Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. In a plain meetinghouse, a woman stands before her judges. The accusers, girls and young wom
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English Pages 272 [294] Year 2003
Table of contents :
Note to the Reader x ..............2994
Of Dark Forests ..............3001
Boston 1688 ..............3023
Two Salem Families 16411692 41 ..............3043
Two Mysteries 55 ..............3057
The Mysteries End ..............3075
The Accuser Ann Putnam Jr 89 ..............3091
The One and the Many 103 ..............3107
"A
skillful retelling of the
endlessly fascinating story of
the 1692 witchcraft crisis for
young readers ...
a gripping,
sophisticated narrative."
—Mary
Beth Norton
MYSTERIES OF
the salem WITCH TRIALS
AUTHOR OF THE SIBERT AWARD-WINNER SIR WALTER RALEGH
AND THE QUEST FOR
EL
DORADO
what
really
happened
mi
''Massachusetts, In
a plain meetinghouse, a
169:f.
woman
stands before
her judges. The accusers, girls and young women, are fervent, overexcited, just on the edge of
breaking out into convulsions. The accused
woman who had
poor, unpopular
before she was married. As the girls
her
trial
is
a
first child
proceeds, the
begin to wail, tear their clothing, and scream
woman
that the
hurting them.
is
Some
of
them
m oCD W O 0)
expose wounds to the horrified onlookers, holding
them— pins
out the pins that have stabbed
have appeared as
that
by magic. Are the girls acting,
if
or are they really tormented by an unseen evil?
Whatever the cause, the nightmare begun: The witch
trials will
five lives, shatter the
in
Salem has
community, and forever shape
o>
Acclaimed historian Marc Aronson
sifts
through
the facts, myths, half-truths, misinterpretations, and theories around the Salem witch trials to present us with a vivid narrative of one of the
most compelling
mysteries
Witch-Hunt
brilliant
readers to
what
come
really
months
American
book that
ft o
eventually claim twenty-
the American social conscience.
in
go
will
history.
is
a
stimulate and challenge
to their
own conclusions about
happened during those
of accusations, trials,
terrifying
and executions.
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HUNT ••?
MYSTERIES OF
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Witch-
HUNT MYSTERIES OF
the salem WITCH TRIALS ^TT? cl ^l
Marc Aronson
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS New
York
London
Toronto
Sydney
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I
am
subject
grateful to
Ginee Seo for suggesting
this
me and
for providing challenges
and
to
insights that helped
me
turn an accumulation of
research and ideas into a book. George Nicholson
was a most helpful adviser and guide in the mysteries
of publishing. assistance
I
from
have also been fortunate in receiving scholars. Professors Charles
Cohen
and Randall Balmer provided useful bibliographic leads,
did Andre
as
Carus.
Professor Bernard
Rosenthal read the entire manuscript carefully, was
me from
gracious in his comments, and saved
number of errors. It was my great good early copy of
of Salem,
fortune to be able to read an
Mary Beth Norton's landmark new study
my book went
In the Devil's Snare, just as
production. As readers of the was able to enrich and,
my
text
and notes
narrative with her
allowed
me
will see,
new
I
insights,
and foolish
her better example
to recognize the folly of
generous, too, in saving errors.
me from
But to get
my
ways. She was
number of
a
a full sense
approach and new interpretations,
I
urge
small
of her fresh
my
readers
go on to read her pathbreaking book. Finally,
Richard Trask, archivist Center,
i^viK-
into
on two important points where I had not followed
Professor Rosenthal's advice,
to
a
who
is
at
the
Danvers Archival
so often helpful to scholars of Salem,
generously gave course,
I
clusions,
am
guidance on images.
I
wrote
this
com-
book, and their recording of
Nina Simone singing "Sinnerman" probably
provided whatever narrative gusto
Budhos's loving attention to to write.
Marina,
There
is
is
in the text. Shirley
my son
as ever,
readers: questioning, engaged, best.
book.
Alexis Krimstein were wonderful
panions when
freedom
this
Of
con-
solely responsible for all the facts,
and remaining limitations in
Ken and the late
me informed
gave
me
great
was the very best of
demanding only
the
probably no better way to become a
writer than to be married to one
who
is
constantly
challenging herself and setting a high standard for the family.
^vii^
CONTENTS Note
to the
Reader
x
A Note About the On
Spelling,
Word
Dates in This
Images in This Book
xiv
Usage, and
Book
xv
INTRODUCTION: Of Dark Forests and Midnight Thoughts
I
"The Queen of Hell"
Two
3
Familiar Fairy Tales
Skittering
Shadows
Belief or Fraud?
PROLOGUE:
16
The Goodwin Children
Boston, 1688:
Possession of the
Mather
vs
Glover
Wolves:
21
23
Of Meetinghouses and
the Blood of
The Puritan Journey
25
Testing a Witch
31
Exploring the Invisible World
35
Lessons and Warnings
37
CHAPTER I: Two
Salem Families, 1641-1692
The Putnams and The Theft
the Porters
A Minister's Warnings CHAPTER II: Two
Mysteries
The First Mystery The Second Mystery The Second Mystery Deepens CHAPTER III: The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin
The Usual
Suspects
Tituba's Confession
CHAPTER IV: The Accuser: Ann Biting,
Putnam Jr. Pinching, and Choking
Of Tests and Wishes -^vlilK-
7
14
41
43 49 5^ 55 57
62 67
75 77
82
89 9^
9^
CHAPTER V: The One
and the Many
103
Martha Corey
105
"Confess and Give Glory to God"
CHAPTER VI: From
123
"Alas, Alas, Alas, Witchcraft"
125
To Hear and Decide
130
One Dead:
Bridget Bishop
CHAPTER VII The Man :
134
in Black
141
Vengeful Ghosts
143
Two Men
147
in Black
CHAPTER VIII: a
II4
Hearings to Trials
"Choosing Death with
Quiet Conscience" "If
I
Would
My
Have
155
Confess,
I
Should
Life"
157
A Confused Jury "Till the
163
Blood Was Ready
to
Come
Out of Their Noses" CHAPTER IX: "That No More Innocent
165
Blood Be Shed"
173
Mary Easty "It Was All False" "I Do Most Heartily, Fervently, and Humbly Beseech Pardon" CHAPTER X: "A Great Delusion of Satan" Ann Putnam Jr. Speaks
175 181
184 189 191
202
Wheels Within Wheels
EPILOGUE:
Explaining Salem
207 209
Fraud, Witches, Hysterics, Hallucinators
APPENDIX:
The Crucible,
Crossing Points of
Witch-Hunt, and Religion:
Many
221
Histories
Timeline of Milestones in Puritan History
Important Dates in Puritan History Before 1692
229 229
Chronology of Events in the Salem Witch
231
Notes and
Comments
234
Bibliography
Index
Crisis
2 56 '
261
^'n^
Note to the Reader As you
will see, there are
many
different ways to
interpret the witchcraft trials that took place in Salem,
Massachusetts, in 1692. But there
be sure
of:
is
one thing you can
you have previously read novels for
If
younger readers or popular adult accounts about those fascinating
Salem
and frightening times, or
itself,
a
if you
have visited
good part of what you know
Over the centuries the
wrong.
is
actual events that took place that
year were surrounded with a series of stories based misinterpretations, fantasies,
many
passed along so
and half-truths
times from
book
to
on
that were
book
that
eventually they were treated as true.
For example, in one frequently told story the outbreak of witchcraft accusations begins when half-black, slave
named Tituba
or
teaches her Caribbean
voodoo-inspired magic to local scene of books
a black,
girls.
on Salem opens with
a
Another
staple
couple of
girls
using occult methods to divine their future husbands' professions.
When
the experiment produces a ghastly
result, the girls are terrified,
and
their strange
symp-
We
read of
Satanic rituals in the woods, reminiscent to us
now of
toms
set off all
the witchcraft accusations.
scary practices in
horror movies or of the allegedly
ancient pagan practices that some claim to be reviving today.
On
the other side of the equation, the Puritan
ministers, especially
^x^
Cotton Mather, are often por-
Note to the
Reader
trayed as driven, harsh inquisitors bent
women and
stamping out any sign of spontaneous,
life -affirming
fun. Arthur Miller's play The
combines many of these themes in narrative.
explained
on oppressing
a vividly
Crucible
rendered
In his drama the events in Salem are
from
as arising
a fear
of sexuality,
ness to give in to powerful families,
and
a
a willing-
tendency to
demonize enemies. In
Tituba was certainly an Indian,
fact,
African, and there
made
is
absolutely
no evidence
not
that she
use of any rituals of her own. If she practiced any
"magic"
at all,
the English.
she used techniques she learned
It is
first afflicted
far
from
clear that the girls
from
who were
were trying to figure out who their hus-
bands would be through the old English practice of
dropping an egg white in water and studying the
one record
shapes. Carefully read, the
that perhaps
indicates that a girl was spooked by seeing the image of a coffin in the water turns
out to be a muddled blend-
ing of different stories.
Many people
in
New England
believed in and used
charms, astrological charts, and rituals handed down
through the centuries to fend off evil influences, foretell is
the future, or interpret God's will.
only very fragmentary evidence of this,
pletely impossible that selves as witches.
But there
The Puritan
it is
there
not com-
some even thought of themis
these examples of folk magic
of Wicca.
Though
no connection between
and the modern
practice
ministers, including Mather,
^xiK-
Witch-
HUNT
much more measured and
were
response than legend would have
troubled in their
it.
drama
chologically astute historical
The Crucible
that
for understanding the 1950s in which
but
no guide
is
it
to
is
a psy-
quite useful
is
was written,
it
making sense of events in the
1690s.
For decades scholars have tried to clear away
underbrush and sources actually
to
make sense of what the
tell us. I
am
original
the beneficiary of their
and have been inspired
diligence
this
to
make
a
few correc-
tions of
my own. You
detective
work in the "Notes and Comments" section
at the
back of
If you
1692 by
this
would
visiting
can see the
of historical
trail
book. learn
like to
more about
modern Salem, you
the events of
will see the traces
of the very stories scholars no longer accept. learn of supposedly real witches and
visit
You
can
amusement
park—style haunted houses. These venues either offer
some fun and
scary thrills or
them
"honor" the witches of the
as believers in a
kind of alter-
native, female -oriented nature religion.
Other reen-
past by recognizing
actments
tell
the anti- Puritan version of the Salem
story, depicting replicas
of the dungeons of the day or
reading from actual transcripts, to show cruel the judges
how mean and
and ministers were. These
performances are more or
less
exhibits
and
entertaining, but they
are not very helpful in understanding the past.
We
can say what did
not
happen
at
Salem.
It is
much
harder to say what did. The challenge of this book
-i^xil^
is
to
Note to the
Reader
give
you enough information
through for yourself. accusations,
to begin to think that
and of the mythologies
around them, teaches anything,
that have
tainty,
We
that
it is
careful with evidence. But caution
resignation.
of the witchcraft
If the study
grown up
we must be
not the same
is
as
are not likely to ever know, with cer-
why the
events at Salem unfolded as they did.
Yet looking for new clues about Salem, re-examining old ones, formulating theories, and testing ever the
more
fascinating just because
it is
them
is
an ongoing
process. Being careful not to recycle false stories, you just
may
arrive at the
one
Precisely because the
that
is
closest to
most diligent scholarship
probably never be able to "solve" Salem, there
is
being true. will
the mysteries of
all
room for your imagination. At the heart
of the whole story
is
one central question:
Why
did the
Why did they twitch and scream and court? Why did they cause nineteen people to
accusers do it?
bleed in
be hanged and
Many of the you reach
a total
of perhaps twenty-five to die?
accusers were teenagers.
this
I
hope
when
question again, in Chapter X, you will
have enough historical context to use your ence, your
that
own
sense of yourself as a
to try to picture
tressed state of
modern
experi-
teenager,
them, your ancestors centuries ago.
group of individuals acted destroy others.
own
Is
as
a
A
pack to attack and
that because they were in such a dis-
mind
that they actually believed their
neighbors were agents of evil? If
so,
what horrors,
or imagined, could have driven them to that state?
real
Or
-SxiliK-
Witch-
HUNT
that the attackers themselves knowingly acted in evil
is it
ways? If they did, why did they? And why were some able to resist?
In one way, the accusers were products of their
time and were very different from you. This book, and the notes in the back, will give you the chance to see
how
different they were. But in another sense your
knowledge of yourself does
give
envisioning and imagining them. history
is
we
that as long as
we have the power
hope you
I
Perhaps you
will discover
will
the great joy of
A Note About
join
me
in that process.
something about Salem none
^ ^
a
And
see.
K-
the Images
that have survived
in
This Book
from the period
are
few of the most famous judges and ministers, and
only one building ings readers
is still
standing in Salem.
generally accurate we
the accusers that any
Any paint-
may have seen in other books were done
the nineteenth century, and while they
in
may have been
know almost nothing about what
and the accused looked
book about Salem
or have only text pages.
-^xiv^
way to begin
are careful with evidence,
of us have so far been able to
of
a
to constantly re-create the past in
our minds.
The only images
you
will either
like.
This means
include
new
art,
On Spelling, Word Usage, and Dates in This Book have not used the original spelling or punctuation
I
in the transcripts of the pretrial hearings, which are the
main source we have about
"And
line:
further
he loved
that
"And
tion:
Bridges
to be the truth."
further,
he loved
that
heard him
I
Here
I
heard him
owned [admitted]
to
a typical
tell
.
.
transla-
James Bridges
girl,
.
which: said
(Modern-day
fourteen-year-old
a
is
Jeams bridges
tell
a gurll at forteen years ould:
oned
bridges:
the events.
.
.
.
which that same
be the truth.") There
is
a
certain pleasure in decoding this writing, but for the
purposes of clarity,
I
have modernized the spelling and
punctuation. have chosen to use the term Indian rather than
I
Native American for a variety British
Museum
Green
Encyclopedia of Native North America,
(director of the
National
Museum
Institution)
by Rayna
American Indian Program,
of American History, Smithsonian
and Melanie Fernandez (acting
nations officer that
of reasons. For one, The
at
first
the Ontario Art Council), explains
"most American Indians prefer to refer
to their
tribal
names, using the general term 'Indian' and,
more
rarely,
(p.
'Native American' in everyday speech"
109). This accords with what
other experts.
I
I
do not believe there
have heard from is
a truly "correct"
-^xvg-
Witch-
HUNT
term now, and
modern phrase
it
would be anachronistic
to use a
for seventeenth- century peoples. For
another, using Native American would lead to a hopeless
muddle when referring Barbados,
to Tituba,
an Indian from
who may or may not have had North
American Indian
roots.
She was native and American
but probably not Native American in the sense,
and the same applies
named John
to her
modern
husband, who was
Indian.
The New Englanders of
the time
still
used the
Julian calendar. They refused to accept the Gregorian calendar, in part because
it
had been approved by the
pope. That meant they considered
be March 25» ^^^ thus
all
New Year's Day
dates in January, February,
and most of March were from the previous
March
I,
year.
So
1692 —a very important date in the story— is
written in documents of the time as either 1691, or
to
March
I,
1691/2.
modern form. As long you should be able
to
as
I
have written
all
March
dates in
you know the general
make sense of
rule,
original sources
even when their dating seems to differ from mine by year.
^xvi^
I,
a
n *..| -^J
7
w
T
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INTRODUCTION '
-
dark forests and Midnight Thoughts
Xl#
•
:/
I
^^ ^MA.-
"The QUEEN
of hell"
May 31,1 692 a
woman
sure if it
in a plain Salem meetinghouse
stands before her judges. The magistrate
—we
are not
was John Hathorne or Jonathan Corwin—speaks with
stern, suspicious voice
joung women,
of the community. The
accusers, girls
the
and
are fervent, overexcited, just on the edge of break-
ing into convulsions. They are so tormented,
it is
as if their very
bones are being pulled out of their sockets.
Judge: Abigail Williams,
Abigail Williams:
Goody
who
hurts you?
Carrier of Andover.
Judge: Elizabeth Hubbard,
who
hurts
you?
^as-
Witch-
HUNT
Elizabeth Hubbard: Goody Judge: Susannah Sheldon,
who
Susannah Sheldon: Goody pinches me, and if I
me
tells
Carrier.
hurts
Carrier.
you?
She
she would cut
bites
my
me,
throat,
did [do] not sign her book.
The accused
had her first
is
a poor, unpopular
child before she
woman from Andover, who
was married. She
is
also suspected
of
having spread smallpox and has spoken sharply to her neighbors.
No
wonder she
women of high
is
called ''Goody" (Goodwife); only married
status are called ''Mrs. "
But she
is
unrelenting in
maintaining her innocence.
Judge:
What do you
say to this you are charged
with?
Martha
Susannah
Carrier:
I
have not done
cries out, saying she
it.
can see an
evil
man
devil himself, dressed in black. This evil specter appears
times
and
is
called "the black
Ann Putnam Jr.
Judge:
man.
What black man
Ann sees the man;
I
is
that?
know
none.
she insists he
Warren takes up Ann's part; she
-^4^
many
suddenly feels a pin being stuck in her.
Martha Carrier:
skin.
or the
is
is
here in the room.
And Mary
feeling something piercing her
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
Judge: What black
Martha Carrier: own
man I
saw no black man but your
presence.
The girls are beginning
to wail
now, baring their wounds, hold-
draw
their blood, collapsing as ifstruck
ing out the very real pins that
down
did you see?
by invisible rays
bla^ngfrom Marthas
thejoung women are under demonic to press
Martha
own
to confess her
attack
sin.
disdainful in her calm disgust, sees only
The judge
eyes.
and
believes
uses their agonies
But Martha,
stoic,
almost
lies.
Judge: Can you look upon these and not knock
them down?
Martha Carrier: They
will dissemble if
I
look
upon them. Judge: You see you look upon them and they
fall
down.
Martha Carrier: looked
at
It is
no one since
false; the I
came
Devil
into the
is
a
liar. I
room
but
you.
Standoff: The unswerving judge, the unbending accused.
now
the accusers ratchet
Susan has fallen
And
up the emotions another notch.
into a kind
of trance, and she
sees ghosts
materialiie in the room.
Susannah Sheldon:
I
wonder what [how many]
could you murder, thirteen persons?
^5^^
Witch-
HUNT
Mary hovering
Walcott can see the dead
in the air.
howl. Elizabeth
And now
spirits too,
people scream and
all the afflicted
and Ann go beyond claiming to
the court that they are sure that
Martha
thirteen ghosts
see ghosts; they tell
killed thirteen
people
in
Andover.
Martha Carrier:
It is
a shameful thing that
you
should mind [take seriously] these folks that are out of their wits.
Do you
Judge:
Martha believe
Carrier:
me
[will
The accusers
Martha
not see them?
insist
it,
so that she
and foot.
.
.
.
do speak, you will not
you]?
that Martha, too, can see the ghosts.
lie. I
am wronged.
falls into a violent fit,
Martha's opposition. By
of the
I
Carrier: You
Mercy Lewis
torture
If
afflicted
this point, the
was
so great that there
The
afflicted
-^6^
by
''the
was no enduring of to be
bound hand " killed.
a scene take place in a legal hearing?
thoughtful, rational
men
have taken
whose visions were never
How could these same judges ignore the sober
honesty of the accused? as a
mad
tells us,
meanwhile [were] almost
seriously the screams of accusers
Martha
court record
[Martha] was ordered away and
How could such How could solemn, scrutinized?
as if driven
A leading minister later described
"rampant hag" who had been promised that she
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
would be made queen of
hell by the devil himself.
This
seems so unlike the Martha who appears in the transcripts that the minister appears to
be writing about
person. But he wasn't; the difference
is
in our perception
of her, which leads us to the next question:
young people join together hardly, if ever, met,
would lead
to attack
a different
Why would
someone
they had
knoMdng their wails and visions and fits
to her death?
In order to begin answering these questions, we have to step outside the courtroom, into the world of fairy tales.
Though
there
is
nothing
left
of the original building, this
is
the site of the meetinghouse in which
the first accused witches were questioned.
Two FAMILIAR FAIRY tales Think back
to the stories
you read or
fairy
godmothers offer
servant girls wonderful clothes so
they can attend
heard
grand
as a child: tales in
balls; in
which
which
villagers
wander off the road into
-^7^
Witch-
HUNT
the dark forest
and
are lost to wolves
and monsters
women
lurk in the shadows; in which malicious old cast spells
and confer with
that
their evil black cats; in
which foolish or greedy farmers sign pacts with strangely elegant
or trailing is
too
tail
a
man, catching sight of his cloven hoof
or getting
a
when
whiff of sulfur only
it
late.
Now imagine what the world would feel like were not charming old Carrier's
own
Martha
but true.
fables,
if these
eight-year-old daughter described just
such a world to Judge Hathorne. Sarah Carrier was sweet-tempered, easy to talk
been
to,
and certain she had
a witch ever since she was six years old.
been converted by her mother, she into touching the red
Martha appeared
said,
book with
to her as a cat,
who
She had
lured her
the white pages.
one
that could terrify
her by threatening to tear her to pieces but one that could also wing her
spirit
away over the treetops to
attack others.
What would
if,
like Sarah,
rise in the
you knew
morning
as sure as the
that witches lived
you and could bring pain, even death,
What we
call "fairy tales" are
the world as spirits,
many of our
among your
to you,
defenseless babies, your precious livestock
sun
and crops?
often simply the record of
ancestors experienced
it.
Evil
and the witches who courted them, supplied
causes for events that were otherwise inexplicable.
Witches were conduits of harm who brought pain and suffering into people's
^8^
lives.
They offered
a very
con-
{
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
Crete
and emotionally appealing explanation for the
often perplexing and painful twists and turns of
Read
and you can
a fairy tale carefully,
behind the witchcraft
life.
see the logic
trials.
Take the story of Sleeping Beauty. Once upon
a
time, the story begins, there was a royal couple unable to have children.
and hold
woman
a
When
grand celebration, they
while giving
woman's
they finally do have a daughter
gifts to all
her anger
fury,
her decide to
kill
— or
at
one old
slight
The
the others.
old
not getting her due, makes
permanently put to sleep — the
beautiful baby.
Anyone who
reads the fairy tale today
about the child.
We
want the old
vented from doing her
We
evil
deeds,
are reacting in exactly the
sure to care
is
woman
be pre-
to
maybe even
same way
as
killed.
did villagers
who, for hundreds of years, condemned witches. After all,
the story leaves out two big questions:
Why
king and queen slight the old woman, and
did the
how were
One way to answer old woman as a midwife, a
they able finally to have a child? these questions
is
to see the
wisewoman, the one who made Sleeping Beauty's birth possible.
Another
is
to picture
her
as
an unpopular,
perhaps unattractive and bitter old woman,
the
it
how
did the royal
"good guys," repay the
woman who
was easy to ignore. In either case, couple,
whom
answered their prayers (in version one) or the poor outsider
who was envious of
their
good fortune
(in
version two)? By ignoring her, slighting her, and then,
^9^
Witch-
HUNT
when
she shows her anger, by destroying her.
And we
cheer them on. Studies of the witchcraft cases in sixteenth- and
seventeenth- century England for which court records have survived show that about
accused were
women. Though
8o percent of the term
witch
those
applied
men and women, women wound up in court four times as often. One historian's analysis of the II4 witchcraft cases in New England in the seventeenth equally to
century (not including the Salem episode) shows that, again, at least
80 percent of those formally charged
with being witches were
women. The more
closely his-
more
torians have looked at these records, the
clearly
much like the beginning of a man or woman who was owed some-
they have seen stories
Sleeping Beauty:
thing and didn't get
it;
woman whom
a
depended on for medical help but thus
man
or
woman who had
also feared; a
suffered losses and
turned angry and vengeful, was very
people
likely to
who then be called
a witch.
From
the point of view of people in the farms
small villages of England and
New
tended to be someone who did not
woman who had
person, in other words, life
assets
in.
She was
a
a
a
lived outside the pattern
woman,
in which her role
were devoted to her family.
And
especially suspect if she was outspoken, not
^HIOK-
witch
owned property. She was
who
people expected of
and her
fit
a
few or no children, or was past her
childbearing years, and yet
of
England,
and
she was
modest and
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
A man or woman who was bitter, who was angry,
quiet.
who disrupted
the
harmony of
daily life was the very
more
the person had a rea-
image of a witch. This was
all
the
true
if
son to be angry. Accusers often saw evidence of witchpeople
craft in
whom
they had refused to help. As in
the story of Sleeping Beauty, the frustration, anger,
and envy of the outsider only made those who had rejected that person think
was
it
she would turn outside the
who
more
he or
likely that
community
for aid.
better to help bitter people to get revenge than
Satan, the Prince of Darkness, the angel whose
envy of
God made him
try to subvert all
how
Sleeping Beauty shows witchcraft accusers.
Another
story, that
who
who
is
really suited to
be the bride of
her magical entry into
evil
troubled by of a servant a
prince but
stepmother,
godmother who
saved by a fairy
is
side with
of Cinderella,
tells
forced into harsh labor by her
until she give
is
we
felt so
seductive spirits. That familiar tale
a royal ball.
own
of creation?
readily
why our ancestors
helps explain
girl
And
is
Here
able to
is
how
a
very similar story, changed just slightly, actually took place in 1671. It
might well have been one of those
England days when the layers of
homespun do
those days pale
and
is
filled
thin.
It is
chill gets into little
to keep
it
gray, cold
New
your bones and out.
The
sky
on
with clouds, and the sun's light
is
promising warmth
it
a cruel tease,
never delivers. At any
moment
a
wind
gust can bully
^\\^
Witch-
HUNT
you, telling you that coldness is
in charge here, winter
is
the rule. Suddenly, everything in your
as bare, stony,
Perhaps
Knapp,
it
and harsh
from
doing chores. She was now
as this that Elizabeth
troubled family, was
a
a servant,
working for the
Reverend Samuel Willard and staying in
much
reverend was a learned man,
nothing
Elizabeth's
like
own
afoul of the law. Perhaps he Elizabeth, a
life feels
landscape around you.
as the
was on a day such
a teenage girl
own
father,
seemed
his
home. The
respected,
who
and
often ran
like a savior to
good strong man who was everything her
undependable father was not. He gave her work and roof over her head. But in able, for
those gray
New England
was unreli-
a way, he, too,
he was often away, and she was days, endlessly
a
alone on
left
sweeping and
hauling, cleaning and cooking, being useful and silent.
Suddenly, It
spoke to Elizabeth in her mind.
a voice
was a grand voice — as grand
Willard' s
—but
it
was
evil.
The
as
the
Reverend
devil offered to relieve
her of one of her chores by taking in the wood chips she
had
still
refused. But
to bring in for the family fire. Elizabeth
when
she
came into the house, she saw the
chips already there. Elizabeth was terrified.
she
done? Had her resentment and envy
in?
Had
his
book
she already
made
in blood?
a pact,
Was she
What had
let
signed her lost
the devil
name
in
and damned?
Elizabeth was haunted by her discontentment, by the voice she heard in the shadows, by the devil,
seemed
'5H12K-
to
loom
so close to her
inmost thoughts.
who
How
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
far
this scenario
is
of a strange dark
from her chores from
vant girl
godmother turning
fairy
Once
again,
behind
a
man
saving a ser-
that of Cinderella's
pumpkin
a familiar fairy tale
into a coach? is
the world of
witches.
Listen
now
another one of Martha Carrier's
to
accusers, twelve -year- old
Phoebe Chandler. Phoebe's
mother asked her
some beer
to fetch
to slake the thirst
of nearby workers. As Phoebe neared the fence to the lot they
were
(which
thought was Martha Carrier's voice, which
know what
I
in,
she heard "a voice in the bushes
well) but saw
I
nobody, and the voice asked
did [was doing] there and whether [where]
going, which greatly frightened me, so that as I
could to those
at
I
ran
I
I
me was
as fast
work."
Phoebe escaped, but when her mother sent her few hours later on another chore,
back
a
same
voice, as
I
judged, over
my
"I
heard the
head, saying
I
should
[would] be poisoned within two or three days, which accordingly happened, as sister Allen's
conceive, for
I
farm the same
day;
I
went
on Friday
to
my
following,
about one half of my right hand was greatly swollen and exceeding painful."
A walk in the sunshine for Phoebe was like the plot of a horror film for us. In every clump of grass lurked the mysterious voice of an angry neighbor,
who might
be an agent of the devil and who had the power to make her sick tionally
if
she did not obey. Phoebe was not an excep-
overimaginative
girl.
Nor was Benjamin
-^13^
Witch-
HUNT
Abbot,
When
a
grown man who had very
similar experiences.
he got into an argument over some land with
Martha Carrier, she seem^ed that she
would
him by warning
to curse
him
stick as close to
as
bark to
a tree. All
of sudden he began to suffer mysterious ailments, including a swollen foot and a running sore, which
disappeared once Martha was arrested. If
true,
your it
daily experience includes curses that
makes perfect sense
haunted by ghosts in evil spirits that
a
your friends are
that
courtroom and
only they can see.
come
Much
are attacked by
of what we
know
about such beliefs comes from the court records of witchcraft
trials,
which are imperfect sources. People
often speak very carefully
when
winning or losing
The
down by
result in
transcripts were taken
and were not meant
Many
fairy tales are
collective
words
individual friends of the court, not official
recorders,
accounts.
a case.
their
have been
lost.
to
be word-for-word
But court records and
not the only ways to peer back into the
of such accusers
as
Sarah Carrier, Elizabeth
Knapp, Phoebe Chandler, and Benjamin Abbot.
Skittering
SHADOWS today?
We
How
do we explain the inexplicable
are told by people
we respect
that
micro-
scopic germs and viruses cause disease, that vast high-
and low-pressure systems stretching across the globe create local weather patterns,
and
that
ribbons of
nearly invisible genetic material determine what color
^n4&
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
our children
eyes
will have;
done experiments
but few of us have actually
to test these ideas or have even care-
We
read the studies conducted by others.
fully
these theories, which do not
our own
on
eyes,
faith.
most people accepted on
how
standing of
see with
In the seventeenth century
under-
faith a very different
the invisible world interacted with
They believed
daily life.
match what we
accept
that
God
ultimately judged
and determined everything—that was the
single clearest
"cause" for any effect seen in the world. But
many
also
believed that there were other invisible forces, good
and bad, present in
their lives.
And
so
do we, even
now.
When
a
dark shadow
skitters across the floor,
sure are you of what
you saw or did not
corner of your eye?
When
you or has reason son
stare at
and you
see that per-
you and then you suddenly experience
to
thing with
see out of the
you know someone envies
to resent you,
strange pain, don't
managed
how
all
you wonder
make you
suffer?
if that
person somehow
When you
your heart, don t you wish
monies designed
you? Don't you
want some-
rituals
to invoke the aid of spirits
test
a
or cere-
might help
out what kinds of deals you would
be willing to make with anyone or anything to get your
way?
And
then don't you worry about what you might
have given away? setback, don't
then
When you
you ask
try to solve the
or someone you love has a
yourself.
Is
it
something I did?
problem by changing your
When someone you know is
really, really, really
and life?
upset—
-^15^
Witch-
HUNT
scary, frightening,
ness
out of control, in
— can you tell whether that person
a true crisis
or in some weird
When
stand?
our nation
is
is
faking
attacked, don't
fearfully,
clear
and preset image of who they may be? is
we experience
it
at
dusk,
night, or anytime
when we
on
are
up alone
and
relations. If
you begin reading about the
moments
not so distant
and in public, in
at all.
No
private
no longer court
cases in the
you can be tried for being
in your
matter what we say
we often explain the
world the same way our ancestors did. are
late at
world we share with parents and teachers,
it is
tests
the world
are not participating in the
seventeenth century with those
mind,
it is
when dark shadows make
when we
everything seem eerie, or
a
in one sense long
ago and far away. But in another sense,
friends
you walk
want to destroy our enemies, and have
The world of the Salem witches
common
or in
it
you don't under-
state
more
as
wild-
tears, rage,
United
a witch.
changed dramatically from then
And
yet there
States in
which
So something has to
now.
We
have
driven the monsters into our private thoughts and
onto the faces of our longer out there witch
trials are
political
as a
opponents. They are no
supernatural force.
The Salem
the record of that transition.
BELIEF
The fact that many people in seventeenth- century New England believed in witches, devils, spells, and amulets does not mean that everyone or
'snsts-
FRAUD?
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
and
did,
Throughout the
certainly not in every case.
l6oOs, people came into
New
England's courts accus-
ing their neighbors of being witches. Surprisingly, in
most
cases the
ers or chose
judge or the jury ruled
against
the accus-
not to execute those who were convicted.
This was not an expression of doubt about witchcraft itself,
was
common
which both the law and
real.
Rather,
it
belief asserted
was because witchcraft was a hard
case to prove. Unlike courts
on
nent, those in England and
New England would
the
European continot
accept evidence obtained by torture. Defenders of torture believed that getting the truth was so important,
the court could use any
means
to obtain
argument was raised in the United September
II,
200I, terrorist
(This very
it.
States after the
attacks.) English courts
but that
protected suspects against this treatment,
made
it
harder to prove cases against them. In
England the courts went even ning traditional
"tests" to
for example, could not be idea that a real witch
a step further,
New
by ban-
uncover witches. Suspects,
dunked in water
would
float), as
(with the
had often been
done in England.
The higher bar suspicion in
for evidence
New England's
matched
courts.
a
making
a legal
mood
of
Even though nearly
everyone agreed that witches really existed, to
a
when
it
came
judgment, those same believers had
canny eye for misguided people, disturbed people,
people who were just using the courts to
One common
settle scores.
way for an accused witch to
fight
back
^17^
Witch-
HUNT
own
was to bring his
ment was an
insult
lawsuit, claiming that the indict-
and made himi look bad in the
of the community. Often enough, the accused
eyes
won
these cases.
The Salem
story
is
unusual— not because there were
claims of witchcraft, but because the courts believed
them from seemed
the
first.
Then
the rules of evidence
to change, probably allowing
both physical and
psychological torture; Sarah Carrier's for instance,
may
well have
abuse in prison. Soon
young brothers,
been subjected
men
joined
accused, convicted, and executed in
to terrible
women numbers
in being that
had
never been seen before in North America; and
finally,
more and more people began
started
out
as a relatively typical
into a
crisis.
and minor
What
case exploded
Explaining why that happened in 1692,
just eight decades before the
requires
to confess.
more than
American Revolution,
seeing into the minds of
New
Englanders who heard the devil whispering to them on dark nights.
It
also raises the sickening possibility that
cynical or angry or disturbed people used popular
ideas about the powers of evil for their
own
evil
ends.
Perhaps the nineteen people who were executed by
hanging (an additional
man was killed by being pressed
to death by heavy stones for refusing to
and
at least five
make
a plea,
other people, including two infants,
died in prison) were not the victims of the beliefs of their time, but rather victims of one set of their neigh-
bors
%s{18&
who were
willing, even eager, to participate in
Of dark forests
and Midnight Thoughts
legal
murder and of another group too
afraid to stop
them. This very concern haunted many people time,
from the
servants
concern
greatest ministers
and children. is
How
and leaders
a
the
young
they responded to this
the heart of the Salem story.
mounting executions forced
to
at
For the
people dedicated to
liv-
ing by God's laws to keep asking themselves whether they were enforcing those divine rules or abusing
them. This was Puritans,
and
it
a
great test for the
New England
began in 1688, in Boston.
-a 19?^
«
%»'
^
"
**
PROLOGUE
|.
^.
Boston, 1688: The Possession of the Children Goodwin ^
1.4
$f
'^ *
^^
^^
,
^/
H^
t^^^!«*•
/./
/ 1
'"
"
n
t
*4v*r
MATHER YS
GLOVER
The
trouble began in the
Goodwin noticed
of 1688. Thirteen-year-old Martha that
some of her
family's
linen was missing and
sharply questioned their washerwoman,
pected had stolen
it.
The
summer
laundress's
who
she sus-
mother was
furi-
ous and attacked Martha with terrible words. Goody Glover's "bad language" seemed to a contagious disease.
younger
siblings,
fell
The
girl,
into
afflict
case reported that "it
fits.
These seemed so
who
art
on the
facing page, which
of the pretrial hearing on
is
later
would have broke
of stone to have seen their agonies."
The
like
and soon her three
painful that the prominent minister
up the
Martha
also used throughout the book,
May 18, 1692 ^en Ann Putnam Jr.
is
a
wrote heart
When
the
a part of the actual record
testified against
Sarah Buckley.
-^ 23 K*
Witch-
HUNT
respected physician
Thomas Oakes
was called
in, the
only possible explanation he could offer for the children's suffering was witchcraft. Luckily, sible for
was not hard to guess
is
not known for certain, though she
"Mary" —^was
often mistakenly called for the part. sort of
who was respon-
harming the Goodwin children. Glover— her
name
first
it
An
made -to -order
angry older woman, she was just the
whom
person
people suspected of being
witch. In fact, not six years earlier, as a
dying, she
had revealed
had bewitched her
who was
is
to
another
to death.
And
woman
a
lay
woman that
Glover
just as the
woman
carrying this secret was prepar-
ing to testify against the witch, her
son was assaulted by
a
"black
thing with a blue cap" that
room to torment him. Though Glover
appeared in his
was just a poor woman, she
seemed
able
cause great
to
harm by using the powers of evil. Her imprisonment immediately healed the youngest of the
Goodwin
children, but
she again railed
at
them,
the other three relapsed.
lo
o
race
rr
oii
Cotton Mather was a young minister when he to the Goodwin household. He went on
came
-
r-r-.
when
.
to write ,
against
Glover and the devil— the
many books and became
authority^
evil
a
leading
on Puritanism in Massachusetts.
one who
surely was
responsible for the anguish Glover was causing the
-SI
24 Fir
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
Goodwin children— a young but important
He
arrived at the household.
minister
was Cotton Mather— son
of Increase Mather, one of the leading ministers and theologians of his day, and grandson of John Cotton,
one of the most important ministers and authors in the early history of
New
England. In his lineage, his
already impressive learning,
Mather was the
ideal
and
his presence,
Cotton
person to aid the Goodwin chil-
dren. If he could entrap Glover and get her to reveal
her Satanic bond, he could free the young people from her malign influence.
Mather, already in Boston, arrived four children
try to help
who
lived near the
which he preached. But he was in what he
knew was
cause. This case was
point for
Of
of
all
a test
New England
MEETINGHOUSES and
home
to
church in
also there to participate
and more momentous
a far larger
both
at their
and
a potential rallying
Puritans.
the
blood of WOLVES: the
PURITAN journey The
America was
Puritans
mission in
clearest in the early days of their
New
England settlements. The Puritans had arrived on ships. Built of long like
simple
wooden
wooden
believers inside.
boats
And,
as
planks, their churches were
on
land, safeguarding the
one of
their descendants,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote, when one of them killed a wolf,
he claimed his reward by nailing
it
"on the porch
of the meetinghouse," where the blood would drip onto
•^25 Br
Witch-
HUNT
the doorstep. This balance of simple strength
and
combat was the essence of Puritanism.
fierce
Puritans turned completely away from what they
saw
as the
old props of religion. Rich cathedrals
scent of incense or the
mood,
the
faith
on
sound of ancient chants might
priests speaking in a foreign language
had no place in
on
the
Word
of
God
as
written in the Bible,
and shared by the congregation.
Puritans, or "the Godly" as they were often
in England,
were pleased with their spare,
wooden benches.
simple churches with their hard Religion for them was not a
sermon on phrases
—all
their religion. Instead, they built their
translated into English,
called
set
clean, simple planks, like the timber of their
churches,
The
of
ceremonies where the
images,
stained-glass
statues,
full
moment
here or there
—
the Sabbath Day, a prayer at meals, pious
on holy
days.
Nor were
they called "Puritans"
because they wanted a pure, clear faith filling every part of
life
and every moment of every
household was considered
a little
the father as a kind of minister.
day.
Each
congregation, with
He would
lead the
family in prayer and Bible reading, and he would discipline those
who needed
it.
Children were viewed
as
prideful and stubborn. Their early education involved
breaking them of that willfulness and making them
more humble and obedient. While was a very severe kind of family of it
as
life,
in
some ways
Puritans thought
based on love. They believed that husbands and
wives should love each other, passionately
^26)^
this
and
inti-
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
mately.
And
made
only
the harsh treatment of
sense since
it
them
gave
young children
the best chance of
discovering God's love, which was the greatest
gift
of
all.
The most
Puritans believed that each person was on the
difficult,
dangerous, and uncertain path: the
journey toward God. In England they had against the
government even
to practice their faith.
Their absolute devotion to religion stood
and
as
their unwillingness to accept
it,
to struggle
they under-
compromise,
their hatred of Catholics clashed with the policies
of English kings content with an easier faith that asked less
of people. Faced with this kind of opposition in
1603, King James
out of the
I
warned
country.
strengthened their
faith.
But
would chase them
this
persecution only
Puritans
and arrived in New England ing in a
that he
felt
new
land.
crossed the sea
they were participat-
new kind of pilgrimage,
starting over in a
who
the physical epic of
And
the physical was
linked to the spiritual growth. Every tree felled, field planted, simple meetinghouse built was a step in the
creation of the
The
kingdom of the Lord.
Puritans were a minority
settlers in
New
England, and from the
conflicts with others to
among
make money or
who came
to
the English
first,
they had
North America only
to live according to their
own
rules.
But their sense of what crossing the ocean meant was very influential.
Anyone today who
feels that
Americans
have a special destiny as a force for religious faith or
>^27K-
Witch-
HUNT
democracy or economic opportunity
on
carrying
sharing in and
is
the Puritans' vision of this land.
Devout Puritans interpreted everything
pened
to
them on
epidemics of
their pilgrimage in the
illness,
that
hap-
new land
wars with Indians, the sickness or
health of their families, earthquakes, even the severity
of
New England winters — as judgments They saw themselves
ior.
as living
of their behav-
out the story of the
Jews, the chosen people in the Bible,
who had
der in the wilderness after they
Egypt.
left
to
wan-
The
stark
meetinghouse colored with the blood of a wolf was the
modern
Word
version of the tents of the Jews, carrying the
of the Lord to the Promised Land.
Puritans drew great strength from seeing themselves in combat with the world
around them. In
their wars
against the Indians, for example, they could be
and
pletely
com-
coldly destructive. For a time they offered
bounties for the scalps of murdered Indians. In this sense they were like those fundamentalists of
gions today
who can
justify
extreme measures against
others—whether that be attacking U.S. doctors
who perform
territories
to take
cities,
killing
abortions, or settling in occupied
— on the grounds that they have a divine right
them. They considered themselves an outpost of
saints in a hostile wilderness.
foes
all reli-
seemed
Any
victory against their
to prove the rightness of their mission; any
defeat was a sign of God's dissatisfaction.
Seeing themselves
as
a
spiritual
community,
Puritans especially feared being attacked by the devil,
-1^28^-
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
the
enemy of God. Those who
and made
rejected
pacts with the devil were,
God
entirely
in the eyes of
Puritan believers, a combination of our worst fears of spies
and
you could not immediately
terrorists. Since
recognize these traitors, they could pass
as the
most
pious of churchgoing neighbors—which meant you constantly had to be a simpler, easier
According
on guard. Anyone who yearned
way to happiness could be tempted.
one woman who confessed
to
witch during the Salem
"We should have happy times for me."
who thought
for
The
trials,
days
to
being
the devil promised her,
and then
it
would be better
devil felt equally present to
they were failing
Knapp, they feared they had
a
people
God. Like Elizabeth
lost their souls already.
Witchcraft and prayer actually had something very
important in
common.
If the devil
turning people into witches, then at
was lurking nearby,
God was
equally close
hand, saving souls. The threat of one proved the exis-
tence of the other. This equation was very important to
Cotton Mather when he came dren, for
on
his family to
to help the
Goodwin
every front the mission that
New England was under
chil-
had brought
assault.
Four years before, in 1684, the frighteningly pro -Catholic Charles
II
had dissolved the original
charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had
allowed the Puritan leaders to govern
New England
was
Englishman named
now being run Sir
as
they saw
fit.
by an arrogant
Edmond Andros. Andros was
questioning whether long- established farmers really
-a29ES-
Witch-
HUNT
owned
their land. Worse, he was insisting that any
come
Christian could
meant
into the
had
that Q^uakers
community. That
be tolerated. All good
to
Puritans knew that Q^uakers trembled and shook in their meetings
inner
light.
To
and claimed
to
be in touch with an
the Godly, this
sounded suspiciously
Puritans were being told to allow
like possession.
people who might be directly in touch with the devil into their towns
Outside
and
New
villages.
England's borders the news was
equally frightening.
King
Philip's War, a ferocious
conflict with the Indians a decade earlier,
had led
to
extremes of death and suffering on both sides.
Though unprecedented the
killing
New Englanders to win,
men,
lost relatives,
and
cruelty allowed
the war left scars: disabled
and the
certainty that remaining
Indians could see their neighbors only
as
mortal ene-
mies. Farther north, the Catholic French and their
Indian
allies
were
a constant threat.
In order to help
people picture the danger witchcraft posed, Cotton
Mather described the
devils themselves as
very like those Catholics. "vast
something
Think of them, he urged,
as
regiments of cruel and bloody French dragoons
[soldiers], with
overrunning
an Intendant [general] over them,
a pillaged
neighborhood."
Despite these very serious threats, young people
did not seem to need the church in the same ways their parents.
And
even those in the older generation
paled in comparison to their forebears,
-I^30tr
as
who had
Boston, 1688:The Ppssession of the Goodwin Children
unknown
braved the society in a a witch
in an effort to create a
new land. For Cotton Mather,
model
a tangle with
was an opportunity to remind everyone in
England of why they were
there:
They were
New
participants
in a great battle, a cosmic struggle as in biblical times,
and they could never of God, too
take their
enemy, the true enemy
lightly.
Testing
WITCH What was a upon whom you asked. On the a
depended
witch?
It
popular
level,
judging
by the way people told stories and eyed their neighbors and brought cases to court,
a
witch was a person
who could do harm through magical means.
A witch,
male or female, could curdle milk, hobble animals,
and even cause young children There were many folkways figure out if
bat one
someone was
who had been
to sicken
and
die.
how to and how to com-
that told people
a witch,
flushed out. For example, one
English folk belief held that
if a
child or baby was
passed through a hole in a natural object such as a
rock or craft. a
a tree, that child
would be immune
Apparently, there was
gap of just the right
size,
pass their babies through last
it
a tree in
8,
that
had
and parents continued long after the
recorded case of using the tree
on July
Salem
to witch-
this
trials.
to
The
way took place
1793.
Some of the methods for telling the future, doing harm to others, and detecting malign forces were part
^31^
Witch-
HUNT
of what Mather called
would no longer
"little
sorceries" but which
we
The year before
the
call "witchcraft."
Salem outbreak, Mather lamented towns
that
"in
some
has been a usual thing for people to cure
it
hurts with spells, or to use detestable conjurations,
with sieves, keys, and peas, and nails, and horseshoes,
and
know not what other implements
I
to learn the
things for which they have a forbidden, and an impi-
ous curiosity. 'Tis in the Devil's
name
that such things
are done."
The
Mather
rituals
cited were the seventeenth-
century equivalent of such diversions
as
checking your
horoscope in the daily paper, hunting for four-leafclovers, or consulting a
according to a
late -sixteenth- century
script, the sieve
a pair sieve
let
forefingers it
and
of shears
and
Ouija board. For instance,
scissors
[scissors] in the
two persons
upon
were used
the
set the
English
manu-
this way: "Stick
rind [handle] of
a
top of each of their
upper part of the shears holding
with the sieve up from the ground steadily; ask Peter
and Paul whether A, B, or C hath stolen the thing lost;
and
sieve will
at
the nomination of the guilty person the
turn around."
English settlers brought these practices with them across the Atlantic,
but Mather and other leading
ministers were trying to eliminate them.
On
the one
hand, they thought these games were dangerous, for they toyed with using the devil's
own powers, even
they were not used for devilish ends.
-j^32^
The
if
ministers saw
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
no
distinction between "white"
only
nonhuman power
ters
On
God.
believed, was
a
saw themselves as
and "black" magic. The
person should
rely on, they
the other hand, the minis-
men
of reason
who
relied
on
experiment and knowledge, not superstition. To them, spiritual matters were
a type
of science. Dealing
with evidence of the occult required the very same
and
rationality
discipline applied to navigating across
the seas or planning
how to sow your
crops. Folk magic
had no place in their world.
To ministers such
as
Mather,
the day, a witch was a person
as well as to the
who had made
the devil. Claims of having been
law of
a pact with
harmed by magic
could be used to arouse suspicion about
a
person. But
could be convicted only by confessing or by the
a witch
testimony of two or more witnesses who were sure they
had seen evidence of the diabolical Mather
set
she was. At
link.
out to get Glover to reveal
first
he tried
recite the Lord's Prayer.
a simple test:
Many
league with the devil would
who and what
He
asked her to
believed that being in
make
it
impossible for a
person to speak these holy words. Glover mangled line after line.
of failing
brought
This was the seventeenth -century equivalent a lie detector test today,
to
trial.
Suddenly,
a
and she was quickly
complication arose.
Glover claimed not to understand English, only Gaelic.
This was possibly true, was
a Catholic.
fessed
all.
The
as
Glover was from Ireland and
But through an interpreter, she concourt hurried to search her home, and
-a33E;|'
Witch-
HUNT
damning evidence was found: small images,
or puppets,
made of
and
rags,
hair." Everyone
"several
or babies,
stuffed with goat's
knew
that witches used
such props to hurt people from a distance.
The importance of puppets in witch trials suggests
something of what witches These seventeenth-century cloth puppets were
meant time.
hidden in the walls of a
home
in Cutchogue,
Island.
The
could
objects used in rituals in
of the world.
a
A
at
the
witch had given
up her soul
strange headless
was
peOplc
Long
sticklike figures look like
many parts
tO
found
so that she
command
Satan's
power. In that sense she
puppet master. She could now use
invisible forces to
harm her victims. But
by deadening her soul, she had also
lost
her humanity and made herself into
She was now
a
tormentor or terrifying. a
woman
puppet
a
evil.
powerful
pseudohuman,
witch was
Not only was she
only was she
of
herself. Either way, as
as soulless
living
a tool
a
different in that she was
an odd, inexplicable kind of
life,
not
troublemaker because of her angry
words and loud mouth, but
a witch
human more-than-human
force in the village
was the less-than-
who
was personally responsible for anything that went
wrong.
A witch
subverted
lives that
good. But that was only because
^34^
should have been
God
allowed her
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
to
do
of or
so, as a test
punishment for the
a
faithful.
Despite having the crucial evidence found in Glover's
home, the judges did not want
clusions,
and they
tried yet another
to
jump
con-
to
Glover was in
test.
a
bad way, but she perked up when her puppets were brought to her. Yet "the children
fell
as
soon
into sad
as she fits."
held one in her hands,
Cause and
effect:
puppet in the hands of a witch and children
Mather understood
modern
halt the course of a contagious disease
of a person who
question witches to learn others he visit
is
doctors
who
an
try to
by tracing the con-
carrying
it,
more about
may have converted
Glover in
suffer.
that catching Glover presented
exceptional opportunity. Like
tact history
Put a
ministers would
the devil
to his ways.
and any
Mather went
to
question her, and she admitted
jail to
meeting her prince, the
devil,
and four
Mather
others.
prayed with her, and he was gratified to report that though she had resisted at
she
first,
wound up thanking him.
Glover was convicted of being erly
a witch
and was prop-
hanged. Witches were never burned in America.
Instead of repenting, that her death
According
to
warned
the last meeting Glover
at
would not help the Goodwin children.
Mather,
as
she predicted, "the three chil-
dren continued in their furnace rather seven times hotter than
as before,
and
it
grew
"
it
was.
EXPLORING the invisible world
gone, Mather
now had
With Ms one human suspect to use the
words of the
afflicted
^35^-
Witch-
HUNT
children themselves to lead
remaining tormentors.
their
to
For
it
him
was the property of these
witches
to
show something of
themselves as they did their malicious work.
Thus eleven-year-old
John Goodwin could see were four
evil
that there
shapes in the
room
with him, and he could almost
Again Mather
name them, but not quite.
tried a test: If the invisible
only John could see emanated fromi ting
human
one of the
forms that
beings, hit-
specters
should
cause an injury to the person.
Rumor had
it
woman" whose
that
an "obnoxious
identity
suddenly developed a
Mather hid
wound
just
after the test.
The Goodwin
children were in
torment, sometimes barking
like
dogs, sometimes purring like cats;
sweating and panting as
then shivering streaks
as
if
if
they were baking in an oven,
drenched with cold water. Red
showed up on their bodies
where they claimed they were being beaten with invisible
One
sticks.
of the boys would be frozen
Published in London in 1681, this series of images shows spirits gathering, approaching, and then
The spirits here seem at swarm of flying devil-dragonflies and then stiff almost-human ghosts. In New England most people believed that spirits were all around, materializing in a house.
first like a
trying to influence
•^36Fi^
humans
for good or
ill.
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
and immobile,
as if
he were nailed to the floor. Then,
suddenly, he and the others would seem to
"with
fly
incredible swiftness through the air," with only a toe occasionally touching the floor.
Though seven,
the youngest
among them
whenever the children had
was already
to dress or undress,
they would have tantrums like the wildest toddlers. "It
would sometimes
one of them an hour or two
cost
to
be undressed in the evening, or dressed in the morning.
For
if
any one went to untie
button about them postures as
made
Faced with
.
.
a string,
or
undo
a
they would be twisted into such
.
the thing impossible."
this extremity
young Martha Goodwin
of suffering, Mather took
into his
own home
so that he
could watch over her and care for her himself. There, daily,
he saw her
fight invisible presences,
go rigid when
given food, and struggle to read the Bible even as "her eyes
would be
strangely twisted
and blinded" and her neck
seemed on the verge of breaking. Eventually, due constant ministrations, she and
were delivered from the caution over
zeal,
other witches he
all
the
Goodwin
evils that assailed
to his
children
them. Choosing
Mather never revealed the names of any
may have
discovered in the process.
Lessons and
WARNINGS
Cotton Mather published
of his experiences with the
Goodwin
he could, but not before their
added
a written postscript.
his
account
children as soon as
father, also
named John,
John Goodwin understood
-a 37
Witch-
HUNT
that whatever took place in his family was just. Surely
God
was afflicting his children because he had failed in
"admonishing and instructing" them.
make
it
"those
much
to dwell in, should
the devil
made
him
it
to see his children suffer,
bodies, that should be temples for the Holy
little
Ghost
easier for
that did not
Still,
and
his cursed
be thus harassed and abused by brood." His own helplessness
worse, for "doctors cannot help, parents weep
and lament over them, but cannot
ease them."
people suggested that he
—the
try "tricks"
kind of folk
magic often used against witches—but Goodwin
And
end
in the
it
Many
resisted.
was fasting and prayer, and the help of
the ministers led by Mather, that delivered his children
back to him.
To John Goodwin, enced was
all
a larger sense, is
he believed,
justified. In part,
because he had not been
prayer
the misery his family experi-
a
good enough
he was sure,
it
father.
was a lesson to
the
But in
all
"that
episode with the
Goodwin children had been harrowing but and
happened
stronger than witchcraft."
For believing Puritans,
triumph.
it
A witch had been
killed;
were healed.
ultimately a
discovered, led to confess,
four children had been
afflicted,
but
all
A great minister had proven to be a caring
man who would
go to any lengths to help an anguished
parent and four children trapped in invisible chains. Incontrovertible proof that
evil
was
real, that the devil
was present, and that witches were dangerous had played out in Boston, and yet those same events proved that
^38 K-
Boston, 1688:The Possession of the Goodwin Children
stalwart ministers
and fervent prayer could defeat the
The
worst of the devil's designs.
clear lesson was to
watch out for attacks from the invisible world and to
on
rely
the leaders of the
community when
these attacks
came. For any who might be tempted by the Quakers, here was a warning to stick with the true
For
skeptics,
both of the time and
since, a very dif-
A
sick old Catholic
ferent set of events
woman who articles in as
else
— even
had unfolded.
couldn't even speak English had religious
her home. Her garbled "confession" probably
much
was
faith.
a defense
of her Catholic faith
Mather admitted
On
this flimsy
she was executed. Four children underwent
of disturbance, which perhaps hints of against the very
anything
Glover sometimes
that
called her spirits her "saints."
as
evidence
some form a
rebellion
admonitions and instructions their
father valued so highly. Perhaps they enjoyed racing
about and screaming and getting attention more than
being well-behaved "temples for the Holy Ghost."
Whatever the
initial cause
of their
and the author of the
account of what took place, exactly
soon enough
Since Mather was both a
their troubles faded away.
central actor in the events
ills,
it
is
impossible to
sole
know
what the children experienced. The lesson of the
Goodwin children was
that children's
games could have
serious consequences.
Four years
later these
two views clashed again in
Salem, and those events changed
New England
in ways
neither Mather nor his critics could have imagined.
-I339K-
4
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CHAPTER
S-A
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I
^1641-169^ «^
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pi
'.^.iJViH
The
II
PUTNAMS
and the PORTERS Putnam ents,
Jr.
her
Like
must have grown up listening
relatives,
fables, legends,
and
Ann
children,
all
to
her par-
The
their friends tell stories.
and myths children hear
the kind that parents and teachers
tell
are not only
— the
formally
ones that always end in morals that adults are eager to pass on.
There
are also the stories adults tell
another, often bitter tales about
tricks,
and bad people who have managed and come out on
top.
Those
to
one
conspiracies,
bend
are the stories
the rules
Ann must
have heard again and again, for her powerful family was suffering setbacks,
and they were sure they knew why.
^43 tr
Witch-
HUNT
Things should have been different. John Putnam
came from Berkshire County, near London, in
New England and
The
first
Salem
farm there in 1 64 1.
town established in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, Salem took
word
established a
to
for "peace."
its
Its
name from
Hebrew
shalom, the
founders wanted Salem to be
a
place where a settler could prosper while living well with his neighbors, obeying the rules of the Lord. In 1629,
three years after the
first
they defined the shared
Europeans arrived in Salem,
commitment
that was the basis
of their community: "We covenant with the Lord and
one with another; and do bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together in
all
his ways."
A people bound together to live by God's laws: This pact
I
it
formed the heart of the Puritan community, and
was built
upon
a very special
kind of
test.
Puritans
did not think a person could do anything to win God's favor.
No amount
of good works or prayers or dona-
tions to the church
would help in any way. Salvation
was entirely up to God. But
son to do
so,
felt
moment came just when
the
hopeless.
Samuel Sewall was a devout,
invited a per-
he or she could prepare to receive divine
grace. Paradoxically, a key
person
when God
a
Boston merchant who was
sincere Puritan.
He would
important part in the Salem witch
also
later play trails.
an
Sewall
recorded his spiritual struggles in his diary. At the very
moment when
he was about to become
of his church,
^H44K^
a full
member
he experienced the most extreme
Two salem Families, 1641-1692
He
doubts.
questioned whether he actually believed in
the divinity of Jesus, and he
whole congregation "what
woman
Similarly, a
who was as in "a
also
in
he had to admit to the
felt
a great
Wenham,
sinner a
had been."
I
town near Salem,
about to join a church described herself
worse condition than any toad."
Recognizing one's sinfulness and unworthiness was
A woman
extremely painful and frightening.
Anne
Fitch described this vividly:
wrath were so amazing to that
me
that
"My
greater,
and
my
so great that
in
my
at
the state of her
no
it
own
I
thought
like
allowed
it,
it
ten times
it.
Looking
"
I
soul, the sinner could see
space,
new room,
this ver)^
felt
clearly
was to expect anything from God,
opened new
so
great, yet such was
undeserving she was of salvation. But also
it,
affliction that ever
was in any measure
life
hopeless
spirit that
and God's
can't express
I
though my bodily pain was very
the anguish of
sins
named
how how
agony
in a person. If
God
shattered pride permitted the person to
experience the sweetness, the beauty, of divine grace.
Once
a
person was sure that
God had given that gift
of grace, he could stand before a church and describe
how
the divine spirit had
worked on
his soul. If the
congregation approved, the saved person could then join them
as a full
member,
a "visible saint."
male believer stood up and addressed
(women
When
a
his congregation
generally spoke privately to elders, then the
pastor read the statement out loud), a unique kind of
bond was
built.
In one way, the statement
— called
a
^45^
Witch-
HUNT
"relation"
—^was a kind of test.
The congregation could
decide whether or not that person was only pretending to
be saved. In another way, the relation was
now
confessions
therapy sessions. public,
like the
seen on talk shows and in group
A
person admitted his weakness in
which allowed him
to feel fully accepted
by the
community. Having
a test for
membership
in a church did
than offer Puritans spiritual comfort. the
hope of overcoming the
apart
and of creating
church,
sion, griping,
to others as
brought
community. Within the
"carefully avoid
all
oppres-
and hard dealing, and walk in peace,
and
love, mercy,
also
divisions that keep people
a loving
members would
It
more
equity, towards each other,
we would they should do
was not an imposed obligation.
It
doing so
to us." Religion
was the most pre-
cious opportunity to live well with others and in the sight of
God.
John Putnam's well a settler could
life
in Salem illustrated exactly
how
do in the new land. By the time he
died in l66!^, he owned nearly eight hundred acres,
which gave
his three sons a fine inheritance. They, too,
prospered, and in 1681 the Putnams were assessed the highest taxes in Salem. This success story did not conflict
with the ideal of a shared community. Puritans
were expected to work hard and attempt to do well in the world. But the
land
is
good land. This put them on one
largest strain
^46\^
Putnams were farmers, and not
on
the covenant that
bound
all
side of the
together the
Two salem Families, 1641-1692
people of Salem: the needs of the farmers against the
ambitions of the merchants. Unfortunately, the family holdings were
much
of
well, too
New England swampy
like
the time: too rocky to farm
at
to use as a pasture, with
no
easy access
to rivers, roads, or other convenient routes to kets.
The one
money
from
mar-
new way
to earn
when an ironworks
built to
family effort to find a
failed disastrously
extract ore
so
burned down by an
their land was
unhappy employee, leaving the Putnams with nothing but lawsuits.
And a new generation
of sons was coming
of age, which further divided the Putnam lands into eleven plots.
Meanwhile, another family was
came from
background similar
a
The
Porters
that
of the
rising.
to
Putnams, but they were finding new routes ity.
John Porter
his family off to a
John Putnam, and he
as
good
start.
When he
owned more land than anyone important than the land tion of
much
from England
arrived in Salem
about the same time
of
it:
to prosper-
on
itself,
a
at just
also got
died in 1676, he
else in
Salem.
More
however, was the loca-
peninsula knifing into the
heart of the Frost Fish River. Salem was the secondlargest port in
New England, and from their
wharves, the Porter family soon trade.
As
early as 1658,
Barbados and served
John
became involved in
traveled to the island of
as a witness
fellow Salem merchant.
docks and
on
The Porter
a contract for a
clan was
away from depending on the unyielding
moving
New England
-^47^-
Witch-
HUNT
and toward
soil
links with
businessmen in distant
lands.
By 1668 the Salem merchants who watched their ships
sail
off to the Caribbean, to France,
England had become an ent
elite that
lived
on
a village in
relatively similar farms, the
center of Salem was turning into a town where
and more people did not own they developed special
to
was markedly differ-
from the struggling farmers. No longer
which everyone
and
own
land. Instead,
serve
the shipping
their
skills
to
more
industry or to cater to the needs of the merchants.
"Salem Town,"
hub was
as this
called,
seemed
place for individuals seeking always for their
advantage, not a
meant
to
home
to
be a
own
best
of the shared values Salem was
embody. Seeing
a
devotion to commerce
as a
condemn
the
threat to religion, ministers began to
business mentality.
The
very avenues that offered suc-
cess to the Porters
and
their allies were
more ominous
to the
seeming ever
Putnams and the ministers they
supported and trusted. This was one instance of the
most fundamental problem in the whole colony. All across Massachusetts there were signs that the
Puritan world was fracturing. Originally, the leaders
of the community had
set fair prices, so
no one could
take advantage of a neighbor's misfortune.
made
They had
rules that limited the kinds of clothing people
could wear, so everyone had a kind of uniform suited to his or her standing.
They were very
strict
about who
could join a church, to ensure that each congregation
-H48}:5-
Two salem Families, 1641-169r
was a community of true believers
who had
experi-
enced God's grace. But now the kind of people who were prospering in Salem entirely
new
clothes. ship.
They
standards.
search of profit.
They built
They loosened
Some even
Town seemed
traveled the world in
fine
homes and wore
the rules for church
Salem was no longer
ened
all
a
home
member-
marry Quakers. of peace,
deep
faith. Instead, the
of
lavish
strayed toward Anglicanism or went as
far as allowing their children to
united in
to be living by
New England— the
a
community
fault line that threat-
tensions between
mer-
chants and farmers, people looking ahead to their individual futures versus people trying to hold vision of a shared that pitted the
Putnams
The THEFT Faced not
like,
away from Salem
their allies
Town and form
"Salem Village,"
The
every squabble
with powerful opponents they did
as
villagers there
vision of Puritanism
and
a
wanted
its
own
to split
new township of
they called
of Danvers today), would have church.
to a
against the Porters.
Putnams and
the
their own.
community— shook in
on
it (it is
rules
and
the city its
own
could preserve the original free themselves
from the
control and contamination of the high-living Salem
Town
merchants. But the leaders of Salem
not eager to
let a substantial
Town were
part of their town
and
its
tax revenues
break away. Over the years the blustery,
plain- talking
Putnams and the
subtle, politically astute
^49^
Witch-
HUNT
Porters were at odds. In 1672, Salem Village was allowed to establish a church, but only as a
congregation in Salem Town.
branch of the main
The
conflict about the
yearning for independence was
villagers'
now
played
out in endless quarrels over selecting the pastor for the
new church. And
in the midst of these clashes
came the
theft.
John Putnam's oldest son was named Thomas. Thomas was of the generation that did pretty well, while his own eldest son, Thomas Jr., recognized that the future was not quite so bright.
As the family
venture into ironworking failed and their land-
holdings were sliced into ever-smaller
slivers,
Thomas
make
Jr.
understood that he needed
to
a
And he knew just how to do it: by Ann Carr, a daughter of a wealthy man
fresh start.
marrying
in the neighboring town of Salisbury.
George Carr died,
his
But when
male heirs managed
to keep
the majority of the property for themselves, leaving the six daughters
and their husbands (including
Thomas Jr.) to divide up the rest in small allotments. The slick Porters and their merchant friends seemed
to control local affairs,
and apparently, the
courts were in their service, robbing
he had reason to expect would be This was only the
first
blow.
Thomas of what
his.
The
courts ruled
Thomas in 1682. Four years later he got even worse news. Thomas had six sisters and a brother. But against
after
^50K-
his
mother
died,
his
fifty-year-old
father
Two salem Families, 1641-1692
remarried one Mary Veren, the widow of tain.
Mary was
very
much
a part
When Thomas
Thomas
Sr. yet
Sr. died in 1686,
brought bitter news: The best part of
his will estate,
cap-
of the Salem mer-
chant world. Unexpectedly, she bore
another son, Joseph.
a ship
the most fertile lands
time, went to
left
his
from old John's
Mary and Joseph.
Everyone in the Putnam clan knew whom
to
blame:
the scheming Mary, their stepmother, and her all-
too-favored son, Joseph. But they could not seem to
convince anyone
ous to them.
else
The
of the betrayal that was so obvi-
courts upheld
169O, came the
Finally, in
last
that
Sr.'s will.
blow. This same Joseph
Putnam, now one of the wealthiest a wife.
Thomas
men in
Salem, took
She was Elizabeth Porter, pride of the family
seemed
working,
salt-of-the-earth
rightfully
Thomas
to rise, as if by magic, even as the
theirs
stolen
evil forces,
Putnams saw what was
To
away.
Sr.'s first marriage,
it
cruel stepmothers,
spiring to steal their wealth
hard-
and
the
children of
must have seemed
as if
and worse were conleave
them
to
flounder
or even perish.
By 1692, then, the
stories twelve -year- old
Putnam heard from her mother, Ann, and her Thomas, and very
much like
all
Ann
father,
her close relations must have been
the fairy tales we read in books
one deadly difference. For
Ann Jr.
—but with
these stories were
not about long ago and far away. They were the most basic truths about here
and now.
-asi^
Witch-
HUNT
A
minister's
WARNINGS Anyone who istry
of Salem Village was in
The church was such
a very difficult position.
created to serve the needs of people
Putnams who
as the
was called to the min-
disliked
and distrusted the
merchant types of Salem Town. The farmers wanted minister a
who would
see the
return to what they saw
world
as
as they
a
did and urge
an older and truer way of
living,
leading the way toward a full break with Salem
Town.
And yet because Salem Village was
not yet inde-
pendent, the wealthy and powerful leaders of Salem
Town, such
as the Porters, still
had great influence on
the Salem Village church.
Caught between powerful isters
factions, a string of min-
of the Salem Village church came and went.
James Bayley arrived in 1672, married one of
Putnam
Sr.'s sisters,
to the role until
court.
and
yet only
managed
1680 by defending
The ongoing
to
Ann
hold on
his position in
strain of his contentious stay
may
even have led to the early death of his wife. George
Burroughs the
lasted just three years before returning to
community
now Maine from which he Though he could not know it at
in what
had been recruited.
is
the time, his entanglement with the festering antago-
nisms of Salem Village had only begun. Following Burroughs, Deodat Lawson stuck
it
out for
five years,
during which time tempers in Salem heated. With the
Putnams taking the determined
•^52&
to have
lead, the its
Salem Village faction was
church stand on
its
own, with
Two salem Families, 1641-169r
no
Salem Town. But the townsfolk held
links to that of
off the villagers,
Only when
The that
Putnams
to
Parris, the
minister
they
would be
selected,
man
and com-
plete their break
Town.
became
Indeed,
wrong a
from
and he did —but
Parris was
for the
just
uphold
to
their values
Salem
and
were sure
Samuel
the
Salem Village
allies
new
arrived,
own church.
its
their
left.
Town
Salem
did
finally allow
run
new minister
the
1688,
in
and Lawson, the Putnams' man,
reasons.
He
minister only after This image on
he failed
at
being just the kind
of merchant
who was prosper-
ing in Salem Town.
If
a
gold locket
is
believed to
represent the Reverend Samuel Parris,
and
it is
the only likeness of
him
that has
survived.
he
favored the older ways of the farmers in the hinterlands of Salem Village, that was probably because he
himself had been unable to master the complications of trade and commerce. He, too, had a bitter edge of envy for those ships
who found
and cargoes
easy prosperity in sending
to ports all
around the world.
As Parris established himself in
mons turned
his church, his ser-
again and again to one theme: the clash
-M53^
Witch-
HUNT
between good people banding together in
community and
who pretended
liars
schemed and plotted for
their
own
to
ends.
a
Christian
be good but
The danger
of deception and falsehood was everywhere, even in one's
own
because
family,
forces were ready to seize
devils,
witches,
and
evil
on wicked people and put
their greed to satanic purposes.
By February 1692, Parris was speaking of an
impending war between good and one had
to
be on the
alert
evil,
in which every-
and ready for
battle.
Since
the early days of the Puritans the front line had shifted.
There were
still
wolves and Indians nearby,
but the more dangerous enemy was within the
commu-
nity itself^or even closer than that.
Perhaps Parris was speaking about things he had seen with his
own
eyes.
already starting, in his
^54 H^
For the hellish conflict was
own home.
i
k^-T
CHAPTER
II
Two Mysteries w*^»^«^i
-.
%/
M
m
The
first
MYSTERY From
No one knows
how
it
began.
the time of the very start of the outbreak of
witchcraft accusations,
dence
for sure
like
we have
just fragments of evi-
the pot shards and chipped stones
ancient civilizations found
at
an archaeological
These frustrating hints and clues often seem about add up to a satisfying
story,
authors blurred the details and
of
site.
to just
and for generations
made
the events
seem
simpler and clearer than the evidence actually shows.
Perhaps Samuel Parris's nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, called Betty,
and
his eleven- or twelve-year-
old (we are not sure about her age) niece, Abigail
(57^
Witch-
HUNT
Williams, were using it
some old English
went horribly wrong. Perhaps. But
one record
the
questions as
John
it
folk magic,
a close
and
reading of
that suggests this origin leaves as
many
offers answers.
Hale, a minister
who was experienced
in
dealing with cases of witchcraft and was personally
involved with the events in Salem, clue that has
been twisted into
gone wrong, he wrote an both affirmed the
us one puzzling
a vivid narrative over the
Troubled by what he saw
centuries.
that
left
good cause
as a
essay five years after the trials
reality
of witchcraft and admit-
ted that "a great deal of innocent blood" had been shed "in the Christian world, by proceeding principles, in
for
.
.
.
witch-
was simultaneously an apology for errors in
craft." It
Salem and witches.
condemning persons
upon unsafe
a defense
of the need to be vigilant against
That confusion of motives makes
know how
it
hard to
to evaluate his words.
Hale's essay
first
beginning "in the
recounts the story of Salem,
latter
end of the year 1691," mean-
ing sometime in January or February of what we think
of
as
1692.
Much
later on, in a chapter
on
the ways in
which people in many different places unknowingly fall
into witchcraft by using charms, incantations,
spells,
he
says, "I fear
tampered with the
door was opened [year] 169!^."
-^SSf^
some young persons, through
know
vain curiosity to
a
their future condition, have
Devil's tools so far that hereby
to Satan to play those pranks,
Perhaps
and
one
anno
this refers to the events that ini-
Two Mysteries
which did mainly take place
tiated the crisis in Salem,
in 1692, even by his calendar.
Or some
perhaps not. For Hale goes on to
no other scholar has been
try with
an egg and
future husband's calling, that
till
there
of
a specter in likeness
is,
He
able to confirm.
persons who
afflicted
informed) did
grue-
no other commentator recorded and
story that
"one of the
tell a
(as
says that
was credibly
I
her
a glass to find
came up
a coffin,
And
a coffin.
she was
afterwards followed with a diabolical molestation to
her death, and so died to others to take
they get a
lest
a single
person — a just warning
heed of handling the
wound
Devil's
weapons
thereby."
Hale claims that through prayer and confession he was able to heal the other "young person."
Two
girls
dabbling in foretelling their futures by
dropping an egg white into water and interpreting the shapes that formed, then being terrified by what they saw.
an
.
.
.
Could they be
Betty
afflicted Betty was sent
friend,
and she did
and Abigail? We know that away to
slowly recover,
stay
with a family
though there
is
no
evidence that Hale visited and ministered to her. And, after
being quite
active in the trials, Abigail disappears
from the records.
It is
tempting to suppose that Hale
was writing about her and that she died tormented by
her visions. But despite the careful research of many scholars, there
And for
there
is
is
absolutely
good reason
no record of Abigail's to
fate.
doubt Hale completely,
no other source mentions
his story
—an
account
-^59K-
Witch-
HUNT
that
would have been perfect evidence for those who
wanted
to
defend the
After
trials.
instance in which one of the people in 1692 died
from her
devilish
all,
the only
is
it
who were
afflicted
wounds. All the other
people who came to court complaining of being assaulted
matter
and abused by witches
how
easily recovered,
no
grievous their suffering. If Hale was writ-
ing about Abigail, a leading accuser in the
why
trials,
didn't anyone else point to her terrible death as proof
of the power of the devil?
Hale might have been referring to not the
1692 (1691 by
girls in early
a different case,
his calendar), but
others in late 1692. In October of that year court
records show that Sarah Cole from the neighboring
town of Lynn and "others" used egg'' to
be."
Maybe Hale was mixing up "just
glass
and an
As happens
a variety
of cases to
warning" Look what can happen
you dabble with the
:
devil;
you might even
lose
so often in studying Salem,
almost enough evidence to details,
"Venus
find out "what trade their sweethearts should
emphasize his
life.
a
tell a
if
your
we have
true story full of juicy
but not quite.
Whatever the cause, Betty and Abigail soon began behaving very strangely. According to
sympathetic
a
Hale, they seemed to be "pinched and bitten by invisible agents; their arms, necks,
and
that,
and backs turned
and returned back again.
they were taken
dumb,
their
.
.
way
Sometimes
mouths stopped,
throats choked, their limbs wracked
-^60 Br
.
this
their
and tormented."
Two Mysteries
Yet from the
it
named Robert
suspicious author all
others saw
first,
A more
differently.
Calef,
who opposed
of the accusations and convictions that followed,
described the same after a strange
into holes, to use
girls this way:
and unusual manner,
and creeping under
viz., as
and
chairs
to act,
by getting
stools,
and
sundry odd postures and antic gestures, uttering
foolish, ridiculous speeches, selves
They "began
which neither they them-
nor any other could make sense
Both
skeptics
nies shared
of."
and those convinced by the
one perception: The Salem
girls
girls'
ago-
were expe-
riencing something very similar to the afflictions of the
Goodwin children about whom Cotton Mather had There
written.
every chance that
is
young people in
Salem would have read or heard about the
first,
book.
The
sorceries"
girls
may have been
practicing the
Mather had warned about. Soon they
enacted the behavior he described. Did this
he was right and that that the girls were
evil
was nearby?
girls, it
gious. Very quickly, others in the signs of serious disturbance: bites,
you believed the
not.
The
Or
mean
did
it
that
imply
good readers and good mimics?
Whatever was bothering the
if
From
the Salem story was a crossing point of differ-
ent beliefs. "little
his
reports;
silly
was quite conta-
community showed fits,
tortured bodies,
dramatics,
if
you did
infection seemed to travel along the lines of
the poisonous
rifts
in Salem.
No one
was affected. But in Salem Village the the leaders of the farm group,
in Salem
Putnam
and those most
Town
family,
active in
-^61
ES*
Witch-
HUNT
Or
supporting Parris were the hardest hit by the trouble.
you might
became the center of the
also say they
action.
Twelve -year- old Ann Putnam Jr., her mother,
Ann Sr.,
a seventeen-year-old servant living with the
Putnams
named Mercy relative
and another seventeen-year-old
Lewis,
and neighbor named Mary Walcott
signs of affliction. Elizabeth
all
showed
Hubbard, the seventeen-
year-old niece of a local physician, and Mary Warren, a twenty-year-old servant, did too. Something was very visibly
wrong in Salem.
The
first
mystery
began in the
first
is
why strange
signs of affliction
—how
interpret Hale's
place
to
sympathetic but enigmatic account and evaluate
However you
against CaleFs complete skepticism. resolve that will lead
you
to the even
it
more puzzling
second mystery.
The second
MYSTERY
If
Hale was talking about Betty Parris
and Abigail Williams, then
it
would be
easy to picture a
scenario such as this: Nine-year-old Betty, the daughter of a minister,
knew she was doing something
bidden when she tried
to see the future;
got scared by something she saw,
ashamed
Knapp
at
after
felt
doubly
like Elizabeth
her chores were mysteriously finished for
her, Betty began to feel
sense of
and when she
she
what she had done. Perhaps,
for-
shame and
evil.
Then, haunted by her
guilt, Betty
may have
acted in the
ways she associated with people possessed by the devil.
-~Jl621iir
Two Mysteries
The
natural next step after that would have been for
Betty to seek help in expunging the vile forces
Her
elders, just like
Hale in his
essay,
from
would
her.
chastise
her for her experiments, but she would be forgiven.
But why would that
many of
this
behavior spread?
women
the younger
could be
It
from
in the area,
children to the recently married, were using folk rituals tices
such
Venus
as the
For some, the prac-
glass.
would have been quite unremarkable, simply the
passing
on of
mothers,
traditions they
relatives,
had learned from their
and friends. Others might have
been searching for new answers outside of the stern words of their ministers and the demands of their austere faith. According to the nineteenth-century
Salem minister and for example,
local historian Charles
Ann Putnam
Sr.
had never completely
recovered from the death of her
Reverend Bayley) and the
loss
Upham,
sister (the wife
of one of her
of the
own
chil-
dren. She could have been drawn to experimentation
with contacting the spirits of the dead.
As Betty roiled in her own sense of shame and fear,
her peers might have
felt a
need
to
show and thus
exorcise their sense of being tainted. If one dabbler in
the occult began to behave strangely, anyone
done some
secret
who had
experimenting herself might grow
very anxious about any twitch or jerk that suggested
she was actually possessed.
Some might
their ministers with exaggerated
even rush to
symptoms, just
to get
checked out and cleared.
-^63K-
Witch-
HUNT
f,.
.y? ///
/.i./^
/
'"..A
yU^j/U^ '7
^
'^;^^-'"
y*f^.
A set
tices their
acts
who were
of individuals
community
officially
privately using prac-
condemned suddenly
out in bizarre ways. This can be seen
confession
as well as a plea to
This story makes sense,
as a
form of
be exorcised and healed.
at least as a
theory. But then
the Parris episode took a strange turn, for the focus shifted
completely away from the
women's
--^64^^
girls'
or young
responsibility for allowing the devil to enter
Two Mysteries
their lives. Abruptly tims.
The
in?" to
is
"How
/
a slave
woman named
^.
^tuju^4t^ yC*^^.
became
did
using Satan against me?"
point came with
J^U.f/^M *fi*.
inexplicably, they
changed from
issue
"Who
and
I
let
vic-
Satan
The turning
Tituba.
Atf.^^/*
^/'-.v*.^
S^L^^^^ yf^^* r ^/'^^y^y. -/X«*X' yktyA--^
.^^ j:!^^ /rr^ fiiXv Mil
uf -*»
'n
Discovered by the historian Elaine Breslaw, these two images
Tafcoie
anJ
from the Barbados plantation of Samuel Thompson. "Tattuba" appears on both lists, three quarters of the way down in the right-hand column, and is underlined. This may mean that Tituba g^ew up on this plantation. le/tj
are of a 1676 inventory of slaves
-365^
Witch-
HUNT
For
all
of the Reverend Parris's thunder about the
treacherous world just outside his small congregation,
he could not entirely shut out the contacts that trade
brought to Salem.
owned Tituba, an Indian the Caribbean,
Indian.
who grew up
Parris,
slave
in Barbados,
who was probably from
and her husband,
aptly
named John
The presence of this Caribbean couple
England was just
as
much
in
New
product of the links bind-
a
ing Massachusetts, the West Indies, and England as had
been John Porter's
visit
as the
own
lives
much
Barbados. As
New England
devout Protestants in living their
to
as
saw themselves as
by their own rules, and
as
much
farmers of Salem Village sought to break off
from the more worldly merchants of Salem Town, everyone in the English-speaking world was slowly
being drawn together in bonds of commerce and law, writing and conversation.
Tituba seems to have been an intelligent, adaptable
woman who
learned
quickly
named Mary
Apparently, a neighbor insisted
—that John,
use a magical
were being
Sibley asked
— or
and perhaps Tituba, help her
method
afflicted
from her owners.
to find out if Betty
by
and Abigail
a witch. If the girls'
baked with rye flour into
a
to
urine was
kind of biscuit and fed to
a
dog, the animal was supposed to lead to the witch or
even speak her name.
drawn
Or
the witch herself
to the animal. This ritual was yet another that
the Puritans
had brought with them from England.
The Tituba who appears
^66^
would be
in
many
novels, plays,
and
Two Mysteries
even older history books about Salem brings pagan,
New
voodoolike island beliefs and rituals with her to
England.
It is
not surprising, then, that she was
heart of the case
from
spirits.
records to is
But the is
slave
the
the start. According to these
often lurid accounts, she
young New England
at
girls
responsible for teaching
is
new forms of trafficking with
woman who
appears in the actual
insistent that she used only the
magic taught
her by her English neighbors and mistresses. There absolutely
no reason
story of the egg
and
to
glass is
And
doubt her.
if
the Hale
about Betty and her cousin,
then Tituba was not involved
at all
in the beginning.
The second
On
MYSTERY deepens Mary
Sibley involved John
February 25,
1692,
and maybe Tituba (two
ferent records contradict themselves
on
this point) in
the, rye cake test. Shortly thereafter the first witch
revealed. She was Tituba herself.
out that the Indian
woman
grievously torment them,
and tell
there,
where no body
dif-
The two
was
girls cried
"did pinch, prick, and
and
that they saw her here
else could.
Yea they could
where she was, and what she did, when out of their
human
sight."
Tituba was not only herself, but an
ghost of herself that haunted and tormented the
The whole
story of the test
from the point of view of the
is
evil
girls.
confusing, especially
beliefs of the time. If
Tituba was involved in baking the cake, no one raised the most obvious question:
Why would
a real
witch
-a 67.^
Witch-
HUNT
conversant with magic spells accurately perform a solely designed to catch herself?
that Tituba
Hale
later
test
reported
had been trained in detecting witches by
her English mistress in Barbados, who truly was
a
would work, wouldn't
witch. If Tituba believed the test
she have been able to subvert it?
In
reality,
Tituba did.
It
the test
had
to
do with anything
girls a
way to speak with-
little
simply gave the
out being responsible for their words.
The
may
girls
have associated Tituba with an occult force that they
wanted
to tap but that they also feared was taking
over. Tituba was
the
both the conduit
embodiment of its
threat.
The
to the test
them
beyond and
gave
them
a
way
to voice these feelings.
We
do not know what Tituba looked
like
or even
what kind of "Indian" she was. There were no native Indians
still
living
on Barbados
in her time, but both
conquered Wampanoags from New England and Arawaks from the area that
is
now Guyana and
Venezuela were brought to the island specifics of Tituba's
as slaves.
Yet the
appearance and heritage probably
were not what influenced the
girls.
The
fact that she
was an Indian was enough.
The vexing
Sir
Edmond Andros
was removed
governor of New England in 1689 even
as
as
William and
new king and queen, were installed in England. What would these changes mean for New Mary,
a
England and
its
Puritan ways? Increase Mather sailed
off to plead the case for his people, arguing that they
^68
i
Two Mysteries
should be allowed to retain their own particular form of church government and political organization.
one knew how
that
would turn
protection from England, all
the less safe.
rumored
to
And
New
out.
priests
who were
Rumor had like
it
modern
that
clerics
their Indian allies by
was a good deed to murder the English,
it
responsible for killing Jesus.
the Indians
renewing the
attacks,
— rather
who support terror— inspired them
felt
the French and Indians were
warfare that had ended in 1676.
telling
Without secure
England's borders
be planning new
French Catholic
No
who had
suffered most
New
war, by the 169OS the
Though
it
was
from the recent
Englanders were feeling the
threat of the Indians with ever-growing force.
One
women
of the
later accused of
being
a witch
spoke of her terror of Indians and her dreams of fighting them.
The
and embodied a
tawny
Indians."
devil she described it.
He
this fear
"appeared to her in the shape of
man and promised The
both used
devil was
to
keep her from the
an Indian, yet
a
tempting
guardian who would keep the Indians away. Surely for
some New Englanders, Indians were mare:
all
figures of night-
the terrors and dangers of the
manifested in
human
New World
form.
For Cotton Mather, the danger of Indians took different form.
Looking
through his eyes
is
like
at
a
Indian religious practices
having
a vision
of hell.
He
imagined that in their "wigwams" Indian sorcerers were raising the
spirits
of devils "in the shapes of bears
-969 S-
Witch-
HUNT
and snakes and
fires."
Indians stood for the pagan
world of magic he tried to stamp out and the
evil forces
he had to combat.
The
historian
identified
and
Mary Beth Norton has
recently
vividly described a series of conflicts in
just this period in
which Wabanaki people aided by
French Catholics devastated what was then the northern portion of the colony and
is
now Maine. Through
wonderful detective work she has shown that ten of the people who accused others of being witches— including
Mary Walcott and, most
significantly,
Mercy Lewis
experienced traumas in these conflicts, such
murder of
as the
close relatives or the loss of property
and
standing. In addition, she has linked twenty-three of the accused to the events in Maine, as well as thirteen
of the most important judges, jurors, clergymen, and officials in the trials.
accused,
In the minds of the accusers,
and judges, the external
imperiling
New England
families were immediately
attacks that
were
settlements and ravaging
and
definitively linked to
manifestations of devilish activity in and around
Salem.
Once
the
young women of Salem began
to feel
unsafe due to their dabbling in the occult, they might well
have thought of Tituba— the Indian in their
midst— as their fears made story takes another twist.
Tituba serving first
^70 s-
two
girls
as the
flesh. It
is
But here again the
not hard to picture
scapegoat for the troubles of the
and for the spreading symptoms.
Two Mysteries
Something very
like that
But Salem was too
may have
started to take place.
volatile a place for
its
tensions to be
healed with the sacrifice of just one.
There are two different versions of Samuel reaction to yet one
more
use of magic in his
According to one account, even
own home.
after the rye cake test,
was a model of caution and patience.
He
asked a
ber of local doctors to examine the afflicted doctors'
ing
judgment was sobering: This was
evil spirits,
much like
not physical
that of
ills.
Parris's
The
a case involv-
Parris's next
fasting.
num-
girls.
remedy was
Cotton Mather in the Goodwin
combination of prayer and
he
case: a
When that tactic
did
not seem to work, he called on sober and established
men, perhaps John Hale included,
Thus
him
to give
counsel.
Parris's behavior was the exact opposite
harsh, frenzied,
and blameful pattern often
of the
associated
with Puritan ministers.
This
first
account claims that Parris did
the use of the rye cake test but not Tituba or
conducting
it.
Instead, he criticized
neighbor who oversaw the
ritual.
Mary
condemn John
for
Sibley, the
But according to
a
second version of these same events, Parris seemed very affected by the
test,
so
much
so that Robert Calef
reported a very disturbing story about his reaction.
He
wrote that Tituba later claimed Parris had beaten and
abused her until she confessed to being
named
a witch
and
others. Parris might have beaten his slave if he
wanted her
to confess
thing. But his
and
demand
take the
that she
blame for every-
name
others makes
^71^-
Witch-
HUNT
sense only
if Parris
believed the diabolical test had
yielded true results.
This question of how to evaluate information that
came from magical, perhaps central issue that
known
that
made Salem
historical cases of witchcraft.
as the "father
test that called
on
was the
came up from the beginning of the
Salem case— and the one
from other
devilish, sources
his
of
How
lies."
different
The
devil was
could one trust a
powers? Speaking
to his
congre-
gation, Parris himself said that the test was ''going to
the Devil for help against the Devil." If the test was not reliable,
why would
insist that she
Parris believe
name other
some other cause
beat his slave, and
it,
witches? Either there was
for his suspicion that has
been
lost to
history or the popular traditions of folk rituals
and
magical beliefs were convincing even to trained ministers,
and
all
their care to spurn both "white"
and
"black" practices was fading away.
In the early months of 1692
on edge craft,
that
what people saw
many
in Salem were so
as accusations
of witch-
manifestations of witchcraft, and devilish mis-
information about witchcraft
confirmed one another's turned, there was
all
blended together and Everywhere you
reality.
more evidence
nearby, even in the spread of
that the devil was
lies
and
half-truths.
Everything seemed covered in a miasma of deceit devil's trail
—and there was
—the
no apparent way out but
to
find the witches, the devil's agents, execute them, and
return the community to safety in the sight of God.
^721^
Two Mysteries
Something about
this case
was so strange, so disturbing,
that even ministers lost their way.
the invisible realm
seemed
The
eerie powers of
to be manifesting
them-
selves everywhere, too real to ignore.
Given the choice between seeing the suffering of their neighbors as God's
punishment for dabbling in
symptoms of
the occult or as
devilish,
Indian-like,
witch-driven attacks, more and more people in Salem chose anger over penitence. Instead of faith turning
them inward attack.
to conscience,
it
pushed them outward
For reasons we only imperfectly understand,
culture of
blame had taken root, and
an agonizing year of accusations,
it
to a
would require
trials,
and deaths
before the balance shifted back to introspection.
And
yet the devil was not the only
lying. Tituba,
who was angry
the accusation, could have beating.
Nor
is it
ministers, wrote
it
at
made up
when
she
made
the story of the
certain that Calef, the critic of the
down
the incident himself.
seems to hint
at Parris
one capable of
accurately
One more
and did not invent
compelling clue that
the deep currents of the story itself
turns out to be a fragment whose meaning can only be
guessed
at
and debated.
i73S-
n
f€^
.
#
CHAPTER
III
The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin MA..
HI
4 ^
/
'
'
«»'»
V
The usual
SUSPECTS
Whatever forces drove the
girls to cry
out against Tituba could not be soothed with merely
one accusation. The
girls quickly
sources for their suffering: Sarah
named two
other
Good and
Sarah
Osborne. All three suspects could have been selected a
kind of computer-model average of
New England was in her
even her
witchcraft accusations
late thirties,
all
on
as
the previous
record.
Good
poor, and not close to others;
own husband thought
she might be a witch.
Forced to beg, she often seemed to grumble and mutter
ing
when people spurned or ignored
her. She was a liv-
embodiment of the scorned woman
in the story of
-^n^
Witch-
HUNT
Sleeping Beauty. As for Osborne, she had gotten into trouble for living with a
man
and for skipping church
services for over a year.
Tituba was an Indian
woman, and about—the
woman
girls
Fighting
And
Indian, a difficult
people talked and complained
named just
demons with
up
An
slave.
her husband died
the right suspects. spiritual
weapons such
as
to individuals
and
their ministers.
point the rules shifted.
On
February 29, leap day,
prayer was this
a
after
But
at
Ann Putnam Jr. 's father, Thomas, and three others asked the law to step in. They wanted the three women brought Though this session could
to court for a pretrial hearing.
not lead to a sentence,
I
it
could uncover enough evidence
Two
to put witches in jail until a full-fledged trial began. local dignitaries,
I
Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne
(Nathaniel Hawthorne's direct ancestor)
i
judges.
They were
later
now
served as
joined by another prominent
men
townsman, Bartholomew Gedney. The judges sent
out to bring in the three suspects. They were to meet their accusers
— Betty
Putnam Jr., and inn.
y
Anyone
Parris,
Elizabeth
in the town
Abigail Williams,
Hubbard—the
who wanted
next day
Ann at
an
to attend the hear-
ing was permitted to come. All the court
and
a
strange
had
to
do was
to indict three witches,
and unpleasant episode could have
ended, perhaps with a dismissal,
as
was usual, or even
with a few unremarkable convictions. But
accused faced the judges,
it
quickly
the crisis in Salem had just begun.
^78}^
became
when
the
clear that
—
The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin
By now
known about
of Salem must have
all
young women
weird, eerie behavior of the girls and
around the Reverend witchcraft,
Parris's
home,
Young and
for themselves if
many people
to
moved
and how the demons were
fit
to the town's
girls into a frenzy
Upham,
the space,
Good denied doing
Sarah
that was
old flocked to the inn to see
exposed. According to Charles
therefore
the accusations of
and the moment of reckoning
about to come.
the
to be
there were too
and the hearing was
meetinghouse. any
evil,
which sent the
of "torture and torment." Face-to-
face, at close quarters,
it
must have been quite
a scene:
the stern judges seated at a long table in front of the pulpit, looking at the crowd; the
ingly unable to control their
peace; the accused witches
young women, seem-
own bodies or
to find
any
—unpopular to begin with
seeing the faces of their neighbors judging
them and
trying to respond to the judges' probing questions.
Asked
to explain
much. Good Hearing
this,
why the
victims were suffering so
finally agreed that
Osborne was
a witch.
the accusers suddenly recovered for the
moment. But Good had too many enemies, even
in
her own family, to be spared on the basis of simply
blaming someone
The had
to
else.
accusers responded to
Good: by being
in her presence.
And
They claimed her assaulting
Osborne
"hurt, afflicted,
exactly as they
and tortured"
that was only a small part of
specter, her ghostly self,
them even when she was
far away.
it.
had been
Osborne
-r^79^
Witch-
HUNT
was equally fervent in denying she was
a witch.
defense she raised a point that was ignored
In her
at first
could never entirely be dismissed. In the end,
one of the reasons serious people began
it
but was
to question
the trials. If the devil used her "likeness" to do harm,
she argued, that was not her fault. She was bringing
up the ambiguity
that plagued the case
from the
was dia-
If the girls let in the devil, if the rye cake test
bolical, if evil ghosts in the shapes of
start:
townspeople
were afflicting people, why couldn't the devil alone be
Why assume witches in the town were him? How could you trust any evidence
responsible? assisting
hand?
tainted by the devil's
Judge Hathorne did not find nificant.
And
been hard
to
considering the scene,
weigh out
suffering, seemingly
girls
some of the most important of the
might have
He
and women, howling,
under the worst form of invisible These victims were from
assault right before his eyes.
rest
it
a subtle theological issue.
was faced with a battery of
The
this possibility sig-
room
was
families in
filled
Salem
Village.
with anxious, eager
townspeople sensing that the very worst of
evils
was
about to be revealed. Perhaps right here, in his court, the source of
all
of the colony's recent afflictions— the
troubles in England, the
ominous Indians,
Q^uakers, the decline in faith
—would be
the weird
exposed.
And
standing against that almost electric charge in the air
stood only an outcast
woman
speaking for herself.
Hathorne pressed on, questioning Osborne, and
^;;{80{::r
The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin
found
that she, too, was
haunted by
fears of Indians.
As the clerk recorded her testimony, "she was
fright-
ened one time in her sleep and either saw or dreamed that she saw a thing like
an Indian
black which did
all
pinch her in her neck and pulled her by the back part of her head to the door of the house." This devil later
whispered in her
ear, telling
but she resisted.
The judge was not convinced. After
her not to go to church,
she was notorious for not
all,
Osborne claimed she had been
own words condemned
Two women
coming but
ill,
to meetings. it
seemed her
her.
faced their accusers and the court,
fought back against the charges, and were unable to
defend themselves. But Tituba, the accused — and likely
as
an Indian
slave,
person
perhaps the most
person to be blamed — did something com-
pletely different.
At
first she, too,
denied pinching
or in any way harming the children; fact,
first
at
one point, in
she said she loved Betty and would not hurt her.
Then something happened. Perhaps her slave, ever alert to
training as a
picking up cues from her master,
took over. Tituba confessed. She took the judges, the court, the afflicted girls,
and the people of Salem crowded
into the darkened meetinghouse
frightening as her story was, finally,
everyone had
a
it
evil.
And
a
journey.
And
was also calming. Now,
clear truth that they could
believe. Tituba's confession was a
of
on
for the next few
map
of a dreamland
months people
treated
-aeiK-
Witch-
HUNT
this
dream world
as
more
true than anything they
could see with their daylight eyes.
TITUBA'S COnfBSSIOn
it
up
that standing
must have been obvious
Tituba
to
would never work.
against the judges
Instead, she figured out a way to agree with their accusations while always excusing herself.
admitting a
evil
Even
as she
was
with her words, in her behavior she was
model of cooperation and contrition. Tituba
changed before the court's
eyes.
She was not an angry,
scheming, loudmouthed witch; she was sweet, cooperative,
and eager
to help.
She even began to suffer from
the same afflictions as her accusers, as if an angry devil
were torturing her and trying to silence her before she
made
revealed his plot. Tituba' s performance in court
her story believable, and
it
saved her
Reading Tituba' s words in the
life.
trial
records
watching a fascinating theatrical performance. challenged about
who was hurting
ventured one surly
is
When
the children, she
— statement "The
devil for
ought
know" —before quickly changing her tone. The had, in
fact,
like
I
devil
asked her to serve him, she admitted.
He
came with four other women, including Good and Osborne. She had seen the four with
man"
in Boston just the previous night,
bullied her into "Yes, but
I
will
harming the
girls.
hurt them no more."
she was sorry she had
^82H5-
a mysterious "tall
and they had
Did she
give in?
And then she
done any harm.
said
The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin
The room must
have suddenly quieted,
Tituba began to confess,
would not have began
devil.
to fight with
to try to use
Goodwin
with the
horrible pains
girls'
The judges could immediately
stopped.
so they
the
We do
see that they
her to get her to confess,
her— as Mather had
children
for as
—to
not know why in
learn
in Boston
more about
this case, unlike so
the
many
others, the judges tended to believe that the accused
were witches. But
it is
clear that
once Tituba began
to
confess, they were reassured by her words.
As the questioning moved away from her her experiences
as a
victim of the forces of
evil,
had ever more elaborate and amazing things
The
devil
came
to
her in the form of
giant black dog. In his
human guise
a
guilt to
Tituba
to report.
hog and
also a
the devil had a yel-
low bird that was a kind of pet. Witches were known to have such "familiars," which took animal form and
were fed by
a
tresses grew.
weird extra breast their masters or mis-
And
as
with Elizabeth Knapp, the devil
"He had
made
the most enticing promises to Tituba.
more
pretty things," she told the court, "that he
give
me
if I
would
serve
him."
Tituba may have invented these the
moment. But
there
would
is
details
also a hint in a
on the spur of
second version
of the court transcript that suggests she was speaking
about actual experiences. There, she explains that the
man who
appeared to her and intimidated her into
harming the
When
girls
came
she was asked for
"just as
more
I
was going to sleep."
details
about the witches'
'i^saK'
Witch-
HUNT
meeting in Boston, Tituba gave an answer that almost sounds
modern Halloween
like
stories,
but with a key
difference: She traveled invisibly, as a spirit.
"We
she get there? presently."
over
ride
upon
sticks
and
Did that mean they went through
them? "We
see
no thing but
Boston, she replied,
"I
was never
at
did
are there
the trees or
are there."
how often
day she went a step further. Asked
How
The
next
she went to
Boston." In other
words, she was not physically there; her spirit had flown to the gathering. That's
why
it
could get there instantly.
For Tituba, dreams and actual events were blurring together.
More
generally, in
New England
society at
the time there was not a clear line of distinction
between the two. Many argued that dreams contained prophecies, revelations, truths life,
and there was no other
nation of what
clear
else they were. It
dreamed of meeting
more
is
and
offered
demanded that
she serve them.
common
expla-
possible that Tituba
a sinister tall
women who
real than daily
her fine
One
man and things
of the
four
and evil
evil
later
women,
she reported, wore clothes similar to those she had
seen
when
black silk
she lived with the Parris family in Boston: "a
hood with
Tituba's adult
people
who
life
a white
had been in
silk
hood under
service to well-dressed
insisted she obey them.
may have been
it."
Her confession
the reverse of the dreams Puritans had
of scary Indians: an Indian dream of scary Puritans.
Whatever the source, the court heard her tasies,
^M^
or dreams
as facts.
visions, fan-
The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin
Whether
it
was a folk- magic
young women having
fits
test to
that they claimed were caused
by specters, or Tituba describing the the question of
spirit,
expose a witch,
how
of her
flights
to evaluate the interaction
of the invisible world of ghosts and dreams with the
common tral
world was the cen-
problem of the
trials.
As her confession went on, Tituba became less hesitant,
and
less
and her accounts
turned more and more elab-
Good,
Sarah
orate. revealed,
had
she
a yellow bird
familiar that she fed by letting it
suck between her fingers.
Osborne's
Sarah
familiars
One
were even stranger. "a thing with a
woman
head
with two
was
like
legs
a
and
wings." Another was a hairy creature that walked legs
like
a
on two
man. This
latter
monster had appeared just the niffht o fire
before in front of the
in the Reverend Parris's
home. In describing" this
Crea-
*u torms ^ ^ taken u her tamiliars, Aa witchu andj the by u •.
calling
i,
i
of the other accusers kept seeing in Salem.
perhaps Tituba was
on
traditional tales
f ^ from
books, the birds shown here are what Tituba and
many
ture,
*
1621 book. Though the Mack cat is the animal most frequently associated with witches in children's
from her own childhood
in South America, which told of evil kenaimas
—little
-^85^
a
Witch-
HUNT
people who lived in the forest and came out
at
night to
do harm.
While she told of creatures
been part of New England the key event she must have
When
hear.
had not previously
that
lore,
Tituba also spoke of
known the judges wanted to
she was questioned for a second day, she
demanded
said the devil claimed he was a god, serve
him
for six years,
and brought
The judges were paying what the book looked put her
name
in
mistress called
it,
me
a
book with him.
When
close attention.
like
she
asked
and whether he asked her
Tituba hesitated. "No, not into the other
to
yet, for
room." But then
it
seems she caught on to what the judges wanted. "He said write
and
set
made her mark judges had called
my name
The
exactly
what the law
confession of the devil's pact. They
a
pressed on.
she did. She
in blood in the devil's book.
now heard from Tituba
for:
And
to it."
"Did you
see any other
book?" Then came the answer
would go on and on and on:
that
marks in the
ensured the
"Yes, a great
trials
many."
Tituba had seen with her own eyes exactly what the girls' fits
seemed
to suggest
— namely,
had signed themselves over
to the devil.
seized the opportunity to discover
sources of
evil
in their
that
many people The judges
more about
community. They knew Tituba
could not read, but perhaps the devil had clues.
"Did he
tell
the
you the names of them?"
left
some
Typically,
Tituba gave an answer that pleased the judges but said little.
-?186t^
The names
she heard, she said, were those of
The Mysteries End and the Hearings Begin
Good and Osborne — the the court.
How many
two
women
already
known by
namies were there? If the judges
could not get the names of
all
the witches, at least they
would know how many they needed
to find. "Nine,"
more than
she answered, six or seven
the judges
knew
about (depending on whether she counted her own
And where
mark).
did these witches live?
Boston and some here in
me where
tell
this
"Some
in
town, but he would not
they were."
Tituba gave an amazing performance that ended the stumbling, confusing
The judges,
first
phase of the outbreak.
the people of Salem,
and the
great minis-
of New England heard in detail what they had pre-
ters
viously
only
confirmed.
under the
suspected.
Their worst fears were
A great conspiracy of evil forces was at work
devil's direction.
Tituba was sent to prison,
but then she was almost forgotten. She no longer mattered,
and she survived the
trials. It
was her words that
counted. They told everyone what to look for: witches
and
their spooky familiars; spirits that could fly
and
appear in other places; the devil seeking names for his dark book; and a mysterious
who seemed
tall
man
dressed in black
to
be the satanic ringleader. These were
the themes that
would come up again and again for the
rest
of the year. Tituba' s words changed everything:
no more con-
fusion about inviting the devil or being attacked by witches,
no more need
for questionable magical tests
or sober doctors' examinations. There was no longer
-^87^
Witch-
HUNT
any question of why people in Salem were being afflicted with disturbing
ing their dark
toll.
doers there were,
symptoms: Witches were tak-
The only issues were how many evil-
who was
their leader,
and how
horrid infection could be stamped out.
Now
this
each
defendant would not only have to protest his or her
own innocence but bring that
into question a larger story
more and more people were
meant the
trials
sure was true. This
were simultaneously about individuals
and about the basic belief in witchcraft people shared.
-^BQm
that
most
/
CHAPTER '
f
IV
The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr.
V
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l-^r m,:m?
Biting, pinching,
Ann Putnam jr.
and CHOKING center of everything.
was there,
Whenever judges needed
firmation that a witch was harming someone, it.
Whenever
circle
a
new
set
of the accused,
at
a
the
con-
Ann gave
of cases started, spreading the
Ann
spoke up. Whenever
a wit-
ness wavered, starting to take back her confessions or accusations,
Ann
too, was a witch, silence.
Of
was sure to find evidence that she,
cowing the wavering witness into
the nineteen people
responsible for hanging,
whom
Ann Putnam Jr.
the law was is
known
to
have testified against seventeen. She was the voice, and the suffering body, of the accusing victims.
-^91^
Witch-
HUNT
If
we
believe what she told the court, her daily life
must have been
torment. Ghosts appeared to her
a
night, telling her
who had murdered them and
at
leaving
her to challenge her monstrous neighbors in court.
And
in daylight, often
when
she was
alone,
left
and
again every time she came face-to-face with the ever-
growing
circle
of exposed witches, she was tortured.
She, her mother, her neighbors, and her relations reacted so intensely, and in such similar ways, to the alleged witches that the judges, the crowd,
were certain the defendants were
visitors
and many guilty,
no
matter what they said in court.
March
The
3, for
example, must have been terrifying.
apparition or
of Sarah Good's young
evil spirit
daughter Dorothy (Dorcas) fastened on to Ann's throat
and "almost choked her. "
When her intent wasn't mur-
derous, the spirit pinched and bit
her to sign the
spirit's evil
trying to force
book and become
That same day another
herself.
Ann,
of Elizabeth Proctor, attacked
a vdtch
specter, the apparition
Ann
in exactly the same
way, nearly choking her
and biting and pinching her.
That ghost would
return and urge
later
mently" to "write in her book." such
as these
Who
was
Ann
Ann
"vehe-
reported events
day after day after day.
Ann Putnam Jr.?
At twelve years old she
was suddenly the center of attention in Salem, speaking out in the form of visions, assaults
—her
own
dreams,
physical
version, perhaps, of the stories of
dark treachery she had heard from her parents.
-^92fcl-
The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr.
Sometimes joined by her miother, who was troubled by both personal tragedy and the Putnams' history of misfortune, sometimes leading her,
Ann Jr.
was
now
the voice of the family. She could have been a kind of reverse Carrie
— of
King novel and
the Stephen
the
movie of the same name — using accusations of occult powers to destroy everyone she
felt
had hurt her and
her family. Did she enjoy her sense of power? Did she actively conspire with
their performances?
merely masterful cues
at
her
Or
and friends
to plan
were she and the others
watching one another, picking up
and sensing what each would
a picture of misery that
fied to be invented? at
relatives
cry out next, to build
seemed too
real
and too uni-
On this point one set of experts is
odds with another. It is
possible that
Ann went
past settling scores
and
even delighted in destroying other people in town,
bringing them down, adults and children, outcasts and leaders,
humbling them, forcing them
to
squirm
before the judges, knowing that they would die.
Once
she got a taste of this brew of vengeance, malice, cruelty,
and
exquisite power, perhaps
once she began
how could describing
became
addictive.
And
send her neighbors to their deaths,
she ever turn back? She might have kept evil
book because became
to
it
a plot,
ghosts trying to force her to sign their
she
felt
she had entered into a
game
an obsession rippling through her
that
circle
of friends, her family, her neighbors, her town, and finally all
of
New
England;
a
game
that she could
now
-^93^
Witch-
HUNT
never stop. In portraying the pact she was desperate to resist, it felt
her
she might actually have been telling people what like to
mad
We know just enough
life.
that
be part of the
seem
to
fit
had become
craze that
images of Ann
to invent
her behavior. But because we cannot
answer the most basic questions about her behavior—
What were her motivations? What did
she think she was
doing? Was she driven by subconscious
drives, or was
she involved in a fully thought-out plot?
know enough
to
understand her.
—^we
And Ann
is
do not
just part
of the story. If
it
took Ann to drive on the accusations that cap-
tivated Salem, filled
it
also
took
a
Salem community already
with rumors, fears, and nightmares turned into
daily visions to give
Ann
a stage. It
as if fairy tales
is
were stepping out of the pages of books and taking over the town. For instance,
on
the evening of the very
men walking in
hearing in which Tituba confessed, two
town heard
a
sound
that
alarmed them.
night sound, and they heard
it
first
It
was no usual
over and over again.
Frightened, they searched for the source of the eerie noise and found "a strange and unusual beast lying the ground."
When
they approached
"vanished away." Suddenly,
it
it,
the creature
was not an odd shape,
but rather the shades of two or three they "took to be Sarah
on
women whom
Good, Sarah Osborne, and
Tituba."
Nights in Salem were dark, darker than anything we experience today. Streets had no illumination except
-Fi94fcr
The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr.
the cold white light of the very
moon and stars and whatever
dim glow might come from
their few windows.
candlelit houses with
Even well-educated leaders
living
in Boston at the time were shaken by unusual sounds.
Thunder, many
felt,
sonal judgment of
soon in
was a blast from God,
New
a very
England. Yet in England, and
New England, some
people were beginning to
argue that storms were simply natural events.
dominant
belief that
per-
God
spoke
as
thunder and the
newer view that sounds in the heavens had no
meaning were crossing each other
The
special
in Salem Village,
which only made for more tension and anxiety. For
most residents of
a jittery
town,
explaining night
sounds and strange visions was getting easier and yet scarier:
They were caused by witches among them,
prowling, lurking, flying about, no longer hiding but attacking,
them
even
out.
as
the judges
seemed
to
be rooting
Three obvious witches had been caught.
Now the watch was on. Who was next? Ann and the Putnam family had the answer, would happen witch
so often, they raised the stakes.
Ann and her mother
but a devout
member
identified was
no
The
of the Salem Village church.
mate child some years before, but there
Instead,
continued
to
is
woman who
illegiti-
no evidence
hold that past against her.
Martha had the reputation of being
churchgoer, a
next
outsider,
True, Martha Corey had borne a mixed-race,
that people
and, as
a loyal
took her religion seriously.
Shortly after the Putnams accused Martha of being a
^95 s-
Witch-
HUNT
named
witch, they
another. Rebecca Nurse was both
man and
the wife of a relatively wealthy
woman. She image of
on
was, in fact, the very opposite of the usual
a witch. It
a picture
evil; at first
is
as if the
Putnams were focusing
of the town, searching to find the face of
they selected outsiders, then a
with a past, then one of the best
Putnams themselves
the to
some
to find
and perhaps
who
good woman
of all.
Though
been aware of it,
Ann and her family wanted
quite obvious: that of
the evil stepmother
Of
women
miay not have
historians the face is
a respected
Mary Veren Putnam,
cost
them
Jr.
started the accusations,
their inheritance
their future.
TESTS dncl
Ann
WIShBS
and the whole family—perhaps some of them reluctantly—joined her. Sometime around March
II,
Ann
broke the tense silence in Salem by announcing that the spirit
of Martha Corey "did often appear to her and tor-
ture her by pinching
Edward, who was
church
as
prominent member of the same
Martha, and Ezekiel Gheever, the clerk who
recorded the tions,
a
and other ways." Ann's uncle
first
examinations in
this set
of accusa-
decided to investigate her charges. To be a
mem-
New England was a serious thing, and when a church member was accused of the vilest evil, the ber of a church in
rest
of her congregation had to weigh the claim carefully.
The two sober men decided
to create a test that
would challenge both Ann's vision of her tormentor
-1^96!^
The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr.
and Martha's apparent godliness. They questioned
Ann
about what clothing Martha's
wearing. If
Ann
evil
specter was
was sure she was being attacked by
Martha, she would certainly be able to describe exactly
what Martha looked
And
like.
Ann
if
got the details
right,
Martha would be trapped. The
visible
worlds seemed to be crossing and could be used
to
invisible
and the
judge each other.
Ann was cunning and that the specter
quick-thinking. She claimed
had spoken
Martha, but had blinded the describe
Ann's
its
clothes. This
word
seemed the
for;
you
but
I
are
am
home,
come
none.
and turned the
test
Martha
also
against Martha's. test
and was ready for
She smiled knowingly when they
delegation.
arrived at her
I
saying, "I
to talk with
know what you
me
come
cannot help people talking of me."
would never expect
to
who "minded
a
person who
be accused of witchcraft. Martha
knew who witches were. They were
And
are
about being a witch,
This was the puzzled, confident voice of
sons"
to
nimble defense preserved
heard about the
to have
itself as
and refused
girl
credibility with the judges
into a case of her
naming
clearly,
"idle, slothful
per-
[obeyed] nothing that was good."
she challenged her questioners.
Was her accuser
No answer. All eagerness, Martha pressed on. Could Ann say what she was wearing? Martha asked. When the two men reported Ann's
able to describe her clothes?
excuse,
a
satisfied
smile
it
as if
at
Martha gloated. She "seemed
to
she had showed us a pretty trick."
-a
97^
Witch-
HUNT
To Martha and
to the eyes of history, a paper-thin
accusation against a virtuous
woman
fell
when
apart
confronted with the simplest challenges. But in Salem in
March of 169^ there was
a
much
darker way the same
scene could be interpreted. Maybe Martha's smiles
woman
were not those of an innocent
confident of
who
having cleared her name, but those of a witch
knew
exactly
what would happen and had succeeded in
covering her tracks.
When Martha went
to visit
Ann
a
few days after her
interrogation, perhaps to personally reassure her, the
younggirl went wild. Choking, seemingly blinded, her
hands and
Martha
to
Ann
feet twisted in horrible ways,
her face that "she did
it."
told
As Ann spoke, her
tongue seemed pulled out of her mouth, and her teeth
clamped down on
it.
When
she could finally
talk,
Ann
claimed to see a yellow bird suckling between Martha's fingers.
The longer Martha stood
Ann saw with a man
more
fraught the situation became.
Martha's shade
turning a
roasting
spit in the fire,
Mercy Lewis,
a servant in
Ann's house, swung
apparition with an iron rod. agony, as it.
if
hands
Soon Mercy,
at
it.
the
too, was in
hustled away from the home,
Mercy was "drawn toward the
fire
by unseen
as she sat in a chair."
The judges heard two
different versions of reality
when Martha Corey was brought March
on
the spirit were punishing her for attacking
Though Martha was
that night
4^981
the
there,
21.
in for a hearing
Whom should they believe:
on
a well-established
The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr.
woman, defended by her reputation and her judgment, or a cluster of accusers tion with ever
And
who seemed
to
meet any objec-
more extreme behavior and
the battle lines were
accusations?
drawn even more sharply by
then because of Abigail Williams, who, two days after Martha's
test,
had claimed
be assaulted by the same
to
On March 19, Abigail
apparition that had attacked Ann.
had another, more extreme see,
fit,
which,
was similar to Mercy's in one key way.
accuser was learning
we
as It
will
was
soon
as if
from another, creating an
one
ever-
wilder scene for onlookers.
An
important guest had arrived
house on the night of March
19.
at
Samuel
Parris's
The Reverend Deodat
Lawson, the former minister of Salem Village, had returned to help in the
Lawson saw
it,
village's
time of trouble. As
Abigail was in the hands of a particularly
violent spirit. She was
thrown back and forth across the
room. Like the Goodwin children, she seemed almost
"stretching her arms as high as she could,
fly,
and crying
'whish, whish, whish.'" Abigail
struggle with the shade of Rebecca Nurse,
air. at
I
won't take
Then,
burning
like
it,"
else.
to the fire,
flight,
come down
something
like
whoosh." But perhaps she was thing
try-
won't,
I
grabbed
and flung them into the room.
Abigail's words have
sounds of
"I
to
she protested, fighting with the
Mercy Lewis, she ran
logs,
began
who was
ing to force her to sign the dreaded book. won't,
to
Maybe she and
to us as the
weird
"whoosh, whoosh,
actually saying
some-
the other girls wished that
-399^
Witch-
HUNT
they could
fly,
free souls.
The
that they could
might have heard of such
dom
to
be
like spirits, like
claim of the Quakers was that a person
could experience the divine
demned by
become
spirit directly.
beliefs,
even
elders. Perhaps the girls
as spirits
The
as views
girls
con-
wanted the free-
themselves and resented the sober
churchgoing adults who were their parents,
as well as
the people they accused. In acting out possession, per-
haps they were showing a yearning for freedom. At the
same time, though, they may have feared inner impulses they wanted to
demons seducing them and with those
let
that the very
loose actually were
that every time they toyed
they were blackening their souls.
spirits,
Abigail's "whish" suggests a mixture of desires that were
making
difficult for
young people
demanded by
their parents
it
the roles
to completely reject
either to
and
fit
into
their faith or
them.
This certainly seemed the case the next day, Sunday, when Lawson preached to his old congrega-
he spoke, some of the assembled began to
tion.
Even
as
have
fits.
Then, suddenly, Abigail interrupted and
spoke out:
"Now
young
was speaking in the voice of an adult male.
girl
Lawson began "It is a
long
stand up, and
to read,
name your
and Abigail went
text," she
complained. By
text."
The
a step further. all rights,
an
eleven- or twelve -year- old girl should be the most silent,
as
act
^lOOK-
one
most modest person in church. But by speaking afflicted
not merely
by as
spirits,
Abigail was
an elder, but
emboldened
as a critic.
to
In Salem
The Accuser: Ann Putnam Jr.
being afflicted by witches was now having very strange resuhs:
It
caused great pain, yet
to speak freely.
It
also allowed victims
was simultaneously agonizing and
liberating. Mrs. Bathshua Pope,
had joined the brigade of nity.
it
an older
woman who opportu-
accusers, saw her
As the sermon droned on she chimed
there
is
The
in,
"Now
enough of that." accusers were
now working
Martha Corey was in church always be
on
a
Sunday. But
it
together, in force.
that day, as she
soon appeared
would
that there
was more than one Martha there. Abigail told everyone to look up, for
beam, gers.
another Martha was seated high on
letting her yellow bird suckle
Ann Putnam Jr.
bird familiar a nail.
then joined
between her fin-
in, seeing
on Lawson's own hat, which was
The bird
a
another
resting
on
that Tituba introduced in her confes-
sion was appearing everywhere. If Tituba had been right
about the bird, what about the more terrifying aspects of her confession— the
man
in black, the nine witches,
the evil spirits flying through the air?
would appear in
Soon
they, too,
the visions of other accusers.
-53101
.,*^
I
..
^
.
^
CHAPTER
7'
V
The One and the
Many
^
k
i
Martha
On
COREY
Monday, March
21,
Martha
Corey was arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Once again the people of Salem came out in force to witness
her examination.
up
How would
against questioning?
a religious
Could
it
really
woman
stand
be that hidden
in the very heart of the church was a servant of Satan?
Martha began by asking
to pray.
The
ability to
recite the Lord's Prayer perfectly was a basic test for
witchcraft, as
Goody
we saw in Cotton Mather's dealings with
Glover. So Martha was staking her claim from
the start:
I
am
above suspicion, a devout woman, she
seemed
to
be saying. But Judge Hathorne was unmoved. Instead,
^105^
Witch-
HUNT
he challenged her again and again: "Why [do] you hurt these persons?"
TV
show,
He was
attacking,
like a
this
up and
reveal her true nature.
not the calm and
is
modern
a
badgering, provoking Martha,
trying to get her to slip
Though
prosecutor on
approach we
fair
expect of a judge, these hearings were not precisely tri-
They were information-gathering
als.
sessions.
The
judges had no more legal training than what they had
gained through
life
experience
as
leading
men
of their
community. Following the standard practice of the day, they
thought
a
tough, no-nonsense approach was
the best way to follow through
and
get to the truth.
came
to
good
at
be
on Tituba's confession
As Hathorne put
in court,
it
"We
That made them
a terror to evil-doers."
finding contradictions in testimony and com-
pletely unable to listen to
anyone who fought back,
even through prayer.
Martha stood before the court and the community stating
what must have seemed to be simple truths
about herself: to
"I
am an
innocent person.
do with witchcraft since
Woman." The chorus
I
was born.
I
I
never had
am
a
Gospel
of the afflicted shot back, "A
Gospel Witch." Hathorne ignored Martha's claims
and proceeded
to the issue of the clothes she was
wearing when the accusers saw her.
know asked.
How
could she
she would be questioned about that? the judge
Martha stumbled.
band had warned her
First she
in advance.
claimed her hus-
Then, when
it
was
revealed that he had denied doing this, she said she
H106t=r
The One and the
knew the
Many
were talking about her and she expected
girls
to be questioned.
In the verbal contest with the judge, Martha was cracking. Just then the afflicted began to speak out.
There were adult
at least
women,
ten of them by now, including four
three female servants,
who had been
at
and the three
the center of the trouble
girls
from
the
Ann Putnam Jr. Most were in the meetinghouse listening. One girl broke into the testimony: "There is a man whispering start,
Betty Parris, Abigail Williams,
and
in her [Martha's] ear."
"What did he the accused.
say to
"We must not
tracted children say,"
much
you?" Hathorne questioned believe
Martha
all
that these dis-
replied,
sounding very
modern parent or teacher. To the that so many accusers made the same
like a
the fact
court,
claims
suggested that they were telling the truth and that
Martha was traction,"
traction
lying.
"You charge
Hathorne responded.
when persons
upon you;
these children with dis-
this
is
"It is a
note of dis-
vary in a minute, but these fix
not the manner of distraction."
An
increasingly overwhelmed Martha could only answer,
"When
all
are against me, what [how] can
I
help it?"
In noting that the accusers were young— more preteens,
teenagers,
and young women than what we
would now consider "children," but in the main not yet full adults
—Martha
was appealing to the normal
standards of her community.
going elder was
much more
An
established church-
trustworthy than a young
^I07e-
Witch-
HUNT
who was
person,
emotions or
fantasies.
no good. Was
it
be "distracted," fooled by
likely to
But
this
argument did Martha
because the accusers were young and
their suffering was so extreme that
and the community
at large, to
plight ahead of their usual
There was
a
it
caused judges,
put sympathy for their
judgment?
kind of fury to the accusers'
fits,
which
was probably more likely to be intimidating to doubters than productive of deep sympathy. But there was another sense in which the accusers' youth did ure in the
trials.
Witches were
a
fig-
kind of inversion of
mothers—they fed foul pets with their
evil breasts
and
were particularly suspect in the death of infants. John
Milton was Paradise Lost
a
devout English Puritan whose epic
was
describes Hecate,
first
published in 1667.
queen of the witches,
riding through the Air she comes smiell
In
poem it
he
as "in secret,
Lur'd with the
/
of infant blood to dance with Lapland witches."
In a community that was fearing for
and concerned
that
its
on
to
demonic mother, was
a
its
young people,
given over to the devil,
dren, possessing them, taking they should be carrying anxiety about
on
a
kind of symbol of
everything that endangered the future.
human
political future
powerfully held religious tradi-
tions were not being passed witch, a
its
The
who was them
witch was a
stealing chil-
away, just
when
the faith. In this sense,
young people, an eagerness
to protect
and provide for them, may have overruled normal cautions.
'I^HIOS^
The One and the
may even
It
be, as
Mary Beth Norton
argues, that
young accusers were only believed when
the
sations were supported by reports,
adult males. If well-respected accusers
and reported
men
that their
now
As
their accu-
lost,
were
real,
girl,
but an estab-
fits
then the
man. at
Putnam house
the
a
few days before, during
her visit with Ann, Martha's efforts to appear devout
written by
observed the young
court would be heeding not just a lished
Many
woman
as a
calm,
clashed with the ever-rising extremes of
the accusers' behavior. Every time Martha bit her
some of the
afflicted
women and
girls
they were being bitten and would insist
ined to show the
hands together,
telltale
as
marks.
If
would howl
lip,
that
on being exam-
Martha rubbed her
any nervous person might do while
being questioned, more protests came from the audience and more demands to reveal the accusers' bat-
much
tered limbs. If Martha so
on her
rest
seat,
good Martha Corey
were
a shell
a
sitting in the
person, while her
above the crowd, pulling invisible strings. as if the
at
evil
against
a sea
It
was
meetinghouse shade floated
her puppet victims on
Or, seen from her perspective,
crowd were
and crashing
leaned forward to
screams came from the crowd.
as if
of
as
it
was
of anger and hatred rising
one lone individual. The truth of
the crowd versus that of the individual was a recurring issue in the
Salem
trials.
Feeding off of one another, the accusers were a
like
pack of wild animals, one darting ahead with some
-^.109S>
Witch-
HUNT
and the others rushing in
aggressive behavior
to fol-
low her lead. Mrs. Pope screamed that her very bowels
were being torn out by the witch, and she began to
Then
others started hurling
accusations at Martha,
as
they were the judges
directing the testimony.
Why
throw things
at
Martha.
the other witch spirits
if
wasn't Martha out with
who were gathering
the meetinghouse? Didn't she hear the calling
in front of
drum
beating,
man in black right there,
her? Wasn't the
whis-
pering in her ear? Wasn't the yellow bird drinking evil
juice
from between her
fingers that very
ment? The judges
its
move-
quickly looked to
see if there was any evidence of suck-
ling
marks on Martha's hands, but
the accusing girl said
it
was too
late.
Martha had already spirited away
a
pin—perhaps to draw blood for the
bird? — and
it
was found "sticking
upright" out of Martha's head.
What can we make of and
scars
these bites
and black-and-blue marks
and, especially, the pin? Pins kept
coming up hearing
in the trials. In a later
Ann Putnam Jr. would
that the specter of Though
it
no longer
claim
one accused witch,
exists, this bottle
was said to hold
pins that had been kept as evidence after they appeared
during the Salem trials and pretrial hearings. According to the very knowledgable Danvers town archivist Richard B. Trask, the shape of the pins shown here dates from the seventeenth century, so they well have
110
been actual
relics
from
the trials.
may
The One and the
How,
Elizabeth
stuck a pin in Ann's
hand even
Many
as
Elizabeth herself was being questioned. Years later the
Reverend Lawson reported in the wrists case
and arms of the
an accuser "had
upper and lower also
that these pins
lip
afflicted
and
one
that in
pin run through both her
a
when
she was called to speak."
He
claimed that invisible forces were able to bind up
some
their victims with real ropes and, in
cases,
hang them on hooks from which they had down.
One
accuser,
bound four
was
appeared
and had
to
to
even
be cut
Susannah Sheldon, apparently
times in two weeks by two
evil spirits
be cut free repeatedly by friends and
neighbors.
The wounds whole Salem
and props
are
story.
one of the defining
To
issues in the
the most skeptical, these injuries
are the clearest signs of a conspiracy.
someone shows up
at a legal
her hand or through her there intentionally.
The
If
hearing with a pin stuck in
lip,
it
accusers
confidently asked to display their
must have been put
would not have
wounds
so
unless they
knew they were there — especially because they claimed, the
wounds
matched the teeth patterns of the accused. To
get even
and apparently the court agreed,
an approximate match to a
a bite pattern requires
handy means of faking very particular
one a
that
is
bound up
hook by
with a thick cord and
scars.
left to
having
And no
dangle
on
accident.
Staging events
According
such
to the critic
as
these
takes
planning.
Robert Calef, in one case the
'^^^^^
Witch-
HUNT
accusers were actually caught trying to use faked evi-
dence in court. During the
trial
Good one
of Sarah
accuser claimed to have been stabbed by the witch's spirit
prove tally
form, and she produced the broken knife to it.
But a young
broken
man testified that he had acciden-
away in a place near the accuser.
The
the accuser for lying but did not go
of her testimony.
rest
and threw
that very knife the day before
it
court criticized
on
to question the
The many mentions of bites and
pins suggest that this kind of fraud happened fre-
quently
—unless you believe the accusers'
ghosts were flying
around Salem doing
Martha Corey had no reason hearing to indict herself.
It
claims that evil
their worst.
to bring a
pin to the
seems possible that
as the
crowd heated up, with people egging one another on, accusers If
made
Martha had
use of everything they saw around them.
pin in her hair, suddenly
a
it
became
a
pin removed from her hand. There were no cameras to
when
record what she looked
like
one waved
arm
a scratched
she arrived. If some-
in the dark
meetinghouse, how carefully could
There were no dental records expected to see
No one
may
aside
events in Salem,
it
to check.
from Lawson—twelve his
own
life
of the
be examined?
What people
been what they
well have
when
room
saw.
years after the
was going poorly and
he had every reason to want to justify his role in the
trials
reported the most extreme cases involving ropes and pins.
The
accusers
who most
closely
matched Lawson by claim-
ing to have repeatedly found Susannah Sheldon tied up
ail2fcS-
The One and the
also testified that
brooms and and
their houses by spirits
poles were whisked out of
all, it is
hard to judge them.
it
hard to believe that someone came to
it
in at
some
and no one noticed,
later
time without attract-
ing any attention. Even the broken knife seems
picked up
planned
at
the
last
a hear-
lips
ing with a pin stuck through her
or that she jabbed
The
in nearby trees.
left
strangeness of the claims makes
After
Many
moment, not
prop
like a
part of a carefully
strategy.
However they got important
as a sign
there, the
wounds and pins
of the increasing boldness
—of the
haps consuming mania
—or
are
per-
accusers. Abigail inter-
rupted a sermon and mocked a minister; Mrs. Pope threw things in the middle of a solemn hearing; someone risked claiming a pin
had magically appeared in court;
the bite marks were flaunted so often, the accusers must
have been very confident that they would be convincing;
man
the
in black joined the yellow bird in migrating
from Tituba's confession
When
questioned by
later said there
into a
common
reference.
doubter, one of the
was nothing to the accusations:
it
for sport, [we] must have
it
began, the game was
now
some
girls
did
"[I]
sport." If that
is
how
completely out of control.
The
accusers either were carrying out a malicious plot
that
drew in more and more conspirators or were in
highly charged state of
mind
and further excited the
in which each backed
others.
a
up
There was no truth
except their passion to be heard and their drive to
expand their range of destruction.
-^ii3e-
Witch-
HUNT
"Confess and give
GLORY
to
GOD"
if
Martha Corey was the
test case
of the accusers' power, Rebecca Nurse was the proof.
There was
a bit
of gossip about Rebecca: Her mother
had once been accused of being case never
went
to court,
in families, which accusations.
And
many
a witch.
Though
that
believed witchcraft ran
made Rebecca more vulnerable
there
is
a
to
record of conflict over a
neighbor's pigs wandering onto her land that might suggest
Rebecca had an argumentative
Rebecca was also known
member. According
when
she was
first
as
an
active,
to her friends
streak.
But
devout church
and supporters,
told that the accusers were mention-
ing her, she said she grieved for the Reverend Parris
%>M:^..^tmr' r The Nurse family
lived on three hundred acres of land in this area, and Francis Nurse prospered. This home probably was built not long after Rebecca Nurse was tried and convicted. It is not hard to picture a house such as this as a boat, an ark planted on land.
and with
-^\\^)^r
his family in their afflictions. all
"She pitied them
her heart," even though she herself was
frail
The One and the
and
ill.
She was said
to
Many
be equally humble in her
acceptance of God's will and her concern for others,
even her accusers.
For the Putnams, Rebecca Nurse's good reputation
may have been hard
Her husband had worked
to take.
himself up from nothing to become farmer.
He prospered
by his
own
a
substantial
efforts
during the
very years of the Putnams' frustrations
Then he joined
pointments. leaders
who opposed
and disap-
Town
with the Salem
the family in the struggles over
the choice of a minister for Salem Village. In ways, then, Rebecca was a perfect
many
symbol of the forces
threatening the Putnams and their ways. She was close as they could
come
Mary Veren Putnam with-
to
out naming her. In court
it
would be decided which
brand of Puritanism would rule in Salem: the
made
This time attack.
On
it
was the elder
Wednesday of
Sr. was in a
attack at the very
the Putnams.
bad way, apparently under
moment
similar to those suffered by
Once
visit
of his
stiff,
visit,
led the
week in
that busy third
the reverend to pray with her.
dren: She was so
community.
Ann Putman who
March, Deodat Lawson returned to
as if
self-
individual speaking for herself or the vengeful
clan with the ever-growing support of the
Ann
as
spectral
and she asked
Her symptomis were
one of the Goodwin
chil-
"she could not be bended."
she could move, her legs and arms flailed about,
she were fighting
someone
be gone! Be gone! Be gone!
"
off.
she
"Goodwife Nurse,
demanded.
Ann and
-^115&
Witch-
HUNT
the invisible spirit then began a furious argument. "I
know,
I
know what
angry God.
I
am
will
make you
have, but
it is
make you
sure that will
gone, do not torment me.
afraid: the wrath of
It is
clothed with the
white robes of Christ's righteousness,"
what as
Ann was
one
really
set
that
Ann
cried.
what the specter wanted, and
fighting to protect, was her soul. But
if,
of historians has argued, Rebecca Nurse
stood for Mary Veren Putnam and
all
the suc-
Salem Town people who were rising
cessful
Be
know what you would
I
out of your reach.
Lawson assumed
afraid.
Putnams suffered in Salem
Village,
then
as the
a very differ-
ent battle was raging in Ann's confused mind. Yelling "I
know what you would have was Ann screaming "
those sneaky, stealing
evil
people who seemed to her to be
from her family without
Was she pleading with them not this interpretation
at
is
ever being stopped.
to take everything? If
then to the agony- racked
true,
Putnam household,
the
threatened to erase
the family had built. Yet other
all
scholars think that there
engage in
this
spirit
is
of Rebecca Nurse
far too little evidence to
kind of speculation about the inner
meaning of Ann's
cries.
Whatever
Ann
Sr.'s
motives
were, the damage was done. Rebecca Nurse would have to speak for herself in court.
The
scene was always the same: the group against
the individual. Judge
Nurse
as
Hathorne respected Goodwife
he had no previous prisoner and spoke to
her with care and consideration. But
-aii6&
first
Abigail and
The One and the
Ann Jr.
testified against her.
Rebecca responded,
my Eternal Father I am clear my innocency. The
can say before
God
will
Rebecca
'
a
come
pray
back,
"I
innocent, and
judge offered
path to rejoining the group, saying every-
one there hoped she was guilty,
Many
God
truly innocent, "but if you be
discover [expose] you." Confess and
he seemed to plead.
Don't stand against
us;
don't
force us to convictjou.
As Tituba's
case
had shown, an accused witch who
confessed was no longer of interest to the accusers or the court. She or he was put in
jail,
but there were no
immediate further punishments. Although, in the end,
all
the confessed witches risked being executed,
that ultimate fate
would come in the
future, whereas
confessing would end the heated clash in court. Just then a
man in the crowd jumped in,
when Rebecca had come had
felt
way
a
lynch
Ann
into his house recently, he
something weird. Three to one.
crowd was itching
Sr.
mob
saying that
to get involved,
And
the
throwing words the
might throw stones.
began
to speak, if speaking
was in a battle for her
life.
She
felt
it
was, for she
she was being ripped
apart by ferocious beasts, in "the paws of those roaring lions
and the jaws of those tearing bears." "Did you not
bring the Black
Man
with you?" she
demanded of
defendant. "Did you not bid
me
Ann
overcome
spat out before being so
tempt
God and that she
be carried out of the courtroom. But by now three others were screaming, wailing,
and
the
die?"
had
to
at least
falling to the
-^117K-
Witch-
HUNT
Once
floor.
again the accused witch seemed to be a
puppet master, for every motion Rebecca made had sick reflection in
more and more people being
a
bitten,
pinched, bruised, and tormented, howling
as if their
The roaring of
the crowd
backs were being broken. built
and
Lawson, passing by outside, heard
built, until
and noise." The count was
the "hideous screech
was
all
No one
against one.
witch and
who was
who was
saint,
accused, except that one
tell
else
It
anymore who was
accuser and
woman was
questioned and everyone
who was
before them being
was in the
mob
against
"The whole assembly was struck with consterna-
her. tion,
and they were
them were under
afraid that those that sat next to
the influence of witchcraft."
Hathorne, barely able ate.
could
over.
"Do you not
see
what
to a
solemn condition these are
in?" he offered, translating, to the victim. Give me a way, calm them and savejou.
for forgiveness.
be heard, tried to medi-
as
it
from the mob
were,
he seemed to be saying,
But the crowd was not in
Two more people
rose
up
a
to
mood
to display
their afflictions.
Rebecca Nurse had nothing new to
knows
I
have not hurt them.
The drama now had imploring judge, the
I
say.
"The Lord
am an innocent person."
three sides: the wild crowd, the
solitary accused.
Hathorne began
almost to plead with Rebecca to see her way out:
"Confess and give glory to God." Rebecca refused. is all false, 1
am
he made. Until,
^118}3-
clear," at
"It
and she rejected every overture
the very
end of the
day, she finally
The One and the
understood the deal the judge wanted
responded
directly to his offer:
Many
make and
to
"Would you have me
belie myself?"
The Puritan conscience would Being true
to herself,
no
tolerate
lies.
Rebecca Nurse could not take
the judge's bargain. But in the Salem meetinghouse a different side of the Puritan experience
now ruled:
the
consensus of the group. Confession had always been the very worst thing to do in a witchcraft case, a sure
path to being executed.
Now
was something
it
else, a
way to accept the judgment of the commiunity and join its
cause.
self
was
What Tituba
now
give glory to
figured out
a role available to
how
to
do for her-
anyone: "Confess and
God."
Rebecca was held for further examination. The
Reverend Lawson was not in the room testimony because he had
a
sermon
to witness
her
to prepare.
He No
was to come in after the day's hearings and speak.
one could miss the growing passions of the
mob nor
quite ignore the questions the accused kept raising.
Like Sarah Osborne, Rebecca Nurse objected that
"I
my shape."
In
cannot help other words,
it,
the Devil
evil
may appear
in
could appear in any form
it
chose
including that of an innocent person. This was
a very
serious issue, for the entire weight of the evidence against the accused lay in the ghostly attacks that
seemed
to
be spreading across Salem. Any serious
thinker and leader of the
community had
evidence that was subject to so
many
to analyze
questions and
-^3119^
Witch-
HUNT
seemed
yet
On
ior.
tied to such undeniably terrifying behav-
March
the afternoon of
barely recovered
from
facing a crowd
Q,^:,
convulsions, the Reverend
its
Lav^son had his turn.
Lawson was
a rather ineffectual minister
sad history with Salem, for his wife
He
died there.
sermon pray."
Sounding
no
about the
ills
"fires
on
to
Goodwin, he urged
his
understand that they had
He knew
themselves.
firsthand
of contention" that divided Salem
Town and Salem Village, for those him his job. But he did not take
disputes had cost
the next step of
directly challenging the accusers. After
the very people
contradictory
clear advice but to "pray, pray,
a bit like John
former congregation
a
daughter had
a
gave a well-meaning,
that offered
brought these
and
who had
all,
who had supported him.
first
warned
and
to "use their bodies
that the devil was eager to sign
sentations, to affright
they were
Instead, he
up
followers
and minds, shapes and repreand
afflict
others."
Then he
backed off by arguing that the devil would not be able to appear in the
seemed well be
to say, mindjour own
among
One clear.
form of the
sins.
But,jes, the
careful,
evil spirits
he
could
us.
minister was ineffectual.
Three days
later the
The other was
Reverend Samuel
whose very home the whole opinion.
truly saved. Be
crisis
all
Parris, in
had begun, gave
He took as his theme Jesus'
too
his
knowledge that one
of his twelve closest followers was a betrayer. Parris was telling his congregation that even the
^^120&
most seemingly
The One and the
Many
pious person, even a very pillar of the community, could
be in league with the
devil.
In this he was agreeing with
accusations against Martha
the
Corey and Rebecca
Nurse. "Christ knows," he warned, "how many Devils
among
us,
wither [whether] one or ten or twenty!"
Parris did not think the devil could use the spirit of a
good person. But
truly
tion by avoiding
it.
his
sermon answered
Since everyone
that ques-
—everyone
sitting
next to you, everyone praying with you in church, every-
one you have ever known and trusted— might infected with
evil,
what did
it
well be
matter that the devil could
only the specters of those he had corrupted?
use
Corruption,
rot,
and
evil
had penetrated everywhere.
Parris was the first pastor to have the
church
as his
did not evil,
he
let
own, no longer tied to Salem Town.
down
said,
his supporters.
The
in their
Men now God and his
was the "lust of covetousness."
Putnams were searching for the
own
He
leading edge of
"prefer farms and merchandise above" laws. If the
Salem Village
family nightmares, Parris
face of evil
named
as the
source of witchcraft the very kind of business success that was distinguishing
Salem Town. According
minister, Salem Village's challenge was not so carefully weigh
dubious evidence
and
as to
to
much
its
to
be on hyper
back against
evils
everywhere. If he did not specifically endorse the
mob
alert,
to suspect
all,
to fight
scene in the meetinghouse, he urged his listeners to be
even more ferocious in the future.
As the reverend's words thundered from the
pulpit,
-ai2iK-
Witch-
HUNT
Rebecca Nurse's out, flinging the
the
sister
Sarah Cloyce got up and walked
door shut behind her. Or was
wind slammed the door
against
an angry woman, frustrated tone?
at
its
it
that
frame? Was she
the minister's harsh
Or was she a witch exposed by a probing sermon?
The
accusers
lars,
joined by John Indian and two other men, began
had no doubt, and soon the young regu-
to file complaints against Sarah. least in ister,
-1^122.^
It
was clear
now that
Salem Village the crowd, supported by
was in charge.
its
at
min-
CHAPTER
VI
From Hearings
TO TRIAIS t^
a
al
I
\
'i
•#/ ti
.^
*.-'
r*
'-i
I
''Alas, alas,
alas,
WITCHCRAFT"
arrested for witchcraft.
Five
At
least
The
leaders of
had
been
one more obvious sus-
and
pect had been uncovered,
inflamed.
people
a
whole town was
New England
realized that
they would have to deal with the crisis in Salem Village.
But who would those leaders be? Increase Mather was
due back from England shortly with
a
new governor,
bringing new laws for the colony. Until the ship carrying
them docked. New England was
limbo.
had
It
had
officials
sixty years
of
its
and
own
courts, laws
and
well as learned ministers, such as
in a strange kind of
all
of English law.
It
cases to consult, as
Cotton Mather,
to
-^125^-
Witch-
HUNT
And
give advice.
yet
it
had no certainty over what new
rules might arrive with the tide.
The prosecution of Sarah Cloyce new
quickly yielded
suspects, including Elizabeth Proctor, the wife of
John Proctor and famous play
the central figure in Arthur Miller's
The Crucible.
Sarah and Elizabeth were two
more well-respected churchgoing women
similar to
Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, and doubts and resentments about those being accused began to be
openly expressed in Salem. In time petitioners
group of
a large
would approach the court in defense of
Rebecca, and there were mutterings of disbelief
rumors went round about
Elizabeth. Nevertheless, the
next hearing was scheduled for April
and
II,
Judges Hathorne and Corwin would have
deputy governor of
this
time
a distin-
sit
with them, including
New
England, Thomas
guished panel of five judges to i
the
as
Danforth, and the devout, learned merchant Samuel Sewall.
Inasmuch
ship, these
men
as
New England had political leader-
were there to see for themselves what
was really going on in Salem.
Danforth tried something new. Instead of ques-
^
tioning the accused, leaving ^
cues
from the flow of
attack,
them
to the
crowd
and pick
its
he spoke directly to the accusers.
to state
to take
its
moment
to
It
was up to
what they had experienced and then have
the accused respond.
^
talk
it
Now
the accusers
This
would have
to
did change the
speak
as individuals, too.
mood
in the courtroom for a while, but due to a twist
-^126^
tactic
— From Hearings to Trials
of
fate, it
had only limited
effect.
For the
Danforth questioned was John Indian, and wife, Tituba, he
knew
his part.
like his
John had no trouble
indicting Sarah and Elizabeth, even
when Sarah
back her own challenge, "Oh, you are
The other
person
first
shot
a grievous liar."
accusers started out carefully, respond-
One
ing to questions but not taking over the meeting.
had
a
but
fit,
it
did not spread. Another reported that
she had seen about forty witches meeting
more than Tituba had seen and
that Sarah
anti-church.
visions of evil.
elaborated
who
devil,
a variation in the
"a white
man"
"in
somehow
image was very
like those in
the opposite, for this was the
not God. Mary Walcott told the judges that she
had seen him
"made
on
deacons in their
led a "great multitude in white
glittering robes." Mercy's
Scripture, yet
like
Mercy Lewis had seen
a glorious place"
book
listed in the devil's
and Elizabeth were
A third
—thirty- one
all
too, "a great
many
the witches to tremble."
times,"
The
and
that
he
story was build-
ing now, the accusers gaining confidence that even with these important
hold the
stage.
men
in the
Mixing angels and
room, they could devils in a vision
"glittering robes"
may have been what court was
for the accusers:
They could scream and
could seem to
they could see sacred sights, even
doing
fly,
this destroyed the lives
neighbors.
yell,
and reputations of
And no one would
of
like
they if
their
stop them.
Perhaps Sarah Cloyce sensed the changing mood, for she asked for
some water and then slumped
in her
ai27K-
Witch-
HUNT
chair in a faint. That was the signal for chaos to break
Now
loose.
the
visions followed.
They saw
prison to join "her
of
spread across the afflicted, and the
fits
sister
cries, bites,
fits,
Sarah's spirit flying off to
Nurse." In a
moment the waves
and screams would
the doubting judges and
damning
crest, silencing
the accused.
"Elizabeth Proctor," Danforth's voice thundered
moment. He made over.
He went
broke the
sure Elizabeth
the charges, but he also
ers
He
"speak the truth."
out,
would not
spell
knew the let
of the
gravity of
the accusers take
back to questioning accused and accus-
one by one. "Speak the truth," he demanded of Mary Walcott.
"You must speak the
God another "I
day.
truth, as
you
Mary Walcott! Does
never saw her so
as to
answer
will
this
it
before
woman hurt
be hurt by her," Mary
answered meekly.
"Mary [Mercy] Lewis! Does she hurt you?" Silence.
"Ann Putnam, does
she hurt you?" Silence.
"Abigail Williams, does she hurt you?" Silence
her hand was thrust in her own mouth. "John! Does she hurt you?"
"This
is
the
woman
that
came in her
gown] and choked me," John the crowd. Like Tituba,
was only one way out for
insisted.
And
^128^
on
it,
and find
he revived
John must have known a slave
allies.
there
being questioned by
master: Create a story that worked, insist rate
shift [night-
on
it,
a
elabo-
From Hearings to Trials
John's confidence spread. Soon action, sure that EUzabeth hurt her. *'
sir,
The
fits
woman
Abigail Williams! Does this
"Yes,
Ann Jr.
was back in
began again.
hurt you?"
often."
Danforth's efforts to challenge the accusers had almost worked, and then
had collapsed.
it
Elizabeth Proctor tried to remonstrate with her accusers by reminding them, as Danforth had done, of
God. "Dear child
.
child," she pleaded.
.
there
.
accusers.
came back, stronger than band, John Proctor, was
He
another judgment, dear
She was answered with convulsions
and screams from the
wizard.
is
ever.
sitting
And now the visions Now Elizabeth's hus-
up in the beams,
a vile
was about to attack Mrs. Pope. Suddenly,
her feet flew up in the
air.
"[Goodwife,] what do you say ... to these things?" "I
know
not,
I
am
innocent."
The courtroomi was John
a
on
Proctor's spirit was
another accuser, and screamed.
A man
as
rose to
scene of rising hysteria. the loose, going after
one noticed him, the other testify^
that he
had just seen
the spirits of both Proctors along with other
known
witches in his room. Completely confident, the two
young
girls,
Ann Putnam
Jr.
and Abigail Williams,
walked up to Elizabeth Proctor and swung only to have their
fists
blocked by her
at her,
spirit.
As
Abigail's fingers trailed against Elizabeth's clothes,
seemed her fingertips cried out,
and
Ann
sizzled, as if
it
burned. Abigail
collapsed.
-S129S*
Witch-
HUNT
A day that had begun with doubting judges and the leaders of the colony
coming to
test a local issue
ended
with the crowd triumphant. Not only had they suc-
ceeded in bringing down two more enemies, in court,
under the a third.
see
how
He
later
eyes of the judges, but they
had
also attacked
Samuel Sewall was convinced. "'Twas awful
to
the afflicted persons were agitated," he wrote.
added,
''Vae [alas], vae, vae,
witchcraft."
There was no doubt about the law in Salem;
it
was
the rule of the pack.
To hear and
DECIDE
By the time
Sir William Phips, the
new governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in Boston
on May
arrived
14, twenty-seven accused witches
were housed in Boston
jails.
To gain control of
colony, Phips had to deal with the cases
at
the
once. "The
prisons," he later wrote to England, were "full of
people committed upon suspicion of witchcraft."
Born
made
in Maine, Phips grew
up in the New World and
his reputation as a fighter
sunken Spanish
ships.
The Puritan
hardly have asked for a governor his predecessor, the hated Sir
Phips was not have been
a
and scavenger for leadership could
more
different
Edmond
strong political leader.
more concerned with
from
Andros. Yet
He
seems to
pleasing strong fac-
tions in
England and New England, and then protect-
ing his
own
issues raised
^130^
reputation, than in tackling the serious
by the witchcraft
trials.
From Hearings to Trials
Phips found
a
colony that
was "miserably harassed with a
most horrible witchcraft."
To remedy
the situation, he
—hastily if not surprisingly— that convicted witches ruled
would be executed, and he asked
nine leading
function
and William stoughton, the ambitious
the
as
Terminer
men
to
court of Oyer
and
[Hearing
Determining] to hold the
trials.
judge who led the new court of
He named
Oyer and Terminer.
and judge William Stoughton then created
a
the respectcd minister
as the chief justice
and
panel that included Hathorne and
Gorwin, to ensure continuity; four prominent merchants, including tary
Samuel
man. Though
juries,
actual decisions
the judges
influence
on
the
Sewall; a doctor;
would have
and
a mili-
would be made by
a decisive
trials.
Almost immediately, the undertow of doubt about the cases that was
surfacing in Salem
conversations in the
,
new
Saltonstall
made court.
was
itself felt
Nathaniel
one of the
judges appointed to the new Samuel Sewall confirmed that there were witches and helped to sit judgment over them. But his
him after the end of the and he ultimately asked forgiveness for the sin of having been part of the court that hanged witches.
conscience continued to bother trials,
-3131^
Witch-
HUNT
court.
An
experienced judge and politician, he decided
to interview
one of the accused witches himself. Her
name was Rachel
Clinton, and the evidence against her
included the kind of strange stories that make these cases read like fairy night
tales.
Thomas Boarman claimed
when Rachel was under
thing like a
cat,
suspicion, he saw
which changed into
some-
a little dog.
As he
managed
always
chased after the creature in the dark, to stay the
one
that
it
same distance ahead, until suddenly TTiomas
saw something
like a giant turtle
running rapidly beside
him. The minute he thought of Rachel, both the scampering, shape -changing spirit dog and the speedy tortoise
disappeared. Faced with evidence such as
this,
Saltonstall objected to the charges against three of the
on
the
first
resigned altogether from the
new
court.
women, perhaps
sat
in
Saltonstall' s speedy exit
from the
trial,
and then
trials
shows that
powerful people were skeptical about the accusations
from very
early on.
However compelling the accusers
might have been when gathered in
however loudly the
local ministers
a
meetinghouse,
proclaimed that
great evil was afoot in Salem, another voice was itself
heard in Massachusetts.
It
a
making
belonged to those who
found no messages in thunder, nothing remarkable in the fears of a
man
battling night shadows
on
a
dark
road, and nothing compelling about howling, bleeding,
fainting accusers.
Even
claiming to be knocked witches,
^132^
skeptics were
as
young women were
down by
the
evil
eyes
of
questioning by what laws of
— From Hearings to Trials
physics that could be possible.
be seen
as
an effort by
ways, magical beliefs, a
a
The
belonged
to a small
Salem can
majority attached to
and
doubting
minority— a voice
folk-
its
drown out
religious faith to
modern-sounding,
very
racket in
voice
that
that nonetheless
was already too strong to be ignored.
Even the most devout ministers saw themselves highly rational
men and
as
were troubled by the kind of
evidence being used in Salem.
When
another justice
turned to Cotton Mather for guidance in the coming cases,
Mather took
a
guarded, cautious line. If
were attacking people, he wrote, sible that devils
were
at fault,
spirits
was certainly pos-
it
not the accused witches.
This was exactly what Sarah Osborne and Rebecca
Nurse had
said in court.
contradiction lay
at
And
as
we have seen,
the heart of the whole Salem case
from the beginning. Why accept the cake test evil
if it
made
this
results of the rye
use of the devil's power?
ghosts to give away their true nature?
Still,
could not entirely dismiss what seemed
whelming evidence of
witchcraft.
He
Why
trust
Mather
like
over-
suggested using
spectral evidence as a kind of hint, a warning, a scent
of evil that would have to be confirmed by tough questioning, by examining the accused for telltale signs that they suckled ideally
their
familiars,
and ultimately
—by a valid confession.
One
of the tragedies of Salem may have been that
great ministers like
Cotton Mather were in an impossible
bind, for they believed in reason and in witchcraft. As the
•a
133^
Witch-
HUNT
accusations mounted, they faced an ever
more
difficult
choice with ever-higher stakes: Follow your reasoning
mind and
challenge the clearest outbreak of demonic
New England had
ever faced; or follow your faith
evil
and
perhaps consign innocent people to death.
One dead: bridget
BISHOP The
new court was
first case to
be heard by the
the easiest. Bridget Bishop had a repu-
tation for witchcraft that went back at least twenty years. Like
Sarah Good, she was exactly the kind of
person who was brought frequently to craft charges
on witch-
trial
but who, previously, had generally gone
free for lack of
good evidence. When Judge Hathorne
pressed Bridget to confess, she responded with the
kind of defiance that had helped her and other accused witches in the past. "I
[which would life."
mean
That was now
Seven years
am
you would]
that
exactly the
house Bridget used to
.
.
.
I
am
a
witch
take away
wrong approach
earlier, at least
testimony they gave, two a
not here to say
my
to take.
according to the new
men who
were tearing down
in had
found rag puppets
live
with pins stuck in them hidden in the walls. Like what
we
call
"voodoo
witches were
dolls," these
known
to use to
tance. For historians
who
witches in Salem, this
is
others question
harm people
at a dis-
believe there were actual
a key piece
why the workers
a startling discovery earlier,
-^134 Bf-
puppets were the tools
of evidence. But
didn't
when
mention such
they had the pup-
From Hearings to Trials
pets
on hand
to
submit
evidence, and they point
as
out that the hearing records are
some
full
of old rumors,
stretching back twenty years,
which people
dredged up whenever witchcraft. vate,
When
neighbor was accused of
a
Bridget's
body was examined
women found
experienced
in pri-
clear evidence of the
oddly formed extra breast witches developed to feed their familiars.
Though
a
second search produced the
opposite result, no one asked to reconcile the two tests.
Instead, people practically lined
up
to testify to
having been magically hurt by Bridget.
For
all
crux of the case was the
drawn from
the evidence
the tortures of the afflicted. As
still
new court had been
afflicted
had been,
John Indian had horseback.
poor man
if
gathering, the behavior of the
anything, turning
a fit
He clamped
his teeth
sitting in front of
on
the neck of the a ghostly
stick.
Ann Putnam Jr. and
opened up new
accusers by seeming to be
someone on
him, wailing that
stakes rose again in court.
Abigail Williams had
more extreme.
while riding with
Bridget Bishop was attacking with a
The
village gossip, the
struck
possibilities for the
down when
they
approached Elizabeth Proctor. They no longer had to claim there was a specter present doing her bidding. Now, it
seemed, the
evil forces
flowed directly from the person
seated in front of them. According to Cotton Mather's later report, at Bridget's trial "she
did but
cast
her eyes on
them, they were presently [immediately] struck down; and this in
such a
manner as there could be no
collusion in the
^135;
Witch-
HUNT
business." vision to
A witch,
now
it
knock down her
evil
and only
she,
accusers.
But
she,
"Upon the touch of her hand upon
could also heal them.
them, when they
appeared, could use her
lay in their
swoon they would immedi-
ately revive." Bridget's evil eye
were no victims to respond to
it.
worked even when there
Under guard of her jail-
she glanced at the meetinghouse that hosted so
ers,
hearings, something crashed,
materialized in a
reported.
It
a
board
with nails
filled
new space. Or at least that is what Mather
might have been a windy day in May, too.
Judge Stoughton's charge justices
and
many
showed how the
demonstrations they had seen
the
filtered
to the jury
through their experience in law and the advice they had received
from Cotton Mather. According
Brattle, a critic
who
lived
through the
to
trials
and most
clearly expressed the rational, skeptical point
Stoughton completely ignored specifically said that
posed victims
it
all
caution.
Thomas of view,
The judge
did not matter whether the sup-
actually experienced the afflictions they so
loudly demonstrated in court, so long as they were suffering
from something
and consumed, wasted,
etc."
The judge confirmed
rule of the majority. So long as
miserable, so long as one
fit
confirmed another,
another screamed just to be heard or that
likely
enough
as a
the
many people were visibly
not matter that one person exaggerated a
broken knife
pined
that ''tended to their being
bit
it
did
or that
a third
used
prop. Something was wrong, and
it
a
was
that the accused witch was responsible.
Following these instructions, then, the jury con-
^136^
From Hearings to Trials
victed Bridget Bishop. She was official
witch in Salem, and
One ous,
pronounced
on June lO
the
first
she was executed.
dead, twenty-six in prison. This was a seri-
and ominous, moment. The leading ministers of
the colony, led by both Increase
and Cotton Mather,
could not
on without taking
let
the executions go
stand on the
"The Return of Several
evidence.
Ministers," which they published
on June
very opposite of what we might expect leaders.
a
They were completely
15,
was the
from Puritan
against
the
noise,
clamor, and chaos of the hearings, they wrote. They did not trust victims
who claimed
to be
knocked down
by a witch's glance or healed by her touch. They specifically rejected the test of reciting the Lord's
Prayer that Cotton himself had used with
Goody
Glover. Finally and firmly, they settled the question
of spectral evidence:
"It is
an undoubted and noto-
rious thing that a
demon
appear, even to
purposes, in the shape of an inno-
cent, yea,
voice,
learned the
the
and
ill
may, by God's permission,
a virtuous
man." Speaking with one
most serious, most devout, and most
men
in the colony dismissed the conduct
main evidence of the
The Salem witch with Bridget Bishop
witchcraft trials.
crisis its
could have ended there,
one victim. But the ministers
were perhaps feeling their way with
a
new govern-
ment. They ended their statement with graph that
left
and
the court
on
its
a last
para-
own. Be careful, they
warned, but finish up what you have started: "We
.
.
.
^^3^^
Witch-
HUNT
humbly recommend unto
the
government the speedy
and vigorous prosecution of such themselves obnoxious,
have rendered
as
according to the direction
given in the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes
of the English nation, for the detection of witchcraft."
And
so,
by
midsummer of
1692, the Salem
crisis
was starting to splinter the Massachusetts colony into five distinct First,
camps and one group not
yet
heard from.
in Salem, there was the growing clan of accusers
and second, one by one, the lonely voices of the accused. Thirdly, there was the voice of the govern-
ment, expressed by the judges of the court of Oyer and
Terminer and led by Judge Stoughton, which read English law
even
if
as
confirming the
validity of the wild
they were questionable in
some
details.
fits,
Fourth
were the ministers, wavering, having real doubts about the evidence, but unwilling to stand against a concept
of witchcraft that they believed in and a government they were eager to influence.
And
finally, there
were
the clear-eyed doubters, the Nathaniel Saltonstalls,
Thomas
Brattles,
and Robert
Galefs,
who saw nothing
in the trials but superstition, melodrama,
destruction of innocent victims. yet
The one
and the
faction not
heard from were those successful merchants — the
Salem Town leaders and their peers in Boston—who
would soon
see the accusations of their
enemies com-
ing closer and closer to them.
Supported by the court, the accusers were the most
-H138K>
From Hearings to Trials
confident force. the
It is
possible that this surge was fed by
ever-greater involvement of accusers,
such
as
Mercy Lewis, who had experienced the horrors of the Indian wars in Maine.
Many of
the judges had been
responsible for botched campaigns and other military failures in that region. If
able to point out
be seen
as the
screaming young people were
demons
in
human form who might
cause of the colony's insecure borders,
those judges would be only too likely to agree. And, just
now, the Salem pack was racing toward
its
moment
of triumph.
-^139^
f
^
y is^
^,
i.,'r
r^
f
f
^w
%%
i.%
CHAPTER
VII
^.
%•
r
The Man in gAtt'?f**^«.
Sf
8t,.i-*'y
Black
y-
#-
Witch-
HUNT
have been observed in those suffering from one disease
or another.
Most
recently, there have
that seek to
been books,
like this
one,
draw on and meld existing research. The
best of these
is
Larry Gragg's The Salem
biographer of Samuel Parris, Gragg
Witch
Crisis.
A
quite familiar
is
with both the original sources and the later studies,
and he
gives a readable,
informed picture of what took
place. Elaine G. Breslaw's Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem
an effort
kind of biography of this crucial actor in
at a
drama.
the
It
woman who
the
combines
detailed
history,
social
and speculation in trying
research,
is
to bring into focus
was so important to the
trials
but
who
disappeared from history after they ended.
While researching this book, tant
new
I
learned of an impor-
Norton. She generously informed
me
of an
had published, "Finding the Devil in the Salem Witch
Trials,"
which allowed
her ideas. Then, just stages,
I
as
had the chance
me
light
between
on
a key
the
trials.
article she
Details of the
to get a sense of
my book went to read her In
Remarkably, Norton has managed to
new
Mary Beth
study of Salem by the historian
into
its
final
the Devil's Snare.
an entirely
cast
By researching connections
group of accusers and severe
clashes with
Wabanaki people in Maine, she has supplied
a
context
other historians only grasped in outline. This allowed
her to make sense of accusations that had previously
seemed random,
and
-^2181
to reinterpret pressures
on
to take the accusers' visions seriously.
the judges,
Born out of
Explaining Salem
her interest in right, this
women and
blend of a feminist orientation with
historical scope
is
certain to
become
for the next generation of scholars. as
our own concerns make us look
ways, I
I
am
sure
know that
gave
me
world in
new
a necessary
And at
a
broad
book
in the future,
the world in
new
schools of interpretation will arise.
the terrorist attacks of September
a fresh sense of a
own
girls as actors in their
how
differently
II,
200I,
one views the
time of crisis. As we examine our own ways of
experiencing the world, we may well learn more about the accusers, judges, and victims of 1692.
'^219 K-
APPENDIX
THE CRUCIBLE, Witch-hunt, and Religion: Crossing Points of In classrooms throughout play The Crucible
is
Many
this land,
Histories
Arthur Miller's
treated as a kind of direct view across
the centuries into the hearts and minds of the Puritans
and farmers of colonial New England. That take.
And yet the
the attention
it
play
gets.
is
a brilliant creation, well
The
real question that
preoccupying teachers and students such a compelling portrait of
not draw
its
1692 What
is
.
a
is
power from
a
is
why
mis-
worth
should be
The Crucible
witch-hunt
if
it
is
does
insight into the events of
the truth that the play captures
if
it is
not
the specifics of the Salem trials?
The answers
to these
questions make Miller's creation
all
more
relevant
to
young people now,
attacks,
than
it
the
in the wake of the
would be
if it
September
were merely
II
a cleverly
written history lesson.
Having
at his
command
in 1952 only a well-written
but unreliable nineteenth-century
popular but inaccurate
The Devil
in
local history,
Massachusetts
and the
by Marion
Starkey, as well as the original pretrial transcripts, which
themselves contain subde errors that close readers have
wrong about some of his facts. He consciously combined characters, and the main Imes
since corrected, Miller was
original Broadway production of Tie Cmablt (left) for the and space to tell a stor>. The small windows used designers show how the and planks of a dominating wooden beams are similar to the portholes not beams also suggest a giant cross. Puritans would
These sketches
ship.
The support
or churches, but. the setting allow images of the crucifixion in their home out their own and play suggest, in the name of Jesus they were carrying
persecution.
221
Witch-
HUNT
of his interpretations do not match the views of historians.
To
pick the most obvious example, in Miller's
1997 autobiography,
doubt slave,
had been practicing
me mention
early seventies
he
Timebends,
Reverend
that Tituba,
have seen
in a
witchcraft."
Barbados
As readers
will
since the
when an English professor carefully reread
known that Tituba was
if she
used any ritual or folk
she learned the practices
at all,
having "no
number of places,
Indian, not African, and that
neighbors and owners. Anyone
from her English
who would
like to see a
of all of the historical errors in Miller's play can go
listing
to
recalls
Parris's black
the original sources, scholars have
magic
modern
Web
sites
which has
such
as http://0gram.org/i7thc/miller.shtml,
links to
many Crucible
including ones
sites,
that spell out historical inaccuracies in great detail.
Despite these "flaws," the "gotcha" satisfaction of
pointing out places where the play does not match the historical record
umph rior
is
a
cheap and easy victory.
of easy erudition that makes the
mind
it
believe he
fiction,
show us the power of
create a scene that feels real, vivid, to events does not
make
the
more you
true.
its
a it
very
fiction to
Accuracy
historical fiction ring true.
The more you know about trials,
and
as
not because
fiction that teaches us history, but because
historical limitations
^222.^
make us
should be used in classrooms
wonderful example of historical
Salem
supe-
right.
The Crucible
is
critic the
a tri-
for seeing mistakes, without granting Miller
his true achievement: his ability to
has
It is
the history behind the
appreciate Miller's ability to
^ THE CRUCIBLE, Witch-hunt, and Religion: Crossing Points of
create characters
who
even
if
have existed, even
ought to
you know emotionally
didn't, stories that
Many
to
if
Histories
they
be true,
they weren't. His confident and insightful sense
of psychology; his thoughtful, well -researched scenesetting;
and
his deft characterization are
all
testimony
to his greatness as a writer, not his deep knowledge of
the past.
A
writer has the ability to render something that
three-dimensional, that
feels
For some rea-
feels real.
son many people — from teachers, parents, and book reviewers to talk
show hosts
associate this artistic ability,
this
mastery of craft and technique, with
ity:
a
manner of
truth-telling that
is
a
grounded
art.
In other words,
sincere, honest,
and
true, that will shine
And
if
if
your historical novel
faithful to fact, readers will experience trait
through in is
absolutely
as a vivid
it
por-
of the past. Like Hollywood costume designers who
used to make sure torically accurate
stars in
you
really care
novel "good.
movie biographies wore
right in
about the
your work past,
seen
is
which
his-
hats, buttons,
underwear, getting the
and turns of phrase that
in the
you are good.
world outside of
your book.
moral qual-
will
as a sign
make your
"
The Crucible puts the lie to this view.
It
reminds us
that at least half of historical fiction, the "fiction" part, is
pure invention. Miller's play
is
good because he
makes the world he has invented come because
it
captures
The Crucible
is,
life as
it
though,
alive,
not
actually was lived.
not simply
a
triumph of
he saw artistry. As Miller so vividly explains in Tmebends. -•223:.-
Witch-
HUNT
an obvious link between the
House of
the
Activities
activities
House Un-American
Representatives, the
Committee (HUAC) and
in Starkey's book.
HUAC
of a committee of
the trials as portrayed
was relentlessly pursuing
tales
of a vast Communist conspiracy in America. At the time, politicians,
some motivated by
taking advantage of the
of a
mood
sincere concern, others
moment, made more and more
of suspicion that was sweeping the country.
HUAC began to hold hearings,
questioning people about
whether they were or had ever been Communists. Large businesses,
schools,
under pressure beliefs.
had
and media companies were put
to root out
employees with dangerous
People stood in danger of losing everything they
built in their adult lives: careers, friendships, stand-
ing in the community. In an atmosphere of fear, some protected themselves by speaking out against others. Precisely as in Salem, the
more people who confessed
having been Communists and
named
others, the
to
more
reason there was to hold hearings, bring in more suspects,
and pressure more companies
to
purify their
ranks. The Crucible, therefore,
is
a play
about
a
witch-hunt in
the seventeenth century written to expose a witch-hunt
in the twentieth.
And
Miller hit
truth in his research. "The
upon an emotional
main point," he
realized, "of
the hearings, precisely as in seventeenth- century Salem,
was that the accused make public confession, damns his confederates as well as his Devil master, and guarantee his sterling
new
allegiance by breaking disgusting old
vows—whereupon he was -1^224!
let
loose to rejoin the society of
THE CRUCIBLE, Witch-hunt, and Religion: Crossing Points
Many
of
extremely decent people." Miller saw the witch
kind of ritual cleansing, in which
guilt
Histories
trials as a
could be released
through confession and naming other sinners. That insight into the structure of the Salem hearings
or
true,
true of a phase of them once accused witches
at least is
began
is
Probing into
to confess.
own
his
understood the psychodynamics of the
time, Miller
even
past,
if
he
did not entirely get the details right. Miller had a subject that could speak to
but
a
current cri-
moment,
while illuminating a fascinating historical
sis
in
a
how could he shape that into
mind via
a play?
He had an image
the character he imagined for John Proctor:
good man who had once had an
year-old maid, and
now had to
affair v^th a seventeen
face her leading a pack of
accusers that was taking aim at his
own
wife.
At that time
Miller had entered psychoanalysis because he was
haunted by the mutual attraction he and Marilyn
Monroe had
felt
when
Though he had not Monroe, he through
been
felt that
they yet
met
briefly in
begun
his
own marriage
Monroe. Procter might
a fictional depiction of Miller's
tional force of the play also
As he was about
relationship with
a
he was betraying
his desire for
Hollywood.
dilemma, the emo-
emerged out of his own
to leave to go to
Salem
pretrial transcripts, Miller received a call liant film director Elia
well have
life.
to read the
from the
Kazan. Miller knew, even
brilas
he
drove to Kazan's Connecticut home, what he was about to joined hear. To save his career in Hollywood, Kazan had the
modern-day witch-hunt. He had spoken
and given them
the
to
HUAC,
names of people he claimed had once 225
Witch-
HUNT
been Communists. Miller was not shocked, but he was angry. "It was not his [Kazan's] duty to be stronger than
he was, the government had no right to require anyone be stronger than
it
had been given him
ernment was not in
that line of
to
to be, the gov-
work in America.
experiencing a bitterness with the country that
I
was
had
I
never even imagined before, a hatred of its stupidity and its
throwing away of
no because
its
man
this
freedom.
human
in his
forced to humiliate himself?
enhanced by
all this
Who
or what was safer
weakness had been
What
truth had been
anguish?"
Miller himself was called to Washington and pres-
sured to give
HUAC
more names, more people
He
or to intimidate into confessions.
moral conviction made
more
intense.
His
refused.
meeting with Kazan
all
the
The conversation of a man who bowed to and another who was determined
the committee, resist
them was
place
on
play
his
to ruin
a
drama
the stage.
It
as
powerful
as
to
any either would
gave Miller the vision of what his
would be about: "the
shifts
of interests that turned
loving husbands and wives into stony enemies, loving
parents into indifferent supervisors or even exploiters
of their children. As
I
already
knew from my reading,
that was the real story of ancient
Salem
Village,
what
they called the breaking of charity with one another." Miller was again right.
drove the is
forward, as
it
did the
charity
HUAC
what we must be on guard against today
laws to
-1^226 K-
trials
The break with
accommodate
a state
is
what
hearings.
as
It
we change
of war against terror. The
THE CRUCIBLE, Witch-hunt, and Religion: Crossing Point?
Many
of
should be taught
Crucible
insight into safety, fear
as
of being accused, and even justified anger
and
to suppress doubt,
voice of humanity that
lets
evil ourselves. Miller's
are in real danger
triumph was
on its historical setting. And that is how I it
in creating a at all
think we should
today.
more source
Miller has identified one
and
at
silence the
kind of psychological realism that did not depend
treat
an
us identify with prisoners, sus-
and accused -evil -doers, then we
of doing
but also
how a witch-hunt works. When our comfort,
an enemy allows us
pects,
as fine writing,
Histories
for The
Crucible,
that adds a final twist to this tangle of personal
and
national history, personal insight and literary accom-
plishment. At the Historical Society in Danvers he saw etchings of court scenes, perhaps faces of the
the
trials.
Salem was not
Protestant past;
Jews and the
it
own
religious Jewish fore-
about America's Puritan,
just
was about "the moral intensity of the
clan's defensiveness against pollution
outside the ranks.
1
understood Salem in
my own
was suddenly The Crucible
is
toward too,
is
insight
that flash,
it
inheritance.
great because Miller penetrated the psy-
moment God and
in the
life
of
me
a
to the
And
Salem
it
speaks
people aching to reach
to protect themselves
in the headUnes today.
drew
from
"
chology of a political witch-hunt, and because
about a
In the
bearded judges recoiling from the agonized
accusers he suddenly saw his bears.
from
a
from
evil.
That,
version of that same
stor)'.
In the struggles of
the Puritans to remain true to their faith in a time of
227
Witch-
HUNT
increasing doubt,
my own
saw
I
grandfather, a leading
Rabbi in Kiev, none of whose ten children were devout.
me
This association made
sympathetic to the strains the
Puritans experienced, while, for Miller,
explained
it
their ferocious intensity.
can give us insights that transcend time-
If fiction
offering us a picture of the v^tch-hunt mentality that
was true of the 1950s America in which the seventeenth- century Salem
it
it
was written,
describes,
and
is
a
—history can do
caution to us in the twenty- first century
something
else.
History sensitizes us to the subtle dif-
ferences between time periods.
The more we know
about witchcraft beliefs in the seventeenth century the less
they resemble the sexually driven fears and passions
of The
On
Crucible.
the objects
the other hand, though, as
and records
left
behind from the
make sense of them by examining our own ories,
and images.
and the
We
see ourselves
we study past,
ideas,
we
mem-
through the
past,
through ourselves. In the process both are
past
modified. Being the product of the great struggle over
modernization in Judaism made the struggles over modernization in the seventeenth century much more interesting to me, as
History
a
is
it
did for Miller.
mirror, fiction a portrait. If Miller's
painting has a few characters wrong, great deal of truth,
and
is
a great
rooms much
^223^
still
shows
fifty
years ago.
accomplishment, and should give
to talk
a
his images are as resonant in
the twenty- first century as they were
That
it
class-
about for generations to come.
Timeline of Milestones in Puritan History Important Dates
in
Puritan History Before
1692
England
1535 King Henry VIII of England becomes head of the Church of
England 1559 Book of
Common
Prayer adopted; Puritans find
it
too
conservative
1590 Several Puritan leaders arrested
New World 1597 Protestant colony
at
mouth of
St.
Lawrence River
fails
England 1603 James
I
becomes
king, threatens Puritans
New World 1608 Scrooby congregation, future Pilgrims, leaves England for Amsterdam, Holland 1620 Mayflower Compact and Pilgrim settlement in Plymouth
England 1625 Charles
I
succeeds his father. James
I
New World 1626 Roger Conant establishes English settlement
at
Salem
England 1628 William Laud, opponent of the Puritans, becomes bishop of
London
-^229S-
Witch-
HUNT
New World 1629 Salem Covenant
1630 The "Great Migration" begins. In a decade, over 15,000 settlers,
many
of them Puritans,
move
to
New
England
from England 1636 Puritans fight against Pequots England
1642 Civil War begins in England, King Charles
I
against
Parliament and Puritans
1646 Parliament defeats King Charles Start of
Quaker movement
1648 King escapes; war begins again
1649 King Charles executed 1653 Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan, becomes Lord Protector of the
Commonwealth England
New World 1656 Quakers arrive
in Massachusetts,
banished
1657 Massachusetts leaders adopt more lenient rules allowing children of church
even
if
members
to
become halfway members
they are not certain of being saved
1658 Death penalty instituted for Quakers England
1658 Cromwell
dies; struggle for succession
1660 Charles
crowned king; some Puritan leaders escape England
to
II
New
New World 1661 Charles forbids execution of Quakers in Massachusetts
1675 Wampanoags under Metacom (King Philip) attack,
start
of King Philip's War 1676-78 Metacom and allies defeated; heavy losses on both sides In what is now Maine bloody clashes between
Wabanaki and
New
Englanders
April 1678
1684 Massachusetts Charter rescinded England 1685 James
^230^
II
succeeds Charles
II
last until treaty
of
Timeline of Milestones in
New World 1686 Sir Edmund Andros named 1688 Goodwin children
War
begins again
governor of
New
Puritan History
England
afflicted in
Maine area
New
French clash with
in
which Wabanaki and
Englanders
England
1688 William of Orange invades and replaces James 1689 William and Mary crowned Parliament passes act
in favor
II
of religious freedom
New World 1689 Colonists depose and imprison Andros Reverend Samuel Parris comes to Salem 1691 William Phips named governor of Massachusetts
Chronology
of Events in the
Salem Witch
Crisis
1692 January
Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, and Jr.
February
show
Mary
Sibley
Tituba,
Ann Putnam
strange behaviors
organizes use of witch
cake
ritual;
Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne identified as
witches
March 1 March 12 March 19 March 2 Late March
John and Elizabeth Proctor denounced
April
Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth leads
1
First examination; Tituba confesses
Martha Corey accused
Rebecca Nurse accused Martha Corey examined
examination of accusers April 19
Abigail Hobbs, Bridget Bishop, Giles Corey, and
Mary Warren examined April
22-
May
20
Fifteen suspected witches examined, including
Mary Easty George Burroughs arrested
in
Maine; Margaret Jacobs
confesses to being a witch
May
14
Increase Mather and William Phips, the new governor,
May May
18
Roger Toothaker arrested Governor Phips creates the court of Oyer and
arrive
27
from England
Terminer
to hear witchcraft cases
-^231 K-
Witch-
HUNT June 2
Bridget Bishop tried and convicted
June 10
Bishop hanged
June 15
Cotton Mather writes
letter
expressing ministers'
concerns about use of invisible evidence
June 16 June 29-30 July 19
Mid-July
August 2-6
Roger Toothaker dies in prison Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Sarah Wildes, Sarah Good, and Elizabeth How convicted Nurse, Martin, Wildes, Good, and How hanged Two accusers invited to Andover and new accusations begin; Minister Samuel Willard condemns the trials George Jacobs, Martha Carrier, George Burroughs, John and Elizabeth Proctor, and John Willard convicted; Elizabeth is
is
pregnant and her execution
delayed
August 19
George Jacobs, Carrier, Burroughs, John John Willard hanged
September 9
Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, convicted;
Proctor,
and
Dorcas Hoar, and Mary Bradbury Hoar confesses and is spared; Bradbury
escapes
September 17 Margaret Scot, Wilmot Redd, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Abigail Faulkner,
Lacy, and Abigail
Hobbs
Rebecca Eames, Mary convicted; Faulkner
temporarily spared due to pregnancy; Eames, Lacy,
and Hobbs executions delayed
September 19 Giles Corey pressed
to death for refusing to
make
a plea
September 22 Martha Corey, Easty, Alice Parker, Pudeator, Scot, Redd, Wardwell, and Mary Parker are hanged Early October Increase Mather speaks against invisible evidence,
convinces Phips to end the
Late October
trials
Phips dissolves the court of Oyer and Terminer
1693 JanuaryFebruary
Spring-
Summer August
-??232.^
Trials begin again, but Phips does not allow the
judges to hang even convicted witches Phips requests pardons for even jailed and confessed witches;
Samuel
London agrees
Parris requests forgiveness for his mistakes
Timeline of Milestones in
Puritan History
1696 Samuel Willard asks
the colony to request
God's
forgiveness
1697 Samuel Sewall asks Minister Willard
to read his
confession in church in Salem Village, community Excommunication of Martha Corey rescinded
Joseph Green takes over church heals
1699
War between Wabanaki and New Englanders ends 1706
Ann Putnam
Jr.
prepares confession for Green to read
to congregation
233 S-
Notes and
Comments The
notes in the epilogue give readers a
some of
the trends in interpreting the
present specific sources
has been useful to
it
confirm that v/hile
I
on
have called
I
interpretations, quotations,
While
trials.
me
Here
I
for facts,
to have to check
and
have used each source correctly, and
have provided accurate citations that readers
I
actually did research this book.
meant
to
and general background.
can use, the notes are not primarily here I
map
to give readers a chance to
work to other
as
proof that
Rather, they are
move on from my
studies that have a great deal to offer. All
of these are books written for adult readers, on the college or graduate school level. For that reason cate
how
accessible each
urge readers to
start
one
is
I
indi-
for a younger reader.
with some of the
I
more readable
secondary books before tackling the primary sources, or to dip into the original documents to get flavor of the time
interpret
Puritan
and the people, but not
them without
New
first
learning
a taste
and
to attempt to
more about
England.
Note to the Reader p.
3234 vs-
—how they took
X The story of the Hngering myths of Salem
were then debunked, and yet
live
hold,
on as undead, seemingly immortal
Notes and Comments
wraiths—is
itself
a fascinating
tale.
Chadwick Hansen was a professor at histories of the Salem trials in
of English, and he took a fresh look
his Witchcraft at Salem (see especially the preface, pp. ix-xv). The book presents an easy overview of the views of previous historians. Though written for adults, Hansen's text is clear and straightforward.
He exposed one
set
of myths and errors. While appreciating aspects
of Hansen's scholarship, a second professor of English, Bernard Rosenthal, in Salem Story (hereafter SS), fundamentally disagrees with
Hansen's basic conclusions (see p. 236 n. 29). Throughout the book, Rosenthal surveys the main views of Salem since 1969, as well as many treatments,
fictional
including those
written
for
younger readers.
Rosenthal's book has a shghtly more scholarly tone in places than Hansen's, but his inclusion of TV accounts and books for young readers, his clear thinking,
and
his at times entertaining frustration with
other scholars should appeal to motivated readers. Taken together,
Hansen and Rosenthal map out how views of Salem have changed from the time of the trials to the present, though Mary Beth Norton's 2002 book, In the Devil's Snare (hereafter D5), suggests new directions for the future. It is
interesting that both Witchcraft at
Salem and Salem Story
—
two of the books that have done the most to uncover errors in existing work were by people who were not primarily students of
—
colonial history. This that in a case
much work
not to fault historians, but rather to suggest
is
such as Salem, where there are limited sources and so
has already been done,
it
sometimes takes an outsider
with a fresh point of view to notice what others have missed. This
should also be encouraging to young readers, for
spend the time too,
may have
to read the sources
and the
it
historical
means
that if
you
background, you,
fresh insights to offer.
Exposing the mythologies around Tituba began with Hansen. Though he is best known for claiming there were real witches in p. xi
Salem, he was also the
by
later writers
first to
show how Tituba had been transformed
from an Indian slave
into an African
one and from
person accused to being the cause of the accusers' convulsions (see also his "The Metamorphosis of Tituba"). Rosenthal too
being the
first
summarizes the ways
and wrongly blamed
Salem
in
which Tituba has been both mischaracterizcd
(or credited) for bringing her native witchcraft to
in SS, pp. 10-14.
1
discuss the confusing beginning of the accu-
Salem in chapter II. xi a good sense of what scholars now know about New To get p. England folk beliefs and magic, see Richard Godbeer's The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Earlx New England (hereafter sations in
-H235.-r
Witch-
HUNT DD),
pp. 7-23.
Godbeer defines magic
as a belief that
humans can
use occult means to influence the world, whereas religion involves a
In
mit.
whose laws and
humans must subseventeenth-century New England, Godbeer thinks, these
belief in a higher
power
to
rules
who were
belief systems overlapped within individuals
magical practices in one This
moment and be
able to use
sincerely devout in another.
a study aimed at the college level, and younger readers may most useful by consulting the two indexes (one for names, the
is
find
it
other for subjects) and by dipping in to learn
more about
a topic they
have already begun to investigate in other, more easily accessible sources.
For one well-written study that shows
this
mixing of beliefs
in
both magic and religion in practice, see David D. Hall's Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment (hereafter WW), especially chapter 5, "The Mental World of Samuel Sewall," (pp. 213-238). Hall writes easily for a general adult audience,
appeal to gist
and the cited chapter
in particular is so
of interesting details taken from Sewall's diary that
full
many
might
if
should
he were visiting and studying a very different culture.
That approach p. xi
it
readers. Hall reads Sewall's diary as an anthropolo-
in itself is fascinating.
The well-defined
beliefs
and practices of
modem Wicca
do not
resemble the jumble of beliefs Godbeer and Hall describe. Sdll,
Godbeer points out that the evidence we have of folk beliefs tends to come from court records and ministers' warnings, which is to say we learn about them when they are being condemned. Popular religion, folk magic, and the clashes and mixtures between these pracUces, as well as the fine words of highly trained ministers, are areas of study that continue to attract scholars. p. xii This description of 18,
Salem
is
based on a personal
visit
on August
2001. Rosenthal describes an earlier phase in which the city
cially
embraced a
link to
modem
offi-
witchcraft, in SS, pp. 204-207.
On Spelling, Word Usage, and Dates
in
This Book
XV The current standard edition of the pretrial transcripts is Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's edited The Salem Witchcraft Papers (hereafter SWP). There are three volumes in the edition, and when I p.
them below, I indicate the volume number and the page numThe sample quotation in this section, selected almost at random, is from vol. 3, p. 788; you will find similar language, spelling, and punctuation on any page. You can also access SWP at cite
ber(s).
http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft.
^3,23&i:t
This
Web
site
offers
Notes and Comments
searchable texts of
many primary
who wants
student
sources related to the
work from
to
original
trials,
materials
and any find
will
it
immensely valuable.
SWP
is
based on a compilation made
since found errors in
it,
1938. and scholars have
in
unknown
as well as a smattering of previously
documents. The biggest problem with
for
it
anyone wanting
to write
new view of the trials is that it is organized alphabetically by the name of the accused. The actual hearings, of course, took place over time and people with every name were shuffled together. While the a
editors
list
other relevant cases
at the start
of one person's testimony,
way to piece together all the testimonies that are linked to a case is to make your own chronology and skip back and forth in the transcripts. Like many other readers. had to do just that, relying the only real
I
on sequences crafted by previous historians. But the problem
is
that
you have read all the testimonies, you cannot be sure what tiny nugget in one might be crucial for understanding another. Mary Beth Norton prepared a very extensive chronology and map of her own, until
and she says
new
that helped a great deal in giving her
insights into
the story (see her "Finding the Devil in the Details of the
Witchcraft Trials"). Bernard Rosenthal
when
tion of the transcripts;
more
reliable
one's relief,
it
becomes
it
now
is
preparing a
available,
and useful resource than the
it
original.
Salem
new
edi-
sure to be a
is
And,
to every-
will be organized chronologically.
Introduction p.
3 The subhead "The Queen of Hell"
Crisis (hereafter
SWC),
p. 108.
able overview of the story get to
know
the
from Cotton Mather's
is
The Salem Witch
Carrier; see Larry Gragg's
description of Martha
find Gragg's
1
and recommend
whole episode
in detail.
book
it
for
most
the best,
reli-
anyone wanting
to
Rosenthal discusses the
source and implication of the label "queen of hell" in SS, p. 124. the tranp. 3 The court scene presented here follows directly from script in
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol.
1,
p.
185;
have added
I
identifiers for the speakers. In the transcript the scribe erratically
mixes past and present
tense, dialogue
slightly paraphrased his past-tense
passages and have recast them
The descripuon of the be found
in
outlined in p.
4 In
DS
SWP,
vol.
1
,
Gragg, SWC,
and summary.
summaries
have very
as part of the italicized
in the present tense.
accusers" bones as nearly
p. 196.
I
Goody
coming
apart can
Carrier's history of troubles
is
p. 106.
Norton argues
that the "black
man" Susan claims
to see
237
Witch-
HUNT was not primarily a reference but rather to an
343-^4
n. 33).
ment
my
sense in reading the transcripts, but
enough
this issue closely
to
I
be sure, and the argu-
and surely accurate, sense of
really part of Norton's larger,
is
person in black clothing,
to a diabolical
dark-skinned, Indian-like being (pp. 58-59,
That was not
have not studied
how
evil,
background of Indian wars influenced what people saw and
the
said in Salem. p.
8 For Sarah Carrier see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol.
1,
pp. 201-202.
For the overwhelming tendency to accuse
p. 10
women
as witches,
is
Putnam Demos 's Entertaining Satan (hereafter ES), p. 60. a scholarly book and is not directly about Salem at all. Still,
Demos
has thought deeply about witchcraft in seventeenth-century
see John
This
New
England, and his insights are excellent preparation for anyone
done more
serious about studying Salem. In particular, he has
speculate on and attempt to define the psychology
and stresses
—
—
to
the inner fears
reflected in witchcraft accusations than any other
scholar of this period (see, the "Psychology" section, pp. 97-212).
Some
historians feel that there is not
enough evidence
to understand
the unconscious mental conflicts of the time, but even if that
Demos 's
attempt
is
fascinating,
enjoys pondering the workings of the mind,
kind of historical
is so.
and for the kind of reader who it is
worth reading as a
fiction.
The most extensive discussion of
the striking gender imbalance
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, pp. 46-76. Though her book is aimed at an academic audience, Karlsen writes well and has a clear and easy-toin accusations of witchcraft is in Carol Karlsen's
follow point of view. She was the unpopular, angry, or marginal
woman,
inheritance of property disturbed
work
first to
men
popular in colleges, and readers
is
women as a may well think
that uses the status of
key
define a witch not as an
but rather as a
woman whose
(see pp. 84-101). Karlsen's
who
are
drawn
to
an analysis
to understanding this particu-
Ume and place she has gotten to the heart of the Salem outbreak. There have been challenges to Karlsen's conclusions, though, which she discusses with more vigor than grace in the afterword to the 1998 paperback edition of the book (see lar
pp. 259-265). p.
11
On
witchcraft
accusaUons of unpopular people, see ES,
pp. 86-94, in which Demos creates a kind of "collective portrait" of a typical witch from the 114 cases he surveys, excluding those
accused
in
Salem. (As
we
will see,
though
it
started out as a typical
outbreak, Salem departed from the patterns of other cases.)
^
Notes and Comments
For the theory
that people
accused those
to help of being witches, see Keith
of Magic,
p.
Thomas
552.
whom
they had refused
Thomas, Religion and
studied England, not
New
the Decline
England; his
lengthy book is aimed at the college level, and by now his key insights have been incorporated into (or dismissed by) more accessible and relevant studies of Salem. Nonetheless, the many cases he discusses are worth reading in their own right, and anyone who wants a broader background before reading about Salem would do well to use his extensive index and browse his pages.
On
the association between witchery and outspokenness see Jane
Kamensky, Governing the Tongue, pp. 151-53. This too is an academic study, but it is important as a leading example of the new generation of historians looking at Salem in ways that blend feminism, anthropology, and close attention to language. p.
12 For the relevance of the Cinderella
Salem
in particular, see Paul
Possessed (hereafter SP), broad-ranging than
book
that has
p.
its title
become
who
tale to witchcraft and to Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem
144. Readable, informative, and
would suggest,
a standard
title in
this is
more
an excellent short
any reading on Salem.
It,
too,
more interested, for example, in the female accusers than in the males whose disputes, Boyer and Nissenbaum claim, were behind the trials. But it is a very good first step into more has
its
detractors,
are
challenging books for a reader texts. I
found the analogies
who wants
to fairy tales
pp. 12-13 For the Elizabeth Knapp
to tackle college-level
simply
story see
brilliant.
Demos, ES,
p. 103; for
the idea that she might have been turning Willard, her protector, into a reverse image of the devil, see pp. 118-19. p.
13 Phoebe's quotes are found
vol. l,pp.
p.
14 For
SWP,
in
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
191-92. details
on Benjamin Abbot see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
vol. l,p. 189.
pp. 17-18
On
see Godbeer,
the kinds of evidence used in witchcraft cases,
DD,
pp. 158-78, and Richard
Weisman's study
is
Weisman,
Witchcraft.
17th-Century Massachusetts, pp. 98-1 14. written for scholars, but it is one of a cluster
Magic, and Religion
in
of books, with those of Godbeer, Demos, Boyer and Nissenbaum, Rosenthal, and Karlsen, that is part of any college reading
on Salem, as I'm sure Norton's DS will soon be as well. David Thomas Konig's Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts list
is
also part of this group of standard texts. Calling on close legal
readings as well as anthropological insights, and based on the assumption that the law is used to control social contlici.
239
Witch-
HUNT Konig's work of the
is
very useful for understanding the legal practices
within the context of Massachusetts history.
trials
Prologue p.
A
23
number of
combed through
scholars have
witchcraft in seventeenth-century
New
the writings on England and have provided
students and scholars with easy access to the original sources on
episodes such as the
Goodwin
case.
One such compilation,
with an introduction by David D.
Seventeenth-Century
New England
Mather on "bad language," see lent place to start research
on
p.
Hall,
is
(hereafter
WH)\
is
in
Cotton
for
268 of this volume. This
attitudes
edited and
Witch-Hunting
an excel-
and opinions expressed
at the
time and to see the Salem episode in the context of witchcraft cases
A treasure trove for anyone seriously studyGeorge Lincoln Burr's edited collection Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 (hereafter NWQ; for Mather on
throughout the century.
Salem
ing
is
"heart of stone," see p. 100. Burr's collection contains contemporary
writing by participants, defenders, and critics of the
vides a handy
way
to
trials
go beyond the snippets and quotations
and proin
books
such as mine to get a real feel of the voices of the time. Be aware, though, that this
is
an anthology, and Burr sometimes includes only a
part of a longer piece that lection (the p.
is
same
24
site that
am
I
you have
to track
down elsewhere.
hosts
SWP).
grateful to Professor Rosenthal for reminding
uncertainty over Glover's
first
24 For the sighting of the strange creature see Mather
p.
271; for the children's relapse, see
p.
25 For Nathaniel Hawthome's description of
is
of the
in Hall,
WH,
p. 270.
house, see his short story "Endicott and the
which
me
name.
p.
vol. 2,
This col-
also available at http://etext.Virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft
this ritual at the
meeting-
Red Cross" in Twice-Told Tales,
available at http://online-literature.com/hawthome/133,
or simply use a search engine and look for terms such as "Hawthome,"
'Twice-Told," and "Red Cross" to find the p.
26
On
story.
the Puritan family see Francis
J.
Bremer, The Puritan
Experiment; pp. 113-15. This is a useful and informed survey book from the 1970s, brought up-to-date in a revised edition with ideas
from more recent scholarship. While this history was once central to the U.S. history students learned from grade school on, much of it is now unfamiliar, especially the details of religious life, and Bremer handy way to catch up on the basics. 27-28 On the Puritan imagery of pilgrimage see Charles pp. offers a
^H240t3-
E.
Notes and Comments
Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of
Piety, especially chapter 3, "Puritan as Pilgrim," (pp. 54-90). This is tough going for all young readers, except perhaps those who are studious and devout Protestants and are already familiar with the terms and concepts the author dis-
cusses.
in
The
ideas themselves, though, are fascinating. In Hoh War Promised Land (New York: Clarion, 2004), the second book the trilogy I began with Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El
and
the
Dorado (New York:
Clarion, 2000),
discuss these themes in
I
more
detail.
p.
28
On
this point
about scalps see James Duncan Phillips, Salem
the Eighteenth Century, p. 58. This
and Phillips has
little
is
trouble defending the Puritans and generally
painting the Indians as savage. Given that, and the fact that Phillips
vague about
his
own
sources,
I
29
On
is
cannot be sure that the Puritans actu-
But since Phillips
ally offered bounties for scalps.
biased in favor of the Puritans, p.
in
historical writing of another era,
it
seems
WW,
the devil's promises see Hall,
is,
if
anything,
likely. p. 145.
30 For Mather's comment on the scary French see Christine Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and Culture (hereafter CC), p. 106. This is a p.
well-written and informative study that rewards the curious reader.
Heyrman has traced the Quaker connection to the Salem outbreak and offers many other revealing details of colonial life. This study is rather more accessible and balanced than some of the other scholarship on this period. p.
31 Details on the witch-protection
tree are
from Sidney Perley's
The History of Salem, Massachusetts, p. 295, published in 1928. This multivolume work is history from another era, concerned with civic pride and carrying an assumption that the reader already knows and cares about the basic story.
It is
useful only either to get a taste of a
very different style of writing and. thinking or to cull for examples of local customs, such as this one.
p.
32 For Mather's often quoted
Magnalia
Christi Americana,
line
vol.
1,
on p.
"little
sorceries," see his
205, easily
available at
www.graveworm.com/occult/texts/mathers.html, or by using a search
engine to look for terms such as "Mather" and "little sorceries." For the longer quote see Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-century Massachusetts, sieve divination, see p.
p. 60.
For the rules of the scissors and
Thomas, Religion and
the Decline of Magic.
213.
of the puppp. 33-34 For Mather testing Glover and the discovery pets, see Hall,
p.
35
On
WH,
p.
270.
the "sad fits" of the children see Hall,
WH,
p.
273.
-a241tr
Witch-
HUNT 36 For the quote on the "obnoxious woman" see
Hall,
WH,
pp. 36-37 For flying and other torments see Hall,
WH,
pp. 274-75.
p.
p.
273.
For Mather on Martha and her struggles under his care, see Burr,
AWCp.
112.
pp. 37-38 For Goodwin's conclusion, as well as his specific comments about "bodies," "doctors," and "tricks," see Hall, WH, pp. 276-77, 279. p. 39 For Mather's interest in using the Goodwin case as a warning against Quakers, see Heyrman, CC, p. 110. p. 39 For Glover's "saints" see Hall, WH, p. 272; for the view on her CathoUcism, see Karlsen, Devil in the Shape of a Woman, p. 34. Robert Calef, the great opponent of Mather and skeptic on the Salem trials, reports that Glover was known to be mentally unstable (see Burr,
NWC,
Hall,
WH,
Chapter p.
p.
p.
44 The
124
n. 1).
As
to the
Goodwin
children in rebellion, see
265.
I
first
Salem Covenant
Massachusetts, 1626-1683,
is
p. 170.
from Richard
This
is
Gildrie, Salem,
an academic study that
is
most useful for those who have read Boyer and Nissenbaum's SP and want to know more about the tensions in Salem. pp. 44-45 For Sewall see Hall, WW, p. 227; for the woman from
Wenham, p.
see
WW,
p.
123; and for
Anne
Fitch, see
45 For a wonderful, accessible book on
of Puritanism, see
Edmund Morgan's
WW,
p. 136.
this "visible saint" aspect
Visible Saints.
Morgan
writes
for college-level readers, but any motivated high school student will
find his study a useful resource. p.
46 On the Puritan
"relation" and
how
it
worked
in a congregation,
see Bremer, The Puritan Experiment, p. 110. p.
46 For
this
quote encapsulating the Puritan mission, see Hall,
WW,
p. 150.
pp. 46-47 The history of the Putnams, including their holdings,
is
from Boyer and Nissenbaum, SP, pp. Ill, 123, 125-26, 136. pp. 47-48 For the history of the Porters see Boyer and Nissenbaum, 5P, pp. 117-18.
pp. 48-49
On the economic
shift in
Salem
in general,
and on the mer-
chant class as a distinct group, see Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts,
1626-1683, pp. 122, 172. The hostility that communiUes bound may feel toward the individualism and lack of boundaries of the outside world continues to this day. Some experts on ten-
together in faith
sions between Western countries and Islamic fundamentalists see this as a crucial issue dividing the
^242}^
two
societies.
Notes and Comments
pp. 49-50 For the two warring families' characteristics see Boyer and
Nissenbaum,
SP, p. 115.
pp. 50-51 On the marriages,
this history
Thomas
of the Putnams
Sr.'s
—
the different generations,
second family, and
his contested
well as on the likeness of the drama to fairy
Nissenbaum, pp. 52-53 its
Boyer and
—
particulariy
135-38, 143.
SP, pp.
On
will— as
tales, see
the story of
Salem
Village's
background
—
own church and minister outlined here several available, among them Charles W. Upham's two-volume
have
fight to
sources are
its
work, Salem Witchcraft (hereafter SW), which was
1867 and which was often used by historians of an
first
published
earlier era.
provides no notes or references, but he began writing about the in the 1830s, lived in
accusers, and
and physical an event. is
is
Salem amid
trials
the descendants of the accused and
our only source for the kind of oral history, gossip,
detail that
When
in
Upham
it is
remains
in the
memory
of a town long after
possible to compare his text to other sources, he
sometimes accurate and sometimes
not.
A completely different kind of book about the same subject matBryan F. Le Beau's The Story of the Salem Witch Trials (hereSWT^. This is a survey of the trials as well as historical scholarship on them, written for college courses. It is a concise and relatively thorough book that is useful as a kind of baseline summary of what happened in 1692 and what people think about it now. Unfortunately, though, the author sometimes cites rather questionable secondary books, such as Marion Starkey's The Devil in ter is
after
Massachusetts, instead of the original source he presumably used,
and there are also small errors
in other citations that
to follow the trail of his research.
I
recommend
basic information but double-checking
make
using
details against
it
difficult
SWT
to get
works by other
historians.
For Le Beau's version of James Bayley's story see SWT. pp. 53-54.
SW,
p.
Upham
recounts the story of the death of Bayley's wife
237. For details on Samuel Parris,
in
see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
152-67, especially pp. 162-63; and for a wonderi'ul, careful reading of Parris's sermons, see pp. 168-71 of SP SP, pp.
Chapter
II
NWC
p. 425. For his quote pp. 58-60 For John Hale's essay see Burr, Salem, at p. 30, for although Witchcraft on the egg white see Hansen,
the reprinted in NWC, this section is omitted. To see There, if you http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft. to
Hale's report original,
go
is
i243!
Witch-
HUNT search for Hale's "Modest Inquiry on the Nature of Witchcraft," you will find a facsimile of the essay, with the quotation
on pp. 132-33. 59 For information on Betty see Larry Gragg, A Quest p. for Security, 117. This is useful scholarly a book for those who want to underp. stand more about the minister who was at the center of the outbreak.
As
for Abigail, for a completely speculative description of her fate
based on Hale's clue, see Frances
Though its
vividly written,
I
found
Hill,
this
A
book
Delusion of Satan,
p.
understanding of the Puritans. Norton speculates that Hale
have been referring
to
may
Susannah Sheldon, not Abigail Williams,
because Sheldon died early and unmarried, five years
(seeD5,
215.
unreliable and simplistic in
after the trials
p. 311).
60 For Cole, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, p. 228. pp. 60-61 For Hale's description of the afflicted girls see Burr, NWC, p. 413; for Calef's see NWC, p. 342. This is one of the joys of using p.
Burr's collection:
You can
leap back and forth from one account to
another, almost hearing the different speakers
making
their cases to
moment in very different ways. p. 63 For Ann Putnam Sr. see Upham, SW, vol. 1, pp. 69-70, 237. Upham's portrait of her was based on local tradifions, which may well you, interpreting the same
have been
true, but at this date they are also
was both popular and
impossible to confirm.
Upham's
day,
and
he might have been reading a current preoccupaUon back into the
his-
Spiritualism
controversial in
torical record.
made the most extensive effort to who Tituba may have been, as well as to set the details we know about her in a broader context of stud-
pp. 65-67 Elaine G. Breslaw has date to determine
fragmentary
of Puritans, slavery, and Caribbean Indians
ies
Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem. This full
academic research, but
her it is
of anthropological details that a young reader interested in the
subject sists
is
at the time; see
is
sure to find fascinating.
of two versions of
lists
The most
1676. Both include a young person includes a boy
named John
exciting discovery con-
of slaves on a Barbados plantation in
named
(see photos
Tattuba, and one also
on pp. 64 and
65). This could
be a record of Tituba and John Indian before Parris purchased them. For a shorter version of Breslaw's views,
in a useful
anthology of
primary sources and subsequent interpretations, see her "Tituba's Confession," pp. 444-53. Breslaw's work
of what
we know
is
most useful
as a portrait
about beliefs and practices in Tituba's age.
do not have enough evidence
to link that general
We just
knowledge
to the
actual person. p.
^244}2-
67 For the history of the Tituba myth see Rosenthal,
SS, pp. 10-14.
Notes and Comments
p. (p.
67 For two versions of the rye cake 342), both in Burr,
AWC
test
In a note
see Hale (p. 4 3) and Calef 1
on
342 Burr also
p.
cites
account of the rye cake test in his own church record. Rosenthal weighs out the different stories, including a more thorough Parris's
reading of Parris's record, and emphasizes pp. 26-27;
I
am
grateful to
tempting to say the record does not p.
him
Sibley's role in SS,
me
that,
naming Tituba,
test led to the girls'
make
Mary
for reminding
while
it
is
the actual
that direct link.
68 For Hale on Tituba's English mistress being a witch, see Burr,
NWC,
414.
p.
68 For Breslaw's research and speculations on the type of Indian Tituba may have been, see Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem, p.
pp. 9-14.
pp. 69-70 For the rumor about the French Catholics inciting the Indians, see Phillips,
Godbeer
in
Salem
quote about the "tawny man" vol. 3, p. 768.
DD, p.
in
the Eighteenth
Century,
47.
p.
DD (p. 200) stresses the colonists' fears of Indians. The And
is
from Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWR on the Indians, see Godbeer,
for Mather's quotes
pp. 192-93.
70 In
DS Norton
ber of the girls and in the
Salem
trials
explores the effect of the Indian wars on a num-
women who were among (see appendix
II,
the
most active accusers
pp. 319-20, for a
of those
list
linked to the Indian wars).
pp. 71-72 For Parris blaming Sibley, see Gragg, SWC, p. 69. For the story of Parris beating Tituba, see Calef in Burr, IsfWC, p. 343. In Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem Breslaw inexplicably
assumes
beat Tituba to force her to confess to having conducted the
than confess to being a witch
account
at all.
at stake in
it
72 For
Parris's
Gragg, SWC, p.
Chapter
in is
Calef 's
good
at
analyzing
(p.
who had
223
n. 5).
devil's tools against him, see
p. 69.
73 Godbeer notes
DD,
p.
warning on using the
particularly ready to
errors in
Breslaw
fit
"Tituba's Confession"
Calef 's story about Parris beating Tituba (see Tituba.
Reluctant Witch of Salem, p.
right.
which does not
109),
Covering the same events
449), however, she gets
what
(p.
Parris
test rather
p.
that people in the
blame others
Salem area
in this
period were
rather than investigate their
own
203.
III
from Gragg, A pp. 77-78 Characterizations of Good and Osborne are "distracted" as Good Quest for Security^ pp. 1 13-14. Calef describes
-^245K-
Witch-
HUNT or melancholy in Burr,
AWC,
p.
343; and Rosenthal discusses Good's
age in SS, pp. 87-88. p.
78 For the judges see Gragg, SWC,
p. 79 For moving the hearing scene, see Upham, SW, vol. 2, detail
Upham
on the hearing
details p. 35;
supplies, but for
it is
p. 48.
to the
meetinghouse and setting the
p. 12.
This
which he
is
is
in this section are also
impossible to
know
if his
the kind of wonderful
the sole authority. Further
from Upham, SW,
account
is
vol. 2,
what he
accurate, but
says does not conflict with the recorded testimony. For the actual dia-
logue see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, p.
vol. 2, p. 358.
81 For Osborne on the Indian image see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
SWP,
vol. 2, p. 611.
p. 81 For Tituba
on Betty see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol. 3,
p. 753.
pp. 82-87 For Tituba 's
SWP,
vol. 3, p.
first
responses see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
747; for Breslaw's analysis of Tituba's confession in
the context of wider cultural studies, see Tituba, Reluctant Witch of
Salem, pp. 117-22.
On
the girls' pains ending
Tituba's confession, see
SWP,
vol. 3 p. 757.
of the devil's enticements, see SWP, vol.
upon the
start
of
For Tituba's description
3, p.
748.
—including her claim of clothing she described — see
pp. 83-84 For details on Tituba's dream flight,
her travel to Boston, and the
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol. 3, pp.749, 750, 753, 755.
On
the
dream flight, see Breslaw, Even today there is a degree
possible Indian origin for Tituba's belief in Tituba, Reluctant Witch
of Salem,
p. 127.
of ambiguity in evaluating dream evidence. For example,
"Dreamtime" of Australian Aborigines to them. If
we
grant that to them, there
is is
discussed,
no reason
we
to
be
when
say
it is
the real
less accept-
ing of the Puritans.
pp. 85-86 For Osborne's two creatures and Tituba's claim to have seen one of them the previous night, see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
SWP,
vol. 3, pp. 749, 752.
For the kenaima theory see Breslaw,
Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem, p. 128.
For the devil's book, see
SWP, vol. 3, p. 754. pp. 86-87 For Tituba's claim of nine witches and their location, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 3, pp. 754-55. p. 87 In contrast to my account in this chapter, Norton argues that the turning point of the trials was not Tituba's confession, but rather Abigail Hobbs's confession and Ann Putnam Jr.'s vision of the evil minister George Burroughs. She believes these events, which linked Salem to the attacks in Maine, led to the rapid increase in the number and scope of the accusations (see DS,
•S{246}:t
p. 120).
Notes and Comments
Chapter IV 91 For Ann's record
p.
recent internet search
in the trials see Rosenthal, SS, p. 41.
saw an
I
On
a
article that listed her as involved in
eighteen of twenty-one deaths, but
it
did not give any particulars for
the additional case (beyond the nineteen hangings and Giles Corey's
death by torture), which
apparently a newly discovered account.
is
Rosenthal's forthcoming edition of the
trials is
most recent data on the number of Throughout DS Norton argues
convictions, and deaths.
the
Salem witch
lived in the
trials,
that the
sure to include the
most important accuser
was Mercy Lewis, not Ann Putnam Putnams' home, had direct links to the Maine trials
Jr.
in
Lewis
disasters,
and could have fed or influenced the Putnams (see especially pp. 134 and 137). I think, though, that Norton has done a better job of establishing Lewis's importance and motivations than of
Ann Putnam
Jr.
This
be debating for years
making sense of
the kind of historical quandary scholars will
is
come, and any readers who want
to
be able
to
to participate in that discussion should read Norton's book.
p.
92 For Ann's
is
my
Dorothy Good's ghost see Boyer and
story about
Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol.
1,
p.
246, and vol.
2, p.
353; the word throat
extrapolation from "almost choke" in the transcripts. For the
Proctor story see SWP, vol.
2, p.
668.
Hansen argues that the accusers were in a state of true psychological torment, which fits the medical diagnosis of "hysteria." He finds a strong similarity between exactly the kind of symptoms Ann reported, such as choking and hallucinating, and case studies by as Sigmund Freud (see Witchcraft at Salem, For Rosenthal's summary of the various schools of thought
famous analysts such p.
1).
may have been
about what
afflicting the accusers, including the hys-
teria theory, see SS, pp. 32-36.
p.
94 For the
story of the
Nissenbaum, SWP, p.
96 For the theory
Putnam without
the dark night, see
Boyer and
vol. 3, p. 371.
95 For discussions of
natural event, see Hall, p.
two men on
and as a
beliefs of thunder as a divine voice
WW,
pp. 76, 77, 78, 79, 106.
Putnams were aiming at Mary Veren knowing it, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SP
that the
entirely
pp. 146-47. p.
96 For Ann's accusation of Martha Corey see Boyer and
Nissenbaum, p.
p.
SWP
98
On
vol.
1, p.
260.
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWR Mercy Lewis see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
97 For Martha's
test see
vol.
1 ,
SWP
p.
261
vol.
1.
pp. 264-65.
-a247S-
Witch-
HUNT p.
On
99
SWC,
Abigail Williams see Gragg,
p. 57.
Lawson's account
NWC,
of Abigail's possession and behavior appears in Burr, pp. 153-54. p.
100 Godbeer discusses appreciatively but skeptically two
interpretations of afflicted p. 11
n.
1
Demos,
115 and
p.
in ES, has
1
young women
17 n. 139).
made
the
As
different
as "acting out" (see
cited earlier in a note
most thorough
on
DD,
p. 10,
effort to date to discern
the inner conflicts of people in witchcraft cases based
on
their
symp-
toms, as recorded in court records. p.
100 For Lawson's account of
NWC,
his interrupted sermon, see Burr,
p. 154.
Chapter V pp. 105-106 For Hathome's questioning of Martha see Boyer and
Nissenbaum, SWP,
on
is
sumed
the accused
behaving
p.
vol.
1,
248; his quote about "terror to evil-
p.
251. Norton points out that judges at this time pre-
doers"
were
guilty,
and thus the Salem judges were not
an unusual fashion (see DS, pp. 27-42). This does not contradict the prior record in which most people accused of witchcraft
in
went
free because judges alone did not render verdicts
—juries
did.
pp. 106-107 For Martha's claim of innocence and the crowd's reaction, see both Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, p. 248, and
Lawson's rendition to crack, see
SWP,
Burr,
in
vol.
1, p.
NWC,
being against Martha, see SWP, vol. p.
p.
155.
For her beginning
250. For signs of "distraction" and
109 For Norton's speculation
1, p.
all
251.
that the testimony of the
young
accusers was also echoed by written descriptions of their afflictions
taken
down by men
but since
lost,
see DS, p. 72.
pp. 109-111 For the accusers calling out questions to Martha and the story about the pin, see Lawson's comments in Burr, NWC, p. 156, which are echoed by Calef in the same volume, on p. 344. For Ann Putnam's claims of Elizabeth How's use of a pin, see Rosenthal, SS, p. 36; Lawson's story about pins and bindings appears in Upham, SW, vol. 2, appendix, p. 530.
For the story about Sheldon being
tied up,
see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, pp. 370-71. pp. 111-112 For the issue raised by the bites and pins see Rosenthal, SS, p. 36. For an instance of bite marks confirmed by the court, see
Cotton Mather's The Wonders of the Invisible World, in Burr, NWC, pp. 216-17. For Calef's story about the knife see NWC, pp. 357-58.
^2AQ^
Notes and Comments
pp. 112-113 For brooms and poles
Nissenbaum, SWP,
left
in
trees
see
Boyer and
vol. 2, p. 371.
p. 113 The famous reference to "sport" is in Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, p. 665. It is not clear in what context or at what time the girl said this. In the transcript the
she
is
unnamed
girl
says "she," not "I," but
speaking about herself.
114 The quote that comprises the subhead on this page is from Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, p. 585. pp. 114-115 For general background information on the case of Rebecca Nurse, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SP, p. 149; the conflict p.
over the pigs ers see
is in
Rosenthal, SS,
p. 92.
For the words of her support-
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol. 2, p. 594; but because account of Rebecca's response to the accusations was from people who believed in her and were advocating for her, it may be
this
doubted. p.
116 Lawson's observation of Ann
Sr.
can be found
in Burr,
NWC,
The interpretation of Ann's struggle with the specter of Rebecca comes from Boyer and Nissenbaum, SP, pp. 148^9.
p.
157.
Rosenthal, in an undated personal communication, strongly objects that
Boyer and Nissenbaum's
effort to glean
Ann Putnam's
subcon-
scious intentions from her spoken words relies on a saintly image of
Rebecca
that
was a nineteenth-century
of psychoanalysis that sources.
I
is
creation and employs a
method
simply inappropriate for seventeenth-century
respect his caution but find their interpretation at least
com-
pelling as a speculation and possibly true.
pp. 116-117 The opening of the hearing Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, pp. 584^85. pp. 117-118 For
Ann
Sr.'s
is
documented
in
Boyer and
claim of being attacked by "beasts," see
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, p. 605. Lawson's description of the scene from outside the courtroom is in Burr, NWC, p. 159; Lawson is explicit that this was a secondhand account, so the details
may is
not be precise, but the overall effect he describes matches what
captured in the testimony.
pp. 118-119 For the dramatic exchanges between Hathome and Nurse, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, pp. 586-87.
119 For Nurse bringing up the devil using her likeness, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, p. 587. p. 120 On Lawson and his sermon see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP p.
and Gragg, SWC, p. 67. Parris's sermon see Gragg, A Quest for Securin, on covetousness is on p. 124. remark pp. 123-24; his version of Cloyce's departure that favors the gives p. 122 Lawson vol. 1, p. 164,
pp. 120-121
On
249
Witch-
HUNT anger or guilt having caused the door to slam; ever the skeptic, Calef credits the
wind
AWC,
(see Burr,
another example of
is
how
pp. 161 and 346, respectively). This
useful Burr's collection
is.
Chapter VI p.
125 Samuel Sewall's quote
chapter p.
noted in
is
many
126 For the petition
Nissenbaum, SWP,
that is
used as the
in support of
vol. 2, pp.
592-93;
subhead
first
SWC,
sources, including Gragg,
in this
p. 82.
Rebecca Nurse, see Boyer and
we
are not sure
when
this peti-
was submitted, though internal evidence suggests it was later in the summer, after she had been convicted. Doubts about Elizabeth tion
Proctor's being accused are discussed in Gragg, p.
127 For Cloyce's response
room scene p.
here, see
to
SWC,
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
127 Lewis's testimony
is
in
p. 77.
John Indian and the overall court-
Gragg, SWC,
vol. 2, p. 659.
p. 70.
pp. 128-29 For Danforth's challenges to both accused and accusers, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, pp. 659-60. p.
129 For the
spirits
of the accused inhabiting the courtroom and the
accusations against the Proctors, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, pp.
660-61.
pp. 130-31 Background on Phips and his comments on the colony upon his arrival there can be found in Burr, AWC, pp. 196, 199, and in
Gragg, SWC,
p. 86.
An
older view of Phips had
that
it
he was pre-
occupied with military matters and was hardly involved with the witchcraft cases after he set up the court, which
him
I initially
crafted I
saw
painted. Rosenthal cautioned
by Phips
my
was
text. I
am
Norton's
the picture of
was a myth was only when 237-38) that I
that this
after the fact to protect himself, but
this interpretation restated in
corrected
me
DS
it
(pp.
grateful to both Rosenthal
and Norton for
me from perpetuating a mistaken view of Phips. pp. 131-32 On Saltonstall see Gragg, SWC, p. 87; on his speedy ignation, see Rosenthal, SS, p. 233 n. 8. On Clinton see Boyer saving
Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol.
1, p.
res-
and
217.
pp. 132-33 For the argument that there was a skeptical mind-set at the time, see Rosenthal, SS, pp. 183-86. Questions about the physics of an
accused witch's supposed
ability to
knock down her accusers by glanc-
ing at them were raised in a letter written by trials
and
later
made
public;
it
Thomas
can be found in Burr,
Brattle during the
AWC,
p. 171.
pp. 134-35 For Bridget Bishop see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. l,p. 86.
^250!^
Notes and Comments
p.
134 Rosenthal's SS gives various possible
puppet story on p.
135 Calef
tells
the story of John's bite in Burr,
pp. 135-36 The excerpts from Mather's are in Burr,
interpretations of the
p. 76.
NWC,
NWC,
348.
p.
report about the Bishop case
pp. 223, 229.
p. 136 Brattle describes the charge
to
the jury
in
NWC,
Burr,
pp. 187-88. p.
137 For "The Return of Several Ministers" see Gragg, SWC,
pp. 101-102; the final paragraph wherein the ministers ultimately
leave the matter to the judges
pp. 138-39 The
on which
my
is
on
paragraph of
last
p. 103.
original text followed an older,
Mary Beth Norton's DS caused me sations,
show
began
that the accusers
which brought them
eventually ended the to
is
the second occasion
now
clearly inaccurate
and the comments of Rosenthal and the example of
interpretation,
view held
chapter
this
trials.
to revise
my
views.
into conflict with powerful leaders
One
who
of Norton's breakthroughs has been
that the accusations of figures such as
Burroughs were directly linked
to the
John Alden and George
Maine wars and made
sense in light of the influence of those attacks on the
Chapter
The older
"overreach" and make wild accu-
to
perfect
trials.
VII
pp. 143-44 For Ann's vision, including the ghosts of Burroughs's
murdered wives, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, pp. 164, 166. For the dates of Burroughs's arrest and his arrival back in Salem,
s&eSWP,
vol. l,p. 152.
WW, p. 76. p. 145 For beUef in the idea that "murder will out," see Hall, SWC, Gragg, see arrests new the on details 145-46 For pp. brought never was who particular, in Andrew Daniel pp. 112-13. For 1
to trial,
see
Weisman,
Witchcraft,
Magic, and Religion
Century Massachusetts, appendix C, p. 109. I Beth Norton for correcting my account of these
some of
the details,
I
have borrowed
the
am
in
17th-
grateful to
Mary
arrests. In describing
wording
in
her note to me.
on the arrests of wealthy p. 146 Norton's more recent interpretation people is in DS, pp. 156-57. Boyer and Nissenbaum. SWP, p. 147 For the quote on "tingling" see vol. l,p. 165.
pp.
147^8
For Burroughs's physical appearance,
strength, and his role Nissenbaum, SWP, vol.
as 1,
Mercy
his
Lewis's tempter, see
presuined
Boyer and
pp. 167, 168-69, 170. 171.
v^251 Vr
Witch-
HUNT 148 For Hobbs's testimony see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
p.
vol. l,p. 173.
148 On Burroughs's not baptizing all but one of his children, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, p. 153. pp. 148-49 Cotton Mather's account of Burroughs's hearing p.
including the passages about Burroughs being a "conjurer," about
promises he made, and about both the noise and the accusers' inabil-
—
ity to speak in the courtroom is in Burr, NWC, pp. 216, 217, 219; Mather quotes Burroughs citing the English book on p. 222. p. 150 For the story about Margaret Jacobs visiting Burroughs, see
Calef in Burr,
NWC,
364, and Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2,
p.
pp. 490-91.
pp. 150-51 Sources on Burroughs's execution are numerous: for Mather's account of Burroughs's death see Burr, NWC, p. 222; for
opposing views on Burroughs see Calef in Brattle's
found
comments
NWC,
is
who doubt
p. 177;
NWC,
pp.
360-61;
and Sewall's diary entry
The idea of "two men
in Rosenthal, SS, p. 145.
Gallows Hill ars
are in
from Calef in NWC, p. 177; Rosenthal p. 249 n. 47.
in black"
cites
is
on
two schol-
Calef in SS,
pp. 152-53 The issue of Burroughs's possible abuse with quotations in Gragg, SWC, pp. 114-15.
Rosenthal speculates, while realizing there
is
is
sunmiarized
only very
frail evi-
Ann Putnam Sr. might have beaten and murdered her Ann transposed that into a vision of an accused witch
dence, that
child and that
whipping her
to death (see SS, p. 40).
For speculations on child
abuse, or false accusations of child abuse, being an important clue in the
Salem
Trials, pp.
p.
story, see Peter
Charles Hoffer, The Salem Witchcraft
49-50 and 79-80.
153 Norton describes the 1676 attack
that devastated
Mercy Lewis's
family in DS, pp. 48-50; Lewis's and Hobbs's Maine connections with
Burroughs are discussed more generally on pp. 128-131.
Chapter VIM pp. 155, 157 The are p.
title
title of the first subhead Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2,
of this chapter and the
from Margaret Jacobs
in
491.
pp. 157-58
On
Abigail
Hobbs
see
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol. 2, p. 409.
p.
158
On Mary Warren
p. 159 Norton
unnamed
-1^252^
offers
accusers
see Rosenthal, SS, pp. 47-48.
her speculative identification of the two
who went
to
Andover
in
DS,
p.
233.
Notes and Comments
pp. 159-60 For Sarah Churchill's story see Boyer and Nissenbaum, vol. 1, p. 211. Sarah Ingersoll's account of Churchill's confes-
SWP,
in the same volume, on pp. 21 1-12. 161-62 For Margaret Jacobs's recantation see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 2, p. 491 her quote about seeing "nothing but death," is on pp. 491-92. p. 162 A modern-day example of a person whose belief in speaking
sion
is
pp.
;
the truth has had important consequences
president of the Czech Republic.
compare
is
may sound
Vaclav Havel, former odd, or overstated, to
the confessions of seventeenth-century admitted liars to
who have changed
people
It
the fate of nations in our
Havel's basic idea of "living
Communist
state,
in truth"
animated
own
time, but
his resistance to the
many imprisonments, and
sustained
him during
common
with the realization Jacobs and Churchill
has a great deal in
his
came to that they simply could not bear lying. See Havel's The Power of the Powerless (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990). p.
p.
On Rebecca
165
NWC,
p.
Nurse's jury reversing
itself,
see Calef in Burr.
358.
165 The quote
that
forms
this
chapter subhead
is
from John
Proctor's plea, discussed on the following pages, in Boyer and
Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol. 2, p. 689.
p. 166 For Proctor's plea see Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol.
2,
pp. 689-90. p.
167 The new theory
that the
the Indian attacks and thus
can be found
in
Norton, DS,
judges
more p.
in
vulnerable to criticism for
receptive to witchcraft accusations
299. For the possibility that the judges
were following English precedent
Law and Society
felt
in accepting torture, see
Puritan Massachusetts,
Konig,
p. 172.
169 The case against George Corwin is outlined in Rosenthal, SS, was actually pp. 196-201, but Gragg is unconvinced that Corwin profiting from the cases (compare with SWC, p. 103, and 55, p. 199). p.
The Corwin/Jacobs family story is in SWC, p. 129. hJWC, pp. 170-71 Thomas Brattle's observations are in Burr, against Samuel Willard cases the on information 177-78. The pp. and John Hale's wife being summarily dismissed
is
from Rosenthal,
55, p. 178.
Chapter IX p.
173 The
title
of this chapter
petition letter to the court, in p.
is
a quote
from Mary Easty's
Boyer and Nissenbaum,
SWR
final
vol.
1.
304.
253 u-
Witch-
HUNT pp. 175-76 This exchange between Easty and the judge
is in Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, p. 289. pp. 176-77 The story of Easty's release and Mercy Lewis's fit is from Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, p. 301; for the accusers backing
see p. 304. Rosenthal outlines the chronology of Mary's hearings
off,
in SS, p. 176.
p.
177 For Easty and Cloyce's joint petition
and Nissenbaum, SWP,
vol. 1, pp.
pp. 179-80 For Easty's famous final Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, pp. 304-305.
letter
181 The quote that comprises the subhead on
p.
Eunice Fry
in
Gragg, SWC,
Boyer
to the judges, see
302-303.
Boyer and
see
this
page
from
is
p. 164.
181 Increase Mather's quotations are from Gragg, SWC,
p.
pp. 173-75.
pp. 182-83 Brattle's
letter
appears in Burr,
NWC,
p. 184.
pp. 182-83 Phips's letters to London are reproduced in Burr, NWC, pp. 196-97. Norton proves that Phips was aware of and involved in the trials in DS, p. 237; Rosenthal stressed this
same point
me
to
in a
personal communication.
183 Easty's "alteration" quote from her
p.
earlier, is in
the
first
Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP,
note to this subsection, Eunice Fry was the
openly admitted that her confession "was tions are p.
p.
final petition, discussed
vol. 1, p. 304.
from
his
aforementioned
all false."
As
stated in
woman who
Phips's quotain Burr,
NWC,
described by Gragg in
SWC,
letters to
London,
201.
184 The
last
phase of the
trials is
pp. 181-83.
quote here is from Parris in Gragg, SWC, p. 184. August 1693 sermon see Boyer and Nissenbaum,
p.
184 The
subtitle's
p.
185 For
Parris's
SP, pp. 176-77.
pp. 185-86 For Parris's 1694 confession see Gragg,
SWC,
pp. 184-85.
186 For Sewall's statement on God's anger see Calef's proclamation in Burr, NWC, pp. 385-86. p.
186 For Cotton Mather's diary entry see Rosenthal, SS, p. 202. pp. 186-87 For Sewall's statement read in church see Gragg, SWC, p.
p.
186. p.
187 For the jury members' apology, see Calef in Burr,
NWC,
p.
387.
Chapter X p. 189 The chapter SW,wo\2,p. 110.
-1^254 &^
title is
from a quote by Ann Putnam
Jr.
in
Upham,
Notes and Comments
p. 191 Green's conciliatory skills are discussed vol. 2, pp.
p.
192
Ann
Jr.
by
506-508, and by Boyerand Nissenbaum
Upham was
unable to finally determine
was responsible
for
upon her
her failing health see SW, vol.
2, p.
Upham
in
how many
parents' death.
On
SW,
IS- 19.
in SP, pp. 2
children
her age and
509; he says her health "began to
was long an invalid," but it is not clear what that chronic illness or some specific form of incapacity. implies pp. 192-93 For Ann's confessional statement see Gragg, SWC, p. 187. pp. 194-95 Thomas Putnam's odd-sounding letter is in Boyer and Nissenbaum, SWP, vol. 1, pp. 165, 166. See note above corresponding to p. 106 for Hathome's use of the same phrase "terror to evil-doers." p. 197 Norton outlines Lewis's later life in DS, on p. 310. pp. 199-200 I discuss both the rebellious side of the 1960s and the
decline and she
—
recent continuities noted with the '50s in
Cultural History of the Avant-Garde
my
(New
Art Attack:
A
York: Clarion,
Short 1998),
pp. 123-33. p.
202 For Putnam's "wheel" phrase, see Boyer and Nissenbaum.
SWP,
vol. l,p. 165.
Appendix p.
225 Miller's quote
p.
226 226 227
p. p.
is
from
his autobiography, Timebends, p. 33
Miller, Timebends, p. 334. Miller, Timebends, p. 335.
Miller, Timebends, p. 338.
Timeline Puritan history follows a more extensive chronology in Bremer's, The Puritan Experiment. The timeline of Salem events is based on a
The Salem Witchcraft not match that of Trials. In a few details Hoffer's chronology does I also Rosenthal in SS; in those cases, I have followed Rosenthal. the for Trials consulted Marilynne K. Roach's The Salem Witch from are chronology of events. Dates for the Indian clashes in Maine similar and
more complete version
Norton's DS, but even debate, so
it is
many of the
always worthwhile
in Hoffer's
dates in that to
drama
are subject to
check multiple sources against
one another.
i255t
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Index A Abbot, Benjamin, 13-14 abuse theory of Salem
crisis,
215
Alden, John, 146, 171
Andrew, Daniel, 145-146,
147, 171
Andros, Edmond, 29— 30, 68, 130
B Bayley, James, 52
biological theories for Salem
crisis,
215— 217
Bishop, Bridget, 134-137
Boarman, Thomas, 132 Boyer, Paul, 212 Bradstreet, Brattle,
Simon, 182
Thomas,
136, 138, 150, 170, 181-182, 2IO
breaking of charity, 226 Breslaw, Elaine G., 2l8
Burroughs, George, 52, 143-145. 147-153- 202
C Galef, Robert, 61, 62, 71. 73- HI, 138, 150, 164, 2IO
Carr, Ann, 50 Carr, George, 50 Carrier, Martha (Goody), 3-7, 8, 13, 14. l8. 166 Carrier, Sarah, 8
^261
e-
Witch-
HUNT
Catholics, 27,
30
Chandler, Phoebe, 13-14 Charles
II,
29
Cheever, Ezekiel, 96 child abuse theory of Salem
crisis,
215
Chronology of Events in the Salem Witch
Crisis,
231— 233
Churchill, Sarah, 159-161, 162, 180 Cinderella,
II,
13
Clinton, Rachel, 132 Cloyce, Sarah, 126-128, 177-178, 193
Cole, Sarah,
60
Communists, hunt
for,
224~226
confessions of witchcraft, 81— 88, II9, 157—1^2, 20I
Corey, Martha, 95-99, lOI, IO5-IIO, 112, 192
Corwin, George, 168-170, 194 Corwin, Jonathan, 78,
131, 148, 168, 170, 175,
194
Cotton, John, 25 Crucible,
The
(Miller), 126, 166, 2IO,
221-228
curses, 14
D Danforth, Thomas, 126, 128-129, 176, 182 deception and fraud theory of Salem
crisis,
2IO, 214. 215
Demos, John Putnam, 212— 213 devil as "father
of
forms
83
of,
lies," JT,
Puritans' views of,
28—29
Tituba and, 86 Devil in Massachusetts,
-1:3262 S-
The
(Starkey), 2IO, 221
3
INDEX
Woman, The
Devil in the Shape of a
(Karlsen), 213
doubters of witchcraft. See skeptics
dreams, 84
E Easty,
Mary, 175-181, 193
egg-in-water
ritual, 59.
60, 63
encephalitis lethargica theory of Salem
England, Puritans
in,
crisis,
2l6
27
England, witchcraft accusations
in,
212
English, Mary, 146, 171 English, Philip, 145, 146, 169, 171
Entertaining Satan (Demos), 212-213 ergot poisoning theory of Salem
crisis,
2l6
F fairy tales,
8-1 1,
"familiars," 83.
1
85
farmers, 46-47, 4^, 52
"Finding the Devil in the Details of the Salem Witch
Trials'
(Norton), 218 Fitch,
Anne, 45
folk magic, 214-215
fraud theory of Salem
crisis,
2IO, 214, 2I5
French Catholics, 69, 70, 167
G Gedney, Bartholomew, 78, 168 Glover, Goody, 23-24. 33-35- 39
Good, Dorothy (Dorcas), 92 -:i283e-
Witch-
HUNT
Good, Sarah, 77-78,
79, 85, 87, 112
Goodwin, John Jr., 36
Goodwin, John
Sr.,
37—38
Goodwin, Martha, 23, 37
Goodwin
i
children, 23—25, 35—39, 61, 217
grace, divine,
|
44—45
|
Gragg, Larry, 2l8
?
Green, Joseph, 191— 192
|
H Hale, John, 58-60, 62, 63, 67, Jl Hall, David,
'
214-215
I
hanging of witches, 137, 150— 151, 165
\ ']
Hansen, Chadwick, 2IO-2II, 214
]
'
Hathorne, John
J
bargains with accused witches, 157 at
Burroughs hearing, 148
at
Corey hearing, 105— 107
at Easty
hearing, 175
at
Good, Osborne, and Tituba hearing,
at
Nurse hearing, I16— II9
in
Oyer and Terminer
78,
80— 82
court, 131
Putnam and, 194— 195 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 25, 7^ Hecate, 108
Hobbs, Abigail, 148, 153,
157, 158
Hoffer, Peter Charles, 215
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 224—226
How,
Elizabeth, III
Hubbard, Elizabeth,
^264}^
3, 6,
62, 78, 176
INDEX
I
Indian, John, 66, 67, 127, 128, 135
Indians fear of,
69-70, 81
Puritans and, 28, 69
Tituba, 68
Wabanaki, 167, 2l8 wars with, 30, 139, 167 Ingersoll, Sarah, 160, 161
In the Devil's Snare (Norton), 2l8
J Jacobs, George, 150, 169
Jacobs, Margaret, 150, 157, 161-162, 180
James
I,
27
Jews' struggles as parallel to Puritans' struggles,
227—228
judges at
Burroughs hearing, 148, 149
at
Corey hearing, 98
at
Corey
at
Good, Osborne, and Tituba hearing, jS—J^, 86
trial,
106— 107
Indians and, 167 motivations at
Nurse
of,
trial,
167-171,
203
164-165
of Oyer and Terminer court, 131, 138, 139, 165. 167-171. 184 skeptics
among, 182
K Karlsen, Carol, 213
Kazan,
Elia,
225-226
-^•265
Witch-
HUNT
kenaimas, 85—86
King
Philip's
Knapp,
War, 30
Elizabeth,
10,,
29, 83
L Lawson, Deodat, 52-53, 99, lOO, Lewis,
III, 112,
Mercy
afflictions of, 62, 98, 127, 147.
background
of,
176-177
70. 153
Burroughs and, 147-148, 152, 153 Carrier and, 6
Corey and, 98 Easty and, 176-177 as leader "little
of accusers, 197
sorceries," 32, 61
M Maine, yo Mather, Cotton advice to judges, 133, 137, 165
background
of, 24''
25
Bishop and, 135, 136
Burroughs and, 150, criticism of, devils
151,
15^
2IO
and witches and, 30,
31,
32
Glover and, 25, 33, 35
Goodwin children and, Indians and, regrets of,
'i;3266tS-
69— 70
186
29, 35—39. 61
II5-120
INDEX
Mather, Increase, 25, 68, 137, medical theories for Salem
181. 182,
crisis,
183
215— 217
merchants, 46—47, 48, 52, 138 Miller, Arthur, 126, 166, 2IO,
221-228
Milton, John, 108
Monroe, Marilyn, 225
N 1960s, 200, 201
Nissenbaum, Stephen, 212 Norton, Mary Beth, 70, 109, 146, 153, 197, 2l8 Noyes, Reverend, 160
Nurse, Rebecca, 96, 98, I14-II9, 163-165, 193
O Oakes, Thomas, 24
Osborne, Sarah,
77, 78, 79-81, 85,
Oyer and Terminer, court
87
of, 131, 138, 139,
167-171, 184
P Paradise Lost (Milton), 108 Parris, Elizabeth (Betty), Parris,
57-64, 78, IO7-IO9
Samuel
background
of,
53
plea for forgiveness, 185
resignation of, 185— 186 rye cake test and, 71—72
sermons
of,
53-54- 120-122, 185
Titubaand, 71-72, 73
-^-267
Witch-
HUNT
Phips, William, 130-131, 167, 182-184 pins, as witches' instruments, IIO, III, 112, II3
Pope, Bathshua, lOI, IIO, 129 Porter, Elizabeth, 51 Porter, John,
4.7
Porter family arrival in Salem, as
47
merchants, 48
Nurse and, 163
Putnams
versus, 49~5I» 1^3
Proctor, Elizabeth, 92, 126-127, 128-129, 135 Proctor, John, 129, 166, 167, 225
puppets, 34, 35, 134-135 Puritans fracturing of,
and
history
48—49
beliefs of,
25-30, 44-45, 203-204, 214-215
Indians and, 28 salvation and,
timeline of,
44—45
229—233
after witch trials,
Putnam,
204— 205
Ann Jr.
as accuser,
78-79,
91,
95-98, 107-III, 197
afflictions of, 62, 92, 135
apology
of,
background
192—194 of,
43,
51.
92,
200
Burroughs and, 143— 145, I52 Carrier and, 4> 6
Corey and, 95-98, IO7-IO9 Easty and, 176, 177 at
^3268^:^
Good, Osborne, and Tituba hearing, 7^—79
INDEX
possible motives of, 93—94, 197— 20I
Proctor and, 129, 135
Putnam,
Ann
St., 62, 63, 93, 95, 115-116, 117,
Putnam, John,
46, 50
4,4,
Putnam, Joseph,
192
51
Putnam, Mary Veren. 5geVeren, Mary Putnam, Thomas
Sr.,
50, 51
Putnam, Thomas Jr., 50-51, 78, 192, 194-196. 202
Putnam
family
affliction of, as
61-62, 121
46—47
farmers,
Nurse and,
I15, Il6,
possible motives of,
163
194— 197
Salem Village and, 49
49— 51, 163
Porters versus,
ft
Quakers, 30, lOO
R recantations of witchcraft, "relation," 46,
160— 162
200— 20I
Religion and the Decline of Magic (Thomas), 2IO
"Return of Several Ministers, The," 137
Riding the Nightmare (Williams), 214 rituals, 32,
34
rye cake test, 66,
Venus
glass
and
67-68, 71-72
egg, 60,
63
Rosenthal, Bernard, 198-199, 214 rye cake test, 66,
67-68, 71-72
;269
Witch-
HUNT
S Salem founding
of,
splitting of,
44
48-49, 52-53, 120, 200
tensions in, 200, 212
Salem Possessed (Boyer and Nissenbaum), 212 Saiem 5toiy (Rosenthal)
2 14
,
Salem Town, 48, 52-53, 120 Salem
Village, 49, 50, 52, I20, 122
Salem Witchcraft (Upham), 2IO Salem Witchcraft Papers (Boyer and Nissenbaum), 212 Salem^ Witchcraft Trials,
Salem Witch
Crisis,
The (Hoffer), 215
The (Gragg), 2l8
Saltonstall, Nathaniel, 131-132, 138, 165, 182
salvation,
44—45
September
II,
200I, 219, 221
Sewall, Samuel,
44-45, 126, 130,
Sheldon, Susannah, 4,
5, III,
131, 148, 151, 184,
186-187
II2-II3
Sibley, Mary, 66, 67, 71 skeptics,
132-133, 136, 138, 166, 181-182
Sleeping Beauty, 9— lO,
II
spectral evidence, 133, 137, 184 Starkey,
Marion, 2IO, 221
Stoughton, William, 131, 136, 138, 148, 161, 170, 181-184
T terror,
war against, 226—227
tests
of church members, 46 of witches,
nnot^
17,
66, 96-97, 105, 135, 163
INDEX
Thomas, Keith, 211— 212
Timebends
(Miller), 222,
223
Timeline of Milestones in Puritan History, 229—233 Tituba accusations against, 77
background confession devil and,
of,
of,
66, 68, 222
81-88, 202-203
86 222
Miller's portrayal of,
Parris and, 71—72, 73
67-68, 71-72
rye cake test and, 66, as scapegoat,
70
slave records of, 64,
65
Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem (Breslaw), 2l8 torture, 17, 18,
166-167
Trask, Richard B., IIO
U Upham,
Charles, 63, 79, 2IO, 212
V Venus
glass ritual,
Veren, Mary,
60, 63
51, 96, II5, I16
"visible saints,"
45
W Wabanaki Indians,
167, 2l8
Walcott, Mary, 6, 62, 70, 127,
Warren, Mary,
4, 62,
176m
177
148
wheat rot theory of Salem
crisis,
2l6, 2I7
-?n271
Witch-
HUNT
Willard, Samuel, 12, Ijl, 182, 186
William and Mary, 204 Williams, Abigail, 57-62 afflictions of,
60-62, 99-IOI, 135
Carrier and, 3
Corey and, 99, IO7-IO9 Easty and, I77 at
Good, Osborne, and Tituba hearing, 78
Nurse and, 99 Proctor and, 129, 135 Williams, Selma, 214
Winthrop, Wait, 168 witchcraft
protection against, 31 rituals and, 32,
women
34
and, 211
Witchcraft at Salem (Hansen), 2IO-2II witches
angry
women
as,
211
characteristics of, lO-II, 31, 33-35,
108
confessions of, 81-88, II9, 157-162, 20I
conviction
hanging
of,
33
of, 137,
150-151, 165
history of, 8, lO-II
outsiders
as,
pardoning property
2 II
of,
of,
184
169-170
testing of, 17, 35, 66,
women and
96-97. 105, 135, 163
witchcraft, 211, 213
Worlds of Wonder, Days ofJudgment
-~3272^r
(Hall), 2 14 -215
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