The relationship between the breakdown of traditional ways of life and the
eruption of witch-hunts among Native Americans is examined This paper argues that
Native American tribes experienced social disruption and a subsequent loss of
autonomy as the federal government implemented policies that included a mix of
acculturation, removal, and, in some cases, extermination. At the societal level,
extensive contact with white Europeans also led to disruptions in the lifestyle, politics,
and religion of Indigenous peoples. Accompanying this disorder was a rise in
accusations of witchcraft. Using Durkheim‟s model of deviance, this essay argues that
witchcraft was generally constructed as a social control mechanism to ensure social
order and maintain moral boundaries. In times of social upheaval and disruption, the
paranoia about witchcraft increased substantially to epidemic proportions: any hint of
insolence could make one a suspect. This paper examines accusations of witchcraft
rather than the ethnographic details of their actual practices. Tribal laws, treaties, and
oral history transcripts are analyzed to determine how witchcraft accusations were used
to negotiate the social and moral boundaries of Native American society in times of
conflict. Comparisons are made to outbreaks of witchcraft in European society,
including the more famous New England witch-hunts.
"Wayward‟ Indians: The Social Construction of Native American Witchcraft
“Beware of powerful beings” – Navajo maxim
Studies of Native American witchcraft have primarily documented its practices
and practitioners as part of a traditional worldview of shamans and magic. This
emphasis on shamanism and magic overlooks witchcraft‟s broader function as a
mechanism of social control.
Witchcraft, or the attribution of witchcraft, often serves as a means of conceptualizing opposing viewpoints or deviant behavior. Though recent scholarship on Native Americans has begun to incorporate witchcraft‟s socially created attributes, including the significance of gender, these studies continue to ignore its broader social control implications.
This essay uses a Durkheimian model of deviance to analyze Native American witchcraft as a way to critique the generally accepted view that witchcraft is an inherent cultural characteristic rather than a socially constructed phenomenon. In Native American societies, witchcraft accusations and periodic witchhunts have been used as means of social control.
What is witchcraft? Weber (1964) conceptualized witchcraft as a type of
technology used to tap into superhuman powers, while O‟Dea (1966:7) saw it as a
method by which to invoke supernatural powers and direct it toward specific “empirical
ends.” Anthropological studies of witchcraft document its widespread association with
magic and religion (Marwick 1970; Middleton 1976). E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1976)
observed that among the Azande of Central Africa, witchcraft was ubiquitous to its
society and played a part in every activity of its life. Pritchard observed that like other
societies, within the Azande “witchcraft beliefs embrace a system of values which
regulate human conduct (18).”
It is important to point out that it is problematic to associate the single term
witchcraft with all Native American tribes because of cultural differences in the
understanding of and appropriate use of supernatural powers.
The Cherokee regarded witches as “counterfeit or pseudo human being since humanity is but one among many guises that they assume in their incessant metamorphosis and in their parasitic
relationship to the Cherokee community (Fogelson 1975:128).” Anthropologist Deward
Walker, Jr. (1989) argues that it is almost impossible to define Native American
witchcraft and sorcery since “no universal definition can encompass all groups in the
Americas (3).” This stems not only from the problems arising from cultural differences
in defining “witchcraft,” but also the many local variations in its belief and practice.
In this essay, I do not focus on a single type of witchcraft or any one Native
American tribe, but rather in examining several, I delineate patterns of witchcraft
accusations within a specific social order or social system. For general studies on nonWestern
tribal society witchcraft see Evans-Pritchard ([1937] 1976) and Clyde
Kluckhohn‟s work on the Navaho (1967). Unfortunately, there is not enough ethnohistorical
data from any single tribe to concentrate a focused investigation on it alone.
Witchcraft persecutions during the eighteenth and nineteenth century are recorded on
the Seneca by Morgan ([1851] 1972:164-65) and Wallace (1972:254-55), the
Chickasaw (Adair [1775] 1930), the Natchez (Thwaites 1847:425), the Delaware,
(Miller 1994), the Navajo (Blue 1988) and the Shawnee (Cave 1995).
But it is not necessary to give a complete definition of witchcraft. Recently,
Walker (1999) stated that “[c]ultures throughout the world have feared witches,
unfortunates who faced blame for disease, flood, drought, and virtually every other misfortune that befell the community” (52). Drawing off of a theme within Walker‟s
statement, I will concentrate on the attribution of certain negative outcomes in a society
on persons (namely witches); the broad definition of witchcraft as the use of magic to
bring about evil is sufficient. By analyzing accounts of witch-hunts from several
different tribes I began to discern a common pattern of witch persecution: in the face
of overwhelming social change the persecution of witches- and not witchcraft itself - is
a device through which tribal social boundaries are recreated. The persecution of
witches is the means by which societal norms are redefined.
This study, then, is concerned with accusations of witchcraft rather than the
ethnographic details of their actual practices. Witches represent a supernatural force
beyond social control and their punishment is a mechanism by which to restore the
social order.
The fear of witches using the supernatural for their own individual purposes
rather than for the common weal has long compelled Western societies to seek them
out and destroy them. In ancient Greece, Plato defined the practice of witchcraft as one
type of poison “…which works by art, magic, incantations, and spells… and breeds in
the minds of the projectors the belief that they possess such powers of doing harm, in
those of the victims the conviction that the authors of their suffering can verily bewitch
them” (Laws XI933a). [1] The generalized fear of some unknown force or person
working against people and their society is reinforced by the acknowledgement that
there are things beyond one‟s control. Removal of those forces within one‟s control
thus makes good social policy.
Previous studies of witchcraft in Europe and the United States have emphasized
how the fear of witchcraft was used to maintain religious (Christianity) and gender
social control. Ben-Yehuda (1985:27) argues that the demise of witchcraft as a positive
or technology of action “and its very specific goals (love potions, spells, love magic,
and the like)” was due to Christian sanctioned witch-hunts beginning in the late Middle
Ages (Thomas 1971; Russell 1980; Ben-Yehuda 1985; Levack 1987; Barstow 1994).
During the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witchcraft became known as
an “evil entity that created rather than solved problems.” Witches and witchcraft came
to be represented as “something purely evil (Ben-Yehuda: 27-28).”
During the European witch-hunts from the fifteenth to the seventeenth
centuries, women accounted for 85 percent of the estimated five hundred thousand
witches executed (Ben-Yehuda 1985:23). Women were more likely to be charged with
practicing witchcraft (Garrett 1977; Andreski 1982; Heinsohna and Steigher 1982), as
was true in the United States (Demos 1970, 1982; Karlsen 1998). Such documentary
evidence has shifted the focus of witchcraft studies from those that emphasized religion
and religious control to the significance of gender (beginning with Enhrenrich and
English‟s (1973) historical study of women healers). Recent analysis of the famous
Salem witch-trails now includes topics related broadly to gender (Karlsen 1998; Reis
1995, 1997, 1998) as well as the interaction of gender, culture and communication
(Breslaw 1996; Kamensky 1997).
Though studies of Native American witchcraft have produced detailed accounts
of its technique as well as the role of its practitioners, these studies have failed to
provide an adequate explanation of how witchcraft has been socially constructed as a mechanism of social control. This essay examines Native American witchcraft in
association with the social exercise of power and the communal orientation of Native
Americans.
When the traditional communal organization of Native American society
became threatened, the persecution of witches and the search for witchcraft
practitioners would be used as a means of social control to maintain social and moral
boundaries.
Native American societies undergoing tremendous social change, usually
in association with fundamental changes in their societies due to European invasion and
conquest of their land, began to construct witchcraft as a deviant act.
Social Construction of Witchcraft: Social and Moral Boundaries
The social construction of witchcraft (accusations, witch-hunts, purges) is best
understood by examining how it contributes to defining a tribe‟s social and moral
boundaries. Using Durkheim‟s (1938:67) conceptual framework of crime and deviance
assuming that all societies negotiate an understanding of where the boundary lines are
drawn between acceptable and unacceptable actions (i.e.,crime). Each society draws
these lines differently and thus the definition of crime and deviance is socially
constructed.
By defining crime or deviance as a “normal function” of society, Durkheim
theorizes, “where crime exists, collective sentiments are sufficiently flexible to take on
a new form and crime sometimes helps to determine the form they will take (1938:65-
73).” Therefore, deviance is a mechanism for social change and a basis for collective
action to counteract that change. Durkheim further suggests that crime‟s “primary and principle function is to create respect for…beliefs, traditions, and collective practices
(1933:72, 80).”
This general function of deviance as a universal social phenomenon with
specific cultural variations in its form and content can be used to conceptualize
witchcraft. In times when the social order is under duress, or evil has befallen the
group, the group will seek to find a causal factor. Under this conception of deviance,
witchcraft, or the attribution of witchcraft, defines an unacceptable form of action. The
belief that witches can in fact effect changes in the world, combined with misfortunes
within the society or group lead to the belief that witches are causing the behavior
(causing harm). The behavior of witchcraft thereby becomes a form of deviance, which
violates social norms.
I am not saying that the social group makes up the belief in witches and then
attributes the witches to the problem. It is that the causal link between evil actions
befalling the society and witchcraft will result in the searching for those causal agents.
(Of course the agents are found in precisely those groups or people least able to react to
the social forces bearing against them.) Witches are not just scapegoats; rather they are
forces working against the social order just as the behavior of criminals causes harm to
society, so too the behavior of witches causes harm to society.
The appearance of witches and witchcraft at work in a society, and their
subsequent persecution, can then be explained as a way to maintain social cohesion
during times of crisis and uncertainty.
It can also help explain why in societies with existing witchcraft practitioners, those same practitioners may be labeled suddenly during times of crisis as deviants - the social context has shifted such that they are now perceived as malevolent rather than benevolent. "
Source and to Read the Entire Abstract on this Topic
http://www.lsus.edu/Documents/Offices%20and%20Services/CommunityOutreach/JournalOfIdeology/Jean%20Van%20Delinder-witches.pdf
Do Witches Cause Harm? Hmmm.. they Heal, Gather herbs, pray, give spiritual and life guidance, and keep to themselves. When terrorized many in history fought back and were killed. They did not see out those who harmed them. The study of Witchcraft is a study of the power of those who work with Mother Earth and with the Great Spirit to do Holy and Divine work, and not crimes, not darkness and not harm. Those that fear their power paint them out as a "bad thing", but it is simply NOT True. Remember to study, read, pray and Think for Yourself.
