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OAH Magazine of History.
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Dennis
Matthew
American
Indians,
and
To
Witchcraft,
Witch-hunting
with
pean
as among
many
itself,
phasized
American
coloniza
commentators
have
by their
Yet,
at
least
in retrospect,
between
the
similari
tile
[shaman
Pawwaws
counted
hos
observer.
dernity
or reason
primitivism,
vs.
rev
abundant
their Pawwaws
sacrifice,_The
knowledgeable
distinction?set
colonists
and
European
Native Americans at odds as they competed
for the same thing: American
land and re
sources. Yet a shared belief in witchcraft?
no more than a similar ambition to live
lives in the North American
land
two
the
scape?hardly
brought
peoples to
one
in
At
least
important respect,
gether.
with
em
colonists,
often equating Indian difference with inferi
ority.
meetings
Euro
newcomers.
Since
tion
among
Natives
? ?.
^
Jesuits
* " , -.
^^n
provided
some
of our earliest
_
accounts
gods?and
devils?were
simply
overmatched.
witchcraft.
Devastating
epidemics
decimated
OAH Magazine
of History
Native
popula
July 2003 21
the
was
catastrophe
induced,
witchery?and
by
witchcraft
it does
(as
today
a world
means of understanding
bad things happen.
some
among
as a
Christians),
inwhich,
own
of our
communities
Indian
the nature
Reconstructing
time
are not
and
of witchcraft
beliefs
among
to
Indians
or biased
ignorant
by
white
observers?misrepresenta
uniformly
the
are
than
to harm
as
. . .
the
was
Iroquois,
lent
the
mobilized
they
injure
witches
or force
or power,
even
others,
near
inspired
no
"the
authors
own
kin.
among
female
Iroquoians,
Although
or charlatans),
tinguished
commentators
Puritan
unlike
considerable
antipathy
he
the
among
dis
nonetheless
shaman practices
who
inspired
Iroquois.
When
magic.
natural
remedies
failed
to produce
Iroquois
the
and
men
and
of outward
avoidance
women
repressed
expressions
their
means
22
to express
to
assault
themselves.
Witchcraft
antagonists
within
offered
Iroquois
such
for opportu
a covert,
communities,
in
hatred
acts
of aggressive
repression
among
the
Iroquois,
Bressani
Gioseppe
wrote
about
were
who
the Hurons,
without
fellow-countrymen,
accuser
other
any
or
than
judge
dying man, who said that he had been bewitched by such a one,
who was killing him..."
(4). A witch discovered among one's own
or
lineage
after
clan,
be more
could
all,
or
afar?he
from
operating
she
could
become
we
Wherever
expect.
might
seventeenth-
and
tended
antagonisms
Iroquois
eighteenth-century
one
than
dangerous
a cancer
within.
was
than
surface
in
witchcraft
culture,
living,
non-human
persons
of great
power?
which
on"
and
"eat"
their
holders.
Similarly,
women
(or men)
to
in contrast
and colonial
witch-hunting,
European
no
the Iroquois were
and executed
among
accused,
suspected,
more
that
for example,
It is suggestive,
than men.
apt to be women
the Iroquois was Atotarho,
witch
the most
venerable
among
perhaps
In general,
those
wicked
communities
repeatedly
accused
Jesuit missionaries
conflict,
but
aggression,
of
even
jealousy,
leader.
results,
and when rituals to uncover hidden wishes ofthe soul through the
examination of dreams failed to have their therapeutic effect, it
became clear that witchcraft lurked nearby. In a society based on
consensus
rivalry,
benevo
Both
of resentment,
"turn
personified,
than
rather
fear
their
aim
other
that witches
universal
the
the spirits or
are
ones"
evil
for
spells
of
because
have
spells
"evil
cast
who
spirits
(3). Agotkon,
power
orenda,
to
purposes
and male
evil
cast
These
harm."
or
agotkon
who
[T]hose
and work
women
and
think
people
geniuses.
tutelary
...
regarded
traffic which
men
"the
century,
eighteenth
[sorcerers]
and
cumspection
Francesco
easily
sense
one's
indulge
in 1646,
came
to be
considered
a sorcerer
and
a witch.
men and
Jogues's alleged witchcraft cost him his life. Iroquois
a male as
was
it
women practiced and suffered witchcraft equally;
well
as female
art.
to
July 2003
the
against
a Jesuit
missionary
above
suggests,
Indians
cated
people
colonial and early national peri
ods as well, when the American
and its aftermath
Revolution
new
rounds of death,
brought
and
dislocation to the
disruption,
numerous
other In
and
Iroquois
dian people. As Natives
to
reconstitute
you would
and
unfortunate
emerged
of white
The
new,
encroachment.
nineteenth-century
ad
and
government,
forth
sentence
the
demnation
her
upon
this
drawn
down
arm
the
have
geance. What
ers done
con
of
against
and
woman,
identification
sures
for
own
your
Tenskwatawa?distinguished
themselves as adept in identify
Native
brother
and pros
vivals;
ecution
witches
of alleged
those
deemed
respon
destroyed
sible for the chaos (collaborat
ing leaders who sold land, for
example), and continued purges
of whom dis
of witches?many
sented or frustrated the proph
to forge a
ets' reforms?helped
black
Your
ago?
struggled
themselves
visionaries
survive,
centuries
more
of
ven
our broth
than
the
rul
In this seventeenth-century
longhouse,
that Native
expressing
above
an
Lafitau's
executing,
in
way,
the
of
com
the
and
country,
laws
Iroqouis
sense
Other
by
freed,
deed,
though he
and
the
Iroquois
culture,
land,
his
resource
to defend
fully continued
lives,
admitted
and
their
sover
D. Hall, Worlds
in Early New
Beliefs
Press,
1989),
of Wonder,
England,
Days
Popular Religious
of Judgement:
MA: Harvard
University
(Cambridge,
71.
of History
July 2003 23
"STAND
FAST,MEN
with
anticommunist
mass
investigations,
THEV'RE
ARMED
WITHMARSH
MAIUMS"
of
communi
cation,
one's
as "witch-hunters"
opponents
was
not
only
but
commonplace
nearly inescapable.
Whether Sarah Good's curse haunted minister Nicholas Noyes's
remaining days on earth isnot known. But Salem witchcraft's long
life as a cultural metaphor suggests that since that long ago day in
imagination.
June of 1692, Salem has haunted the American
Endnotes
on the Origin and
Anderson,
Imagined Communities:
Reflections
(New York: Verso Books,
1991).
Spread of Nationalism
2. For a similar conclusion
of "witch burning" within
the
about the persistence
see also Bernard Rosenthal,
Salem Story: Reading theWitch
Salem metaphor,
1. Benedict
Trials of 1692
University
Press,
1993),
209.
Herbert
Block's
America
whose
Post,
Prints
of Congress,
and
Photographs
Division.)
1841),
"Seneca
Possessed:
Colonialism,
Witchcraft,
In Spellbound: Women
author
counters
Ethnohis
in
in
of Handsome
Lake."
and Witchcraft
DE: SR Books,
1998.
ed. 121-43. Wilmington,
in Seven
Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters
Press, 1993.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
teenth-Century America.
the Time
Great
Lakes Region,
1991.
Matthew Dennis
of Power."
and Gender
NE: University
of Nebraska
Prophet. Lincoln,
320-21.
Selected
Bibliography
a Witch?
"Who or What's
David.
Blanchard,
Iroquois Persons
American
6 (1982):
Indian Quarterly
218-37.
Cave, Alfred A. "The Failure of the Shawnee
Prophet's Witch-Hunt."
The Shawnee
1983.
Kluckhohn,
1724]), I, 241.
Putnam,
R. David.
Press,
America,
Dowd,
Library
Edmunds,
to the
3. Joseph-Francois
Indians Compared
Lafitau, Customs
of the American
N. Fenton
Customs of Primitive Times, no. 49, 2 vols. ed. and trans. William
and Elizabeth Moore
1974-1977
(Toronto: Champlain
[first publ.,
Society,
-.
11 August
marshmallows,"
/ From page 23
Dennis,
with
armed
men?They're
home.html>.
Dennis
fast,
("Stand
to an attack against
the Girl Scouts
of
responds
as "un-American."
"one world"
branded
ideals were
cartoon
Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for
1745-1815.
Press, 1992.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Unity,
1650-1815.
UK: Cambridge
Cambridge,
University
of Cultivating
a Landscape
in Seventeenth-Century
of
Peace:
America
Iroquois-European
(Cornell
University
En
Press,
Possessed:
Witchcraft,
Gender,
and Colonialism
on
the Fron
OAH Magazine
of History
July 2003 27