The Women Who Threw Corn

The Women Who Threw Corn Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

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This book tells the stories of women from Spain, North Africa, Senegambia, and Canaries accused of sorcery in sixteenth-century Mexico for adapting native magic and healing practices. These non-native women – the mulata of Seville who cured the evil eye; the Canarian daughter of a Count who ate peyote and mixed her bath water into a man's mustard supply; the wife of a Spanish conquistador who let her hair loose and chanted to a Mesoamerican god while sweeping at midnight; the wealthy Basque woman with a tattoo of a red devil; and many others – routinely adapted Native ritual into hybrid magic and cosmology. Through a radical rethinking of colonial knowledge, Martin Austin Nesvig uncovers a world previously left in the shadows of historical writing, revealing a fascinating and vibrant multi-ethnic community of witches, midwives, and healers.

• Reveals that Mesoamerican culture had a profound impact on Spanish and African women in colonial Mexico
• Analyzes witchcraft, sorcery, and healing as performed by women in sixteenth-century Mexico
• Identifies the specific rituals, behaviors, and materials native to Mesoamerica that non-native peoples adopted into creolized society