Section 5. The variety of their tortures increased continually, and though about nine or ten at night they always had a release from their miseries and ate and slept all night for the most part indifferently well, yet in the daytime they were handled with so many sorts of ails that it would require of us almost as much time to relate them all as it did of them to endure them. Sometimes they would be deaf, sometimes dumb, and sometimes blind, and often all this at once. One while their tongues would be drawn down their throats; another while they would be pulled out upon their chins to a prodigious length. They would have their mouths opened unto such a wideness that their jaws went out of joint, and anon they would clap together again with a force like that of a strong spring lock. The same would happen to their shoulder blades and their elbows and hand wrists and several of their joints. They would at times lie in a benumbed condition and be drawn together as those that are tied neck and heels, and presently be stretched out, yea, drawn backward, to such a degree that it was feared the very skin of their bellies would have cracked. They would make most piteous outcries that they were cut with knives and struck with blows that they could not bear. Their necks would be broken, so that their neck bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it, and yet on the sudden, it would become again so stiff that there was no stirring of their heads. Yea, their heads would be twisted almost round, and if main force at any time obstructed a dangerous motion which they seemed to be upon, they would roar exceedingly. Thus they lay some weeks most pitiful spectacles, and this while as a further demonstration of witchcraft in these horrid effects, when I went to prayer by one of them that was very desirous to hear what I said, the child utterly lost her hearing till our prayer was over.
Section 6. It was a religious family that these afflictions happened unto, and none but a religious contrivance to obtain relief would have been welcome to them. Many superstitious proposals were made unto them by persons that were I know not who nor what, with arguments fetched from I know not how much necessity and experience. But the distressed parents rejected all such counsels with a gracious resolution to oppose devils with no other weapons but prayers and tears unto him that has the chaining of them, and to try first whether graces were not the best things to encounter witchcrafts with. Accordingly, they requested the four ministers of Boston, with the minister of Charlestown, to keep a day of prayer at their thus haunted house, which they did in the company of some devout people there. Immediately upon this day, the youngest of the four children was delivered and never felt any trouble as afore. But there was yet a greater effect of these our applications unto our God!
Section 7. The report of the calamities of the family for which we were thus concerned arrived now unto the ears of the magistrates, who presently and prudently applied themselves, with a just vigor, to enquire into the story. The father of the children complained of his neighbor, the suspected ill woman whose name was Glover, and she, being sent for by the justices, gave such a wretched account of herself, that they saw cause to commit her unto the jailer’s custody. Goodwin had no proof that could have done her any hurt, but the hag had not power to deny her interest in the enchantment of the children. And when she was asked whether she believed there was a God, her answer was too blasphemous and horrible for any pen of mine to mention. An experiment was made whether she could recite the Lord’s Prayer, and it was found that though clause after clause was most carefully repeated unto her, yet when she said it after them that prompted her,6 she could not possibly avoid making nonsense of it, with some ridiculous depravations. This experiment I had the curiosity since to see made upon two more, and it had the same event. Upon commitment of this extraordinary woman, all the children had some present ease, until one (related unto her) accidentally meeting one or two of them, entertained them with her blessing, that is, railing, upon which three of them fell ill again, as they were before.
Section 8. It was not long before the witch thus in the trap was brought upon her trial, at which, through the efficacy of a charm, I suppose, used upon her by one or some of her cruel, the court could receive answers from her in one but the Irish, which was her native language, although she understood the English very well, and had accustomed her whole family to none but that language in her former conversation, and therefore the communication between the bench and the bar was now chiefly conveyed by two honest and faithful men that were interpreters. It was long before she could with any direct answers plead unto her indictment. And when she did plead, it was with confession rather than denial of her guilt. Order was given to search the old woman’s house, from whence there were brought into the court several small images or puppets or babies made of rags and stuffed with goat’s hair and other such ingredients. When these were produced, the vile woman acknowledged that her way to torment the objects of her malice was by wetting of her finger with her spittle and streaking of those little images. The abused children were then present, and the woman still kept stooping and shrinking as one that was almost pressed to death with a mighty weight upon her. But one of the images being brought unto her, immediately she started up after an odd manner and took it into her hand. But she had no sooner taken it than one of the children fell into sad fits, before the whole assembly. This the judges had their just apprehensions at and carefully causing the repetition of the experiment found again the same event of it. They asked her whether she had any to stand by her. She replied she had, and looking very pertly in the air, she added, “No, he’s gone.” And she then confessed that she had one who was her prince, with whom she maintained I know not what communion. For which cause, the night after, she was heard expostulating with a devil for his thus deserting her, telling him that because he had served her so basely and falsely, she had confessed all. However, to make all clear, the court appointed five or six physicians one evening to examine her very strictly, whether she were not crazed in her intellectuals and had not procured to herself by folly and madness the reputation of a witch.7 Diverse hours did they spend with her, and in all that while no discourse came from her but what was pertinent and agreeable, particularly, when they asked her what she thought would become of her soul, she replied, “You ask me a very solemn question, and I cannot well tell what to say to it.” She owned herself a Roman Catholic and could recite her Pater Noster in Latin very readily,8 but there was one clause or two always too hard for her, whereof she said she could not repeat it if she might have all the world. In the up-shot, the doctors returned her compos mentis, and sentence of death was passed upon her.
Section 9. Diverse days were passed between her being arraigned and condemned. In this time one of her neighbors had been giving in her testimony of what another of her neighbors had upon her death related concerning her. It seems one Howen about six years before, had been cruel bewitched to death, but before she died, she called one Hughes unto her, telling her that she laid her death to the charge of Glover, that she had seen Glover sometimes come down her chimney, that she should remember this, for within this six years she might have occasion to declare it. This Hughes now preparing her testimony, immediately one of her children, a fine boy, well grown toward youth, was taken ill, just in the same woeful and surprising manner that Goodwin’s children were. One night particularly, the boy said he saw a black thing with a blue cap in the room, tormenting of him, and he complained most bitterly of a hand put into the bed to pull out his bowels. The next day the mother of the boy went unto Glover in the prison and asked her why she tortured her poor lad at such a wicked rate. This witch replied that she did it because of wrong done to herself and her daughter. Hughes denied (as well she might) that she had done her any wrong. “Well then,” said Glover, “Let me see your child and he shall be well again.” Glover went on and told her of her own accord, “I was at your house last night.” Says Hughes, “In what shape?” Says Glover, “As a black thing with a blue cap.” Says Hughes, “What did you do there?” Says Glover, “With my hand in the bed I tried to pull out the boy’s bowels bu
t I could not.” They parted, but the next day Hughes, appearing at court, had her boy with her, and Glover, passing by the boy, expressed her good wishes for him, though I suppose his parent had no design of any mighty respect unto the hag, by having him with her there. But the boy had no more indispositions after the condemnation of the woman.
Section 10. While the miserable old woman was under condemnation, I did myself twice give a visit unto her. She never denied the guilt of the witchcraft charged upon her but she confessed very little about the circumstances of her confederacies with the devils, only, she said, that she used to be at meetings, which her prince and four more were present at. As for those four, she told who they were, and for her prince, her account plainly was that he was the Devil. She entertained me with nothing but Irish, which language I had not learning enough to understand without an interpreter.9 Only one time, when I was representing unto her that and how her prince had cheated her, as herself would quickly find, she replied, I think in English, and with passion too, “If it be so, I am sorry for that!” I offered many questions unto her, unto which, after long silence, she told me she would fain give me a full answer, but they would not give her leave. It was demanded, “They! Who is that they?” And she returned that they were her spirits, or her saints (for they say the same word in Irish signifies both). And at another time, she included her two mistresses, as she called them in that they, but when it was enquired who those two were, she fell into a rage, and would be no more urged. I set before her the necessity and equity of her breaking her covenant with hell and giving herself to the Lord Jesus Christ by an everlasting covenant. To which her answer was that I spoke a very reasonable thing, but she could not do it. I asked her whether she would consent or desire to be prayed for. To that she said if prayer would do her any good, she could pray for herself. And when it was again propounded, she said she could not unless her spirits (or angels) would give her leave.10 However, against her will I prayed with her, which if it were a fault it was in excess of pity. When I had done, she thanked me with many good words; but I was no sooner out of her sight than she took a stone, a long and slender stone, and with her finger and spittle fell to tormenting it, though whom or what she meant, I had the mercy never to understand.
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 hobgoblins11 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.
SALEM
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 iden
tified 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.