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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 6 



beats on the roof. Experiences with witches? No, 

 brujos used to be around, but one is not much 

 troubled by them now. Micaela remarks that 

 a good many witches formerly lived in La Vuel- 

 ta, and often they assumed owl form to annoy 

 or bewitch the Mestizos of Tzintzuntzan. How- 

 ever, some years ago most of the inditos joined 

 the Third Order of San Francisco, and since 

 that time there has been little trouble. Still, 

 continues Micaela, there are a few Indians who, 

 when angered with people in Tzintzuntzan, 

 threaten to come at night and bewitch them. 



Owls, opines Primo, are very apt to be 

 witches who have assumed this form. Fortunate- 

 ly, they can be killed simply by shooting their 

 shadow on the ground; that kills the spirit. But 

 how does one see an owl's shadow on a dark 

 night? Primo is not quite sure. 



Vicente volunteers that he once spent an un- 

 comfortable hour when an owl began to sing 

 outside his house one night. Although he be- 

 lieves he has no enemies in La Vuelta, still, 

 his house is almost the closest of alii those in 

 the village. Finally he arose and frightened 

 it away with a shot. At the very least, he says, 

 a singing owl portends sickness in the nearest 

 house. And with a curious cause-and-effect 

 logic, he feels that scaring the bird away re- 

 moves the danger. 



Carmen has had no experiences with witches, 

 but she remembers a story of witchcraft in 

 earlier days in the village. A man was married 

 to a girl who became very sad and thin, and 

 who begged, at last successfully, to be allowed 

 to return home. The girl and her mother were 

 both witches. They took out their eyes, hid 

 them under the hearth stones, put in cat eyes 

 and with petate wings went flying away to 

 suck blood, so that the wife could recover her 

 strength and return to her husband. Meanwhile 

 the husband came to her mother's house, discov- 

 ered the eyes, and took them home with him. 

 When his wife appeared next day without eyes, 

 he knew she was a witch. 



Uruapan, says Micaela, is a bad center for 

 witches. The whole sierra, and especially Ta- 

 rascan towns, are full of witchcraft. A woman 

 from Uruapan married a local man, and lived 

 in a house in El Rincon. Apparently she was 

 just an ordinary woman, but presently her 

 neighbors noticed unusual things. Every night 



wolves came to her house and spoke to her 

 "like Cristianos" ("Christians," i. e., human 

 beings as contrasted to nonhuman pagans), call- 

 ing "Petra, Petra, Petra." After a while she 

 died, carried off, so goes the gossip, by these 

 werewolves. ^ 



VI. 



Dona Andrea knows more lore, superstition, 

 and local gossip, than anyone else I know. She 

 is not a native Tzintzuntzeno, having come from 

 nearby Quiroga when she married Jose Maria 

 in 1904, at the age of 15. Though Tzintzuntzan 

 was only 8 km. away — less than that by canoe — 

 she had never visited the town before she came 

 as a bride. At that time there was no plaza, 

 and except for a few gente de razon in the cen- 

 ter of town, everybody wore indigenous garb. 

 Her girlhood training had included sewing and, 

 she says, for the first several years she practiced 

 this trade, showing local seamstresses hovi' to 

 make "civilized clothing." Ultimately, she took 

 up the bayeta herself, turned to pottery making, 

 and became one of the most skilled of all pot- 

 ters. With the bayeta and potter's art she also 

 picked up the local lore and stories. 



Don Grabiel — his name is always metathe- 

 sized — wants to know how one wins the love of 

 a girl? But it is for a girl in far-away Colom- 

 bia, and besides, she has no unmarried daugh- 

 ters herself who might be placed in danger. 

 After all, it's too bad. Don Grabiel is a nice 

 boy, but he would want to take his wife far 

 away from Tzintzuntzan, and that would not be 

 good. Well, winning a girl is really very sim- 

 ple. You just kill a hummingbird, and dry, 

 burn, and powder the body. By surreptitiously 

 sprinkling a little on a girl she can easily be 

 seduced. Also, by sprinkling the powder on the 

 door of a house at night a thief can enter with- 

 out awakening the owners. Other less difficult 

 ways to win the love of a girl? Well, a boy can 

 scrape his finger nails and place the powder in 

 a small hole in a piece of fruit, so carefully 

 treated that she will not notice the tampering. 

 If she eats the powder she will be drawn mag- 

 ically to the love-sick or designing swain. 



For really nefarious purposes, however, says 

 Doiia Andrea, there is nothing like the finger of 



1 Wolves are not found near Tzintzuntzan. 



