Mary Beth Norton seems to have entered into a single-minded telling, trying to link the Indian wars as the sole answer to “Essex County Witch Trials”. The French and Indians were involved in an up rise of accusations, sure. But Norton’s reasoning behind how the Indian wars had not happened, maybe these trials would not have occurred, does not make sense. Norton tries to wiggle her out of it by stating that she does not believe that the Second Indian War caused these trials but that it “created the conditions that allowed the crisis to develop as rapidly and as extensively as it did.” As an example she uses “repeated spectral sightings of the black man” and “establishes a crucial connection” found throughout records on Salem, as a direct link