SOURCE: "Witchcraft and the Puritans," in Witchcraft in Old and New England, 1929. Reprint by Russell & Russell, 1958, pp. 329–74.

In the following excerpt, Kittredge asserts that belief in witchcraft was common throughout history and points out that the witchcraft trials in the American colonies were remarkably limited in number.

… It is frequently stated, and still oftener assumed, that the outbreak at Salem was peculiar in its virulence, or, at all events, in its intensity. This is a serious error, due, like other misapprehensions, to a neglect of the history of witchcraft as a whole. The fact is, the Salem excitement was the opposite of peculiar,—it was perfectly typical. The European belief in witchcraft, which our forefathers shared without exaggerating it, was a constant quantity. It was always present, and continuously fraught with direful possibilities. But it did not find expression in a steady and regular succession of witch-trials. On...