 Complete the following phrase:  The existence of witches and demonic forces was taken for granted by the American colonistswitchcraft was considered the work of the Devil. Colonists believed that witches could be identified by their strange behavior. As early as 1626, nineteen years after the founding of the Jamestown colony, a grand jury in Virginia sat to consider whether Goodwife Joan Wright was a witchshe had supposedly predicted the deaths of three women and had caused illness as revenge for not hiring her as midwife. No record of the outcome is extant. Nevertheless, Virginia did not experience events of mass hysteria such as the 