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Salem Witch Trials (containing excerpts from Laurie Cabot's 'Power of the Witch')
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The twenty people executed in Salem have always seemed a small number when compared with the millions who suffered in Europe, but proportionally those killed, those imprisoned, and those accused but not yet arrested were a sizeable percentage of the population for a sparsely populated area. It was a true hysteria. People from all walks of life had been accused: a minister who had graduated from Harvard and owned a large estate in England; the wealthiest shipowner in Salem; Captain John Alden, the son of John and Priscilla, the legendary lovers of Plymouth Colony; even the wife of the governor of the Bay Colony. No one was safe. It all started in the Reverand Paris's kitchen, where Tituba, a slave woman from Barbados, entertained the Reverand's |
Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser - Used with permission |
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daughter and her girlfirends during the cold
winter months of 1691. The girls asked Tituba, who knew methods of
divination, about their future husbands, a normal concern of most young
girls around puberty. In time the girls began to have fits, showed
extreme moodiness, adopted odd postures and gestures and had
visions. (A generation later in Northampton, Massachussetts, the
same type of behaviour among young people would lead the Reverand
Jonathon Edwards to declare that a spritual 'quickening' was occurring
and thus would begin the first 'Great Awakening' in the history of
American religion revivals. In Salem Village this same behaviour
was interpreted by church leaders as the work of the devil.)
Hearings were held over the next few months at which the girls and others who became afflicted with the same behaviour (it had become a kind of teenage fad) accused adult members in the community of tormenting them. They had bizarre fantasies of otherwise respectable people engaged in lurid activities with the devil. As the winter turned into spring, natural misfortunes were blamed on the devil working through certain members of the village. According to the theories of the day, the devil could work only through someone with that person's cooperation. Someone who had made a pact with the devil. Someone who was a 'Witch'. Accusations were made, people arrested, hearings were held, and by spring the jails were overflowing. Then it spread. 'Witches' were discovered in Beverly, Topsfield, Andover, Ipswich, Lynn and virtually every town in Essex County. In Andover there were actually more arrests than in Salem Village. Authorities in Boston sent representatives to conduct trials. In June the first trials began, and Bridget Bishop was hanged after having been in Jail since April. Events moved quickly. In July, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, Sarah Wild and Susanna Martin were hanged. The August trials found John Willard, John and Elizabeth Proctor, George Jacobs, Martha Carrier and the Reverand George Burroughs guilty. All were executed, except Elizabeth Proctor, who was pregnant and given a stay of execution until her baby was born. The September trials sent Martha Cory, Alice Parker, Anne Pudeator, Mary Esty, Margaret Scott, Mary Parker, Wilmot Reed and Samuel Wardwell to the gallows. Martha Cory's husband, Giles, was pressed to death beneath the weight of stones. And as the gruesome summer ended over a hundred people were still awaiting trial, and several hundred others had been accused. Finally, cooler heads began to prevail. Increase Mather preached in Cambridge that the issue of acceptable evidence for 'Witchcraft' rested on very shaky ground, especially the notion of spectral evidence, or the devil's ability to take the shape of someone in the community. While not denying that the devil could assume the shape of a man or woman, 'proving' that he or she had made an initial pact with the devil was rather difficult. Could the devil not assuem the shape of an innocent person as well? Some people were beginning to think so. In the end, Increase Mather argued that it would be better for one 'Witch' to escape execution than to put ten 'innocent' people to death. His arguments carried the day, and the Witch-hunt soon ended. A question that often arises about the twenty people executed and the hundreds accused is: were they really Witches? Historical evidence is sketchy. I am sure that some or many of them, like their counterparts in Europe, still retained many of the Old Religion's practices - herbalism, special potions, divination, natural healing techniques. Some may have even celebrated the old nature holidays. We know that Massachusetts settlers at Merrymount erected a Maypole earlier in the century. But the question of whether or not they were Goddess worshippers has never been proven. Surely there were Witches among their ancestors, but they themselves may not have been Witches in the sense that they were our co-religionists. Most were probably devout Christians. As the eighteenth century progressed people grew more sceptical about Witchcraft. The spirit of the times - the rationality of the Enlightenment - convinced people that magic was hocus-pocus and people who practised it were practising self-delusion. The new era was also more sceptical about religion in general and less zealous in persecuting unbelievers. The wrath that had fuelled the Witch-hunts subsided. In 1712 the last person was executed for Witchcraft in England, although the anti-Witchcraft laws stayed on the statute books until the twentieth century. In Scotland the last execution took place in 1727 and the laws were repealed in 1736. Of course, all over Europe and |
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