During the early modern period, accusations of witchcraft were rampant throughout Europe. Witches were accused of seduction, harming livestock, cursing and poisoning children, and generally causing social disruption.1 The language used to describe their condition was laced with suspicion of sexual deviance and descriptions of unnatural bodies. While the witch craze was occurring in Europe, European colonization was also taking root as expeditions throughout the western hemisphere were being conducted. As these European travelers interacted in various ways with free and enslaved indigenous and African peoples, they created narratives about their perceptions of these groups, specifically their women.

Much of the language surrounding these non-white women and their bodies is reminiscent of the ways in which Europeans would describe the women they accused of witchcraft. Their deviance from social acceptance, whether through being non-European or through supposed acts of witchcraft, resulted in particular associations with being unnatural, unmotherly, and hyper-sexual. While black and indigenous women were described similarly to white, European women accused of witchcraft, they were understood to be wicked inherently while European witchcraft was viewed as a condition separate from one’s core self. This can be seen in the description of non-white women’s bodies as abnormal and monstrous as well as them being a reproductive threat. Much of the existing literature on this subject focuses on either the concept of witch accusations interacting with gender or race and empire. In my essay, I evaluate how both play a role in the European perception of witches and non-white women as socially deviant.

One of the primary traits ascribed to European witches is their hyper-sexual nature and ability to allure men with devilish charm. They tended to take on the role of temptress in societal perceptions and were frequently accused of seducing men, even those in high social positions. The condition of being a witch itself was believed to originate from a woman engaging in sexual relations, either knowingly or unknowingly, with the devil.2 One particular account of witchcraft from London in 1617 provides a list of the exact steps a woman would take in order to take on the devil as her master. This list

includes items such as, “Satan offers his back-parts to bee kissed,” “yielding to be sucked by Satan,” and finally, “to dally and lye with them … as it were marriage unto him.”3 These explicit actions cast the figure of the witch as sexually deviant and produce anxieties about her apparent power of usurpation of the social order by means of seduction. Lyndal Roper’s work, which discusses the intricacies in fantasy and the early modern witch craze, describes how this threat was closely related to a witch’s weaponization of the non-reproductive sexuality in disrupting reproduction. Often times, if a mother or child fell ill, fingers would point to the lying-in maid or a nurse who helped with delivery as having cursed the child or mother.4 Additionally, in his article, Women and Witches: Patterns of Analysis, Clarke Garrett describes how the sexual temptations that witches thrust upon men were seen as a disruption to the way that men could achieve moral purity.5 The idea that these women had the power to drag others into their own errant behavior by using their inherently sexual nature was a core attribute afforded to the European witch by early-modern societies. 

In a similar vein, the bodies of indigenous and black women during the early-modern period were depicted by European travelers and colonists as being hyper-sexual. In his, A New Account of Guinea (1744), William Smith, who was

employed by the Royal African Company, describes the indigenous people and cultures he encountered throughout his travels in the Western world. In one entry, he describes the indigenous women he observed as having, “no scruple, if they have but the opportunity to meet the embraces of a man,” and claims that because of this supposed constant sexual desire, it would be impossible for them to be raped.6 He then contrasts this open sexual behavior with the general chastity and monogamy of both men and women in European societies.7 This juxtaposition reveals the inherent difference that Smith believed to exist between white and non-white bodies. Smith’s account shows how these non-white women were perceived as more sexual than their white counterparts simply by nature.

In addition to this, Ligon, who wrote A True And Exact History of the Island of Barbados in 1657, recounts the practices of enslaved peoples in the Americas, including women returning to hard, manual labor in a “fortnight” after going through the birthing process.8 This, in comparison to the weeks, sometimes months-long lying-in process that European women would undergo after

labour during this same time period shows how the black woman was seen to be naturally pre-disposed to giving birth and having children, an almost animalistic trait. This particular aspect of black women’s sexuality is also reminiscent of the idea that witches did not feel pain in the way that a typical woman would.9 Enslaved women’s ability to return to work after birth was perceived to be because of their unnaturally pain-free labour in comparison to European women, instead of the threat of physical violence by owners of enslaved peoples. This sexualization of non-white women served to create distinctions between Europeans and those they enslaved, which aided in the justification of the practice of slavery.

In addition to this connection of hyper-sexualized bodies, both European witches and non-white women shared a socially understood skepticism in their relationship to reproduction and motherhood. In his essay, Garret points out the contradiction between a woman’s understood natural role as caretaker and mother and a witch’s threat to reproduction. Many European witches, as they could occupy the role of healer and caretaker by utilizing recipes specific to address medicinal needs, were blamed when a child fell ill or a woman could not conceive because of the connotation that they could employ the opposite of healing magic and cause harm. In one documented case from sixteenth century London, a woman named Ursley was accused of witchcraft when the child that she had cared for since it was in its mother’s womb fell ill.10 As the child developed, their legs became deformed to a point that they could no longer walk.11 Additionally, Ursley pestered the mother of the child for compensation for her care in the form of money or food, despite the fact the family was known throughout the community to be poor.12 Ursley’s accusation and others like it carried more than just the weight of a single child becoming sick. It represented a deeper threat to reproduction and motherhood, which was observed to be the natural role for a woman in the early modern period. In this way, European witches were representative of an unnatural female force. As Andrew Apter put it, "the work of the witch is the inverse of fertility."13

European witches, however, were not the only group of woman to face this categorization of unmotherly. Women of color in the early-modern period were also perceived by Europeans to be a deviation from natural womanhood. For example, enslavers were highly skeptical of their female enslaved laborers. They were often blamed and even punished for the miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths that they suffered personally or were seen as having aiding in.14 In this way, enslaved women were also seen as posing a threat to the reproductive process. In one case on a plantation in Saint Domingue, an enslaved woman and midwife named Arada was accused by her enslaver of having killed more than seventy babies.15 As a punishment, she was forced to wear a rope collar with seventy knots, each representing a child she had allegedly killed.16 This accusation is strikingly similar to the cries of witchcraft that echoed through European villages during the early modern period. Another frequent punishment for instances of alleged infanticide was social ostracization of the accused.17 Therefore, these anxieties about the social order becoming disrupted by women acting contrary to their natural role as mothers and caretakers led to punishments and perceptions similar to that of the European witch. 

While these similarities between white European women accused of witchcraft and indigenous and black women existed in the perceptions of early-modern European society, they certainly do not mean that these two groups were perceived identically. In North American English colonies, there were instances of witchcraft accusations against African women, but there were no resulting executions.18 This is because of several reasons. First, enslaved Africans in the Americas were seen first and foremost as a commodity, the destruction of which would be costly for enslavers.19 Additionally, non-white women were viewed as morally inferior to white Europeans, so the punishments for those accused of witchcraft was not as severe.20 Finally, many European colonizers were afraid of what would happen to them if they were to accuse or punish African and Native women because they were seen as devilish themselves.21 White Europeans worried that if they were to punish those they viewed as essentially evil, they would “wreak their unholy evil” against them.22

For European women, witchcraft was understood to be a condition that they could take on through actions like associating with other accused witches, or, as previously discussed, sexually involving themselves with the devil. Witchcraft was not seen to be an inherent trait of all women, as they could follow the, admittedly restrictive, societal expectations for women in early-modern Europe and avoid the kinds of accusations of witchcraft that plagued those who deviated from these norms. Additionally, the accused European witches were not facing the same violence to which enslaved women were subjugated. The accusations of white women, especially older widows, practicing witchcraft largely reflected a social anxiety of women with independence and power in the face of a rapidly changing political landscape.

On the other hand, these characteristics of black and indigenous women’s bodies as hyper-sexual and unmotherly are attached to the women themselves instead of traits they would take on through their own actions. In Timothy J. McMillan’s article, he says that according to the perceptions of Europeans, “Africans also mirrored Satan's image.”23 While indigenous and black women were perceived as being associated with Satan from their birth and as a condition of their existence, European women were believed to have to undergo a sexual ritual to achieve this same status of wickedness. Black women were therefore seen as essentially wicked while white, European women were seen as susceptible to wickedness which manifested in witchcraft. Additionally, this stigma surrounding the bodies of non-white women was tied to the racist beliefs that Europeans used to justify centuries of subjugation and slavery. 

This difference between perceptions of the white European witch and the non-white woman reflects the attitudes of racialization and empire in the early modern period. Many European travelers used the language of witchcraft and the devil to describe the bodies and actions of indigenous and African women because it was a way for them to understand their place as colonizers and among the emerging racial hierarchy. The anxieties of witches and the perceived power that they held over the social order informed the language of the anxieties felt that non-white women would disrupt the social order through similar methods of seduction and harming children and mothers. As their position in the world was evolving through the process of empire, Europeans used notions and both gender and race as tools to solidify their understood social order.

Works Cited

 A True and Iust Recorde, of the Information, Examination and Confession of all the Witches, Taken at S. Ofes in the Countie of Essex Whereof some were Executed, and Other some Entreated According to the Determination of Lawe. Wherein all Men may See what a Pestilent People Witches are, and how Vnworthy to Lyue in a Christian Commonwealth. Written Orderly, as the Cases were Tryed by Euidence, by W. W. London 1577-1582., W. W., fl. 1582.:. https://wake.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/true-iust-recorde-information-examination/docview/2248556727/se-2.

Andrew Apter. “The Blood of Mothers: Women, Money, and Markets In Yoruba-Atlantic Perspective.” The Journal of African American History 98, no. 1 (2013): 72–98. https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.98.1.0072.

Cooper, Thomas,fl.1626. 1617. The Mystery of Witch-Craft Discouering, the Truth, Nature, Occasions, Growth and Power Thereof. Together with the Detection and Punishment of the Same. as also, the Seuerall Stratagems of Sathan, Ensnaring the Poore Soule by this Desperate Practize of Annoying the Bodie: With the Seuerall Vses Therof to the Church of Christ. very Necessary for the Redeeming of these Atheisticall and Secure Times. by Thomas Cooper. London:. https://wake.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/mystery-witch-craft-discouering-truth-nature/docview/2240915397/se-2.

Garrett, Clarke. “Women and Witches: Patterns of Analysis.” Signs 3, no. 2 (1977): 461–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173296.

Ligon, Richard. 1657. A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbados Illustrated with a Mapp of the Island, as also the Principall Trees and Plants there, Set Forth in their due Proportions and Shapes, Drawne Out by their Severall and Respective Scales : Together with the Ingenio that Makes the Sugar, with the Plots of the Severall Houses, Roomes, and Other Places that are used in the Whole Processe of Sugar-Making ... / by Richard Ligon, Gent [True and exact history of the island of Barbados.]. London:. https://wake.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/true-exact-history-island-barbados-illustrated/docview/2248579544/se-2.

Roper, Lyndal. “Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany” (New Haven: Yale UP, 2003)

Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London and New York, I994), 203-04.

 Cooper, Thomas,fl.1626. 1617. The Mystery of Witch-Craft Discouering, the Truth, Nature, Occasions, Growth and Power Thereof. Together with the Detection and Punishment of the Same. as also, the Seuerall Stratagems of Sathan, Ensnaring the Poore Soule by this Desperate Practize of Annoying the Bodie: With the Seuerall Vses Therof to the Church of Christ. very Necessary for the Redeeming of these Atheisticall and Secure Times. by Thomas Cooper. London:. https://wake.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/mystery-witch-craft-discouering-truth-nature/docview/2240915397/se-2.

Ligon, Richard. 1657. A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbados Illustrated with a Mapp of the Island, as also the Principall Trees and Plants there, Set Forth in their due Proportions and Shapes, Drawne Out by their Severall and Respective Scales : Together with the Ingenio that Makes the Sugar, with the Plots of the Severall Houses, Roomes, and Other Places that are used in the Whole Processe of Sugar-Making ... / by Richard Ligon, Gent [True and exact history of the island of Barbados.]. London:. https://wake.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/true-exact-history-island-barbados-illustrated/docview/2248579544/se-2.

McMillan, Timothy J. “Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England.” Journal of Black Studies 25, no. 1 (1994): 99–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193479402500106.

Smith, William. A new voyage to Guinea: describing the customs, manners, soil, Climate, Habits, Buildings, Education, Manual Arts, Agriculture, Trade, Employments, Languages, Ranks of Distinction, Habitations, Diversions, Marriages, and whatever else is memorable among the Inhabitants. Likewise, an account of their animals, minerals, &c. With great Variety of entertaining Incidents, worthy of Observation, that happen'd during the Author's Travels in that large Country. Illustrated with Cutts, engrav'd from Drawings taken from the Life. With an alphabetical index. By William Smith, Esq; Appointed by the Royal African Company to survey their Settlements, make Discoveries, &c. London: printed for John Nourse, at the Lamb without Temple-Bar, MDDCXLIV [1744]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (accessed April 10, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0100558573/ECCO?u=nclivewfuy&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=281c3af7&pg=255.