Editing Death by burning (section)

=== Colonial Americas ===
[[File:Execution of Mariana de Carabajal.jpg|thumb|Execution of [[Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal|Mariana de Carabajal]] (converted Jew), [[Mexico City]], 1601]]

====North America====
[[File:Modocs Scalping and Torturing Prisoners.jpg|thumb|Native Americans scalping and roasting their prisoners, published in 1873]]
[[Indigenous peoples|Indigenous]] North Americans often used burning as a form of execution, against members of other tribes or white settlers during the 18th and 19th centuries. Roasting over a slow fire was a customary method.<ref>''Scott'' (1940) p. 41</ref> (See [[Captives in American Indian Wars]].)

In [[Massachusetts]], there are two known cases of burning at the stake. First, in 1681, an [[Slavery in British America|enslaved woman]] named Maria was accused of trying to kill her enslaver by setting his house on fire. She was convicted of arson and burned at the stake in [[Roxbury, Massachusetts|Roxbury]].<ref name="Maria, Burned at the Stake">CelebrateBoston.com (2014), [http://www.celebrateboston.com/crime/puritan-burned-at-stake-maria.htm "Maria, Burned at the Stake"]</ref> Concurrently, an enslaved man named Jack, convicted in a separate arson case, was hanged at a nearby gallows, and after death his body was thrown into the fire with that of Maria. Second, in 1755, a group of enslaved people accused of having conspired and killed their enslaver,  Mark and Phillis were executed for his murder. Mark was hanged and his body [[gibbet]]ed, and Phillis burned at the stake, at [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]].<ref name="Mark and Phillis Executions">[http://www.celebrateboston.com/crime/puritan-mark-and-phillis-executions.htm Mark and Phillis Executions] (2014)</ref>

In [[Montreal]], then part of the colony of [[New France]], [[Marie-Joseph Angélique]], an enslaved woman, was sentenced to being burned alive for an arson which destroyed 45 homes and a hospital in 1734. The sentence was commuted on appeal to burning after death by strangulation.

In [[New York City|New York]], several burnings at the stake are recorded, particularly following suspected [[Slave rebellion|slave revolt]] plots. In 1708, one woman was burnt and one man hanged. In the aftermath of the [[New York Slave Revolt of 1712]], 20 enslaved people were burnt (one of the leaders slowly roasted, before he died after 10 hours of torture)<ref>''McManus'' (1973), [https://books.google.com/books?id=2H3S1OLtmagC&pg=PA86 p. 86]</ref> and during the alleged [[New York Conspiracy of 1741|slave conspiracy of 1741]], at least 13 enslaved people were burnt at the stake.<ref>''Hoey'' (1974),[http://www.americanheritage.com/content/terror-new-york--1741 Terror in New York–1741]{{Dead link|date=July 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

In 1731, 51-year-old [[Delaware]] housewife Catherine Bevan was burned for murder, and in 1746, Esther Anderson was burned in [[Maryland]] for another murder.<ref>{{Cite web |title=DeathPenaltyUSA, the database of executions in the United States |url=https://deathpenaltyusa.org/usa1/other.htm |access-date=9 May 2022 |website=deathpenaltyusa.org}}</ref>

In an opinion piece published in the [[Washington Post]], [[Emory University]] historian [[Kali Nicole Gross]] asserted that 87% percent of the women executed by burning at the stake in the US and its predecessor colonies between 1681 and 1805 were Black.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gross |first=Kali Nicole |date=25 February 2022 |title=The historical truth about women burned at the stake in America? Most were Black. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/25/black-women-history-burned-at-stake/ |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |quote=In his diary entry on Sept. 22, 1681, Increase Mather - father of the legendary clergyman Cotton Mather and later a president of Harvard College - wrote of "a negro woman who burnt 2 houses at Roxbury July 12." The woman, Maria, described as a servant - often a euphemism for an enslaved person at the time - of Joshua Lambe, was convicted of arson for using a hot coal to set fire to the house of a local doctor and Lambe's home...Beginning with Maria's execution and ending with the last known woman burned at the stake - which, according to the Espy File on U.S. executions from 1608 to 2002, was a Black woman in North Carolina in 1805 - the overwhelming majority of women to face the fatal fires of justice, 87 percent, were Black.}}</ref>

====South America====
The last known burning by the Spanish colonial government in [[Latin America]] was of Mariana de Castro, during the [[Peruvian Inquisition]] in [[Lima]] on 22 December 1736<ref>René Millar Carvacho, ''La Inquisición de Lima: Signos de su Decadencia, 1726–1750'' (DIBAM, 2004)</ref> after she had been convicted on 4 February 1732 of being a [[Judaizers|''judaizante'']] (a person who was privately practicing the Jewish faith after having publicly converted to Roman Catholicism).

In 1855 the Dutch [[abolitionist]] and historian [[:nl:Julien Wolbers|Julien Wolbers]] spoke to the Anti Slavery Society in Amsterdam. Painting a dark picture of the condition of slaves in [[Suriname]], he mentions in particular that in 1853, "three Negroes were burnt alive".<ref>''Woblers'' (1855), [https://books.google.com/books?id=WqcNAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA205 p. 205]</ref>

==== West Indies ====
In 1760, the slave rebellion known as [[Tacky's War]] broke out in [[Jamaica]]. Apparently, some of the defeated rebels were burned alive, while others were gibbeted alive, left to die of thirst and starvation.<ref>''Waddell'' (1863), [https://archive.org/details/twentynineyears00waddgoog/page/n30 p. 19]</ref>

In 1774, nine enslaved Africans in [[Tobago]] were found complicit of murdering a white man. Eight of them had first their right arms chopped off, and were then burned alive bound to stakes, according to the report of an eyewitness.<ref>''Blake'' (1857), [https://archive.org/details/historyofslavery1857blak/page/154 pp. 154–155]</ref>

In [[Saint-Domingue]], enslaved Africans found guilty of committing crimes were sometimes punished by being burnt at the stake, particularly if the crime was attempting to foment a slave rebellion.<ref>{{cite book|title=Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1995|last1=Heinl|first1=Robert Debs|last2=Heinl|first2=Michael|last3=Heinl|first3=Nancy Gordon|year=2005|orig-year=1996|edition=2nd|publisher=Univ. Press of America|location=Lanham, Md; London|isbn=0761831770|oclc=255618073|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/writteninbloodst00hein}}</ref>