244 ISLETA, NEW MEXICO [kth \nn,47 



it SO much during the days following. She had never thought of that 

 man as a witch before, although she had once suspected his sister,^' 

 but there was no doubt she was thinking of him now as one. She 

 should have hit him on the chest four times, she said. When you do 

 that to a witch "the bad goes back into him." Formerly when a witch 

 was caught he would be placed sitting on his toes; i. e., squatting, and 

 kept in that position, being replaced when he fell over, until he died. 



At Isleta, as elsewhere, hair cuttings are buried or burned or care- 

 fully kept, lest witches work through them. Sweepings from the 

 floor are also burned "because we have stepped on them and these 

 bad people might get them if we threw them out." The root, pakoli 

 (Mexican, kachama),^^ is an antiwitch prophylactic which is carried 

 in the pocket by men, in the belt by women. "When you carry it, 

 nobody can do j'ou any harm." One informant had been paying a 

 visit to Taos and he observed that where at Taos ashes are used 

 against witches, at Isleta, pakcjli is used. . . . During his visit at 

 Taos a girl in his host's house fell sick of a fever and a medicine man 

 came in to see her, Santiago Kuncha or Paw'iapap.^^ After feeling the 

 girl over, Kuncha (Spanish, abalone shell) looked at the Isletan 

 visitor and straightway remarked that in that Isletan pocket were 

 three roots with which he should doctor the girl, enabling her to 

 recover without ceremonial. There were, in fact, three roots in that 

 Isletan pocket: KarH, wolf root, which is gooil to be chewed for a 

 pain in the stomach; palefia, which is a bear root (called p'awa, at 

 Taos), and the antiwitch root, pakQli, which must have been particu- 

 larly good for the gu'l who was sick because someone had envied her 

 her employment by some white people in Fernandez de Taos. . . . 

 All these roots the Isletan promised to send to his Taos hosts. 



The well-known clay pit of the church at Chimayo which is referred 

 to as sanctuario is visited for medicine. A sick person may walk 

 to sanctuario in two or tliree days, when ordinarily it takes a week — 

 an amusing carrying over into Catholic cult of the Isletan notion of 

 rapid progress when on supernatural quest. San Escapu'la is the 

 saint '* of sanctuario.^* He is the "luckiest"; i. e., the most powerful, 

 of saints. WTien you ask liini for something you make him a promise; 

 i. e., vow, which you must keep to.^^ Recently in childbirth a woman 

 made him a promise.^' She has had a Mass for him and later she will 

 visit sanctuario. Lucinda visited sanctuario a few years ago to get 



21 See p. 242. 



2' The practice itself is Mexican. See Parsons, 18, for this and other Mexican witch practices and beliefs. 



23 In Isletan, lake spread out. He was, I surmise, he who is referred to by Taos townspeople as the big 

 earring man, chief of the three north side kivas. Big earrings were made of abalone. 



'< A cristo (crucifix), but formerly a bolto, image in one piece. 



2> See pp. 415-416. 



M See p. 415. 



2" Promesa, as would be said in Mexico- The visitations of sanctuaries in connection with promesas is 

 characteristically Mexican. (See Parsons, 16.) 



