{"id":1305,"date":"2013-07-26T11:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T11:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/much-more-than-salem-america-bewitched.html"},"modified":"2013-07-26T11:26:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T11:26:00","slug":"much-more-than-salem-america-bewitched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/much-more-than-salem-america-bewitched.html","title":{"rendered":"Much More than Salem: America Bewitched"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In the early hours of the morning on January 5, 1895, Mrs. Baptiste, \u201ca colored woman,\u201d found \u201ca small black coffin\u201d in front of her residence in New Orleans at Royal Street and Caffin. Once Baptiste realized what was on her stoop, a large crowd of residents congregated at her house and \u201cconsiderable excitement prevailed.\u201d Sergeant Hevron of the Fifth Precinct arrived and \u201ctook charge of the box.\u201d With a hatchet he pried off the coffin\u2019s lid and inside revealed \u201cseveral candles, a wire mask, and a shirt made out of a oat sack\u201d arranged in such a way as \u201cto represent a body.\u201d For her part, Baptiste was \u201cbadly frightened\u201d of the coffin since she \u201cterms herself a voudou.\u201d Her own house had been raided by the police before and \u201ca lot of snakes in bottles, bones, and bundles of letters from her victims\u201d had been uncovered. While it was unknown who placed the coffin at her door, it was clear that they meant her harm. (Story and quotes from \u201cA Voudou Victim. A Coffin on the Doorstep Creates a Sensation,\u201d 6 January 1895,\u00a0<\/span>The Daily Picayune<\/i>; image from George Washington Cable, \u201cCreole Slaves Songs,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>The Century Magazine<\/i>, April 1886).<\/span>

Stories like this, of people seeking supernatural powers to work their will, proliferate throughout American history. As Owen Davies\u2019s recent book\u00a0<\/span>America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem<\/i>\u00a0(OUP, 2013)<\/a>\u00a0demonstrates, America\u2019s relationship with witchcraft did not conclude with Salem in 1692.<\/span>America Bewitched<\/i>\u00a0is an enjoyable read, and one that served as a nice break from working on my\u00a0<\/span>dissertation<\/a>. The book is geared towards a popular audience and so it reads at a pleasant pace with little theory. The chapters are full of story after story of witches and witchcraft in American history from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. The bulk of the prose is narrative surrounding these stories, which range from entertaining or funny, but are more often tragic and gruesome.\u00a0<\/span>
<\/a>
<\/span><\/span><\/a>As a book written for a wide audience, the book is not argument driven, but this does not mean that it makes no contributions. One of the book\u2019s main strengths is Davies\u2019s attention to the interactions and overlap between the witchcraft beliefs, practices, and fears of early Euro-Americans, recent immigrants, Africans and African Americans, and Native Americans. The porous nature of ideas regarding witchcraft illuminates the realities of what happens when various groups live close together in towns, on plantations, and in tenements. The result is a fascinating tale with a myriad of actors. Additionally, Davies covers witchcraft in all different places and spaces\u2014Alaska; the West; New Orleans; western Pennsylvania; Santa Fe; Norfolk County, Virginia; Galveston, Texas; San Francisco; Memphis; and the Five Points of New York City. Davies finds accusations, folklore, and court cases involving witchcraft from all across the country, dispelling any notion that \u201csuperstitious\u201d people are found in any one kind of place or one kind of community.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early hours of the morning on January 5, 1895, Mrs. Baptiste, \u201ca colored woman,\u201d found \u201ca small black coffin\u201d in front of her residence in New Orleans at Royal Street and Caffin. Once Baptiste realized what was on her stoop, a large crowd of residents congregated at her house and \u201cconsiderable excitement prevailed.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMuch More than Salem: America Bewitched<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the early hours of the morning on January 5, 1895, Mrs. Baptiste, \u201ca colored woman,\u201d found \u201ca small black coffin\u201d in front of her residence in New\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/much-more-than-salem-america-bewitched.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Much More than Salem: America Bewitched\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the early hours of the morning on January 5, 1895, Mrs. Baptiste, \u201ca colored woman,\u201d found \u201ca small black coffin\u201d in front of her residence in New\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/much-more-than-salem-america-bewitched.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-07-26T11:26:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/files\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-yqhkhfoAoZo\/Ue_4ob1evcI\/AAAAAAAAAO0\/c_j0iWByUPM\/s320\/America+Bewitched.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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