, France V. Scholes discovered the corpus of the trials in

Spanish archives. He and Eleanor B. Adams published most of the materials in Don Diego de Quijada Alcalde Mayor de Yucatán, 1561–1565 , 2 vols. (Mexico City: José Porrúa Hermanos, 1933), including a lengthy introduction that summarizes the trial records. France V. Scholes and Ralph L. Roys, Fray Diego de Landa and the Problem of Idolatry in Yucatán (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1938) give an in-depth analysis of the proceedings. Recently Inga Clendinnen has given a new interpretation of the Landa trials in Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Building on several earlier research articles, she postulates that testimonies in the trial records may be unreliable and that incidences of idolatry and sacrifice may have been exaggerated. The Greenleaf articles on the Indians and the Inquisition and the Mixtec religion and Spanish Conquest deal with methodological problems of using the procesos de Indios as historical sources.

The procesos reveal fascinating data on the use of idolatry, sorcery, and sacrifice within a political context of native resistance to Spanish power. In general, the Indians attempted to manipulate inquisitional procedures by denouncing Spanish-appointed caciques as idolaters in order to deprive them of office. There are also denunciations for idolatry and human sacrifice by Indians who wanted to attack their own political enemies, hoping to replace them in the new political hierarchy. The procesos also illuminate subversive activities of Indian sorcerers, curers, witches, and seers who tried to perpetuate the old beliefs. Of particular concern to the Mexican Inquisition were groups of native priests and sorcerers who openly defied the "spiritual conquest" by establishing schools or apprenticeships among the young. The teachers made a frontal attack on Catholicism and Spanish Catholic culture. They ridiculed the new religion and urged a return to native religious practices. These men, branded as "dogmatizers" by the inquisitors, were considered especially dangerous by the missionary clergy. Thus the native priesthood preached a counterculture and a counter-religion and took the lead in performing sorceries and sacrifices. They supported the ancient practices of concubinage and bigamy as a symbol of resistance to the new religion—and the dogmatizers also ridiculed the Inquisition. Students of ritual humor among the Maya, notably Professor Victoria R. Bricker, in recent times have found survivals of plays and dances done in jest of the Holy Office. It is obvious that this same set of attitudes impelled native doctors or curers to continue the use of preconquest medicine, and to transmit Aztec, Maya, and Mixtec medical lore to future generations of Indians and mestizos in colonial Mexico.

Obviously, procesos de Indios initiated by the Inquisition are pe-

ripheral to other documentation about social discontent in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Mexico, but they are reliable benchmarks of what was taking place. Trials of all genres of mestizos, pardos, and others are indicative of developing syncretism, accommodation, and resistance to the culture of the conqueror. Most resistance to the Spanish social structure, however, probably came in more passive ways, although some writers would like to link forced acculturation with Indian rebellions in colonial Mexico. It is certain that native religion was important in Indian rebellions and that paganism became a catalyst in the upheavals, but documentary studies of causal factors still await scholarly investigation. Important to future studies will be analyses of peyote cults and the use of other hallucinogens (yerba pipiltzintzin, ololiuqui) in idolatry, sorcery, and in other patterns of pagan resistance.

Perhaps the thorniest problem faced by ethnohistorians as they interprets procesos de Indios relates to classical procedures of historical criticism: the art of determining the validity of historical sources. Do the Inquisition manuscripts give a reliable picture of native religion or pagan resistance? Did the monastic inquisitor or the provisor or the professional judge on the Holy Office tribunal correctly understand the testimony of the evidence? Did the inquisitor project an image or an interpretation of data in the procesos de Indios from an ethnocentric Christian viewpoint? Did the scribes and notaries properly report the proceedings? Were the interpreters really competent to transmit testimonies of Indians who did not know Spanish? While historians may not be able to arrive at firm answers to these questions, they must nevertheless be ever in their minds as they interpret. Given the nature of these problems, distorted pictures and fanciful interpretations result with alarming frequency.

The meticulous scholar must therefore examine a broad base of archival documentation and other sources in order to place the ethnohistorical data in proper perspective. Statements of historian France V. Scholes and anthropologist Ralph L. Roys pertaining to Fray Diego de Landa and the Problem of Idolatry in Yucatán may be applied to other areas. They concluded that Indian testimony often "confirms, supplements, and clarifies our knowledge of Maya religion derived from other sources," but they recognized that the evidence possibly "contains exaggerations, even certain falsehoods and that Indians may have called upon memory of pre-Conquest practices as regards certain details." On the whole, they concluded cautiously that "the testimony does provide a generally valid description of actual cases of idolatry and sacrifice that had occurred subsequent to the Spanish occupation and the beginning

of the missionary program."^[28] Clendinnen, as noted, has explored these caveats and has taken issue with the traditional historiography on Landa and the Yucatán idolatry trials.

The careful scholar should always remember that it is important to let the documents speak for themselves whenever possible rather than to force them into a fanciful or preconceived framework, a framework often built on grand generalizations and untested hypotheses. Several dissertations and theses on the Indian Inquisition, and the Inquisition and mestizos and blacks, deserve to be published: Bradley W. Case, "Gods and Demons: Folk Religion in Seventeenth-Century New Spain, 1614–1632," (doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 1977); Eva A. Uchmany, "La Conquista de México: El choque de dos culturas" (tesis de doctorado, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1971); Gloria R. Grajales, "Cristianismo y paganismo en la altiplanicie mexicana, siglo XVI" (tesis de maestría, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1949). Colin Palmer's Slaves of the White God (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976) uses Inquisition procesos to uncover the black experience in early Mexico.

Excellent examples of the use of procesos de Indios by anthropologists are Noemí Quezada, Amor y magia amorosa entre los aztecas: Supervivencia en el México colonial (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma, 1975), which gives a critical survey of pre-Hispanic and colonial texts dealing with magical and religious aspects of love and sexuality, and, by the same author, "Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón y su persecución de idolatrías," UNAM/T, 1980: 323–354; studies of Ruth Behar, who is planning a volume on the eighteenth century building on her articles "The Visions of a Guachichil Witch in 1599: A Window on the Subjugation of Mexico's Hunter-Gatherers," Ethnohistory , 34 (1987): 115–138, and "Sex and Sin, Witchcraft and the Devil in Late-Colonial Mexico," American Ethnologist 14 (1987): 34–54; the translation and edition by J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig of Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón's Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629 (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984); and the anticipated work based on provisorato and other documents of Serge Gruzinski.^[29]