In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton

From 1675 through 1678, the residents of Essex County, Massachusetts, were at the frontline of King Philip's War, a.k.a. Four people and several infants also died while in custody. Punishments included long jail sentences, nineteen hangings, and one man who was pressed to death with heavy stones. Over the next five months, at least one hundred forty-four people, including several men, were prosecuted for witchcraft of them, fifty-four actually confessed to the sin. Norton follows the events of the Salem witch trials chronologically, detailing daily and weekly happenings. They would testify to having seen members of the village (usually, but not always, older women) engaging in witchcraft, hexing their animals, and doing other 'malefic acts.' Most of the accusations were brought by a group of young women ranging in age from eleven to twenty years old.

The witchcraft trials began in January 1962 when two girls living in the household of Reverend Samuel Parris began having 'fits.' The village elders suspected witchcraft, and residents began coming forward with tales of ghosts and visions of witches torturing and killing their victims. This was a crucial factor that made the Salem witch trials unique among other incidents of witchcraft during the colonial era. One of the goals of Norton's book is to destroy that 'metanarrative' by re-examining the crisis within the larger historical context of regional conflicts with Native Americans and the effects these conflicts had on the people who experienced them.

There have been a plethora of books already written on the subject of the Salem witch trials, but the majority of them tend to approach the subject through the women who were accused as victims. A prolific author on historical subjects, she also serves as the president of the American Historical Association. Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University. In the Devil's Snare Summary Published in 2003, In the Devil's Snare, a non-fiction work by American historian Mary Beth Norton, examines the 1962 Salem witch trials, in which one hundred forty-four people were prosecuted as witches, under the thesis that the violence of the First and Second Indian Wars were a major factor in causing the trials.

In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton