Witchcraft in Colonial America

Prosecution of Witches Unevenly Distributed in British North America

Sep 4, 2009

Why were witch trials relatively numerous in 17th-century New England, but much less so in the other colonies? The answer lies in New England's Puritan religion.

The European conquest and settlement of North America took place in what is often called the early modern era. The Dark Ages were ending, the Renaissance was well underway, and magic was slowly being replaced by science as a way of making sense of the world. But people change slowly; and even in the late 1600s the fear of witches disrupted public life in the British colonies.

Witchcraft in Salem and Elsewhere

The most famous witch trials took place in 1692 in Salem Village (now Danvers) in the colony of Massachusetts. But they were hardly the only ones. By one count, there were 234 indictments or legal complaints of witchcraft in New England in the 17th century, resulting in 36 executions. In all the other colonies during the same period, there were only a few trials and suits for slander, and no executions. The hunt for witches was almost exclusively a New England phenomenon.

What Was Witchcraft, and Who Were the Witches?

The New England colonists, like all people of their day, were subject to many natural forces beyond their control: fires and floods, weather that could ruin crops, diseases that could kill livestock, high infant mortality, epidemics that could carry off whole families – to say nothing of lesser annoyances like a well going dry, a newborn calf dying, a bone broken in a fall. In a prescientific age, people subject to such afflictions would, perhaps understandably, attribute them to supernatural evil powers. And who more likely to wield such powers than the cantankerous old man down the street, or the old widow who never seemed to have a kind word for her neighbors? Suspicion very often fell on women who were not modest or deferential enough to meet the standard expected of their sex. It is estimated that 80% of those charged with witchcraft were women.

Witchcraft and the Puritans

The concentration of witchcraft cases within the New England colonies can be explained by the predominant Puritan religion of the area. New England Congregationalism, with its origins in the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and the absolute power of God, was a strict faith, with very specific ideas about what constituted moral behavior. It was also a faith very much based on fear: fear of the Devil and his snares; fear of the Devil’s agents, the witches and demons; fear of God himself, and the eternal punishment he could inflict on anyone who went astray. One could argue that, in a very real sense, Puritanism created witchcraft.

The Salem witch trials came to a dramatic end in the fall of 1692, when accusations of witchcraft extended all the way to the wife of the colony’s governor. Once people in high places began to be tainted, other people in high places took a more sober look at what was happening and decided not pursue further indictments. Some of them even issued public apologies for what now appeared to be a miscarriage of justice. No doubt personal belief in witchcraft continued among some New Englanders, but the magistrates no longer responded to their accusations. Witchcraft in New England was over.

Demos, John Putnam. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 10-13.

The copyright of the article Witchcraft in Colonial America in Colonial America is owned by Darryl Hamson. Permission to republish Witchcraft in Colonial America in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.