The thing is, America is so heavily colonized that there’s no way the magic here would look similar at all to a European or British wizard. First off, you’re telling me Aztecs, Hopi, Seminole, and Lakota peoples (to name a few) would all have the same wizarding traditions as each other? No, I do not buy it. There would have been a substantial diversity between larger tribes.
Now we have first contact and you’d have Spanish and Mesoamerican magical traditions interbreeding heavily into probably a pretty solid fusion. The French tended to trade openly in the Northeast, and likely wouldn’t have assimilated as thoroughly as the Spanish but more so than the British who tended to just go “ours now, you leave.”
Then come waves of immigration, including the African Diaspora/the slave trade and focusing heavily in the south and northeast. Alongside that, you have French Canadians (Acadians) moving down the Mississippi into Louisiana and giving it a heavy French and Caribbean influence. You have Scotch and Irish immigrants moving into the Appalachians where (in some places) they’re in close contact with Cherokee and similar tribes, and in others with slaves. We can assume those groups would trade magic thoroughly amongst themselves in the few hundred years of living in close contact. You have Latin American immigration coming up through the south west and bringing their Mesoamerican/Spanish hybrid magic where it would be informed by Creole traditions formed by hybridizing French, African, and Native techniques along with the dominant British traditions. The Midwest tends to be Scandinavian, but again their magic is influenced by people they would have had trade with such as plains Indians and French trappers in the north.
Then, of course, Chinese and Japanese schools of magic coming into California where it blends with traditional Mexican schools. You have Puerto Rican, Italian, and Jewish immigrant communities living in close contact with each other as well as whatever hybrid Dutch-British-African hybrid is going on in NYC. That’s not even getting into more recent waves from Vietnam, Laos, and the Middle East, for example.
What I’m saying here is that not only would American magic look like an unholy hodgepodge to a European wizard, but there would be regional variations within the country that would be almost impossible to even work around.
I mean, say what you will about the French and British, but they’ve spent most of the last thousand years in close contact with each other and you can assume that French and British wizards and witches would probably at least know what their magic looked like. We’re talking now about cultures spread across the entire globe taking up residence in one area where they’re now surrounded by people with entirely different traditions. After a few generations, there’s going to be a lot of adaptation and adoption of techniques to the point that your grandparents wouldn’t recognize your wandwork because you’re now using something adapted from a Hmong style with a distinctly Norwegian flare and youre casting it with Incan words.
I mean Jesus, just look at the variations in American food from region to region if you don’t believe me.
dailybridgerton
theartofmadeline
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stormborns
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