The views of witchcraft in North America have evolved through an interlinking history of cultural beliefs and interactions. These forces contribute to complex and evolving views of witchcraft. Today, North America hosts a diverse array of beliefs about witchcraft.
Indigenous communities such as the Cherokee, Hopi, the Navajo among others, included in their folklore and beliefs malevolent figures who could harm their communities, often resulting in severe punishments, including death. These communities also recognized the role of medicine people as healers and protectors against these malevolent forces.
The term witchcraft arrived with European colonists, along with European views on witchcraft. This term would be adopted by many Indigenous communities for those beliefs about harmful supernatural powers. In colonial America and the United States, views of witchcraft were further shaped by European colonists. The infamous Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, along with other witch hunts in places like Maryland and Pennsylvania, exemplified European and Christian fear and hysteria surrounding accusations of witchcraft. These trials led to the execution of numerous individuals accused of practicing witchcraft. Despite changes in laws and perspectives over time, accusations of witchcraft persisted into the 19th century in some regions, such as Tennessee, where prosecutions occurred as late as 1833.
The influences on Witchcraft in Latin America impacted North American views both directly and indirectly, including the diaspora of African witchcraft beliefs through the slave trade and suppressed Indigenous cultures adopting the term for their own cultural practices. Neopagan witchcraft practices such as Wicca then emerged in the mid-20th century.
Native Americans in the United States
Native American communities such as the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Delaware, Hopi, Miami, Natchez, Navajo and Seneca have historically defined witches as evil-doers who harm their own communities. Witches are traditionally seen as criminals, and witchcraft as a crime punishable by death, if nothing else as a last resort. While some communities have passed laws specifically outlawing vigilante killings, traditional views of witches and witchcraft have largely remained the same into 20th century, and through to the present among traditionals. Alan Kilpatrick says in The Night Has a Naked Soul: Witchcraft and Sorcery Among the Western Cherokee "A cursory survey of the ethnohistorical literature indicates that death was the standard punishment among Native American societies. Numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century accounts of random witch killings are recorded among the Chickasaw."
Witches in these communities are defined in contrast to medicine people, who are the healers and ceremonial leaders, and who provide protection against witches and witchcraft.
Cherokee
The Cherokee have traditional monster stories of witches, such as Raven Mocker () and Spearfinger (), both known as dangerous killers.
Among the Cherokee, the medicine people are seen as a "priesthood caste", known to work together in groups to help the community. As in other Native communities, they are defined as the opposite of witches, who are seen as criminals,
Cherokee healers have "doctored" dogs so the dogs can help them detect witches.
As in the other tribes that have agreed to talk to anthropologists, witchcraft has been traditionally punished by death in Cherokee communities. In 1824 the western Cherokee passed new laws "forbidding the wanton killing of suspected witches", however, this attitude and retribution appears to have continued at the same rate in both the Cherokee and Creek communities throughout the 19th Century. In the twentieth century, many communities responded to allegations of witchcraft with mental health treatment, including medication. But despite changes in laws and perspectives, Kilpatrick (quoting Shimony (1989)) wrote in 1998 that one does still occasionally read about "the demise of a suspected witch in Native American communities" but that most of these deaths take place "only while the witch is in animal guise (by shooting) or by means of counter-witchcraft".
Hopi
The Hopi have many beliefs and concerns about witches and witchcraft.
Suspicious deaths are often blamed on witchcraft, with members of the community trying to figure out who might be a witch, and who might have caused the death or other misfortune.