John Putnam Demos

“Consider, too, the matter of display, the claims of “specialness” implicit in attack by witchcraft. Such claims were most vividly dramatized in full-blown “fits,” but, in a lesser measure, they may be imputed to all self-described victims: “The forces of evil have chosen me as their target. And you—the standers-by—must attend to me in my hour of affliction.” This”
― John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England

“However, neither process nor project will go as smoothly as the colonists hope… at some deeper (mostly unacknowledged) level, there will be growing worry that the process might reverse itself—so as to make the currents of change run the opposite way. Instead of their civilizing the wilderness (and its savage inhabitants), the wilderness might change, might uncivilize, them. This they will feel an appalling prospect, a nightmare to resist and suppress by every means possible.”
― John Putnam Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America