Pottermore revealed the first two of four pieces of information about Wizardry in North America on Tuesday and Wednesday with more coming in about an hour. Read the two parts so far below:
Though European explorers called it ‘the New World’ when they first
reached the continent, wizards had known about America long before Muggles
(Note: while every nationality has its own term for ‘Muggle,’ the American
community uses the slang term No-Maj, short for ‘No Magic’). Various modes of
magical travel – brooms and Apparition among them – not to mention visions and
premonitions, meant that even far-flung wizarding communities were in contact
with each other from the Middle Ages onwards.
The Native American magical community and those of Europe and Africa had
known about each other long before the immigration of European No-Majs in the
seventeenth century. They were already aware of the many similarities between
their communities. Certain families were clearly ‘magical’, and magic also
appeared unexpectedly in families where hitherto there had been no known witch
or wizard. The overall ratio of wizards to non-wizards seemed consistent across
populations, as did the attitudes of No-Majs, wherever they were born. In the
Native American community, some witches and wizards were accepted and even
lauded within their tribes, gaining reputations for healing as medicine men, or
outstanding hunters. However, others were stigmatised for their beliefs, often
on the basis that they were possessed by malevolent spirits.
The legend of the Native American ‘skin walker’ – an evil witch or
wizard that can transform into an animal at will – has its basis in fact. A
legend grew up around the Native American Animagi, that they had sacrificed
close family members to gain their powers of transformation. In fact, the
majority of Animagi assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for
the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men,
who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.
The Native American wizarding community was particularly gifted in
animal and plant magic, its potions in particular being of a sophistication
beyond much that was known in Europe. The most glaring difference between magic
practised by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a
wand.
The magic wand originated in Europe.
Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more
powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest
witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of
a very high quality. As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers
demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and
Transfiguration are very difficult without one.
As No-Maj Europeans began to emigrate to the New World, more witches and
wizards of European origin also came to settle in America. Like their No-Maj
counterparts, they had a variety of reasons for leaving their countries of
origin. Some were driven by a sense of adventure, but most were running away:
sometimes from persecution by No-Majs, sometimes from a fellow witch or wizard,
but also from the wizarding authorities. The latter sought to blend in among
the increasing tide of No-Majs, or hide among the Native American wizarding
population, who were generally welcoming and protective of their European
brethren.
From the first, however, it was clear that the New World was to be a
harsher environment for witches and wizards than the Old World. There were
three main reasons for this.
Firstly, like their No-Maj counterparts, they had come to a country with
few amenities, except those they made themselves. Back home, they had only to
visit the local Apothecary to find the necessities for potions: here, they had
to forage among unfamiliar magical plants. There were no established
wandmakers, and Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which would one
day rank among the greatest magical establishments in the world, was at that
time no more than a rough shack containing two teachers and two students.
Secondly, the actions of their fellow No-Majs made the non-magical
population of most wizards’ homelands look lovable. Not only had conflict
developed between the immigrants and the Native American population, which
struck a blow at the unity of the magical community, their religious beliefs
made them deeply intolerant of any trace of magic. The Puritans were happy to
accuse each other of occult activity on the slenderest evidence, and New World
witches and wizards were right to be extremely wary of them.
The last, and probably the most dangerous problem encountered by wizards
newly arrived in North America were the Scourers. As the wizarding community in
America was small, scattered and secretive, it had as yet no law enforcement
mechanism of its own. This left a vacuum that was filled by an unscrupulous
band of wizarding mercenaries of many foreign nationalities, who formed a
much-feared and brutal taskforce committed to hunting down not only known
criminals, but anyone who might be worth some gold. As time went on, the
Scourers became increasingly corrupt. Far away from the jurisdiction of their
native magical governments, many indulged a love of authority and cruelty
unjustified by their mission. Such Scourers enjoyed bloodshed and torture, and
even went so far as trafficking their fellow wizards. The numbers of Scourers
multiplied across America in the late seventeenth century and there is evidence
that they were not above passing off innocent No-Majs as wizards, to collect
rewards from gullible non-magic members of the community.
The famous Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93 were a tragedy for the
wizarding community. Wizarding historians agree that among the so-called
Puritan judges were at least two known Scourers, who were paying off feuds that
had developed while in America. A number of the dead were indeed witches,
though utterly innocent of the crimes for which they had been arrested. Others
were merely No-Majs who had the misfortune to be caught up in the general
hysteria and bloodlust.
Salem was significant within the magical community for reasons far
beyond the tragic loss of life. Its immediate effect was to cause many witches
and wizards to flee America, and many more to decide against locating there.
This led to interesting variations in the magical population of North America,
compared to the populations of Europe, Asia and Africa. Up until the early
decades of the twentieth century, there were fewer witches and wizards in the
general American population than on the other four continents. Pure-blood
families, who were well-informed through wizarding newspapers about the
activities of both Puritans and Scourers, rarely left for America. This meant a
far higher percentage of No-Maj-born witches and wizards in the New World than
elsewhere. While these witches and wizards often went on to marry and found
their own all-magical families, the pure-blood ideology that has dogged much of
Europe’s magical history has gained far less traction in America.
Perhaps the most significant effect of Salem was the creation of the
Magical Congress of the United States of America in 1693, pre-dating the No-Maj
version by around a century. Known to all American witches and wizards by the
abbreviation MACUSA (commonly pronounced as: Mah – cooz – ah), it was the first
time that the North American wizarding community came together to create laws
for themselves, effectively establishing a magical-world-within-a-No-Maj-world
such as existed in most other countries. MACUSA’s first task was to put on
trial the Scourers who had betrayed their own kind. Those convicted of murder,
of wizard-trafficking, torture and all other manners of cruelty were executed
for their crimes.
Several of the most notorious Scourers eluded justice. With
international warrants out for their arrest, they vanished permanently into the
No-Maj community. Some of them married No-Majs and founded families where
magical children appear to have been winnowed out in favour of non-magical
offspring, to maintain the Scourer’s cover. The vengeful Scourers, cast out
from their people, passed on to their descendants an absolute conviction that
magic was real, and the belief that witches and wizards ought to be exterminated
wherever they were found.
American magical historian Theophilus
Abbot has identified several such families, each with a deep belief in magic
and a great hatred of it. It may be partly due to the anti-magic beliefs and
activities of the descendants of Scourer families that North American No-Majs
often seem harder to fool and hoodwink on the subject of magic than many other
populations. This has had far-reaching repercussions on the way the American
wizarding community is governed.
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