I am relying mostly on secondary sources for the events covered in this blog, although for some of the storylines I have not found adequately detailed secondary sources and am therefore using published primary sources. I have modernized the spelling and punctuation of all direct quotes. For the most part each storyline is taken from a single source:
For the Salem witch trials, I am using In the Devil’s Snare by Mary Beth Norton, which is the most thorough chronological account of the trials. Norton’s interpretations of the events do not figure prominently in my posts, which are intended mainly to simply describe the events as they happen, but her choices of what to include in the book has shaped my choices of what to include on the blog, so there is some indirect influence here from her ideas. In some cases I have consulted the online version of the published records of the trials, The Salem Witchcraft Papers, for more specific information on certain events than that provided by Norton.
For the Connecticut witchcraft scare, I am using the primary documents published in Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, edited by David Hall. Although this event is discussed in many general works on New England witchcraft, I have not found a sufficiently detailed chronological account of it in any secondary source.
For the reconquest of New Mexico, I am using The Journals of don Diego de Vargas, edited by John L. Kessell and Rick Hendricks, specifically the first three volumes (Remote Beyond Compare, By Force of Arms, and To the Royal Crown Restored), which cover this period. These are collections of Vargas’s personal and official correspondence, translated into English and conveniently organized chronologically.
For the Port Royal earthquake, I am using Port Royal, Jamaica, by Michael Pawson and David Buisseret, along with the online version of the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial.
For the Mexico City riot, I am using La política de una rebelión: los indígenas frente al tumulto de 1692 en la Ciudad de México by Natalia Silva Prada and The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 by R. Douglas Cope. Between the two of them, these books give the most complete account of both the riot and the events before and after it that I have found.
