Like many other Europeans, the Puritans believed in the supernatural. Every event appeared to be a
sign of God’s mercy or judgment, and people believed that witches allied themselves with the Devil to carry out evil deeds and deliberate harm such as the sickness or death of children, the loss of cattle, and other catastrophes. Hundreds were accused of witchcraft in Puritan New England, including townspeople whose habits or appearance bothered their neighbors or who appeared threatening for any reason. Women, seen as more susceptible to the Devil because of their supposedly weaker constitutions, made up the vast majority of suspects and those who were executed. The most notorious cases occurred in Salem Village in 1692. Many of the accusers who prosecuted the suspected witches had been traumatized by the Indian wars on the frontier and by unprecedented political and cultural changes in New England. Relying on their belief in witchcraft to help make sense of their changing world, Puritan authorities executed nineteen people and caused the deaths of several others.

Source: Corbett, P.S., Janssen V., Lund, J., Pfannestiel, T., Vickery, P., & Waskiewicz, S. U.S. History. OpenStax. 30 December 2014.

Salem Witch Trials

From June through September of 1692, nineteen men and women, all having been convicted of witchcraft, were carted to Gallows Hill for hanging. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft. Then, almost as soon as it had begun, the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts ended.

In 1688, John Putnam invited Samuel Parris, formerly a planter in Barbados, to preach in the Village church. Parris moved to Salem Village with his wife Elizabeth, his six-year-old daughter Betty, niece Abigail Williams, and his Indian slave Tituba, acquired by Parris in Barbados.

In February of 1692, Betty Parris became strangely ill. The cause of her symptoms may have been some combination of stress, asthma, guilt, boredom, child abuse, epilepsy, and delusional psychosis. The symptoms also could have been caused by a disease called “convulsive ergotism” brought on by ingesting rye–eaten as a cereal and as a common ingredient of bread–infected with ergot. (Convulsive ergotism causes violent fits, a crawling sensation on the skin, vomiting, choking, and–most interestingly–hallucinations. The hallucinogenic drug LSD is a derivative of ergot.)

At the time, there was another theory to explain the girls’ symptoms. Cotton Mather had recently published a popular book, “Memorable Providences,” describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston, and Betty’s behavior in some ways mirrored that of the afflicted person described in Mather’s book.

Talk of witchcraft increased when other playmates of Betty began to exhibit similar unusual behavior. William Griggs, a doctor called to examine the girls, suggested that the girls’ problems might have a supernatural origin.

Suspicion had already begun to focus on Tituba, who had been known to tell the girls tales of omens, voodoo, and witchcraft from her native folklore.

Meanwhile, the number of girls afflicted continued to grow, rising to seven. The girls contorted into grotesque poses, fell down into frozen postures, and complained of biting and pinching sensations.

Sometime in late February, when arrest warrants were issued against Tituba and two other women, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams named their afflictors and the witch hunt began. Soon Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis were also reporting seeing “witches flying through the winter mist.” The prominent Putnam family supported the girls’ accusations.

The first three to be accused of witchcraft were Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn. Good was a beggar and social misfit, and Osborn was old, quarrelsome, and had not attended church for over a year. The Putnams brought their complaint against the three women to county magistrates, who scheduled examinations for the suspected witches. At the examinations, the girls described attacks by the specters of the three women, and fell into contortions.

The matter might have ended with admonishments were it not for Tituba. After first denying any guilt, Tituba claimed that she was approached by a tall man from Boston–obviously Satan–who asked her to sign in his book and to do his work. Yes, Tituba declared, she was a witch, and moreover she and four other witches, including Good and Osborn, had flown through the air on their poles.

Soon, according to their own reports, the spectral forms of other women began attacking the afflicted girls. Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce, and Mary Easty were accused of witchcraft. Dorcas Good, four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, became the first child to be accused.

Stuck in jail with the damning testimony of the afflicted girls widely accepted, suspects began to see confession as a way to avoid the gallows. Deliverance Hobbs became the second witch to confess. Jails approached capacity when Governor Phips returned from England.

Phips created a new court, the “court of oyer and terminer,” to hear the witchcraft cases. Five judges were appointed to the court. Chief Justice was a gung-ho witch hunter named William Stoughton. Mather urged Stoughton and the other judges to credit confessions and admit “spectral evidence” (testimony by afflicted persons that they had been visited by a suspect’s specter). Mather’s advice was heeded. The judges also decided to allow the examination of the bodies of accused for evidence of “witches’ marks” (moles or the like). Many protections that modern defendants take for granted were lacking in Salem: accused witches had no legal counsel, could not have witnesses testify under oath on their behalf, and had no formal avenues of appeal.

The first accused witch to be brought to trial was Bridget Bishop. Almost sixty years old, owner of a tavern, critical of her neighbors, and reluctant to pay her bills, Bishop was a likely candidate for an accusation of witchcraft. Deliverance Hobbs and Mary Warren, both confessed witches, testified that Bishop was one of them. A villager named Samuel Grey told the court that Bishop visited his bed at night and tormented him. A jury of matrons assigned to examine Bishop’s body reported that they found an “excrescence of flesh.” Several of the afflicted girls testified that Bishop’s specter afflicted them. Bishop’s jury returned a verdict of guilty. Bishop was carted to Gallows Hill and hanged.

As the summer of 1692 warmed, the pace of trials picked up. Rebecca Nurse was a pious, respected woman whose specter, according to Ann Putnam, Jr. and Abigail Williams, attacked them. Ann Putnam, Sr. added her complaint that Nurse demanded that she sign the Devil’s book. Nurse was one of three Towne sisters, all identified as witches, who were members of a family that had a long-standing quarrel with the Putnam family. The Nurse jury returned a verdict of not guilty, much to the displeasure of Chief Justice Stoughton, who told the jury to go back and consider again. The jury reconvened, this time coming back with a verdict of guilty. Nurse rode with four other convicted witches to Gallows Hill.

No execution caused more unease in Salem than that of the village’s ex-minister, George Burroughs. Burroughs was identified by several of his accusers as the ringleader of the witches. Ann Putnam claimed that Burroughs bewitched soldiers during a failed military campaign in 1688-89. Historian Mary Beth Norton argues that the large number of accusations against Burroughs, and his linkage to the frontier war, is the key to understanding the Salem trials. Norton contends that the enthusiasm of the Salem court in prosecuting the witchcraft cases owed in no small measure to the judges’ desire to shift the “blame for their own inadequate defense of the frontier.”

Among the thirty accusers of Burroughs was nineteen-year-old Mercy Lewis. Lewis told the court that Burroughs flew her to the top of a mountain and promised her all the kingdoms if only she would sign in his book. At an execution, a defendant in the Puritan colonies was expected to confess, and thus to save his soul. When Burroughs on Gallows Hill continued to insist on his innocence and then recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly (something witches were thought incapable of doing), the crowd reportedly was “greatly moved.”

One victim of the Salem witch hunt was not hanged, but rather pressed under heavy stones until his death. Such was the fate of octogenarian Giles Corey. Seeing the futility of a trial and hoping that by avoiding a conviction his farm, that would otherwise go the state, might go to his two sons-in-law, Corey refused to stand for trial. The penalty for such a refusal was pressing. Three days after Corey’s death, eight more convicted witches, including Giles’ wife Martha, were hanged.

By early autumn of 1692, Salem’s lust for blood was ebbing. Doubts were developing. The educated elite of the colony began efforts to end the witch-hunting hysteria. Increase Mather, the father of Cotton, argued that it “were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.” Increase Mather urged the court to exclude spectral evidence. Governor Phips ordered the court to exclude spectral evidence and to require proof of guilt by clear and convincing evidence. With spectral evidence not admitted, twenty-eight of the last thirty-three witchcraft trials ended in acquittals. The three convicted witches were later pardoned.

By the time the witch hunt ended, nineteen convicted witches were executed, at least four accused witches had died in prison, and one man had been pressed to death. About one to two hundred other persons were arrested and imprisoned on witchcraft charges.

Source: Linder, D.O. “The Witchcraft Trials in Salem: an account,” In U.S. History. OpenStax. Edited by Corbett, P.S., Janssen V., Lund, J., Pfannestiel, T., Vickery, P., & Waskiewicz, S. 30 December 2014.

Salem Witch Trials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5JmvtmYOjI

Donnell, M. The Salem Witch Trials. (2017, July 30). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5JmvtmYOjI ​​​​​​​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFJLJ1ikk8

The Audiopedia. What is Spectral Evidence? (2017, August 22). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFJLJ1ikk8 ​​​​​​​

Summary

Beginning in early 1692 and culminating in 1693, Salem Town, Salem Village, Ipswich, and Andover all tried women and men as witches. The witch hunt began with accusations of witchcraft made by a group of young women. Paranoia swept through the region, and fourteen women and six men were executed. Bridget Bishop was the first person to be executed for witchcraft in Salem. Five other individuals died in prison. The causes of the trials are numerous and include local rivalries, political turmoil, enduring trauma of war, faulty legal procedure where accusing others became a method of self-defense, or perhaps even low-level environmental contamination. Enduring tensions with Indians framed the events, however, and an Indian/African woman named Tituba, enslaved by the local minister, was at the center of the tragedy. Under duress, she confessed to engaging in witchcraft and implicated others. In spite of the opposition of Increase Mather, spectral evidence was used to convict and condemn many innocent people in Salem.

Source: The American Yawp. A Free and Online, Collaboratively Built American History Textbook, 2017-2018 Edition.