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In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study.
In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. 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. 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. 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. 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.
In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. 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. 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. 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. 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.
436 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews
August 10, 2007
An interesting subject, but after a while reading this book felt more like a chore than a pleasure. The author's a good historian but a mediocre storyteller; Norton never manages to tap into the human drama of the story and thus creates more of a dry catalogue of events than an actual narrative.
February 29, 2008
I really wanted to rank this higher, and am almost ashamed that I can't. I'm a history nerd, love colonial history, and a total dork about community-wide paranoia and I still couldn't get past how dry this book got at times. The author is one of the foremost writers on this time period and subject and while she takes a truly interesting look at the outside influences playing into the paranoia of Salem and environs, her over-reliance on written testimony of the time made the book hard to get through. Her narrative just wasn't as easy to follow as it could have been.
November 19, 2019
Norton's award-winning IN THE DEVIL'S SNARE offers the most important revision to date of Boyer and Nissenbaum's influential interpretation of the 1692 witch trials, SALEM POSSESSED (1972). Unlike those earlier authors, who characterized the witchcraft crisis as the outgrowth of intra-community conflict, Mary Beth Norton observes that the crisis was a regional event occurring in the context of a disastrous frontier war and a breakdown in provincial political authority. Many of the accusers in 1692, Norton observes, came from towns other than Salem – over forty of the accused “witches” were from Andover, for instance – and many of the early accusers and alleged witches, like Abigail Hobbs and George Burroughs, were emigrants or refugees from communities that French-allied Abenaki warriors had recently attacked. The afflictions that beset Deliverance Hobbs and other accusers also suggest a tie to Native American warfare: in their testimony the afflicted claimed to have seen devilish and “tawny” apparitions serving or acting as the Devil, and to have suffered wracking physical pains similar to those imposed on torture victims by Indian captors (a symptom that had not appeared at earlier New England witch trials). Magistrates and judges accepted this spectral evidence because they believed in an actual Devil, and saw nothing unusual in the Devil's choosing to afflict Christian New England with both a physical, Native American military assault and a concurrent spiritual assault by witches - “a combined assault from the visible and invisible worlds” (210). This was, Norton usefully notes, a convenient way for Massachusetts's elite to displace blame for their own military failures, which included the destruction of several Maine settlements and failed 1690 attacks on Montreal and Quebec. It also gave the accusers, many of whom were women and teenagers, a temporary taste of power, as they became their communities' intermediaries with the invisible world. The reliance of prosecutors on the testimony of marginalized people, however, eventually undermined official confidence in the accusers and helped bring the trials to an end.
Norton's interpretation is a pretty convincing one, and ties the Salem witch crisis to other episodes, like Bacon's Rebellion, where conflict between British colonists and Indians led to a severe crisis of colonial political authority. It is occasionally a hard argument to follow, since Norton follows the trials week by week and often day by day to make her case, and occasionally rests that case on speculation – there are a number of troubling “must haves” and other qualifiers throughout the text. And, like all good arguments, it leaves one or two questions unanswered. The feature of the Salem witch trials that always intrigued this reviewer, and that Norton mentions but doesn't explain, is the accusers' construction of witchcraft as a kind of counter-church, with satanic sacraments and ritual membership-book signing. This suggests that the Puritans saw witchcraft as a religious threat, not just a racial one. In 1692 they may have tied it to another religious threat, namely the one posed by Roman Catholicism. Massachusetts was for the first time at war with Catholic New France, stories of Catholic persecution of Protestants were commonplace in the English-speaking world, Protestant ministers still called the Pope Antichrist, and fears of priests seducing captives away from “true” Christianity would soon become a feature of New Englanders' Indian captivity narratives. Perhaps, in addition to blaming the Indians and the elite for the Salem witch crisis, future studies might usefully ask whether the French and anti-Catholicism were also contributing factors.
Norton's interpretation is a pretty convincing one, and ties the Salem witch crisis to other episodes, like Bacon's Rebellion, where conflict between British colonists and Indians led to a severe crisis of colonial political authority. It is occasionally a hard argument to follow, since Norton follows the trials week by week and often day by day to make her case, and occasionally rests that case on speculation – there are a number of troubling “must haves” and other qualifiers throughout the text. And, like all good arguments, it leaves one or two questions unanswered. The feature of the Salem witch trials that always intrigued this reviewer, and that Norton mentions but doesn't explain, is the accusers' construction of witchcraft as a kind of counter-church, with satanic sacraments and ritual membership-book signing. This suggests that the Puritans saw witchcraft as a religious threat, not just a racial one. In 1692 they may have tied it to another religious threat, namely the one posed by Roman Catholicism. Massachusetts was for the first time at war with Catholic New France, stories of Catholic persecution of Protestants were commonplace in the English-speaking world, Protestant ministers still called the Pope Antichrist, and fears of priests seducing captives away from “true” Christianity would soon become a feature of New Englanders' Indian captivity narratives. Perhaps, in addition to blaming the Indians and the elite for the Salem witch crisis, future studies might usefully ask whether the French and anti-Catholicism were also contributing factors.
June 24, 2020
Well this was a fun, albeit tedious, one to read. Mary Beth Norton, a feminist historian, took a look at all the "interpretations" of the Salem Witch Trials, and finally concluded they all got it wrong. She set about putting all the legal and personal documents into a chronological timeline and you might say she found something many historians (who were wearing the feminist tinted glasses) had missed when looking at this famous period of early colonial history.
In short, most historians had never made the connection between how all of the "victims" of the witches, and many of the witches themselves, had either been or had relatives affected by the Wabanaki Indian wars on the Maine frontier. In other words, the Puritan mindset of coming to establish a City on a Hill, and thus coming into spiritual conflict with unseen powers, became a broiling fear of witches who were in league with the Indian tribes which the settlers were locked in gruesome battles with.
This was a very thorough history of the Salem Witch crisis, and Norton, to her credit, refuses to put on the "smash the patriarchy" mindset that many of her predecessors have. She argues that what made the Salem trials different is that very young women were given more legal clout than ever before during this crisis. This was not the Patriarchy trying to suppress and kill "unruly women." This was the result of fear unfettered and imaginations left to run wild. On the whole, a really worthwhile book with some fascinating historical details.
In short, most historians had never made the connection between how all of the "victims" of the witches, and many of the witches themselves, had either been or had relatives affected by the Wabanaki Indian wars on the Maine frontier. In other words, the Puritan mindset of coming to establish a City on a Hill, and thus coming into spiritual conflict with unseen powers, became a broiling fear of witches who were in league with the Indian tribes which the settlers were locked in gruesome battles with.
This was a very thorough history of the Salem Witch crisis, and Norton, to her credit, refuses to put on the "smash the patriarchy" mindset that many of her predecessors have. She argues that what made the Salem trials different is that very young women were given more legal clout than ever before during this crisis. This was not the Patriarchy trying to suppress and kill "unruly women." This was the result of fear unfettered and imaginations left to run wild. On the whole, a really worthwhile book with some fascinating historical details.
January 2, 2016
Norton's conclusion should have been put at the start, for in it she explains her thesis clearly and concisely--that the witchcraft crisis of 1692 was in large part a reaction to King Philip's War and King William's War--and makes explicit the logic by which her argument works. Both these things would have benefited me greatly if I'd had them up front. She also, in the conclusion, addresses the question of the afflicted girls--sensibly and with attention to nuance.
In the Devil's Snare is a tremendously ambitious book, as Norton is trying to lay out connections between the experiences of settlers in Maine, the accusations of the afflicted in Salem, and the actions and decisions of the colony leaders in Boston (also in Maine and in Salem). This is a horrifically tangled web; I spent most of the book wishing desperately for a score card. And she has some of the same problem that Boyer and Nissenbaum do. Where they treat the witchcraft accusations as transparent vehicles for socioeconomic disputes, Norton treats them as transparent vehicles for anxieties about the Wabanakis (particularly in regards to John Alden, where--going by Norton's explanation--he was accused of witchcraft because he was known to trade, without any supernatural overtones, with the French and the Indians). And I don't think it's quite that simple.
On the other hand, the parallel Norton argues that the people of Massachusetts saw between the Wabanaki attacks and the Devil's attacks, between the colony's military failures and the afflicted girls suffering, does make very cogent sense of a troubling question: why the magistrates were willing to believe--and more than believe, to invest totally in the truth of--the witchcraft accusations, when in all other witchcraft trials, magistrates were notable for their caution and skepticism:
If the devil was operating in their world with impunity--if God for his own inscrutable reasons had "lengthened the chain" that usually limited Satan's active malevolence against mankind, to adopt Lawson's memorable phrase--then the Massachusetts leaders' lack of success in combating the Indians could be explained without reference to their own failings. If God had providentially caused the wartime disasters and he had also unleashed the devil on Massachusetts, then they bore no responsibility for the current state of affairs. (Norton 299-300)
And as she makes very clear, without the hand of Providence to hide behind, their responsibility was very heavy, comprised of both greed and incompetence. (It's not exactly comforting to be given proof that human governments have pretty much always been greedy and incompetent, but on the other hand, it does put the current political sturm und drang in helpful perspective.)
I was never quite convinced of the transparent one-to-one correspondence Norton wants me to believe the New Englanders saw between the Wabanakis (and Indians in general) and the Devil, but that may be my own subject-position getting in the way, rather than a fault in her argument. I don't want to believe they could have believed that, but that doesn't mean they didn't.
In the Devil's Snare is a tremendously ambitious book, as Norton is trying to lay out connections between the experiences of settlers in Maine, the accusations of the afflicted in Salem, and the actions and decisions of the colony leaders in Boston (also in Maine and in Salem). This is a horrifically tangled web; I spent most of the book wishing desperately for a score card. And she has some of the same problem that Boyer and Nissenbaum do. Where they treat the witchcraft accusations as transparent vehicles for socioeconomic disputes, Norton treats them as transparent vehicles for anxieties about the Wabanakis (particularly in regards to John Alden, where--going by Norton's explanation--he was accused of witchcraft because he was known to trade, without any supernatural overtones, with the French and the Indians). And I don't think it's quite that simple.
On the other hand, the parallel Norton argues that the people of Massachusetts saw between the Wabanaki attacks and the Devil's attacks, between the colony's military failures and the afflicted girls suffering, does make very cogent sense of a troubling question: why the magistrates were willing to believe--and more than believe, to invest totally in the truth of--the witchcraft accusations, when in all other witchcraft trials, magistrates were notable for their caution and skepticism:
If the devil was operating in their world with impunity--if God for his own inscrutable reasons had "lengthened the chain" that usually limited Satan's active malevolence against mankind, to adopt Lawson's memorable phrase--then the Massachusetts leaders' lack of success in combating the Indians could be explained without reference to their own failings. If God had providentially caused the wartime disasters and he had also unleashed the devil on Massachusetts, then they bore no responsibility for the current state of affairs. (Norton 299-300)
And as she makes very clear, without the hand of Providence to hide behind, their responsibility was very heavy, comprised of both greed and incompetence. (It's not exactly comforting to be given proof that human governments have pretty much always been greedy and incompetent, but on the other hand, it does put the current political sturm und drang in helpful perspective.)
I was never quite convinced of the transparent one-to-one correspondence Norton wants me to believe the New Englanders saw between the Wabanakis (and Indians in general) and the Devil, but that may be my own subject-position getting in the way, rather than a fault in her argument. I don't want to believe they could have believed that, but that doesn't mean they didn't.
June 1, 2010
One of the most detailed accounts of the Salem Witch Trials I have ever read. Norton makes an interesting case, combining the fear of Indian raids from the outside with the internal fear of Satan and witchcraft within Essex County. One could only imagine such an environment; surrounded in fear from the inside and out.
I have to admit, I didn't finish reading this book. Norton includes some great evidence and primary sources from Cotton Mather and other well-known players in the trials. However, the book is very heavy with this evidence. The connections between the residents of Salem, residents of other parts of Essex County, people back in England, etc, is mind-boggling. The web weaved by who-knows-who among the accused and the afflicted is quite confusing at times. Norton is obviously a great historian, she definitely knows her stuff, but the story is presented in such a way that it can bombard the reader into a kind of "wait, what?" stupor.
Norton also dispels some of the common assumptions about the witch trials and the mysterious Tituba. In terms of completeness, her work wins a gold star. In terms of entertainment value (well, as entertaining as a terrible and scary time can be made out to be) not so much.
I have to admit, I didn't finish reading this book. Norton includes some great evidence and primary sources from Cotton Mather and other well-known players in the trials. However, the book is very heavy with this evidence. The connections between the residents of Salem, residents of other parts of Essex County, people back in England, etc, is mind-boggling. The web weaved by who-knows-who among the accused and the afflicted is quite confusing at times. Norton is obviously a great historian, she definitely knows her stuff, but the story is presented in such a way that it can bombard the reader into a kind of "wait, what?" stupor.
Norton also dispels some of the common assumptions about the witch trials and the mysterious Tituba. In terms of completeness, her work wins a gold star. In terms of entertainment value (well, as entertaining as a terrible and scary time can be made out to be) not so much.
March 31, 2016
I REALLY enjoyed this book but oh my goodness it was so friggen dense
February 3, 2011
I really liked this, but I would hesitate to recommend it to people who rarely read history, I think it might seem dense and hard to plow through. But so interesting, and anyone who is curious about the Salem Witch Trials should check this out. Norton thinks that too much attention has been paid over the years to debating the accusers in the trial (why did they do it, were they just purely faking it all, etc.), and more attention should be paid to the context of the Trials, and what was going on in the areas around northeastern Massachusetts at the time. Specifically, the settlements northeast of Salem were engaged in ongoing, bloody warfare with the French and Indians during the trials, and they had been for years. Normally, according to Norton, the middle-aged men in charge of Massachusetts didn't pay much attention to the actions and accusations of teenage girls. In fact, there were several other cases of witchcraft accusations in other parts of the colonies that died out quickly and didn't explode into trials and executions as the situation did in Salem. Why did the men in Salem take THESE accusations so seriously? Norton contends that this situation was different because the French and Indians were clearly winning the fight, burning villages and taking captives. The people of Massachusetts saw that war as one between themselves and the forces of the devil. So it was no surprise to discover that the devil was not only attacking them in the form of French and Indians, but also attacking them through witches in their midst.
I do think that occasionally Norton draws a dubious parallel between people involved with the witch trials and activity on the frontier. I'm fully with her that the context must matter, to some extent, and probably has a lot to do with the willingness of the judges to convict and execute. But sometimes she goes a little far, tracing people from Salem back to towns on the Maine coast where they may or may not have lived, and people they may or may not have known very well.
But really, this is one of those books where the central thesis makes so much sense, you wonder how it could have taken so long to write a book about it.
I do think that occasionally Norton draws a dubious parallel between people involved with the witch trials and activity on the frontier. I'm fully with her that the context must matter, to some extent, and probably has a lot to do with the willingness of the judges to convict and execute. But sometimes she goes a little far, tracing people from Salem back to towns on the Maine coast where they may or may not have lived, and people they may or may not have known very well.
But really, this is one of those books where the central thesis makes so much sense, you wonder how it could have taken so long to write a book about it.
September 26, 2019
DNF.
I really should have loved this. The Salem Witchcraft Trials have also been immensely fascinating to me and the fact that this book was framed in a historical/feminist context was very intriguing. However, I just could not finish this. The way that it was written was hard to follow. I appreciate the extensive background information on each person, but it really turned into information overload. I almost feel like I needed to take notes as I read to keep everyone and their family history straight.
Clearly Norton is well educated on the subject and she has a lot of important things to say, but it was just too dense for me. I'd like to pick this one back up in the future, but I will definitely approach it more as a textbook type reading than a typical non-fiction.
I really should have loved this. The Salem Witchcraft Trials have also been immensely fascinating to me and the fact that this book was framed in a historical/feminist context was very intriguing. However, I just could not finish this. The way that it was written was hard to follow. I appreciate the extensive background information on each person, but it really turned into information overload. I almost feel like I needed to take notes as I read to keep everyone and their family history straight.
Clearly Norton is well educated on the subject and she has a lot of important things to say, but it was just too dense for me. I'd like to pick this one back up in the future, but I will definitely approach it more as a textbook type reading than a typical non-fiction.
August 6, 2020
2.5 stars
In addition to looking at the accusations and trials of the “witches” in the Salem, Mass. area in the late 17th century, this author looks at other things happening in the area at the time to see if there is a connection. Specifically, the First and Second Indian Wars happened in the years leading up to the witch accusations and trials.
I do find the Salem witches an interesting topic, but a number of nonfiction books I’ve read about it (including this one) have not held my interest. I do find it hard, sometimes, to read books with a lot of quotations from other sources, and this one (and other books on this topic) has a lot of that.
In addition to looking at the accusations and trials of the “witches” in the Salem, Mass. area in the late 17th century, this author looks at other things happening in the area at the time to see if there is a connection. Specifically, the First and Second Indian Wars happened in the years leading up to the witch accusations and trials.
I do find the Salem witches an interesting topic, but a number of nonfiction books I’ve read about it (including this one) have not held my interest. I do find it hard, sometimes, to read books with a lot of quotations from other sources, and this one (and other books on this topic) has a lot of that.
December 4, 2019
2.5/5
Ya. Le tenía mucha fe a este libro porque hace mucho que quería leer sobre este momento horrible de la historia, pero la verdad es que no pude terminarlo. Me decepcionó un poco porque está lleno de datos interesantes narrados de una manera /muy/ aburrida, y al final nunca logré enganchar; y es una pena porque de verdad es un tema muy interesante :< espero encontrar más libros al respecto pero no-tan-fomes.
Ya. Le tenía mucha fe a este libro porque hace mucho que quería leer sobre este momento horrible de la historia, pero la verdad es que no pude terminarlo. Me decepcionó un poco porque está lleno de datos interesantes narrados de una manera /muy/ aburrida, y al final nunca logré enganchar; y es una pena porque de verdad es un tema muy interesante :< espero encontrar más libros al respecto pero no-tan-fomes.
March 20, 2022
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Mary Beth Norton, 2002
My favorite quote: “They believed that, in the colony, they lived in a moral and spiritual wilderness, corruption on all sides, and this made them particularly vigilant, even paranoid, when it came to threats, either real or perceived.”
Notable characters: Bridget Bishop, the first woman executed in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692; Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne, among the first women who were accused; Giles Corey, a farmer who was pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty; Tituba, a slave — and the very first to be accused — who survived by confessing
Most memorable scene: In the Devil’s Snare was, for me, a pretty mixed bag. While I didn’t enjoy being tossed between the decades in what felt like no logical order (I seriously think I got whiplash) I liked the glimpses into the socioeconomic events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of 1692
Greatest strengths: In the Devil’s Snare not only covers the Salem Witch Trials themselves, but includes a lot of interesting historical details that likely influenced them. I’ve often wondered, ‘How could this happen?’ but after reading In The Devil’s Snare, I came away with a deeper understanding of what brought things to that point. One thing I’m sure of: I never would have survived as a Puritan. Or in 1692 in Salem. Or anywhere else in the world in 1692 for that matter. They didn’t even have gummy bears then. Enough said
Standout achievements: I will say that of all the accounts of the Salem Witch Trials I’ve come across, Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare is easily the most detailed — and at times, a little too ambitious — that I’ve read
Fun Facts: Mary Beth Norton’s 1996 book, Founding Mothers & Fathers, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Personally, that just sounds like a kick in the nuts to me, but I suppose some folks are “honored just to be nominated” or whatever
Other media: There are pretty much a million things out there that cover the events of the Salem Witch Trials, but none I’m aware of that are based specifically on In The Devil’s Snare. Perhaps if Mary Beth Norton had won that Pulitzer, things would be different, but she didn’t. She lost. And here we are …
What it taught me: In the Devil’s Snare is so full of information about historical events that I can’t help thinking Mary Beth Norton must be a real snore at dinner parties. I know some folks really love that stuff, but it pretty much just wore me down to a bloody nub. That said, this book should, if nothing else, serve as a lesson in the very real danger of group-think (and as a reminder not to invite Mary Beth Norton to your dinner party)
How it inspired me: It was this book that began my descent into all things Salem Witch Trials -- so I have to give Mary Beth Norton that much. In the Devil’s Snare certainly isn’t the easiest starting point on the subject but it prompted me onto other sources of information on the subject. And after muddling through In the Devil’s Snare, they all read like Dick and Jane books in comparison, so that’s kinda nice
Additional thoughts: While I learned a lot from this book, I never fully bought into Mary Beth Norton’s theories about the connections between New Englanders, the Indian Wars, and the “devil.” Though plausible enough, the connections didn’t quite gel and weren’t fully tied together until the conclusion, which contributed to a disjointed feeling through much of the book. Perhaps if I were to sit down and discuss the matter face-to-face with Mary Beth Norton, she could explain it to me in a way that made it all a little more feasible, but that’s not going to happen. I don’t throw dinner parties. And even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t invite Mary
Haunt me: alistaircross.com
Read In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692: https://tinyurl.com/3asrrbam
My favorite quote: “They believed that, in the colony, they lived in a moral and spiritual wilderness, corruption on all sides, and this made them particularly vigilant, even paranoid, when it came to threats, either real or perceived.”
Notable characters: Bridget Bishop, the first woman executed in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692; Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne, among the first women who were accused; Giles Corey, a farmer who was pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty; Tituba, a slave — and the very first to be accused — who survived by confessing
Most memorable scene: In the Devil’s Snare was, for me, a pretty mixed bag. While I didn’t enjoy being tossed between the decades in what felt like no logical order (I seriously think I got whiplash) I liked the glimpses into the socioeconomic events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of 1692
Greatest strengths: In the Devil’s Snare not only covers the Salem Witch Trials themselves, but includes a lot of interesting historical details that likely influenced them. I’ve often wondered, ‘How could this happen?’ but after reading In The Devil’s Snare, I came away with a deeper understanding of what brought things to that point. One thing I’m sure of: I never would have survived as a Puritan. Or in 1692 in Salem. Or anywhere else in the world in 1692 for that matter. They didn’t even have gummy bears then. Enough said
Standout achievements: I will say that of all the accounts of the Salem Witch Trials I’ve come across, Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare is easily the most detailed — and at times, a little too ambitious — that I’ve read
Fun Facts: Mary Beth Norton’s 1996 book, Founding Mothers & Fathers, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Personally, that just sounds like a kick in the nuts to me, but I suppose some folks are “honored just to be nominated” or whatever
Other media: There are pretty much a million things out there that cover the events of the Salem Witch Trials, but none I’m aware of that are based specifically on In The Devil’s Snare. Perhaps if Mary Beth Norton had won that Pulitzer, things would be different, but she didn’t. She lost. And here we are …
What it taught me: In the Devil’s Snare is so full of information about historical events that I can’t help thinking Mary Beth Norton must be a real snore at dinner parties. I know some folks really love that stuff, but it pretty much just wore me down to a bloody nub. That said, this book should, if nothing else, serve as a lesson in the very real danger of group-think (and as a reminder not to invite Mary Beth Norton to your dinner party)
How it inspired me: It was this book that began my descent into all things Salem Witch Trials -- so I have to give Mary Beth Norton that much. In the Devil’s Snare certainly isn’t the easiest starting point on the subject but it prompted me onto other sources of information on the subject. And after muddling through In the Devil’s Snare, they all read like Dick and Jane books in comparison, so that’s kinda nice
Additional thoughts: While I learned a lot from this book, I never fully bought into Mary Beth Norton’s theories about the connections between New Englanders, the Indian Wars, and the “devil.” Though plausible enough, the connections didn’t quite gel and weren’t fully tied together until the conclusion, which contributed to a disjointed feeling through much of the book. Perhaps if I were to sit down and discuss the matter face-to-face with Mary Beth Norton, she could explain it to me in a way that made it all a little more feasible, but that’s not going to happen. I don’t throw dinner parties. And even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t invite Mary
Haunt me: alistaircross.com
Read In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692: https://tinyurl.com/3asrrbam
January 13, 2023
This was a very informative read about the Salem witch trials, & how the fears of the townspeople directly correlated with their anxieties surrounding the First and Second Indian Wars.
Around 100 pages in, the book got to be a bit dense and dry—I found myself skimming over the repetitive accusations and actions of the witchcraft accusers. I wish more had been said about what caused the accusers to act in this way, but respect the author’s decision not to discuss this which she explains at the end of the book.
Overall, this is a great book if you’re looking to do a deep dive into the Salem witch trials and particularly if you’re interested in Indigenous studies/history. For the casual reader, though, I think this may be a little too much to swallow.
Around 100 pages in, the book got to be a bit dense and dry—I found myself skimming over the repetitive accusations and actions of the witchcraft accusers. I wish more had been said about what caused the accusers to act in this way, but respect the author’s decision not to discuss this which she explains at the end of the book.
Overall, this is a great book if you’re looking to do a deep dive into the Salem witch trials and particularly if you’re interested in Indigenous studies/history. For the casual reader, though, I think this may be a little too much to swallow.
March 28, 2023
as a narrative, this kind of flops. but as a history book, it’s some of the best history i’ve ever read. meticulous work. attention to detail. it’s not as exciting as the crucible, but it does give you a nuanced look at a community on the brink in seventeenth-century new england. i wish the francophobia/antipopery angle was fleshed out more, but that would have made this book even LONGER, so i’ll give MBN a pass on that one. i can’t believe i read books like this every week in grad school. i guess that’s what i get for not skimming this!!
March 22, 2017
Lots of detail. Lots and lots and lots of detail, which would have been easier to follow had the author used a more entertaining writing style. Still, I'd recommend this to anyone with an interest in pre-modern American history.
January 9, 2024
whew! what a slog.
November 4, 2019
Quite a dry and ponderous book to sift through. I may try again at another time, but couldn't get through this right now.
December 14, 2013
"The Crucible," by Arthur Miller, is an illuminating piece of theater. But as one of America's most often produced plays, it casts a spell over our cultural imagination that complicates the historian's task. The factual inaccuracies - composite characters, age changes, the adulterous affair at the center of the play - are, in a sense, the least of it.
Embroiled in the cold-war paranoia of the 1950s, Miller needed a sufficiently distant setting to critique what he called a "perverse manifestation of the panic which sets in among all classes when the balance begins to turn toward greater individual freedom." The play, with its memorable portrayal of John Proctor as a hero who refuses to betray his friends, fundamentally casts the Salem crisis as a test of individual conscience.
Cornell history professor Mary Beth Norton doesn't finger him by name, but it's clear that with "In the Devil's Snare" she wants to wrest the witchcraft episode away from Arthur Miller. What happened in Salem, she argues, was not a timeless expression of the battle between conformity and individuality. Instead, her "new interpretation ... places it firmly in the context of its very specific time and place." There may be lessons here for us all, but, she insists, "The dramatic events of 1692 can be fully understood only by viewing them as intricately related to concurrent political and military affairs in northern New England."
Norton builds a strong case, but her recitation of the evidence is sometimes so repetitive that to move it along I would have bargained with Satan to endure "The Crucible" one more time. Her perfectly reasonable thesis, which she characterizes as radical, is that Indian attacks on the northern frontier created a climate of panic at a time when Massachusetts had lost its charter and was being ruled by a shaky interim government.
That tense atmosphere led usually skeptical men to accept the hysterical claims of young girls, which they ordinarily would have dismissed. What's more, she continues, the leaders of Massachusetts, having failed to protect their citizens from Indians - the devil's minions - "quickly became invested in believing in the reputed witches' guilt, in large part because they needed to believe that they themselves were not guilty of causing New England's current woes."
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
The air over Salem is already crowded with explanations for what happened during those paranoid months. Historians have suggested that revenge or a deadly lust for others' land motivated neighbors to hang 19 people and press one to death. (Puritans didn't burn their witches - that was considered a "Popish cruelty.") Sociologists have examined the resentment that developed between the thinly populated Salem Village and the prosperous seaport of Salem Town. Feminists have illuminated the signs of misogyny in the accusations. Psychologists have analyzed psychosomatic illnesses caused by the anxieties of young people trapped in repressive Salem households. Pathologists have noticed that smallpox often inspired panic about malevolent forces. Biologists have even speculated that moldy grain may have induced hallucinations in the bewitched girls.
Many critics before Norton have noted that the Puritans were terrified of the Indians, whom they regarded as working in concert with Satan to destroy their "city on the hill." But what Norton has done here, more deliberately and carefully than anyone else, is re-create the exact battles with Wabanaki Indians that terrorized specific instigators and perpetrators of the witchcraft crisis. What's more, she's dismantled the proscenium arch over Salem and demonstrated that what happened there must be seen in the broader context of northern New England fighting for its survival.
That effort involves tracing - sometimes with a degree of speculation - the history and family connections of many Salem residents back to the Maine frontier, the site of the First and Second Indian Wars (King Philip's War and King William's War). From there, Norton shows that victims of witchcraft often described their afflictions in specific phrases that echoed the grisly Indian attacks they'd seen or heard about. Norton is also particularly attentive to the flow of gossip, which enables her to reconstruct the drift of certain accusations from town to town until they took deadly root in Salem.
'We must not believe all that these distracted children say.'
Attorney General Thomas Newton, from Boston, was prescient when he predicted, "The tryalls will be tedious," but students of law and the history of science will be fascinated by Norton's careful analysis of the interrogations. Salem investigators made a crucial error when they departed from custom and began questioning suspects in public, thereby creating a forum in which aggrieved parties could interrupt with hysterical outbursts, fits, and curses.
The Puritans lived on the cusp of the Enlightenment. They knew enough already to be skeptical, but they also believed that malevolent forces were at work in the physical world. Despite their attempts to establish scientific and medical tests for witchcraft, the judges clung to the controversial notion that testimony given by spirits and ghosts - "spectral evidence" - was admissible.
To make matters worse, the magistrates began preserving the lives of confessed witches who were willing to expose other witches, a practice that quickly led to the imprisonment of hundreds of "Satan's servants." In a climate that assumed the accused were guilty, it was virtually impossible to mount an effective defense.
As an academic historian, Norton tolerates none of the lurid aura that floats around the witchcraft crisis, but in the process she throws out Rosemary's baby with the bath water. There's no flesh on these characters. She names the names, but they remain just names - who went here, said that, did this. In her sober recitation of legal and historical detail, even the hysterical fits, ghastly visions, and physical manifestations of supernatural attack eventually begin to sound monotonous. Yes, this is valuable scholarship, but nonacademic readers accustomed to spellbinding characters in the work of David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin may find this approach as dry as a witch's broom.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1031/p1...
Embroiled in the cold-war paranoia of the 1950s, Miller needed a sufficiently distant setting to critique what he called a "perverse manifestation of the panic which sets in among all classes when the balance begins to turn toward greater individual freedom." The play, with its memorable portrayal of John Proctor as a hero who refuses to betray his friends, fundamentally casts the Salem crisis as a test of individual conscience.
Cornell history professor Mary Beth Norton doesn't finger him by name, but it's clear that with "In the Devil's Snare" she wants to wrest the witchcraft episode away from Arthur Miller. What happened in Salem, she argues, was not a timeless expression of the battle between conformity and individuality. Instead, her "new interpretation ... places it firmly in the context of its very specific time and place." There may be lessons here for us all, but, she insists, "The dramatic events of 1692 can be fully understood only by viewing them as intricately related to concurrent political and military affairs in northern New England."
Norton builds a strong case, but her recitation of the evidence is sometimes so repetitive that to move it along I would have bargained with Satan to endure "The Crucible" one more time. Her perfectly reasonable thesis, which she characterizes as radical, is that Indian attacks on the northern frontier created a climate of panic at a time when Massachusetts had lost its charter and was being ruled by a shaky interim government.
That tense atmosphere led usually skeptical men to accept the hysterical claims of young girls, which they ordinarily would have dismissed. What's more, she continues, the leaders of Massachusetts, having failed to protect their citizens from Indians - the devil's minions - "quickly became invested in believing in the reputed witches' guilt, in large part because they needed to believe that they themselves were not guilty of causing New England's current woes."
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
The air over Salem is already crowded with explanations for what happened during those paranoid months. Historians have suggested that revenge or a deadly lust for others' land motivated neighbors to hang 19 people and press one to death. (Puritans didn't burn their witches - that was considered a "Popish cruelty.") Sociologists have examined the resentment that developed between the thinly populated Salem Village and the prosperous seaport of Salem Town. Feminists have illuminated the signs of misogyny in the accusations. Psychologists have analyzed psychosomatic illnesses caused by the anxieties of young people trapped in repressive Salem households. Pathologists have noticed that smallpox often inspired panic about malevolent forces. Biologists have even speculated that moldy grain may have induced hallucinations in the bewitched girls.
Many critics before Norton have noted that the Puritans were terrified of the Indians, whom they regarded as working in concert with Satan to destroy their "city on the hill." But what Norton has done here, more deliberately and carefully than anyone else, is re-create the exact battles with Wabanaki Indians that terrorized specific instigators and perpetrators of the witchcraft crisis. What's more, she's dismantled the proscenium arch over Salem and demonstrated that what happened there must be seen in the broader context of northern New England fighting for its survival.
That effort involves tracing - sometimes with a degree of speculation - the history and family connections of many Salem residents back to the Maine frontier, the site of the First and Second Indian Wars (King Philip's War and King William's War). From there, Norton shows that victims of witchcraft often described their afflictions in specific phrases that echoed the grisly Indian attacks they'd seen or heard about. Norton is also particularly attentive to the flow of gossip, which enables her to reconstruct the drift of certain accusations from town to town until they took deadly root in Salem.
'We must not believe all that these distracted children say.'
Attorney General Thomas Newton, from Boston, was prescient when he predicted, "The tryalls will be tedious," but students of law and the history of science will be fascinated by Norton's careful analysis of the interrogations. Salem investigators made a crucial error when they departed from custom and began questioning suspects in public, thereby creating a forum in which aggrieved parties could interrupt with hysterical outbursts, fits, and curses.
The Puritans lived on the cusp of the Enlightenment. They knew enough already to be skeptical, but they also believed that malevolent forces were at work in the physical world. Despite their attempts to establish scientific and medical tests for witchcraft, the judges clung to the controversial notion that testimony given by spirits and ghosts - "spectral evidence" - was admissible.
To make matters worse, the magistrates began preserving the lives of confessed witches who were willing to expose other witches, a practice that quickly led to the imprisonment of hundreds of "Satan's servants." In a climate that assumed the accused were guilty, it was virtually impossible to mount an effective defense.
As an academic historian, Norton tolerates none of the lurid aura that floats around the witchcraft crisis, but in the process she throws out Rosemary's baby with the bath water. There's no flesh on these characters. She names the names, but they remain just names - who went here, said that, did this. In her sober recitation of legal and historical detail, even the hysterical fits, ghastly visions, and physical manifestations of supernatural attack eventually begin to sound monotonous. Yes, this is valuable scholarship, but nonacademic readers accustomed to spellbinding characters in the work of David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin may find this approach as dry as a witch's broom.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1031/p1...
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August 23, 2025“If the devil was operating in their world with impunity—if God for his own inscrutable reasons had “lengthened the chain” that usually limited Satan’s active malevolence against mankind to adopt Lawson’s memorable phrase—then the Massachusetts leaders’ lack of success in combating Indians could be explained without reference to their own failings. If God had providentially caused the wartime disasters and he had also unleashed the devil on Massachusetts, then they bore no responsibility for the current state of affairs….They quickly became invested in believing in the reputed witches’ guilt, in large part because they needed to believe that they themselves were not guilty of causing New England’s current woes.”, p. 299-300
August 24, 2015
3.5 Stars, but it gets an upgrade for being eminently skimable. In this work, Norton looks at a well trudged and puzzled over moment in early American History, the Salem Witch Trials, and approaches it anew. She started by collecting every available source, including counting those persons who had been accused, but not actually tried for witchcraft and by doing so brought previously overlooked connections to light, and didn't discount the men who had also been accused and tried, which past feminist historians had discounted. The main revelation that Norton argues is that the Salem and Andover witch scares were the result of Indian-Settler violence on the frontiers, in particular the 2nd Indian War or "King Williams War". These uprisings, the resulting destruction and murders, caused the second generation of Salem Citizens to subconsciously question their project and these fears manifested in the form of a "Tawny Devil". The bulk of her work is dedicated to tracing and teasing out these connections, and especially those like Abigail Hubbard who were linked to the Maine frontier where the worst of the violence occurred. This is a major turn in the Salem historiography, and certainly seems to be a plausible explanation. Her footnotes are generous and encompassing, and she helpfully indicates where her findings and primary source research conflict and correct previous interpretations. Those who want to know every last detail of the Salem Trials will desire to read every word and will enjoy doing it, busy grad students can skate by with the Intro and conclusions in which Norton helpfully expounded her method and findings.
January 11, 2017
Fascinating work of history from Norton, who takes an event that is among the more well-known in early American history (well, at least parts of it), and infuses it with life and meaning through careful scholarship and an attentiveness to social and political context. Norton's main contribution, outside of her careful detailing of the accusations, trials, and executions, is the weaving in of the Indian Wars that occurred in the decades just prior to the witch crisis, as Norton is attempting to explain why a few initial accusations of witchcraft (not unusual at that time) blew up into a full-blown crisis.
Her thesis is simple: Salem Village and surrounding areas were marked by a culture of fear of violent Indian attack. This fear created conditions in which people under stress looked to assign blame to those with whom they disagreed or suspected of malevolent acts. Further, the men serving as magistrates and judges had also been directly or indirectly involved in much of the failure associated with the previous Indian war, so the community's turn to focus on the devil and his minions took the spotlight off of them, got them off the hook.
The main chapters, while interesting, can be a bit of a slog, what with names, accusations, and trials criss-crossing throughout. They are hard to keep straight, and to differentiate from one another. But the narrative really does come together in the final couple of chapters, and Norton also provides a lucid conclusion.
Her thesis is simple: Salem Village and surrounding areas were marked by a culture of fear of violent Indian attack. This fear created conditions in which people under stress looked to assign blame to those with whom they disagreed or suspected of malevolent acts. Further, the men serving as magistrates and judges had also been directly or indirectly involved in much of the failure associated with the previous Indian war, so the community's turn to focus on the devil and his minions took the spotlight off of them, got them off the hook.
The main chapters, while interesting, can be a bit of a slog, what with names, accusations, and trials criss-crossing throughout. They are hard to keep straight, and to differentiate from one another. But the narrative really does come together in the final couple of chapters, and Norton also provides a lucid conclusion.
November 5, 2018
This is a comprehensive look at the Salem Witch trials of 1692 that has been meticulously researched and footnoted by an historian who specializes in colonial America. Fair warning: this is not an easy read. As an avid reader of all things Salem (1692) I felt it was time to pick up a non-fiction text that has been referenced a great deal in the fiction that is out there. While Norton does get into the nitty-gritty of the crisis, there are still so many unanswered questions about exactly why and how this happened. I was happy to see that the relations with the Indigenous (Wabanaki) People were treated as having more of an impact on the happenings in Salem than what I've read in the past. In most of the fiction I've come across, the interactions with the Native people has been reduced to wallpaper that just provides a little scene setting for the main events of the outcries, trials, convictions, and executions of many innocent people in Salem and surrounding towns. Norton does posit that the hostile climate created by the tension between "heathen" and Puritan is more of a catalyst in this part of American history than most people realize.
This was not a pleasurable read, but definitely one to pick up if you yearn to know more about this dark chapter in America.
This was not a pleasurable read, but definitely one to pick up if you yearn to know more about this dark chapter in America.
December 17, 2012
Not a bad book. It covers the trials very thoroughly. The beginning has a lot of quotes! Almost entirely quotes at some points. Misspellings and bad grammar and all! And there is a lot of names. So many different names that's it's hard to remember who is who. But as far as learning about the witch trials and the events around it this is a good book. If you have an interest in the witch trials... you should learn a lot. I did. I personally believe the trials were a farce. Liars and corruption cost the lives of many innocent people. I believe these people were scapegoats and the "afflicted" were attention hounds and liars and people with a hidden agenda. They saw a chance to redeem some inner vengeance and took advantage of it. Any questionable citizen was sacrificed. From a justice stand point... there was none. And the quick loss of support shows that many people saw the complete ridiculousness of these proceedings. It was a very strange and unfortunate event.... mass hysteria, liars and people looking to avert attention from their failures to run and protect a community. The people that condemned the "witches" were the ones that needed to be hung.
October 31, 2017
This book presented a fresh viewpoint on the Salem Witch Trials that I'd never seen put forth as possible cruxes to the extreme volitility of the accusations put forth during this infamous period. However, I found little to connect the events throughout the narrative other than an occasional alluding to the parallels drawn between the descriptions given of the "devil" and their resemblance to the Indians that were so present on the northeastern frontier and the sporadic mention of certain accusers/accused previous connections to the afflicted frontier. The connections weren't, I felt, fully brought together until the conclusion and I would've like a bit more interconnectivity throughout the narrative. That being said, I now have a new view of the Trials that I hadn't been led to consider previously and I'm glad that this book exists to help bring about a fresh take on a much discussed and debated time period of American history.
June 26, 2019
Norton’s book on the Salem (or, as she argues, the Essex County) witch crisis is probably the most careful and chronologically accurate study ever written about this exceedingly controverted episode in American history. Norton writes well for a major-league academic, and her premise, shrewdly connecting the witch scare to contemporaneous Indian wars, is a path-breaking hypothesis even if it does not provide a simple, coherent explanation of what is, from any point of view, a complex event.
As other reviewers have noted, though the book is the product of first-rate historical research, it is probably not the best introduction to the subject unless one has a serious interest in the subject. There are simply too many names and events to make it the sort of book most educated general readers would choose to read for pleasure. Still, there’s no reason why sound historical scholarship has to be exceptionally pleasurable reading. That’s preferable but not necessary.
As other reviewers have noted, though the book is the product of first-rate historical research, it is probably not the best introduction to the subject unless one has a serious interest in the subject. There are simply too many names and events to make it the sort of book most educated general readers would choose to read for pleasure. Still, there’s no reason why sound historical scholarship has to be exceptionally pleasurable reading. That’s preferable but not necessary.
May 12, 2022
Upon first reading the reviews for this one, I thought to myself that while I know colonial history can be immensely boring for some people, the book wouldn’t drag on in my case as I’m especially interested in that era of history and am Abenaki myself. That started becoming less and less my opinion as I got about half way through. It wasn’t that the history or even the written quotations of documents here was uninteresting, the narrative was just a bit difficult for me to follow. The old english is normally doable for me, but when paired with a confusing telling of events i found myself having to read the same pages multiple times to process what was being explained to me. However, the author is incredibly well-read on the topic and my lack of ability to focus shouldn’t reflect on her work in researching the topic. I am looking forward to utilizing some of the other books and archives listed as sources when I decide to research further!
January 22, 2019
I loved this book because I got to learn so much about a subject that I've always been really interested in. And it seemed like there was a lot of good information in here, everything was very detailed and in depth. I also loved the argument that the atmosphere of the wars is what really set the stage for the trials to blow up the way they did, I think that makes a lot of sense and it's a perspective I didn't know a lot about before.
However this was still not a fun book to read. It felt like a huge information dump, and even though it was interesting information I felt like it wasn't put forth in a very interesting way. It took me a really long time to read this because I was just pushing and struggling through it and there was so much dry information it was really hard to keep track of and get invested in.
However this was still not a fun book to read. It felt like a huge information dump, and even though it was interesting information I felt like it wasn't put forth in a very interesting way. It took me a really long time to read this because I was just pushing and struggling through it and there was so much dry information it was really hard to keep track of and get invested in.
July 8, 2018
4.5 stars
Out of all of the books I read on the Salem Witch Trials this one was for sure the best in my opinion. The entire subject to me is very frustrating because historians like answers and we are usually pretty good at finding them. But this whole subject is hard to diagnose because primary sources are scare and they all require a lot of interpretation. More than usual.
In the end nobody will know for sure why Salem played out the way it did but Norton's take on it with the Indian Wars theory makes the most sense to me. However, it still feels incomplete and like there is more going on there we aren't able to interpret
Out of all of the books I read on the Salem Witch Trials this one was for sure the best in my opinion. The entire subject to me is very frustrating because historians like answers and we are usually pretty good at finding them. But this whole subject is hard to diagnose because primary sources are scare and they all require a lot of interpretation. More than usual.
In the end nobody will know for sure why Salem played out the way it did but Norton's take on it with the Indian Wars theory makes the most sense to me. However, it still feels incomplete and like there is more going on there we aren't able to interpret
February 8, 2023
I have many conflicting feelings about this book. On one hand it is wonderfully researched. Norton has such a passion for the subject and it can be felt in every single line of this book. On the other hand, it’s so boring to read. It is painfully dry. I’m a history nerd and read non-fiction most of the time. This was painful to get through at times.
I will say that people who are interested in reading about the witchcraft trials from a new perspective should give this a read. I’m glad I made myself finish it, but it was a struggle from page 1. If you can handle the dryness, you will be rewarded with amazing research by a female author who does deserve praise and credit for her work.
I will say that people who are interested in reading about the witchcraft trials from a new perspective should give this a read. I’m glad I made myself finish it, but it was a struggle from page 1. If you can handle the dryness, you will be rewarded with amazing research by a female author who does deserve praise and credit for her work.
December 20, 2023
Toward the end of In the Devil’s Snare Mary Beth Norton writes about a letter written by Samuel Parris in which he mentions both the Indian wars taking place at the time and the witchcraft crisis happening in Salem that year, and she says that he was not the only person “who linked witches and the war.” It was then that I realized Norton seems to think that merely mentioning two separate but concurrent events is enough to “link” events in the historical context, an incredibly faulty and dangerous line of thinking for a historian to take. But it explains the entire premise—and the failure of it—in this book.
Norton spends the entire book aggrandizing her thesis of relating the witch trials back to the fear the Salem residents felt about the surrounding Indian wars with the Wabanaki tribe, particularly mentioning those young people and clerics who had survived battles in Maine and moved down into the relative safety of Salem. She constantly writes about how no other historian before has ever recognized the possibility of such a connection besides her, literally writing that that idea is “what nearly all historians have failed to recognize”! But it still takes her 226 pages to get to the point she is apparently trying to make: “If the devil was active in the land, how could they—mere mortals outwitted by the evil angel’s many stratagems and wiles—be responsible for their failure to defend Maine and its residents adequately? Unable to defeat Satan in the forests and garrisons of the northeastern frontier, they could nevertheless attempt to do so in the Salem courtroom.” What a stretch this, to look at the crisis from a modern approach, when, even if everyone then was aware of the Wabanaki threat, none of them ever explicitly wrote about that as the reason the witchcraft crisis of 1692 happened. All we can rely on now is written testimony, and too much if has been lost to be able to declare such a thing confidently. Again, reckless. And yet if she were trying to prove something in her own thesis about that topic, she barely goes into detail on that connection anyway, hardly anything about the potential fears and motives of the Salem villagers, and instead just lists name after name after name and all their convoluted family connections.
Then, still, at the end, she writes: “As this book has shown, the next four years proved the Wabanaki leaders to be remarkable prophets. No other war fought on North American soil has ever had such extraordinary consequences.” This is again such a reckless thing for a historian to say! Essentially asserting that the Wabanaki predicted the witchcraft crisis, that they knew the next war would be a spiritual witch war rather than a combat war when there is no evidence for that, and if there was evidence she never discussed it in the book. Norton again takes the viewpoint of a modern historian, assuming and projecting 21st century ideas into a history that cannot be changed or even interpreted correctly with a modern view knowing so many documents are missing.
And then, to top it all off, Norton seems to take back everything she said about the Indian connection being the most important, and most overlooked, aspect of Salem witch history with the following line on page 296: “The wartime context could well have influenced the onset of those fits—that the afflicted first accused an Indian of tormenting them certainly suggests as much—but more important than such plausible, if not wholly provable, origins was the long-term impact of the young women’s charges in the context of Puritan New Englanders’ belief system.” If she believes this too, then why did she spend the whole book trying to convince me that the Wabanaki connection was the primary one behind all the witchcraft contexts and accusations on zero evidence? Of course the Puritan perspective has a huge weight when studying this area and Norton has to pay homage to researchers before her who have done those studies; maybe she thought taking a different angle with the Wabanaki threat was going to lead somewhere groundbreaking. But it didn’t, at least not for me, and so it felt like Norton was walking back everything she claimed she was going to do in the book and admitting, oh, yup, actually the Puritan influence still was the most important factor, not the Indian wars. Please make up your mind!
Norton becomes so long-winded about every single person and date and court examination she goes into that I got completely turned around by all the details. And then she has the audacity to write things like “as has already been noted” or as has been seen,” when it’s impossible to keep the characters and chapters straight in the dense, dry way the book is written, packed with clauses and commas and confusing notations that make any person’s life incredibly difficult to follow. The afflicted and the accused alike never got much attention as far as their lives, motives and statements in their examinations and trials, and it was just a boring list after a while of every possible name and family connection. She should have picked a narrative that worked and broadly focused on it without getting bogged down in the outrageous detail that ended up in this book.
I’m only rating In the Devil’s Snare two stars instead of one because there were some tidbits here and there that I learned something from and have resolved to look into more thoroughly on my own and in other books. This is not a good book to learn more about Salem, though.
Norton spends the entire book aggrandizing her thesis of relating the witch trials back to the fear the Salem residents felt about the surrounding Indian wars with the Wabanaki tribe, particularly mentioning those young people and clerics who had survived battles in Maine and moved down into the relative safety of Salem. She constantly writes about how no other historian before has ever recognized the possibility of such a connection besides her, literally writing that that idea is “what nearly all historians have failed to recognize”! But it still takes her 226 pages to get to the point she is apparently trying to make: “If the devil was active in the land, how could they—mere mortals outwitted by the evil angel’s many stratagems and wiles—be responsible for their failure to defend Maine and its residents adequately? Unable to defeat Satan in the forests and garrisons of the northeastern frontier, they could nevertheless attempt to do so in the Salem courtroom.” What a stretch this, to look at the crisis from a modern approach, when, even if everyone then was aware of the Wabanaki threat, none of them ever explicitly wrote about that as the reason the witchcraft crisis of 1692 happened. All we can rely on now is written testimony, and too much if has been lost to be able to declare such a thing confidently. Again, reckless. And yet if she were trying to prove something in her own thesis about that topic, she barely goes into detail on that connection anyway, hardly anything about the potential fears and motives of the Salem villagers, and instead just lists name after name after name and all their convoluted family connections.
Then, still, at the end, she writes: “As this book has shown, the next four years proved the Wabanaki leaders to be remarkable prophets. No other war fought on North American soil has ever had such extraordinary consequences.” This is again such a reckless thing for a historian to say! Essentially asserting that the Wabanaki predicted the witchcraft crisis, that they knew the next war would be a spiritual witch war rather than a combat war when there is no evidence for that, and if there was evidence she never discussed it in the book. Norton again takes the viewpoint of a modern historian, assuming and projecting 21st century ideas into a history that cannot be changed or even interpreted correctly with a modern view knowing so many documents are missing.
And then, to top it all off, Norton seems to take back everything she said about the Indian connection being the most important, and most overlooked, aspect of Salem witch history with the following line on page 296: “The wartime context could well have influenced the onset of those fits—that the afflicted first accused an Indian of tormenting them certainly suggests as much—but more important than such plausible, if not wholly provable, origins was the long-term impact of the young women’s charges in the context of Puritan New Englanders’ belief system.” If she believes this too, then why did she spend the whole book trying to convince me that the Wabanaki connection was the primary one behind all the witchcraft contexts and accusations on zero evidence? Of course the Puritan perspective has a huge weight when studying this area and Norton has to pay homage to researchers before her who have done those studies; maybe she thought taking a different angle with the Wabanaki threat was going to lead somewhere groundbreaking. But it didn’t, at least not for me, and so it felt like Norton was walking back everything she claimed she was going to do in the book and admitting, oh, yup, actually the Puritan influence still was the most important factor, not the Indian wars. Please make up your mind!
Norton becomes so long-winded about every single person and date and court examination she goes into that I got completely turned around by all the details. And then she has the audacity to write things like “as has already been noted” or as has been seen,” when it’s impossible to keep the characters and chapters straight in the dense, dry way the book is written, packed with clauses and commas and confusing notations that make any person’s life incredibly difficult to follow. The afflicted and the accused alike never got much attention as far as their lives, motives and statements in their examinations and trials, and it was just a boring list after a while of every possible name and family connection. She should have picked a narrative that worked and broadly focused on it without getting bogged down in the outrageous detail that ended up in this book.
I’m only rating In the Devil’s Snare two stars instead of one because there were some tidbits here and there that I learned something from and have resolved to look into more thoroughly on my own and in other books. This is not a good book to learn more about Salem, though.
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