In the Devil's Snare

Norton describes the brutality of the Wabanaki attacks on colonial settlements as she develops her argument that these contributed to the witch crisis. The settlers who experienced those attacks, lost relatives in them, or even heard about them feared attacks from the Wabanakis. The attacks took place in the broader context of King William’s War, which was primarily a struggle for the domination of North America between the British and French. The British allied themselves with the Iroquois confederacy, while the French were allies of the Wabanaki confederacy. The Wabanaki confederacy included several Indigenous peoples and was formed in the aftermath of King Philip’s War, which concluded in 1678; it aimed to form an alliance with the French and stop the expansion of New England.

King William’s War began in 1688, and it was still raging in 1692 when the witch crisis occurred. During the previous war (King Philip’s War), Indigenous forces became motivated to stop English settlements on their lands and to refuse to recognize English authority. The Treaty of Casco, which was negotiated at the conclusion of the earlier war, required the English to pay corn tributes for each family living on Indigenous lands; it therefore recognized the sovereignty of Indigenous groups in Maine.