Black Magic

Abstract

Whites accused Blacks1 of the crime of witchcraft in New England but no executions resulted from these accusations. As Blacks occupied the lowest rung within the society, their ability to survive the ordeals of the witchcraft trials itself indicates something of the perceived power they possessed. The survival of the accusation of witchcraft also demonstrates Blacks' insignificance in the eyes of the Europeans. This contradiction in categorizing Blacks as both powerless and powerful actually served to empower Blacks in the society of colonial New England. Social scientists have examined New England witchcraft through analyses of economic tension, folk culture, gender, and politics, but rarely in terms of race and ethnicity.2 Anthropologists have generally ignored Salem witchcraft. This lacuna in scholarship may be a result of the general lack of interest in historical research or the desire to explore more exotic arenas than Puritan New England. Thomas Buckley's research among the Yurok of northern California provides a clue for the dearth of research on race arid witchcraft in New England: preconceived models of society based on 20th-century Eurocentric experience. Buckley (1982) examines the issue of women's power in Yurok society and reinterprets earlier research on menstruation and danger as indicating a misinterpretation of women's status. In the literature, menstruating Yurok women are portrayed as unclean and dangerous. According to Buckley, they are so full of power that they are threatening, not