| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Witches of Abiquiu: The Governor, the Priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil. By Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. xvi + 344 pp. Illustrations, glossary, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $21.95, paper.)

In this provocative tale of power, Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks use the last witchcraft trial in North America to examine issues of life, identity, and spirituality in mid-eighteenth-century New Mexico. Between 1756 and 1766, decades after the famous trials in Salem, Massachusetts, the Genízaro pueblo of Abiquiu in northern New Mexico experienced its own witchcraft outbreak. Ebright and Hendricks delve into the proceedings, as well as the backgrounds and motivations of the main players involved. The authors attribute multiple factors to the event, including Native American resistance to Christianization, Spanish attacks on Native religious sites, the threat of Comanche and Ute raids, and "a Franciscan [Father Juan José Toledo] predisposed to battle the Devil" (pp. 248–9). In this period of uncertainty and change similar to the climate of the fear Mary Beth Norton describes in her work on Salem, witchcraft became a powerful expression of anxieties of the time.

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