Were Slaves in the American Colonies Ever Tried For Witchcraft?

by Zeuvembie

I know Europe had its folk-magic traditions, which were imported into the Americas, and I know that African-Americans had their indigenious religious beliefs and traditions which became syncretized in systems like hoodoo and voodoo, but were slaves ever subject to charges of practicing witchcraft?

CManners35

The previous two commentators are correct, Tituba in Salem is the most widely known. However, while she was enslaved, there is evidence to support that she was likely not African, but Indigenous. You can find the primary documentation which indicates her as "Indian" online and open-access. (Not West-Indian).

See: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=67

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However, very few enslaved African-Americans would have been charged as witches in North American colonies. This is for three reasons:

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  1. There was a serious decline of Witchcraft belief beginning around the 1680s roughly (with the exception of a few late bloomers in Europe). However, Generally, the British saw their heigh of witch-hunting around the 1640s. Most historians consider Salem in the 1690s to be an odd blimp, and shortly after the spirit of the enlightenment quelled most of the witchcraft related superstition in the North American colonies, especially among educated elites. By 1700– witchcraft accusations were in steep decline across the British Isles. In 1736, the English parliament enacted the Witchcraft Act, repealing James I's 1604 act (which was primarily cited for use in Salem) and no longer punishing witchcraft as a viable crime. The enactment of this act was in response to growing skepticism to witchcraft across Europe, in which belief was falling out of style, both politically and religiously. Instead of a significant spiritual threat, belief in witchcraft was more of a threat to Britain's newly enlightened state; after the 1736 act, the fight against evil dissipated from intellectual works and instead, the war was waged against ignorance and superstition within the unenlightened masses. Of course, some informal witch-hunting lynch mobs persisted in rural areas, but few records show any African Americans suffering as a direct result of this.

For this see: Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736-1951. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).

Stuart Clark and Bengt Ankarloo, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 4: The Period of the Witch Trials (2002)

Elmer, Peter. Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

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  1. Slaves were commodities, in the period in which witchcraft anxiety was prevalent, profit and chattel often outweighed superstition and even rigid religious beliefs in North American Protestant colonies. Basically, why accuse a slave of witchcraft, have them hung or transported and lose profits.

See: Katherine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018),

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  1. Afro-syncretic spiritual practices, like voodoo (Vodun), or Obeah was inconsistent with European understandings of demonological witchcraft, and as a result, it was interpreted as nonsensical, or chiefly, as an act of poisoning to achieve insurrection. Mostly because of the pracitioning elements associated with the practice was abhorrent to most European settlers, and these "fetishes" or religious material cultures had to be imbued with African-derived supernatural power to be effective. (Sometimes herbs would be used to poison and cause actual pharmacological harm) Therefore a slave would have likely been punished under an act against rebellion, rather than anything related to witchcraft.

See: Breslaw, Elaine G. Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic : Health Care in Early America. New York: New York University Press, 2012.

Diana Paton. “Witchcraft, Poison, Law, and Atlantic Slavery.” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 2 (2012): 235–64.

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If you happen to find a few, they are most likely outliers.