The Visible and Invisible !’Vorlds of Salem

CHAP ] LR 2 The Visible and Invisible !’Vorlds of Salem Historians, we have seen, are in the business of reconsm~ction. Seventeenrl> century Virginia, with its worhl of slaves, indentured smwants, and tobacco barons, had to be built anm~5 not just lifted intact fiom the record. It fi~llows, fl~en, tbat if historians are builders, they must decide at fl~e outset fl~e scale of their pro}errs. How much ground should be covered? A year? FlAy years? Sev- eral centuries? ttow will the subiect matter be defined or limited? ’]"he story of slavery~ arrival in Virginia might be ranked as a moderateb, large topic. It spans some siW years and involves O~ousands of hnmigrants and an entire colony. Furthermore, the topic is large as much because of its content as its reach over time and space. The genesis of slaveW snrely ranlo as a cen~-al strand of the American experieuce. ~?~ understaud it adequately requires more breadth of vision d~an, for instance, u~dersmnding O~e history of ~nerican hats during the same period. The lure of topics both broad and signi~cant is tmdeniable, and there have always been historians willing m put! on their seven-league boots, following in fl~e houorable tradi6on of Edward Gibbon’s Decl~e ~,~d Fall qf the Roma~ E~npire. The gre~t equalizer of such grand plans is ~e twen~-fom--hour day. His- torians have only a limited amouat of time, and the hom~, they sadly dis- cover, are not expandable. Obviously, the more years covered, the less time available to research the events in each. Conversely, fl~e narrower ~e area of research, the mbre the historian can become immersed in a period~ details. .A keen mind working on an apparently small topic may uncover relation- Ships and connections whose significance goes beyond ~e zubject matter’s original boundaries. Salem ~Sllage in 1692 is such a microcosm~one familiar to most students of ~nerican history. That was the place and the time witchcra~ came to New England with a vengeance, dominating the life of the village for ten months. Becat~se rbe witchcraft episode exhibited welbdefined boundaries i~ 24 ~oth nme at~d sl)ace, it shows well how an ot~-told stot~ may be transformed by me lntenb,ve reseat ch techmques of small-sca e h stoo. > admonal y me outbreak at Salem bas been v~ewed as au incident &vorced fi’om the cause- and-effect sequences of everyday village li[?. I~ven to label the eveuts as an "outbreak" suggests tbat they are best viewed as an epidemic, alien to the corn numtys nornal ~ncUons. the gm ~s of bewitchment break ont sud- denly and inexplicably~agents, presumably of some invading disease. Over fl~e past decades, however, bistoriaus have studied tbe tra~ natic experiences of lo9z in great ~ ...... 1. n~ so doing d~oy h:~ve created a more sophis~cated model of the meutat world behind the Salem outbreak. They have also suggested ways in which the witchcraft episode was tied to tbe evewday events of~llage life. The techoiqnes of small-scale histo,T, in other words, have provided a compelling psychologica! and social context tbr the events of 1692. ,,’7" BEWITCHMENT AT SALEM VILLAGE The baffling troubles experienced in Salem Village began during the winter of 169I 1692 in fl~e home of the village’s minister, Samuel Parris. There, Parrls’s ni~m-year-old daughcer Betq, and his niece Abigail Williams bad taken strangely ill, claiming that ~ey had been "bitteu and pinched by invis ible agents; ~eir arms, necks, and backs turned d~is way and d~at wag and returned back again.., beyond the power of any Epileptick Fits, or natural Disease m effect." La ~er eraditions~not necessarily reliable~suggesred tha ~ the afflictions catne after a group of girls met to divine what sort of men ¯ dr fi~mre husbands mi0~t be, a subject of natural enough interest. Lack ing a crystal ball, they used the next available substitute, the white of a raw egg suspended in a glass of watec At some point during these con~uringks, things went sour. One of the girls thought she detected % specter in the like hess of a coffin" in the glass~bardly an auspicious omen. Soon Bett)~ fl~e youngest of the girls, began complaining of pinchiug, priclding sensations, lmffelike pains, and ~he fedJng fl~at she was bring choked. In the weeks r!~a~ followed, three more girls e~ibited similar s~nptoms. ~atever fl~e cause of rt~e yotmg gMs’ symptoms, the Revm’end Parris was at a loss m m~derstand O~e afflic~ons, as were several doctors and ministers he brought in to observe the strange beha~ors. ~aen one doctor hinted at the possibiliw of witchcraft, a neighbor, MaW Sibley, suggested putOng to use a bit of New England folldore to reveal whe~er O~ere had been aW sorcery. Sibley persuaded two slaves IMng in ~e Parris household, John Indian and his wife, Timba, to bake a "witch cake" made of we meal and urine given them by ~e girls. T~e cake was fed to a dog~Ne theotT of bewitchment confirmed, presumably, if the dog suffered torments similar to those of the aNivted ~rls. T~i~ experiment seems to have t~igbtened O~e girls even *note, for ~eir s~pmms worsened. Thoroughly alarmed by the symptoms, Parris and several o~er adults pressed ~e girls for the identiv of ~e specters O~ey believed AFTER THE FACF: THE ART OF HIS’FORIC~L DETECTION were tormenting them. Wheu the girls named three women, a formal con> plaint was issued, and on February 29 &e suspec{s were arrested, for, indeed, seventeend>cenmry New Englanders conceived of witchcraft as a crime. If dm girls were being tormented, it was necessaW m punish whoever was responsible. ’l~vo of d~e xvomen arrested, Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne, were al- ready ~popular in the village. The ~ird accused was Parris’s Indian slave, Tiatba. Timba may have been purchased by Parris during a visit to the Caribbean and was perhaps originally from Sot~th America, Florida, or the Georgia Sea Islands. Under examination hy village magistrates, Sarah Good angrily denied the accusations against her, suggesti*~g instead that Sarah Os- bourne was gui!t)~ Osbourne denied ~e charges, b~t the d)mamics of the hearings changed abruptly when Tituba ccmfessed to being a witch. One ac- count of the trials, published eighe years later, reported vhat her admission came after an angw Reverend Parris had beate~ Tituba. For whatever rea- son, she testified that four women and a man were causing the afflictious of the young women. Good and Osbonrne were among them "They ht rt t ~e children," Timba reported. "And they lay all upon me and ~ey tell me if will uot hurt the children, they will burr me." The tale con~nued, complete with apparitions of black and red rats, a yellow dog with a head like a woman, % thing all over haiw, all the face haiw~" and midnight rides m witches’ meetings where plans were being laid to attack Salem. Duriug New England’s first sevenW years, few witchcraf~ cases h~d crone before the courts. Those that had were dispatd~ed quidd)~ and cahn soon returned. Salem proved different. In O~e first place, Tituba had described several other witches and a wizard, though she said she was unable to identify them. The villagers felt 0my could not rest so long as these agents remained at large. Furthermore, dm yolmg women contim~ed to name ~lames~and now not just communig; outcasts but a wide varie~ of ~llagers, some spectable church memhers. The new suspects ~oined Timba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbourne in jail. By fine end of April the hunt had led to no less a personage than the Reverend George Burroughs, a former mi~ister of the village li~ng in Maine. Constables marched to Maine, fetched him hack, aud threw him in jail. ~ If someone confessed to witchcraft~ tbe matter of identification seemed simple enough. But if ~e accused reused to admit ~ilt, then the magistrates looked for corroborating proof. Physical evidence, such as voodoo dolls and pins found among the suspect’s possessions, were considered criminating. Fur~ermore, if the de~l made a pact with someone, he suppos- edly required a physical mark of allegim~ce and thus created a "witch’s fit" where ¢i~mr he or his ~amihar, a likeness in animal form, might s~ck. Pris- oners in ~e Salem ~ials were often examined for any abnormal ~arks on their bodies. it Aside from physical signs, the magistrates considered evidence that witch’s malice might have led to suffering on the part of fi~e victim. ~ud of black magic--harm by occult menus--was aown as msleficis~. lager Sarah Gadge, for example, testified that m~o years earlier she had timed Sar~t~ Good todgiug fi)r the night. According to Gadge, Good "fe~l to mutterillg and scolding extreamly and so told said Gadge if she would not let her in she should give i~er something . and the next morning after, to said Deponents best remembrance, one of the said Gadges Cowes Died in a Sudden terrible and Strange unusuall manet." ~a The magistrates also considered wbat they called "spectral evidence," at once the most danming and dangerous kimi of proof.

Load more