The Penguin Book of Witches (14 page)

Section 11. When this witch was going to her execution, she said the children should not be relieved by her death, for others had a hand in it as well as she, and she named one among the rest, whom it might have been thought natural affection would have advised the concealing of. It came to pass accordingly that the three children continued in their furnace as before, and it grew rather seven times hotter than it was. All their former ails pursued them still, with an addition of (’tis not easy to tell how many) more, but such as gave more sensible demonstrations of an enchantment growing very far toward a possession by evil spirits.

Section 12. The children in their fits would still cry out upon they and them as the authors of all their harm, but who that they and them were, they were not able to declare. At last, the boy obtained at some times a sight of some shapes in the room. There were three or four of them, the names of which the child would pretend at certain seasons to tell, only the name of one who was counted a sager hag than the rest. He still so stammered at that, he was put upon some periphrasis in describing her. A blow at the place where the boy beheld the specter was always felt by the boy himself in the part of his body that answered what might be stricken at, and this though his back were turned, which was once and again so exactly tried, that there could be no collusion in the business. But as a blow at the apparition always hurt him, so it always helped him too. For after the agonies, which a push or stab of that had put him to were over (as in a minute or 2 they would be), the boy would have a respite from his fits a considerable while and the hobgoblins
11
disappeared. It is very credibly reported that a wound was this way given to an obnoxious woman in the town, whose name I will not expose, for we should be tender in such relations lest we wrong the reputation of the innocent by stories not enough enquired into.

Explanations for and interpretations of the Salem witch crisis vary so widely that they can in many respects be seen as more reflective of the times in which the historians are writing
about
Salem than of Salem itself in 1692. Whether explained away as a delusion of Satan, in the first decades of the eighteenth century,
1
when North American intellectual and religious life was beginning to morph in response to the Scientific Revolution; in the nineteenth century, as an embarrassing relic of medieval thought,
2
when history as a field was in the grips of professionalization; or as a shocking aftereffect of eating moldy rye bread, in the 1970s,
3
when Freudian psychoanalysis began to influence the practice of the humanities and drugs played an increased role in popular culture, Salem has always been a screen on which to project presentist interpretations. These various readings of the Salem episode are attractive primarily because they are easily dismissed: Satan made dangerous inroads once but not again; the Middle Ages are well behind us; and bread mold is easily controlled. None of these proximate causes suggest that Salem was a usual or predictable phenomenon and they all reinforce the comforting thought that such a widespread government-sanctioned panic cannot possibly happen again.

Recent scholarship presents a more nuanced and resilient interpretive picture. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum argue in their 1974 book,
Salem Possessed
, that the largest and most fatal North American witch crisis can be understood as a land-based rivalry between two loose family groups, the Porters and the Putnams. Within this rivalry reside kernels of class resentment, coalescing around the divisive figure of the village minister, Samuel Parris, and the cultural differences between a growing port town (Salem Town) and its more insular rural counterpart (Salem Village). The Boyer and Nissenbaum argument represents a starting point for an understanding of what went awry in Salem Village, though its narrow focus requires greater elaboration.

That elaboration begins to appear in 1987’s
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
by Carol Karlsen. Part of the broader trend toward cultural history and its attendant emphasis on questions of class and gender, Karlsen’s writing focuses on an all-important question that had preoccupied writers on witchcraft during the early modern period, but which had eluded Boyer and Nissenbaum: namely, what to make of the fact that most witches were women. In Karlsen’s view, female witches tended to be middle-aged women who were socially conspicuous in some way and challenged the rigid gender hierarchy of Puritan New England. Karlsen’s point is a vital one for an understanding of Salem but still leaves questions unanswered. Why this particular community? Why then?

Answers to this last set of questions take shape in Mary Beth Norton’s 2003 account,
In the Devil’s Snare
. Norton rightly points out that the Salem witch crisis might be better understood as the Essex County witch crisis, as its complex web of accusations and suspected witches extended well outside of Salem Village and deep into the surrounding countryside. She broadens the focus beyond the intricacies of village life, instead placing the Salem episode in context with the Indian wars across the Maine frontier. Norton demonstrates that many of the afflicted girls had direct ties to the violence at the Eastward, and that the language that is used to describe the Devil during the trial testimony overlaps with the language used to describe the native population. The Salem Villagers were a “People of God, settled in those which were once the Devil’s territories,”
4
and the strain, at the personal, political, and psychological levels, on a community so deeply touched with violence and uncertainty, could only find its expression in that culture, at that time, in a witch trial.

Seen within the wider context of English witch-hunting with other North American examples, the Salem witch crisis can no longer be explained away as an anomaly. Every aspect of the Salem crisis—the region in which it took place, the personalities that emerge from the historical record, the outcomes for the accused and the accusers, even the scale of the trial—had an antecedent that can clearly be identified and that was sometimes even known to the participants themselves. Salem’s unique element was the expressed idea of a covenanted conspiracy of witches, a parallel anti-Christian community within the visible Christian one, with accounts of witches’ Sabbaths that find their roots in English folk magical belief.
5
Even the concept of conspiracy, which opened the scale of inquiry to include as many as 150 people before the panic was brought to a close, finds its source in English witch-hunting manuals, which suggest that a witch can be reliably identified by another confessed conspirator.

So, what caused it? What elusive factor sent a widespread community of pious New Englanders into a witch-fearing terror that would result in the death of nineteen innocent people at the hands of the state? Was it superstition? Rotten bread? Indians? Gender panic? Satan himself?

In a sense, Salem was caused by all of these things (or rather, all of them except for rotten bread). The signal fact about Salem is that the panic did not take place in a vacuum. The Salem witch crisis exists as a set of interrelated phenomena along a historical continuum with both a past and, just as important, a future. Rather than being an aberrant expression of North American fears and attitudes about witchcraft, it should instead be seen as the
ultimate
expression of it. And therein lies the most alarming aspect of the Salem witch crisis—if Salem is not aberrant then it cannot be comfortably consigned to the past. Within this slippery historical continuum of behavior, precedent, practice, and response, witchcraft in North American religious and intellectual life becomes less safe to think about. This lack of safety, this persistent reminder of the inhumanity that a small community and its learned and trusted government can show its own members, lingers among us, a threat of what we could at any time still become.

The warrant for Sarah Good marked the legal beginning of the Salem witch trials.
1
She, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba were the first three women in Salem accused of witchcraft. In many respects, Good and Osburn were the usual suspects, as witchcraft trials went.
2
Good was a beggar. She was married with children, but did not conform to standard religious practice, missing church regularly because she had no suitable clothes. She was on the margin and disreputable; with her these infamous trials began.

Salem, February the 29th, 1691/2
3

Whereas Mrs.
4
Joseph Hutcheson, Thomas Putnam, Edward Putnam,
5
and Thomas Preston, yeomen of Salem Village in the county of Essex, personally appeared before us, and made complaint on behalf of Their Majesty against Sarah Good, the wife of William Good of Salem Village above said, for suspicion of witchcraft by her committed, and thereby much injury done to Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Anna Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubert,
6
all of Salem Village aforesaid sundry times within this two months and lately also done at Salem Village contrary to the peace of our sovereign lord and lady William and Mary, King and Queen of England, et cetera. You are therefore in Their Majesties’ names hereby required to apprehend and bring before us the said Sarah Good, tomorrow about ten of the clock in the forenoon at the house of Lieutenant Nathaniel Ingersoll in Salem Village or as soon as may be then and there to be examined relating to the above said premises and hereof you are not to fail at your peril.

Dated: Salem, February 29th, 1691/2, John Hathorne to Constable George Locker;

assistant: Jonathan Corwin

[verso]

I brought the person of Sarah Good, the wife of William Good, according to the tenor of the within warrant as is attested by me

George Locker, constable, 1 March 1691/2

Sarah Osburn and Tituba Indian were the next two women accused.
1
Sarah Osburn also represented the sort of woman one might conventionally expect to see accused. She had stopped going to church. She lived with a much younger man. Tituba, on the other hand, was a slave in Parris’s house, where the first two girls were afflicted.
2

With this warrant we begin to see the spread of Parris’s investigation, but its pattern still fell within the norms of North American and English witch trials. If we compare Salem at this moment with its nearest analogues, the Bury St. Edmunds trial for example, the tendency in early modern Anglophone witch trials was for a small knot of women to be accused, and for the trial to remain focused on those women. In February 1692, the Salem episode still looked fairly typical in terms of its scale and the number of individuals involved.

Warrant for Sarah Good and Tituba

Salem, February, the 29th day, 1691/2

Whereas Mrs.
3
Joseph Hutcheson, Thomas Putnam, Edward Putnam, and Thomas Preston, yeomen of Salem Village in the county of Essex, personally appeared before us, and made complaint on behalf of Their Majesties against Sarah Osburn, the wife of Alexander Osburn
4
of Salem Village aforesaid, and Tituba, an Indian woman servant of Mr. Samuel Parris of said place also, for suspicion of witchcraft by them committed and thereby much injury done to Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Anna Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubert
5
all of Salem Village, contrary to the peace and laws of our sovereign lord and lady, William and Mary of England, et cetera, king and queen.

You are therefore in Their Majesties’ names hereby required to apprehend and forthwith or as soon as may be bring before us the above said Sarah Osburn, and Tituba Indian, at the house of Lieutenant Nathaniel Ingersoll in said place and if it may be by tomorrow about ten of the clock in the morning then and there to be examined relating to the above said premises. You are likewise required to bring at the same time Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Anna Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubert or any other person or persons that can give evidence in the above said case and hereof you are not to fail. Dated: Salem, February 29th, 1691/2, John Hathorne to Constable Joseph Herrick, constable in Salem; assistant: Jonathan Corwin

[verso]

According to this warrant I have apprehended the persons within mentioned and have brought them accordingly and have made diligent search of images and such like but can find none.

Salem Village, this 1st March, 1691/92, me, Joseph Herrick,
6
constable

The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn
1
continued within the normal bounds of witch trials; they were asked about their long-standing reputations for unusual or disagreeable behavior, like missing church or arguing with neighbors. The trials took a unique turn, however, in the examination and subsequent confession of Tituba. In this first examination, Tituba, like the other women, denied being a witch but then almost immediately confessed, blaming Good and Osburn for making her do it. She described the other witches who are part of the conspiracy, but did not name them save for Good and Osburn. The Devil who made her do it is described as a man in a tall hat with white hair and black clothes. More than one historian has pointed out that this description could apply quite well to her owner (and possible tormentor), Samuel Parris.

Most important, according to
A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft
by William Perkins reproduced above, the word of a confessed witch is sufficient evidence to condemn another accused witch. So Tituba, through her confession and naming, condemned Good and Osburn as well as pointed to a wider group of witches as yet undiscovered. Tituba’s confession marks the moment at which the Salem trial branches into a different kind of legal and social event: from it stemmed the concept of a conspiracy with an unknown number of conspirators.

Another important distinction is that the examinations were conducted in public. Generally, examinations of accused witches would be conducted in private to determine if evidence was sufficient to move to a public trial. In this case, the examinations themselves became unstable and, as historian Mary Beth Norton describes it, “explosive,” between the magistrates, who assumed the guilt of the accused; the accused themselves, who had to figure out how to answer the charges against them; the afflicted, whose torments grew more theatrical and acute with the presence of an audience; and the audience itself, tossing in unsolicited comments and inducements as the examinations took place.
2
The spectacle of these examinations must have been staggering. Even reading the transcripts today is a riveting exercise.

The Examination

The examination of Sarah Good before the worshipful assistants John Hathorn, Jonathan Corwin.

[Hathorne]:
Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?

[Sarah Good]:
None.

[Hathorne]:
Have you made no contract with the Devil?

[Sarah Good]:
Good answered no.

[Hathorne]:
Why do you hurt these children?

[Sarah Good]:
I do not hurt them. I scorn it.

[Hathorne]:
Who do you employ, then, to do it?

[Sarah Good]:
I employ no body.

[Hathorne]:
What creature
3
do you employ then?

[Sarah Good]:
No creature, but I am falsely accused.

[Hathorne]:
Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Paris, his house?

[Sarah Good]:
I did not mutter, but I thanked him for what he gave my child.
4

[Hathorne]:
Have you made no contract with the Devil?

[Sarah Good]:
No.

[Hathorne]:
Desire the children all of them to look upon her and see if this were the person that hurt them?

And so they all did look upon her and said this was one of the persons that did torment them. Presently they were all tormented
.
5

[Hathorne]:
Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you thus torment these poor children?

[Sarah Good]:
I do not torment them.

[Hathorne]:
[illegible] Who do you employ, then?

[Sarah Good]:
I employ nobody. I scorn it.

[Hathorne]:
How came they thus tormented?

[Sarah Good]:
What do I know? You bring others here and now you charge me with it.

[Hathorne]:
Why? Who was it?

[Sarah Good]:
I do not know but it was some you brought into the meetinghouse with you.

[Hathorne]:
You were brought into the meetinghouse.

[Sarah Good]:
But you brought in two more.

[Hathorne]:
Who was it, then, that tormented the children?

[Sarah Good]:
It was Osburn.

[Hathorne]:
What is it that you say when you go muttering away from persons’ houses?

[Sarah Good]:
If I must tell I will tell.

[Hathorne]:
Do tell us then.

[Sarah Good]:
If I must tell I will tell. It is the commandments, I may say, my commandments, I hope.

[Hathorne]:
What commandment is it?

[Sarah Good]:
If I must tell you I will tell. It is a psalm.

[Hathorne]:
What psalm?

After a long time she [Sarah Good] muttered over some part of a psalm.

[Hathorne]:
Who do you serve?

[Sarah Good]:
I serve God.

[Hathorne]:
What God do you serve?

[Sarah Good]:
The God that made heaven and earth.

Though she was not willing to mention the word God, her answers were in [a] very wicked, spiteful manner reflecting and retorting against the authority with base and abusive words and many lies she was taken in.
6
It was here said that her husband had said that he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly. The worsh
7
Mr. Harthon
8
asked him his re[scored out] reason why he said so of her, whether he had ever seen anything by her and he answered, no, not in this nature. But it was her bad carriage to him and indeed, said he, I may say with tears that she is an enemy to all good.
9

Sarah Osburn, her examination

[Hathorne]:
What evil spirit have you familiarity with?

[Sarah Osburn]:
None.

[Hathorne]:
Have you made no contract with the Devil?

[Sarah Osburn]:
I no I never saw the Devil in my life.

[Hathorne]:
Why do you hurt these children?

[Sarah Osburn]:
I do not hurt them.

[Hathorne]:
Who do you employ then to hurt them?

[Sarah Osburn]:
I employ nobody.

[Hathorne]:
What familiarity have you with Sarah Good?

[Sarah Osburn]:
None. I have not seen her these 2 years.

[Hathorne]:
Where did you see her then?

[Sarah Osburn]:
One day agoing to town.

[Hathorne]:
What communications had you with her?

[Sarah Osburm]:
I had none, only how do you do or so. I did not know her by name.

[Hathorne]:
What did you call her then?

Osburn made a pa [scored out] stand at that at last said she called her Sarah.

[Hathorne]:
Sarah Good saith that it was you that hurt the children.

[Sarah Osburn]:
I do not know that the Devil goes about in my likeness to do any hurt.
10

Mr. Harthon desired all these children to stand up and look upon her and see if they did know her, which they all did and every one of them said that she [scored out] this was one of the women that did afflict them and that they had constantly seen her in [the] very habit that she was now in.
11
The evidence do stand that she said this morning that she was more like to be bewitched than that she was a witch.

Mr. Harthon asked her what made her say so.

She answered that she was frighted one time in her sleep and either saw or dreamed that she saw a thing like an Indian all black,
12
which did pinch her in her neck and pulled her by the back part of her head to the door of the house.

[Hathorne]:
Did you never see anything else?

[Sarah Osburn]:
No. It was said by some in the meetinghouse that she had said that she would never believe that lying spirit any more.

[Hathorne]:
What lying spirit is this? Hath the Devil ever deceived you and been false to you?

[Sarah Osburn]:
I do not know the Devil. I never did see him.

[Hathorne]:
What lying spirit was it, then?

[Sarah Osburn]:
It was a voice that I thought I heard.

[Hathorne]:
What did it propound to you?

[Sarah Osburn]:
That I should go no more to meeting but she [scored out] I said I would and did go the next Sabbath day.

[Hathorne]:
Were you never tempted further?

[Sarah Osburn]:
No.

[Hathorne]:
Why did you yield thus far to the Devil as never to go to meeting since.

[Sarah Osburn]:
Alas I have been sick and not able to go.

Her husband and others said that she had not been at meeting these year and two months.
13

The [scored out] examination of Tituba

[Hathorne]:
Tituba, what sp[scored out] evil spirit have you familiarity with?

[Tituba]:
None.

[Hathorne]:
Why do you hurt these children?

[Tituba]:
I do not hurt them.

[Hathorne]:
Who is it then the de [scored out]

[Tituba]:
The Devil for ought I ken
14
[scored out] know.

[Hathorne]:
Did you never see the [illegible] Devil?

[Tituba]:
The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.

[Hathorne]:
Who have you seen?

[Tituba]:
4 women and [scored out] sometimes hurt the children.

[Hathorne]:
Who were they?

[Tituba]:
Goody Osburn and Sarah Good and I do not know who the others were. Sarah Good and Osburn would have me hurt the children, but I would not.

She further saith there was a tall man of Boston that she did see.

[Hathorne]:
When did you see them?

[Tituba]:
Last night at Boston.
15

[Hathorne]:
What did they say to you?

[Tituba]:
They said, hurt the children.

[Hathorne]:
And did you hurt them? No [scored out]

[Tituba]:
No. There is 4 women and one man. They hurt the s[scored out] children and then lay all upon here
16
and they tell me if I will not hurt the children they will hurt me.

[Hathorne]:
But did you not hurt them.

[Tituba]:
Yes, but I will hurt them no more.

[Hathorne]:
Are you not sorry that you did hurt them?

[Tituba]:
Yes.

[Hathorne]:
And why then do you hurt them?

[Tituba]:
They say hurt children or we will do worse to you.

[Hathorne]:
What have you seen?

[Tituba]:
A man come to me and say serve me.

[Hathorne]:
What service?

[Tituba]:
Hurt the children and last night there was an appearance that said K[scored out] kill the
children and if I would not go on hurting the children they would do worse to me.

[Hathorne]:
What is this appearance you see?

[Tituba]:
Sometimes it is like a hog and sometimes like a great dog.

This appearance she saith she did see 4 times.

[Hathorne]:
What did it say to you?

[Tituba]:
It s[scored out] the black dog said serve me but I said I am afraid. He said if I did not he would do worse to me.

[Hathorne]:
What did you say to it?

[Tituba]:
I will serve you no longer. Then he said he would hurt me and then he looks like a man and threatens to hurt me. She said that this man had a yellow bird that kept with him and he told me he had more pretty things that he would give me if I would serve him.

[Hathorne]:
What were these pretty things?

[Tituba]:
He did not show me them.

[Hathorne]:
What else have you seen?

[Tituba]:
Two cats: a red cat and a black cat.
17

[Hathorne]:
What did they say to you?

[Tituba]:
They said, serve me.

[Hathorne]:
When did you see them last? [scored out]

[Tituba]:
Last night and they said serve me but I she [scored out] said I would not.

[Hathorne]:
What service?

[Tituba]:
She said hurt the children.

[Hathorne]:
Did you not pinch Elisabeth Hubbard this morning?

[Tituba]:
The man brought her to me and made her [scored out] pinch her.