36 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Actions and local occurrences said to indicate witchcraft included
nonpayment of rent, demand for public assistance, giving the "evil
eye," local die-offs of horses or other stock, and mysterious deaths
of children. Also among the telltale actions were practices related to
midwifery and any kind of contraception. The service that women
provided among the poor as healers was one of a number of vestiges
from pre-Christian, matrilineal institutions that once predominated
in Europe. It is no surprise that those who had held on to and per
petuated these communal practices were those most resistant to the
enclosure of the commons, the economic base of the peasantry, as
well as women's autonomy. 6
The traumatized souls thrown off the land, as well as their de
scendants, became the land-hungry settlers enticed to cross a vast
ocean with the promise of land and attaining the status of gentry.
English settlers brought witch hunting with them to Jamestown,
Virginia, and to Salem, Massachusetts. In language reminiscent of
that used to condemn witches, they quickly identified the Indigenous
populations as inherently children of Satan and "servants of the
devil" who deserved to be killed.7 Later the Salem authorities would
justify witch trials by claiming that the English settlers were inhabit
ing land controlled by the devil.WHITE SUPREMACY AND CLASS
Also part of the Christian colonizers' outlook was a belief in white
supremacy. As an 1878 US Protestant evangelical hymn suggests
"Are your garments spotless? I Are they white as snow? I Are they
washed in the blood of the lamb?"-whiteness as an ideology in
volves much more than skin color, although skin color has been
and continues to be a key component of racism in the United States.
White supremacy can be traced to the colonizing ventures of the
Christian Crusades in Muslim-controlled territories and to the Prot
estant colonization of Ireland. As dress rehearsals for the coloniza
tion of the Americas, these projects form the two strands that merge
in the geopolitical and sociocultural makeup of US society.
The Crusades in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal today)