Overview

Witchcraft in Early North America investigates European, African, and Indian witchcraft beliefs and their expression in colonial America. Alison Games's engaging book takes us beyond the infamous outbreak at Salem, Massachusetts, to look at how witchcraft was a central feature of colonial societies in North America. Her substantial and lively introduction orients readers to the subject and to the rich selection of documents that follows. The documents begin with first encounters between European missionaries and Native Americans in New France and New Mexico, and they conclude with witch hunts among Native Americans in the years of the early American republic. The documents—some of which have never been published previously—include excerpts from trials in Virginia, New Mexico, and Massachusetts; accounts of outbreaks in Salem, Abiquiu (New Mexico), and among the Delaware Indians; descriptions of possession; legal codes; and allegations of poisoning by slaves. The documents raise issues central to legal, cultural, social, religious, and gender history. This fascinating topic and the book’s broad geographic and chronological coverage make this book ideally suited for readers interested in new approaches to colonial history and the history of witchcraft.

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9781442203570

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Reviews

Witches, witches, everywhere. That s the elegantly simple and subtle insight of Alison Games s new book. Witchcraft in Early North America combines an innovative approach to exploring the enmeshed histories of European, African, and Native American people in the early modern world with an important analysis of the deep and wide histories of witchcraft beliefs and practices across North America. Students, teachers, and general readers alike will appreciate this combination as they explore the richness of Games introduction and the variety of primary sources she has gathered here.--Wulf, Karin

Alison Games's wonderful book combines a superb historical introduction with an imaginative and wide-reaching collection of documents. Witchcraft, we learn, crossed cultural boundaries in North America, a finding that finally places the study of this aspect of the early modern world into our larger understanding of the period. General readers, students, and professors alike will benefit from the efforts of Professor Games, a leading scholar of the early modern Atlantic world, who brings her considerable talents and unique historical skills to the problem of witchcraft.--Peter C. Mancall

Author Information

Alison Games is the Dorothy M. Brown Distinguished Professor of History at Georgetown University. She is the author of Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, which won the Theodore Soloutos Award in Immigration and Ethnic History, and The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1600, winner of the Bainton Book Prize in History.

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