Witch Burning

[Meh_Gerbil]

I've a historical question.

My wife was reading about the history of Bermuda and as it turns out there was some witch hunts down there as well -- about the same time as the Salem fiasco. It got me to thinking that I'm unaware of witch hunts in northern states.

So what I'm wondering is if those witch hunts had a tendency to occur in areas with a slave population and I wonder if that slave population was communicating the african version of the danger of witches to their masters.

Some here have said that an african witch isn't necessarily a good thing and that the people fear them -- so I wonder if they communicated that fear to the whites, hence the over reaction.

Of course, white on white violence was common -- for merely being a protestant of a different denomination, so the lore of the slaves likely doesn't account for all of it but I'm wondering if there is a connection.

[technomage]

Interesting question.

Probably not the slavery connection--the "witch panics" were already going strong in Europe before there were any colonies here. But that certainly could have added to the situation.

In addition, it's widely accepted that Tituba (one of the victims of the Salem panic) may have been teaching some of her divination methods from Africa ... but there's no definite way to tell.