In 1666, families living in the rural outback of the thriving town of Salem petitioned the General Court for the right to establish their own church. For political and economic reasons this was a questionable move, but in 1672 the General Court authorized the establishment of a separate parish. In so doing the Court put the 600-odd inhabitants of the village on their own politically as well.
Over the next fifteen years three preachers came and went before, in 1689, one Samuel Parris became minister. Parris had spent twenty years in the Caribbean as a merchant and had taken up preaching only three years before coming to Salem. Accompanying him were his wife; a daughter, Betty; a niece, Abigail; and the family’s West Indian slave, Tituba, who told fortunes and practiced magic on the side.
Parris proved as incapable of bringing peace to the feuding factions of the Salem Village as had his predecessors. In January 1692 the church voted to dismiss him. At this point Betty and Abigail, now nine and eleven, along with Ann Putnam, a twelve-year-old, started “uttering foolish, ridiculous speeches which neither they themselves nor any others could make sense of.” A doctor diagnosed the girls’ ravings as the work of the “Evil Hand” and declared them bewitched.
But who had done the bewitching? The first persons accused were three women whose unsavory reputations and frightening appearances made them likely candidates. Sarah Good, a pauper with a nasty
Examination of a Witch. A stern puritan patriarch adjusts his glasses to better examine a beautiful—and partially disrobed—young woman. Ostensibly, he is looking for the "witch's teats” with which she suckled "black dogs” and other creatures of the Devil. Completed in 1853 by T. H. Matteson, this painting subtly indicts puritan men as lecherous hypocrites. In fact, most accused witches were in their forties or fifties. The painting thus reveals more about the nineteenth-century reaction against puritanism than about the puritans themselves.
Source: Photo by Mark Sexton/Peabody Essex Museum.
Tongue; Sarah Osborne, a bedridden widow; and the slave Tituba, who had brought suspicion on herself by volunteering to bake a “witch cake,” made of rye meal and the girls’ urine. The cake should be fed to a dog, Tituba said. If the girls were truly afflicted, the dog would show signs of bewitchment!
The three women were brought before the local deputies to the General Court. As each was questioned, the girls went into contortions: “their arms, necks and backs turned this way and that way. . . their mouths stopped, their throats choaked, their limbs wracked and tormented.” Tituba, likely impressed by the powers ascribed to her, promptly confessed to being a witch. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne each claimed to be innocent, although Sarah Good expressed doubts about Sarah Osborne. All three were sent to jail on suspicion of practicing witchcraft.
These proceedings triggered new accusations. By the end of April 1692, twenty-four more people had been charged with practicing witchcraft. Officials in neighboring Andover, lacking their own “bewitched,” called in the girls to help with their investigations. By May the hunt had extended to Maine and Boston and up the social ladder to some of the colony’s most prominent citizens, including Lady Mary Phips, whose husband, William, had just been appointed governor.
By June, when Governor Phips convened a special court consisting of members of his council, more than 150 persons (Lady Phips no longer among them) stood formally charged with practicing witchcraft. In the next four months the court convicted twenty-eight of them, most of them women. Five “confessed” and were spared; the rest were condemned to death. Several others escaped. But nineteen persons were hanged. The husband of a convicted witch refused to enter a plea when charged with being a “wizard.” He was executed by having stones piled on him until his ribcage broke and he suffocated.
Anyone who spoke in defense of the accused was in danger of being charged with witchcraft, but some brave souls challenged both the procedures and the findings of the court. Finally, at the urging of the leading ministers of the Commonwealth, Governor Phips adjourned the court and forbade any further executions.
No one involved in these gruesome proceedings escaped with a reputation intact, but those whose reputations suffered most were the ministers. Among the clergy only Increase Mather deserves any credit. He persuaded Phips to halt the executions, arguing that “it were better that ten witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned.” The behavior of his son Cotton defies apology. It was not that Cotton Mather accepted the existence of witches—at the time everyone did, which incidentally suggests that Tituba was not the only person in Salem who practiced witchcraft—or even that Mather took such pride in being the resident expert on demonology. It was rather his vindictiveness. He even stood at the foot of the gallows bullying hesitant hangmen into doing “their duty.”
The episode also highlights the anxieties puritan men felt toward women. Many puritans believed that Satan worked his will especially through the allure of female sexuality. Moreover, many of the accused witches were widows of high status or older women who owned property; some of the women, like Tituba, had mastered herbal medicine and other suspiciously potent healing arts. Such women, especially those who lived apart from the daily guidance of men, potentially subverted the patriarchal authorities of church and state. (For more on this topic, see Re-Viewing the Past, The Crucible, p. 76.)
•••-[Read the Document Ann Putnam's Deposition (1692) at Www. myhistorylab. com
((••—[Hear the Audio Lookie There! at Www. myhistorylab. com
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