J.K. Rowling released the final installment of "Magic in North America," a history of witches and wizards in North America from the 14th century to the early 1900s on Friday.
Over the course of the week, Rowling released three other "Magic in North America" stories, chronicling Native American magic, life during the Salem witch trials, and the enacting of "Rappaport's Law," a piece of legislation that drove wizards into hiding from No-Maj (the American word for non-magical people) after 1790.
Friday's story takes a look at "1920s Wizarding America," and includes a section on where American wizards get their wands. In an earlier story, Rowling revealed wands were a European invention and that the earliest wizards in America practiced magic solely with their hands.
After the establishment of Ilvermorny, the American school for witchcraft and wizardry, wands became commonplace among American wizards. While you might remember Harry Potter purchasing his wand at Ollivander's in Diagon Alley, American wizards in the 1920s purchased their wands from four, distinct wandmakers: Shikoba Wolfe, Johannes Jonker, Thiago Quintana, and Violetta Beauvais.
Wolfe's wands were best known for their Thunderbird tail feathers and aptitude for transfiguration, while Jonker's wands had an iconic mother-of-pearl inlay which made them easy to spot. Quintana created his wands using spines from the White River Monsters of Arkansas, but as he never divulged how he killed the creatures, his famous wands went out of production after Quintana died. Beauvais ran her wand operation out of New Orleans, creating scarily powerful wands out of swamp mayhaw wood and hairs from rougarous, the dog-headed monsters native to the swamps of Louisiana.
Once a wizard purchased a wand from one of the four, they were required to register it with the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA). This law was created at the beginning of the 19th century as a way to monitor witches and wizards and their magical activies.
