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The first essay, “Witchcraft in the Anglo-American Colonies”, Norton introduces the idea that there are many different views of witchcraft and so many different contexts it is seen in. From different movies, TV shows, and books, the depiction of Witches has been changed so much since Colonial America when the series of witch trials occurred. One of the main causes of these so many varied depictions is many of the records and warrants of these trials was based on gossip and were not written down since many of the population were not fully literate. Newspapers were also much less prevalent so news traveled solely through the storytelling people did from town to town. This unclearness of what happened to cause these trials, how these occurrences happened, and the reasons they happened are all very general and vague, and, in some instances, very flawed. Most accusations were based on a person’s misfortune from weather, illness, etc. and then a neighbor of theirs happened to do something to make them believe it was the neighbors doing somehow.
Mike makes a solid point in his post that education definitely had an impact on how these trials started. People did not logically think about the cause and effect of each situation; if they got sick, which was very common since they were not in the best living conditions, or if there was a bad storm, they did not attribute it to dirty living conditions or a storm simply moving through, but their neighbor who they disliked for some reason and wanted to have the last word.
Norton does a good job of accurately describing how people view and think about these witch trials, as well as describing some of the major causes of the sudden rises in accusations of witchcraft. I enjoyed these reading especially because, from the beginning, it could be related to the present day to things I have actually experienced.