Most prominently, Norton argues that massacres of colonists by the fearsome Wabanakis tribe during the Second Indian War and the colonial government’s failure to effectively counter such killings were the main precipitators of the witchcraft trials. She quickly uncovers a number of historical threads not previously explored by scholars. Instead of writing another history of the oft-chronicled crisis, Norton (American History/Cornell Univ.) looks at the notoriously flawed and unfair trails from a 17th-century perspective. By providing this essential context to the famous events, and by casting her net well beyond the borders of Salem itself, Norton sheds new light on one of the most perplexing and fascinating periods in our history.The author of Founding Mothers and Fathers (1996) evaluates a less edifying episode in early American history-the infamous 1692 witchcraft scare-and finds connections between the terrors of American’s Second Indian War and the colonial authorities’ endorsement of the trials. Struck by the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed and what the witchcraft “victims” described, many were quick to see a vast conspiracy of the Devil (in league with the French and the Indians) threatening New England on all sides. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees-including the main accusers of witches-had fled to communities like Salem.
In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions.
Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study.
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