"In the Devil's Snare" by Mary Beth Norton. Alfred Knopf, 2002. Release date: September 2002. by Margo Burns ---------- Mary Beth Norton holds a doctorate from Harvard University and is a Professor of History at Cornell University. She is the author of "Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society." (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996). In October, she will be on a brief author tour, speaking in Boston, Salem, South Hadley, MA and Portland, ME. As dates and locations are available, I will post them to the List. ---------- Mary Beth Norton's new book, "In the Devil's Snare" will hit bookstore shelves in a matter of days, and will give you a refreshing new perspective on an old subject -- the Salem witch trials of 1692 -- that could shake up a lot of well-entrenched understandings of why the trials unfolded as they did. Most previous attempts to explain these events have concentrated on the mental state of the afflicted "girls" -- despite the fact that they weren't all young or female -- or detailed long-standing land squabbles between the families of the afflicted and the accused in Salem Village -- even though more people were accused in Andover where land was not the issue. Richard Weisman first raised the neglected issue of the magistrates' motives in his book, "Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts" (University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), a line of inquiry which Bernard Rosenthal subsequently pursued nearly a decade later in "Salem Story" (Cambridge, 1993). Norton finally brings the question to the fore, with an answer which places the witch trials in the context of the most important political and military crisis for the colony, but about which modern history says little: the Indian wars of the late 17th century. "In the Devil's Snare" addresses at length this key but long-neglected question: why did the clergy, politicians, and most of all, the magistrates behave as they did? Norton draws each thread carefully connecting the players across Essex County with the horrific events occurring in Maine -- survivors of Indian massacres, former neighbors from isolated frontier outposts now living as refugees across Essex County, magistrates who as military officers had bungled campaigns they led in Maine, and finally Governor Phips himself, who she makes a solid case for being present in Massachusetts for most of the trials and being a supporter of the trials until the tide of popular opinion turned in the fall of 1692. Norton will even challenge you to release some of your assumptions about what you think you know about the events, because most prior explanations have treated Salem as an insular event. She pushes you to situate the trials in a much larger political context of New England, and with the racial equation being made between the physical assaults of the "tawny-skinned" Natives of the region and the spectral assaults from the witches in "invisible world." Historians have long claimed that a key difference which sparked Salem so that it became so unlike other "witchcraft" outbreaks of the era was that accusations against covenanted church members like Rebecca Nurse and Martha Cory were believed and pursued. While this was indeed unusual, Norton posits that the real turning point came in April with the confession of Abigail Hobbs, who made the first connection between the Devil's work in Salem and the Indian attacks in Maine, after which came the real flood of accusations. Likewise, historians have typically concentrated on Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam, Jr. as key accusers, but Norton makes a credible case that it was Mercy Lewis, a survivor and witness to the massacre of many in her own family in Maine and a member of Rev. George Burroughs household there, who became the leader of the afflicted once the proceedings began to reflect the fear of Indian attack. Like Abigail Hobbs, Lewis is not one of the familiar cast of players, but "In the Devil's Snare" makes a solid case for both new readings. The section on the Andover accusations was a bit sluggish to get through, but one of Norton's strengths is her ability to show the reader step-by-step what actually happened, and anyone who has endured real courtroom proceedings knows that they do not go as hastily as "Law & Order" on TV might lead you to believe. Her explanation of the legal proceedings is the best I have seen yet, unraveling the chaos that so many concurrent cases created, and aptly filling in the gaps where there are missing documents, just as a modern-day art restorer might give an indication of what is lost in damaged parts of a mural or tile floor. The heart of the book, though, is the way she methodically reveals how the civil leaders of the colony, unable to defeat the enemy in the "visible world" from taking human lives, it was possible they could still save face by aligning themselves with the spiritual leaders to vigorously defeat the Devil in the battle for Christian souls in the "invisible world," with other tools at their disposal: the law. Previous work exploring the concurrence of the Indian wars and the witch trials has been explored in pieces by a few scholars since 1984, but never anything this complete.* Norton presents us with the first book-length treatment and even if you already know a lot about the trials, you won't want to miss this one or put it down. "In the Devil's Snare" is certain to change how every history class on the subject will be taught. --Margo Burns ----------- NOTE: I read scholarly books with a second bookmark on the endnotes, constantly flipping back and forth as I read so I won't miss a thing. I was pleased to see that throughout the book, Norton is generous in acknowledging the enormous number of people who contributed to her work on this book, from eminent colleagues to her undergraduate students, even including two nods to discussions on our Salem-Witch List for providing her with helpful information on the families of some of the people involved. ----------- * See: Baker, Emerson W. and Reid, John G. Chapter 7: "Statecraft and Witchcraft, 1692." in "The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695." University of Toronto, 1998. Breen, Louise A. "Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630-1692." Oxford, 2001. Kences, James. "Some Unexplored Relationships of Essex County Witchcraft to the Indian Wars of 1675 and 1689." Essex Institute Historical Collections 120, 1984. -- Margo Burns, List Owner of the SALEM-WITCH List at Rootsweb.com margo@ogram.org