Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials [illustrated] 0689848641, 9780689848643

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

Citation preview

"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.

A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD

Wmm

Q}

w -

00

v.. >

^m.-^

f^m^^

Sa!eo*tii^^^--^^-^

-^-

l\

"^

t

f

^

Digitized by the Internet Arcliive in

2011

http://www.arcliive.org/details/witchliuntmysteriOOaron

'44

Witch-

,

HUNT ••?

MYSTERIES OF

/

yv the sal em

^^rrAam

'^

#

f-#-

#

i

^

f *

'"

WITCH TRIALS

\^

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

%.

/ *^

4^

J^t;

^ -i

.

? ^

^

i^

'

^fc^^C

C^

ri%^

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

•If^

//«,/i

_

tJ

~i

'

if

^

H-

^

,/

*/

/

'Jf

.

ft ,iJ.

i.

•?-*

'

^^

f

.

'/

.

CHAPTER

S-A

„

I

^1641-169^ «^

-4.

^--4.

,

i,-1-'

*-/

/ tf -yi.****!

^

V

«

i

1

!

» ^ n r^ -•

^

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

4^

^

i^fi^^. X.,

r'^

*#*-#

3?

.-?

K #%

(^

1

71

K-f•£-^

^#.

^ ^

%%

%

^

%.*-^

:.' ,

^

i^

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

Bibliography Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem

(Cambridge,

Origins of Witchcraft

Possessed:

MA: Harvard

The Social

University

Press, 1974); abbreviated in the "Notes" as SP.

,

eds. The Salem Witchcraft Papers. 3 vols.

(New York: Da Capo

Press, 1977); abbreviated in the "Notes" as SWP.

Bremer, Francis Bradford

ed.,

to

J.

The Puritan Experiment:

New

England Society from

Edwards (Nev/ York: St. Martin's Press, 197^; ^^v.

NH:

Hanover,

University Press of

New

England, 1995)

(page citations are to the 1995 edition).

Breslaw, Elaine G. Puritan Fantasies

.

Tituha, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians

(New Yorh: New York University

"Tituba's Confession:

The

and

Press, 199^)-

Multicultural Dimensions of

the 1692 Salem Witch-Hunt." In Elaine Breslaw, ed.. Witches of the Atlantic World:

York:

Burr,

A

Historical Reader

New York University

George Lincoln,

ed.

1648-1^06 (New York: reprint.

New York:

are to the

-^^256fcr

Press,

and Primary Sourcebook

(New

200o).

Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases,

Charles Scribner's Sons,

1914;

Barnes and Noble, 1968) (page citations

1968 edition); abbreviated in the "Notes"

as

NWC.

Bibliography

Carlson, Laurie Winn. England Witch

Trials

Fever

m

Salem:

A New

Interpretation of the

New

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999).

Demos, John Putnam. Early

A

Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of

New England (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1982);

abbreviated in the "Notes" as £5.

Gildrie,

Richard.

Salem,

1626—168^: A Covenanted

Massachusetts,

Communit); (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1975).

Godbeer, Richard.

The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion

(New York: Cambridge

England

in

Early

University Press,

New

1992);

abbreviated in the "Notes" as DD.

Gragg, Larry. (Westport,

A

Quest for Security: The

CT: Greenwood

The Salem Witch

.

Crisis

Life

of Samuel

Parris,

1653-1^20

Press, 1990).

(New York:

Praeger, 1992); abbreviated

in the text as SWC.

Green, Rayna, and Melanie Fernandez. Encyclopedia of Native North America

The British

Museum

(Bloomington, IN: Indiana

University Press, 1999).

Hall, David D. Worlds of Wonder, Days offudgment: Popular Religous Belief Early

in

New

England

(New York: Knopf, 1989);

abbreviated in

the "Notes" as WW.

,

ed.

Witch-Hunting

in

Seventeenth- Century

New

England:

A

-^257

Witch-

HUNT

Documentary History, 1638 (Boston: Northeast University Press,

1993;

rev. ed.,

1999) (page citations are to the 1999 edi-

tion); abbreviated in the "Notes" as

Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E.

WH.

The Practice of

Piety:

Puritan Devotional

Hill,

NC:

Hansen, Chadwick. "The Metamorphosis of Tituba: Or,

Why

Practices

in

Seventeenth- Century

University of

New

North Carolina

England

(Chapel

Press, 1982).

American Intellectuals Can't Tell an Indian Witch from a Negro." New En^and Quarterly,

.

Witchcraft at Salem

vol. 47,

no.

I

(New York:

(March 1974): 3—12.

Brazillier, 1969).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Endicott and the Red Cross." In ToldTales

Heyrman,

(New York: Modern

Christine

Leigh.

Library, 200l).

Commerce and

Communities of Colonial Massachusetts,

A

Peter

The Maritime

as CC.

Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials

(New York: Da Capo

Hoffer,

Culture:

igSo—iy^O (New York: Norton,

1984); abbreviated in the "Notes"

Hill, Frances.

Twice-

Charles.

Press, 1997).

The Salem Witchcraft

Trials:

A

Legal History

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997)-

Kamensky, Jane. England

^258^

Governing the Tongue: The

(New York: Oxford

Politics

of Speech

in

University Press, 1997)-

Early

New

Bibliography

Karlsen, Carl. The England

Devil

m

the

Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft

(New York: Norton, 1987;

citations are to the

Colonial New

reprinted. 1998) (page

1998 reprint edition).

Konig, David Thomas. Law and County,

m

1629-1692 (Chapel

m

Society

Hill,

Puritan MassachusetU: Essex

NC:

University of North

Carolina Press, 1979).

Le Beau, Bryan

F. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials

(Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1998); abbreviated in the "Notes"

as5Wl

Miller, Arthur. Timebends

.

The Crucible

(New York: Viking

Morgan, Edmund.

NY: Cornell

(New York: Grove

Visible Saints:

Press, 1989).

Press, 1953).

The History of a Puritan Idea (Ithaca,

University Press, 1963).

Norton, Mary Beth. "Finding the Devil in the Details of the

Salem Witchcraft 21,

.

Trials." Chronicle of Higher Education, (January

2000).

In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis

Knopf, 2002); abbreviated

in the "Notes

ofl692 (New York: '

as DS.

Perley, Sidney. The History of Salem, Massachusetts, vol. 3. l6yi-iyi6

(Salem,

MA:

Sidney Perley, 1928).

-;

259?>

Witch-

HUNT

James Duncan.

Phillips,

Houghton

Salem

the Eighteenth

Century

Witch

Trials:

A Da^-by-Do)/

(New York: Cooper Square

Community Under Siege.

Bernard. Salem

Story:

Reading the Witch

(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University abbreviated in the "Notes"

Starkey,

Marion.

Thomas, Keith.

TTie

Religion

Upham, Charles W.

and

Press,

2002).

Trials

of l6g2

Press, 1993);

the Decline

(New York: Knopf, 1950).

of Magic (Oxford, England:

Press, I97l)-

Salem Witchcraft: With an Account of Salem

a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred

New

Chronicle of a

as SS.

Deui/ in Massac/iusefts

Oxford University

reprint.

(Boston:

Mifflin, 1937).

Roach, Marilynne K. The Salem

Rosenthal,

in

Spirits.

Village

and

2 vols. (1867;

York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1966);

abbreviated in the "Notes" as SW.

Weisman, Richard. Massachusetts

Witchcraft,

(Amherst:

Magic, and Religion

in

lyth- Century

University of Massachusetts Press,

1984).

Williams,

Selma,

Nightmare:

and Pamela Williams Adelman.

Women and

Witchcraft ftom the

Old World

(New York: HarperCollins, 1978; HarperPerennial, edition).

^260^

1991)

to

reprint,

Riding the

Colonial Salem.

New

(page citations are to the

York: 199^

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

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

k

IIIMIIIIII 204 7 04746 3 9999

WITHDRAWN No

Icngor Xi\^ prsperly of the

Boston

FubJJt; Library.

Sale of this material boneflied the Library, \

Alfston

Brandt Library

300 N. Harvard AJIston,

MA

Str