hellbreaks

The Puritans, although are a very religious people, can be superstitious at times. A Puritan emigrant minister, Thomas Shephard, writes about how the crew of his vessel, the Hope, attributes a long run of storms hitting the ship to the ship being bewitched. In order to discover the culprit and counteract his or her curse, the crew nails two red-hot horseshoes to the main mast of the ship.[1] The Puritans are knowledgeable of various practices of witchcraft, sorcery, and incantatory.

Samuel Parris’s daughter and niece, ages 9 and 11, playfully experiment with spells and incantations to find out who their future husbands will be. Shortly afterwards, the two girls “begin to exhibit nervous symptoms, thrashing about and assuming odd postures.”[2] When their behavior does not improve, Parris concludes a witch must be behind this. After “intense questioning by adults and under pressure [the two girls] accuse three women, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and a West Indian slave named Tituba, of bewitching them.”[3] When tried, Tituba confesses that she has seen the devil: a “thing all over hairy, all the face hairy, and a long nose.”[4] Confession is the most weighty part of the actual trials, but other parts include “damaging evidence”, “supernatural abilities”, and “anger followed by mischief”.[5] Damaging evidence and supernatural abilities can be empirically verified[6], but anger followed by mischief is hard to prove who actually committed the crime.

Examples of damaging evidence, supernatural abilities, and anger followed by mischief in the witch trials include any event where damage to the accuser is believed to be caused by the accused witch. For example, if the accuser or a family member of the accuser becomes ill and/or dies, then the sickness/death can be evidence in convicting a person of being a witch. We already know the importance of a family member’s life in the household economy of a family, especially in developing and maintaining farmland. If an accuser’s livestock becomes ill and dies, then this can also be used as evidence against an accused witch. Cows and livestock are also very important economic entities of a household. When serious things happen to accusers families (economically), they start to point the finger

As the symptoms of the girls continue not to improve, the accusations continue to fly. Patterns start to develop in these accusations. For example, the girls start to run out of people to accuse as witches, and start naming people whom they have never seen before. In one instance at an arraignment, the two girls cannot even pick out the man they had put on trial, until the man behind them whispers into their ears. When the interrogators ask the girls how they know who the witch is, they say because the man behind them tells them so.[7] Corruption begins to grow in the trials.

[1] Maxwell-Stuart, P.G., Witchcraft in Europe and the New World, 1400-1800 (New York, NY: Palgrave 2001), 93-94.

[2] Russell, Jeffrey B., A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. 1980), 103.

[3] Russell, History, 105.

[4] Russell, History, 105.

[5] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 13-14.

[6] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 15.

[7] Boyer, Salem Possessed, 33.