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Speaker 1: Our guest today is historian Mary Beth Norton. She's a

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Speaker 1: professor of American History at Cornell University, where she's taught

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Speaker 1: since nineteen one. In two thousand five to two thousand six,

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Speaker 1: she was also the pit Professor of American History and

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Speaker 1: Institutions at the University of Cambridge. She has received four

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Speaker 1: honorary degrees and has held fellowships from the Rockefeller, Guggenheim,

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Speaker 1: Melon and Star Foundations, as well as from Princeton University

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Speaker 1: and the Huntington Library. She is currently the president of

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Speaker 1: the twelve thousand member American Historical Association. My producer is

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Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams had a chance to sit

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Speaker 1: down with Professor Norton this past summer, and I want

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Speaker 1: to share that great conversation with you today. So without

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Speaker 1: further delay, let's get on with the show. This is

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Speaker 1: the Unobscured Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey,

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Speaker 1: I'm Mary Beth Norton. I'm a professor of American history

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Speaker 1: at Cornell University. I teach a bunch of courses on

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Speaker 1: early America and women. I have written several books, um

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Speaker 1: some of which are related to Salem Witchcraft, one of

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Speaker 1: which in particular is called in the Devil's Snare subtitle

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Speaker 1: the Salem Witchcraft Crisis of sixte two and very deliberately

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Speaker 1: subtitled a crisis rather than trials, because the book is

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Speaker 1: much broader than the trials themselves. When you call it

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Speaker 1: a crisis is because there are so many things occurring

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Speaker 1: outside of this very specific instance of the witch tribals.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk about a few of those contributing factor well,

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Speaker 1: I think in my book I argue that the most

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Speaker 1: important contributing factor is the um Indian War that's going

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Speaker 1: on on the northern frontier. We don't really know much

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Speaker 1: about this war. I certainly didn't know much about it

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Speaker 1: until it popped up as I was working on my

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Speaker 1: my study of Salem Witchcraft. I did not intend to

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Speaker 1: make the book what it turned out to be, which

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Speaker 1: is a dual narrative of war and witchcraft. I did

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Speaker 1: not understand the significance of the war until I kept

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Speaker 1: coming across material relevant to the war in the stuff

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Speaker 1: I was reading, and Uh, I went to look for

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Speaker 1: histories of the war, and I didn't find any um

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Speaker 1: And this was why I didn't anything about it. Was

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Speaker 1: because there have been no modern histories of it. The

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Speaker 1: most recent history to this day, the most recent history

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Speaker 1: of the war, which is known as King William's War

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Speaker 1: on the North in Frontier, was written by Cotton Mather

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Speaker 1: and published in the sixteen nineties. Was the only comprehensive

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Speaker 1: history that I found, and still there has been not one.

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Speaker 1: So I did not anticipate finding the war to be

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Speaker 1: as important as it turned out to be. And before

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Speaker 1: there was Philip, yes, there was King Philip's War. And

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Speaker 1: another problem with the literature on King Philip's War until

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Speaker 1: my book was that it's always focused on King Philip's

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Speaker 1: War in the south, that is, southern New England. King

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Speaker 1: Philip's War is thought of as an Indian war in

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Speaker 1: the old Plymouth Colony, uh in Rhode Island, and in

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Speaker 1: parts of southern Massachusetts Bay. But I discovered that there

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Speaker 1: was a northern part of it also, which has been

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Speaker 1: given very short shrift in histories of King philips War.

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Speaker 1: There is one history of King Philip's War that gives

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Speaker 1: a chapter to the northern part of the war, but

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Speaker 1: the King Philip's War is started in the sixteen seventies

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Speaker 1: and um the leader of the Indians was King Philip Um,

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Speaker 1: a Wampanoag chief who was very concerned about English encroachments

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Speaker 1: on his land and very concerned about missionizing activities of

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Speaker 1: the Christians in his lands. Um and he led his

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Speaker 1: warriors in raids, very devastating raids on New England communities.

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Speaker 1: But the war um leaked over, I think we can say,

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Speaker 1: into the north. The Indians in the north, the Wabanakis

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Speaker 1: did not particularly want to get involved in it, but

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Speaker 1: they basically were forced to because of pressure from the

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Speaker 1: Wampanoag's in the south and from the English settlers who

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Speaker 1: didn't trust them because of what was happening in the South.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, the English treated them extremely badly in

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Speaker 1: King Philip's war, Um did all kinds of things that

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Speaker 1: you can only call the furious um to them. And

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Speaker 1: so they did become involved. And so the Indian War

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Speaker 1: then became in the sixteen seventies, became general. Um. It

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Speaker 1: was finally came to an end in more or less

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Speaker 1: with a truce in sixteen seventy eight. And UH they

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Speaker 1: it was devastating to the English who had settled in

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Speaker 1: Maine and New Hampshire. Uh, they had abandoned their communities

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Speaker 1: in that period they moved back in um and then

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Speaker 1: the Second War started in sixteen eighty eight and it

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Speaker 1: all happened all over again. It was devastating. It was

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Speaker 1: devastating war. UM. We don't think of Maine as a

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Speaker 1: very um well, we don't think of Maine is a frontier.

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Speaker 1: We don't think of Maine as a prosperous area. But

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Speaker 1: in fact, Maine in the sixteen seventies and sixteen nineties

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Speaker 1: was really where the action was as far as um

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Speaker 1: profit to be made in New England. In Boston, people

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Speaker 1: had bought land, they had set up sawmills. Boston had

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Speaker 1: a very vigorous ship building industry that the sawmills in

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Speaker 1: Maine were providing the labor the time, the timber for

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Speaker 1: the um. The There was a big business of masts

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Speaker 1: of the very well built, very well developed pines which

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Speaker 1: were perfect for ships masts in in Maine. And so

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Speaker 1: these people who owned this property in Maine were making

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Speaker 1: money handover fest and they also were fishing off the

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Speaker 1: coast uh and so there was a lot of money

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Speaker 1: to be made in Maine. And basically the Indian Wars

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Speaker 1: devastated the economy of Maine and Maine in a lot

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Speaker 1: of ways never really recovered. Um. People didn't come back

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Speaker 1: until the seventeen twenties. And when they did, UM the

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Speaker 1: um a lot of the entrepreneurial energy was gone. So

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Speaker 1: it was really very bad. How did those same things

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Speaker 1: in the economic wars that were occurring because of these wars,

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Speaker 1: how did that affect the town sae Um? Well, what

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Speaker 1: happened was, um all the people who had been settling

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Speaker 1: in Maine had to go somewhere they if they weren't killed,

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Speaker 1: and so they filtered down into Massachusetts. They filtered down,

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Speaker 1: especially into Essex County, which is the northernmost county of Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: the northeastern most county, and so a lot of the

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Speaker 1: people came to live in marble Head, or came to

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Speaker 1: live in Salem, or came indeed to live in Salem

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Speaker 1: Village uh and Um in particular. One of the things

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Speaker 1: that I discovered. I didn't discover it, I learned it

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Speaker 1: in other people's work, but that I've pursued to a

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Speaker 1: greater extent than other people did was how many of

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Speaker 1: the young female accusers were in fact refugees from the

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Speaker 1: main frontier, where people whose families had been killed, even

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Speaker 1: though they had survived, and they had come to um

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Speaker 1: to Salem, or to the area of Salem, and we're

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Speaker 1: living as servants or living with their families that were

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Speaker 1: only shall we say partial families because people in the

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Speaker 1: family had been killed. So UM. I argue in the

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Speaker 1: book that one of the reasons why these women were

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Speaker 1: so um conflicted shall we say um, was that we could,

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Speaker 1: in a modern sense say they say that they were

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Speaker 1: suffering from PTSD, that they had suffered such trauma on

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Speaker 1: the frontier as young people, that they acted out in

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Speaker 1: in ways that helped to further, if not begin, the

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Speaker 1: Salem Crisis. I was very fortunate to be able to

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Speaker 1: find very scattered records biographical information about the youthful experiences

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Speaker 1: of three of the young women, very explicit information about

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Speaker 1: what they've gone through as young children, and that was

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Speaker 1: very helpful to my making my argument. Uh where I

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Speaker 1: find it. I found it and actually was mostly published

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Speaker 1: but in sort of obscure places, um, in compilations of

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Speaker 1: documents that were done in the nineteenth century. Until I

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Speaker 1: wrote my book, nobody was focusing on it. Until I

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Speaker 1: wrote my book, nobody really focused on the war it

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Speaker 1: was listed. If you read most other books about Salem,

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Speaker 1: there'll be a first chapter, and the first chapter will

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Speaker 1: say sort of underlying factors behind um Salem witchcraft, and

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Speaker 1: one of them will be problems of the governance of

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Speaker 1: the colony, and then there'll be other issues, but one

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Speaker 1: of them will also be UM the Indian War, and

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Speaker 1: it will get a few pages. UM. But the Indian

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Speaker 1: War came to dominate my narrative because I think it

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Speaker 1: dominated the lives of people then, and the way I

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Speaker 1: said earlier, I I didn't um expect it um. But

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Speaker 1: what happened was I decided to do something in my

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Speaker 1: research that other people hadn't done, which was to look

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Speaker 1: for letters written by anybody in the sixteen nineties, hoping

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Speaker 1: that I would find comments about Salem witchcraft about which is.

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Speaker 1: I was hoping I would find comments about what people

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Speaker 1: thought about which is. It turned out there's only one

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Speaker 1: really good set of letters that talks about witches, and

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Speaker 1: it's in't Dutch, so I had to rely on somebody

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Speaker 1: else's translation of those. But what I did so I

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Speaker 1: was very disappointed because I got these letters that would

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Speaker 1: say things like five witches hanged yesterday, But then they

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Speaker 1: wouldn't say anything about what they thought about that fact.

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Speaker 1: But what happened was, Um, they were not telling me

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Speaker 1: about the witches. They were telling me about the Indian Wars.

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Speaker 1: The letters that didn't tell me about witchcraft told me

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Speaker 1: all this stuff about the Indian War. You know, my

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Speaker 1: cousin tells me from Maine that thusn't such as happening,

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Speaker 1: or I hear from New Hampshire that thusn't such as happened.

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Speaker 1: And it's suddenly the penny dropped that that was what

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Speaker 1: was really crucial, that was what was controlling people. So

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Speaker 1: I um added a whole lot of stuff about the

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Speaker 1: Indian War to what was my previous idea of thinking

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Speaker 1: about Salem witchcraft. Let's take it and boil it down

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Speaker 1: into maybe an individual and try and just imagine what

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Speaker 1: it would be like for a single human being living

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Speaker 1: in one of these colonies. What kinds of horrors have

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Speaker 1: they or their their family? Right? Well, one of the

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Speaker 1: people that I talk a lot about in the book

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Speaker 1: is Mercy Lewis, who was a servant in Um the

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Speaker 1: home of Thomas Putnam, which is a crucial family for

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Speaker 1: the witchcraft crisis because his young daughter and Putnam Jr.

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Speaker 1: Was one of the first children who accused people, and

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Speaker 1: Mercy Lewis, I was able to discover, was from a

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Speaker 1: family that had lived in what was then called Falmouth,

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Speaker 1: Maine is now called Portland, UM for a number of

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Speaker 1: years um And I discovered that basically most of her

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Speaker 1: family except for her parents were wiped out in the

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Speaker 1: First Indian War in King Philip's War, and then the

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Speaker 1: ones who weren't killed in the First Indian War were

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Speaker 1: mostly killed in the Second Indian War. She and her

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Speaker 1: sister alone were left. Her sister married someone in Salem Village,

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Speaker 1: UM in the late sixteen eighties, as I remember correctly,

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Speaker 1: and that seemed to me why Mercy Lewis eventually made

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Speaker 1: her way to that area. She also crucially was a

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Speaker 1: servant for a while in the home of the Reverend

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Speaker 1: George Burrows, who is a crucial figure in my book

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Speaker 1: and who is someone who ties Salem Village together with

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Speaker 1: um Ti, Salem Village together with um Uh the main Frontier,

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Speaker 1: because he worked both places. He was both a minister

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Speaker 1: in Salem Village and a minister on the main Frontier

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Speaker 1: and um he um and she lived with him for

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Speaker 1: a while and she became one of his key accusers,

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Speaker 1: and so did Ann Putnam Jr. Become one of his

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Speaker 1: key accusers. So I like to say when I give

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Speaker 1: talks about Salem witchcraft, that I have spectral a spectral

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Speaker 1: vision of my own, and that my spectral vision is

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Speaker 1: of um uh and Putnam Jr. As the daughter of

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Speaker 1: this family, and Mercy Lewis as the servant sharing a

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Speaker 1: bed in what we've been called the chamber, that is

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Speaker 1: an upper room above the main and floor Uh And

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Speaker 1: basically Mercy Lewis filling and Putnam Junior's head full of

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Speaker 1: stories of the Indian War. And we see in An

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Speaker 1: Putnham juniors accusations in sixt details about things that happened

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Speaker 1: in Maine and details about George Burrows that you don't

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Speaker 1: see in, for example, the accusations of Abigail Williams, who

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Speaker 1: is the niece of the Reverend William Paris, whether Samuel

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Speaker 1: Paris in um in Salem village. That to me was

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Speaker 1: very telling. It told me that Ann Putnam Jr. Had

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Speaker 1: information about Maine. The only person she could have gotten

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Speaker 1: that information from was Mercy Lewis, who was a servant

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Speaker 1: in the household So let's talk about power within the

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Speaker 1: colonies and how it ended up being subverted throughout this crisis.

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Speaker 1: How about consolidated? I mean, what again, I'm fond of

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Speaker 1: saying two people when I'm trying to explain what the

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Speaker 1: power structure of the colony was like at the time

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Speaker 1: of the Witchcraft crisis, I am fond of saying the

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Speaker 1: following that making the following analogy that would be though

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Speaker 1: in the US today the joint chiefs of Staff were

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Speaker 1: also the president's cabinet and also the judges of the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court, because that's the power structure of Massachusetts at

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Speaker 1: the time. The same men were the judges in the

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Speaker 1: trials and the chief advisers of the governor, and the

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Speaker 1: men who led the local militia in the Indian War.

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Speaker 1: So you talk about consolidation of power there, it is

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Speaker 1: absolutely So We've got the power dynamics of the men

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Speaker 1: who are there filling all these rules, the same guys. Right,

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Speaker 1: Let's just go over the gender dynamics. So we have

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Speaker 1: powerful are the women, Well, the women are of different status,

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Speaker 1: is um. There are the women who are married to

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Speaker 1: those powerful men, and they are known as mistress. They

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Speaker 1: have a title um, and so they have a certain

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Speaker 1: status in the community. They don't play much of a

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Speaker 1: role in the in the Salem crisis. We don't know

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Speaker 1: much about them. We know about a few of them,

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Speaker 1: Um asked Tad Baker about the wife of the governor,

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Speaker 1: for example. Um. They we know about some of them.

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Speaker 1: But mostly we have ordinary women who are known as

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Speaker 1: good wives or goody and we have young women who

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Speaker 1: are children. In the case of the three beginning accusers,

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Speaker 1: Abigail Williams and Um, Um, come on, I'm now I'm

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Speaker 1: blanking um. Abigail Williams and um and Putnam Jr. And

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Speaker 1: Paris's daughter. Those are the children, and they're always called

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Speaker 1: the children, and they're always separ rated by as far

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Speaker 1: as other people are concerned, from the somewhat older accusers.

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Speaker 1: Then you have the group of accusers who are the

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Speaker 1: teenagers and twenty somethings, many of whom are servants, but

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Speaker 1: not all of whom are servants. And then you have

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Speaker 1: the older women, um, the good wives, the women of

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Speaker 1: some stature in the community, mostly in their thirties. A

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Speaker 1: couple who are older who play roles as accusers. And

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Speaker 1: one of the arguments that I make in the book

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Speaker 1: is that when it the children's accusations are not it's

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Speaker 1: not that they're not taken seriously, it's that they don't

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Speaker 1: lead to politically, they don't lead to judicial um uh,

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Speaker 1: they don't lead to judicial activity until somewhat older women

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Speaker 1: and girls way in. There was a rule at the

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Speaker 1: time in English law that it was more it was

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Speaker 1: a common law rule. I don't think it was written

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Speaker 1: down anywhere that if you're that the evidence of someone

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Speaker 1: under fourteen would not be acceptable in a UM in

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Speaker 1: a capital case, and so the because witchcraft, of course

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Speaker 1: was a capital crime. And so I think that it

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Speaker 1: that in the beginning, they the authorities in Massachusetts waited

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Speaker 1: in effect for older people to weigh in. And what

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Speaker 1: seems to have been especially important was when women in

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Speaker 1: their thirties also became accusers. When Um and Putnam Senior

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Speaker 1: became an accuser, When Sarah Viber became an accuser, even

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Speaker 1: though she was not a woman of particular standing in

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Speaker 1: the community, my student discovered that she appeared in more

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Speaker 1: prosecutions than anyone else UM, and so it was clear

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Speaker 1: that a woman of that standing UM, who was seen

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Speaker 1: as more mature, was more believable as far as the

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Speaker 1: judges were concerned. I might add that the young woman

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Speaker 1: um Oh among the accusers Susannah Sheldon, who seemed to

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Speaker 1: be the craziest and she seemed to give the weirdest

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Speaker 1: um accusations. If you read her statements to the court,

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Speaker 1: they're very strange. She is herself a refugee from the

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Speaker 1: main frontier, living with her mother. Her father is dead

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Speaker 1: um and her older brother seems to have been killed

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Speaker 1: in the Indian War uh. And she is often cited

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Speaker 1: as an important accuser, but if you look at the

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Speaker 1: legal records, she hardly ever appeared in a case. She

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Speaker 1: doesn't They don't let her swear to the truth of

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Speaker 1: something because I think they don't trust her. They only

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Speaker 1: let people swear to the truth of something if they

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Speaker 1: trust them, and I don't think they trust Susanna Sheldon.

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Speaker 1: She is nuts and they seem to recognize that she's nuts.

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Speaker 1: They don't say that anywhere. But so I think people

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Speaker 1: who have not paid attention to the way these testimonies

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Speaker 1: are used in court miss out on a number of

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Speaker 1: aspects of the trial. And I will say that of

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Speaker 1: the trials, and I will say that the new addition

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Speaker 1: of the papers done by the international team under the

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Speaker 1: direction of Bernard Rosenthal has really helped us in this

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Speaker 1: regard because they give us all the legal notations on

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Speaker 1: the documents that in fact sometimes we're missing from the

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Speaker 1: previous addition that we had to work with, which was

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Speaker 1: based on w p A transcripts done in the nineteen thirties.

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Speaker 1: So the recent edition has really helped us with understanding

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Speaker 1: the legal process and how it was pursued. But back

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Speaker 1: to your question about the UM, the believability or about

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Speaker 1: the roles of these younger women UM. One of the

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Speaker 1: things I discovered from my previous book UM called Founding

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Speaker 1: Mothers and Fathers, which is about UM seventeenth century society

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Speaker 1: in general and compares what happens in New England to

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Speaker 1: what happens in in the Chesapeake. One of the things

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Speaker 1: I discovered from that was that young women tended to

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Speaker 1: be disbelieved when they spoken court. So to me, when

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Speaker 1: I looked at the Salem records for the first time,

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Speaker 1: one of the things I was particularly interested in figuring

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Speaker 1: out was why were these young women believed, because the

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Speaker 1: young women in the past were usually not believed. And

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Speaker 1: of course my answer was the Indian war because the

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Speaker 1: consolidation of the power um by the in the hands

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Speaker 1: of the judges UM and the who were also the

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Speaker 1: leaders of the war, meant that they basically wanted an

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Speaker 1: explanation for why they were losing the war, and they

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Speaker 1: were losing the war because of witchcraft. Qwi D. Let's

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Speaker 1: get into how faith shades everything that occurred throughout this

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Speaker 1: faith in what faith in witches, belief in witches everybody

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Speaker 1: believes in witches greater or something a bit mystical, and

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Speaker 1: how the Puritan faiths specifically shaped a lot of this well.

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Speaker 1: UM Actually, Um, a lot of people in Maine were

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Speaker 1: not Puritans, and so we don't know that much about

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Speaker 1: what the refugees thought, the people who came down into

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Speaker 1: Salem in Salem Village, because Maine was settled not by Puritans,

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Speaker 1: but for the most part by members of the Church

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Speaker 1: of England, one of whom was my very own ancestor.

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Speaker 1: But that's another story, and so UM, the it's really

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Speaker 1: hard to know the Uh. Certainly Cotton Mother, who becomes

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Speaker 1: a great defender of the trials, is one of the

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Speaker 1: leading young clerics of the colony. His father Increase is

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Speaker 1: gone in England for the previous several years. He's in

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Speaker 1: England negotiating for a new charter for the colony. Comes

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Speaker 1: back with a new governor, arriving in May, by which

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Speaker 1: point the witchcraft crisis is well underway. There's lots of

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Speaker 1: accusations by then. So UM, certainly Samuel Parris uh is

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Speaker 1: a believer in UM a very harsh version of Puritanism.

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Speaker 1: He's known for his UM, very what we'd say today,

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Speaker 1: hard line sermons. Uh. He was having a big dispute

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Speaker 1: with members of the congregation and members of this town

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Speaker 1: in Salem Village. They were happy with him. They were

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Speaker 1: withholding his salary, they were withholding firewood. He was not

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Speaker 1: happy and uh, so he started giving UM more and

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Speaker 1: more angry sermons. Everybody had to attend. It was part

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Speaker 1: of the law. Everybody had to attend church services, where

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Speaker 1: they were church members or not. So everybody was hearing

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Speaker 1: Samuel Paris rant and rave. And we're lucky that we

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Speaker 1: have transcripts that have been published of many of those sermons,

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Speaker 1: so we have an idea of what he was saying.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean Puritanism was important to all these people, UM,

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Speaker 1: and they were the faith was significant, and that faith

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Speaker 1: included a belief in the existence of witches. In England

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Speaker 1: at the time there was beginning to be skepticism about

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Speaker 1: belief in witchcraft, but not in America, not really. Even

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Speaker 1: when the witchcraft crisis came to an end, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: because people did not believe in witchcraft. It was because

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Speaker 1: they came to believe that you couldn't prove someone was

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Speaker 1: a which in court legally, that was why they stopped.

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Speaker 1: And we have a letter that has survived from um

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Speaker 1: a magistrate in northern Essex County who who wrote a

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Speaker 1: letter to a judge who was a friend of his

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Speaker 1: and basically laid out, shall we say, the Puritan case

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Speaker 1: for why you can't convict a which on spectral testimony,

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Speaker 1: And basically his argument was like follows went as follows, um,

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Speaker 1: spectral testimony must come from the devil, because God would

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Speaker 1: never tell us what's going to happen in the future.

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Speaker 1: When God does not speak to us this way, we

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Speaker 1: all know that, so it has to come from the devil.

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Speaker 1: And if you are convicting these people on spectral test

379
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Speaker 1: on spectral evidence, you are convicting them on the testimony

380
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Speaker 1: of the devil. And we all know, you can't trust

381
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Speaker 1: the devil, and so that's really why they stopped the trials.

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Speaker 1: That worked. That worked. It didn't stop the trials, I

383
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:04,160
Speaker 1: should say, I should stop that, because indeed they did

384
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Speaker 1: continue the trials after the dissolution of the of the

385
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Speaker 1: special court. They did um get um. They did in

386
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Speaker 1: fact have three further convictions of people who had confessed,

387
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: but all those people were had their convictions in effect

388
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: overturned um. And in the regular courts they did not

389
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,479
Speaker 1: allow spectral evidence. This is the trials that occurred in

390
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 1: January of sixte and UM. So there were no executions

391
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Speaker 1: after late September of six and those were the last

392
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Speaker 1: executions that were based on spectral evidence. In part I

393
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Speaker 1: hastened to add there was always other evidence too. There

394
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Speaker 1: was no one he was convicted solely on spectral evidence. Uh.

395
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Speaker 1: There were the what we would call the usual kinds

396
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Speaker 1: of evidence of witchcraft, which is neighbors accusing someone of

397
00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:04,920
Speaker 1: doing um witchcraft against him from from the proceedings that

398
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: had happened prior to that. The only thing that's different

399
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: about an oyer in terminal court is it's a special court,

400
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: as a court established by the governor for a special reason.

401
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: There had been a previous oyer and terminal court in

402
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: New York to try the people who had been involved

403
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 1: in a revolt in New York. It was basically the

404
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:27,240
Speaker 1: same model. There was nothing different. Particularly, Um, nobody, I

405
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:29,479
Speaker 1: should say it was a lawyer. Um, there were no

406
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: lawyers involved in this except for the first prosecutor. He

407
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 1: was a trained English lawyer. Everybody else was not a lawyer. Um.

408
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: They but they were experienced magistrates. They had served as

409
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: justice as the piece for years. They had heard many

410
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:47,159
Speaker 1: small cases. They had even sometimes sat in capital cases previously.

411
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:51,199
Speaker 1: There were some pirates who were convicted and hanged previously

412
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 1: in New England. So basically, um uh, it's not as

413
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:59,679
Speaker 1: though these are not experienced people in judicial procedures. But

414
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,359
Speaker 1: none of them were trained lawyers. They did have law books.

415
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:07,360
Speaker 1: We know that there was a bookstore in Boston that

416
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: had law books that they bought and that they read.

417
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 1: So we know they were self educated. Shall we say

418
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 1: about how they should handle things? Um, But a lot

419
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:19,080
Speaker 1: of things about the trials we don't know. For example,

420
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: we know there were nine judges. We know they were

421
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: supposed to be five at any one trial, and that

422
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:31,959
Speaker 1: at least two of those five had to be particular people,

423
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: but we don't know about anything else. We don't know

424
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Speaker 1: how many of those people actually sat in the in

425
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: the trials. We don't know who sat in particular trials,

426
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: except we're sure that the chief judge, William Stowton, who

427
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 1: was the Lieutenant governor of the colony, we know he

428
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 1: was there pretty much all the time. We're sure he

429
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: was there all the time. Other than that, we don't know.

430
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 1: We don't know who was on the jury. We on

431
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 1: the juries. We don't know if there were more than well,

432
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:02,480
Speaker 1: we think there was more than one jury, but we

433
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: don't know how many people actually served. We don't know

434
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: if there were different juries for different trials. We do

435
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: know that George Burrows challenged jurors in his trial and

436
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 1: so new jurors had to be seated, but that's it.

437
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: We don't know if the people who were the jurors

438
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: before in the trials before Burrows were all the same guys.

439
00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: Was it the same people again? And again we don't

440
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:29,959
Speaker 1: know that. Um. We know that there was a second

441
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,600
Speaker 1: grand jury impaneled later in the system, because we've seen

442
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: the the call for the new grand jury. But again

443
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: we don't know was the first grand did the first

444
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: grand jury sit throughout the entire early period of the trials.

445
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: We have no idea. Those records are all gone. So

446
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: even though we have a lot of records that survived,

447
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: there's many procedural things we don't know. And probably the

448
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: best procedural infidence we have is the notations on some

449
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:02,480
Speaker 1: of the documents by the court color Um and he

450
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: Um he made uh notations about whether something was sworn

451
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: before the grand jury, whether it was sworn in court itself,

452
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 1: And so sometimes you get documents where they say sworn

453
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 1: in before the grand jury and nothing else, And then

454
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: there's other documents that say sworn in court and nothing else.

455
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: And sometimes you get things that are said sworn and

456
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: we were the grand jury and sworn in court, But

457
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 1: you don't know what the missing evidence means. And sometimes

458
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: he even wrote a note on something which said, sometimes

459
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: people just gave their testimony orally, and I didn't write

460
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 1: it down. So we have one note that says that,

461
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: So who knows? Um Actually, sort of ironically, the best

462
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: evidence we have about the conduct of the trials comes

463
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: from Cotton Mathers account of five of the trials, written

464
00:30:56,200 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: to defend the trials themselves written to defend the verdicts

465
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 1: in his book, and he wonders of the invisible world,

466
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 1: and he gives us kind of blow by blow descriptions

467
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 1: of what happened in the various trials. And so we

468
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: can see in some of those cases that we have

469
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: the evidence of the testimony that he talks about, but

470
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: in other cases we don't have the evidence of the

471
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: testimony that he talks about. I think I and everybody

472
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: else sort of assumes that he's telling the truth when

473
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 1: he tells you that this is the testimony that's given

474
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: in those cases, because there were too many people who

475
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: were there and who could have said, no, no, you're

476
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: a liar cotton mother if you're telling telling us things

477
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: that didn't actually happen in the court room. And so

478
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: we think that he did, in fact work off of

479
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: records that are now lost. He got those records from

480
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: the court clerk, from Steven Sewell, who was the court clerk.

481
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 1: And you know, we know that because he thanks Steven

482
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: Sewell for he asked Steven Sewell for those records, and

483
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: he thanks Steven so for those records. So um, there

484
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: we can pretty much believe them, because in fact, when

485
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 1: we do have the written testimony that he describes, it's accurate.

486
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: I mean, he describes it accurately, So we just sort

487
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:15,840
Speaker 1: of have to make certain assumptions. But he doesn't tell

488
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: us how many judges were there or or things like that.

489
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 1: So um, but he does tell us that the accusers

490
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: came in. He does tell us that confessors came in

491
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 1: and so forth, so we do have that information from him.

492
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 1: Now Here there are so many ideas of what a

493
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: which could be, but in there is an idea of

494
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: what a which is. Essentially that's commonly shared with a

495
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: lot of people. Can you describe what in or before

496
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:56,200
Speaker 1: there were basically which was basically believed to be someone

497
00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 1: who had some kind of access to a cult information

498
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: and powers and that. But there were a disagreement about

499
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: that because there were some people who thought that that

500
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: had to mean that they were in touch with the devil.

501
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: There were other people who thought, no, no, there were

502
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: what you might call today a white witch or a

503
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: useful witch who could for example, tell your fortune. Um,

504
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 1: that was someone who had some mystical power. Um. The

505
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: the ministers would say that that meant the person had

506
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: to be in touch with the devil, because that God

507
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: would never tell you what's the future, was that the

508
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: devil might. And so any fortune teller, as far as

509
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: the ministers were concerned, was a witch as far as

510
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: local people were concerned. That isn't true. Uh, Well, a

511
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: witch who could tell the future or a fortune teller,

512
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: it was not necessarily an evil person. Was someone who

513
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: could just help you or could give you a potion.

514
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: If you were in love with someone who wasn't in

515
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 1: love with you, you could get a spell to help you, um,

516
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: make that person fall in love with you. Or if

517
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 1: you wanted to know what had happened to your husband

518
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 1: who was had been at sea for years, was he

519
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: going to come home? The which or the fortune teller

520
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:08,919
Speaker 1: could tell you that sort of thing. In fact, there's

521
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: one of the women who's accused of witchcraft in s

522
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,279
Speaker 1: who seems to have specialized in telling women that their

523
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 1: husbands were never going to come home, that they were widows. Um.

524
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: She seems to have liked to have given them bad news.

525
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: So um, there's that kind of witchcraft. And then there's

526
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: the kind of witchcraft where a witch is seen as

527
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: being evil and uh seeking to do bad things to people.

528
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 1: She doesn't like. It's almost always a woman, not entirely.

529
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:38,719
Speaker 1: It can be a man, and the as far as

530
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: the local people are concerned, as a woman, as far

531
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:42,920
Speaker 1: as the ministers are concerned, it could be a man.

532
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: I should add that. And that would be if you

533
00:34:46,040 --> 00:34:49,200
Speaker 1: get in trouble with somebody and they have and and

534
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:51,800
Speaker 1: let's say you have an argument with your neighbor. Um.

535
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 1: Your neighbor's cows got into your cornfield. You're really mad.

536
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 1: You go and have a conversation. More than a conversation.

537
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,360
Speaker 1: You yell at your neighbor. And it's an older woman,

538
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: and she says, I'll get you, because you know it

539
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: was the problem was the fence around your corn It

540
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: wasn't my cows. If you'd had a better fence, this

541
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened. And so some kind of disagreement occurs

542
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: um within the neighborhood um. And that's where a lot

543
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 1: of witchcraft accusations come from. There's actually a very excellent

544
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 1: book about witchcraft, mostly in Europe to a certain extent

545
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: in America called Witches and Neighbors, and it's about the

546
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,759
Speaker 1: by guy named Robin Briggs, who's a British historian and

547
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 1: he makes a very strong case that a lot of

548
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 1: these witchcraft cases involve disputes among neighbors. Kind of standard

549
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: common disputes among neighbors. But let's say, Um, that dispute

550
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:50,239
Speaker 1: about the cows in the cornfield happened, and then three

551
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: days later, UM, you who have been cursed out by

552
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: the supposed witch, that is, by your neighbor, you start

553
00:35:56,640 --> 00:35:58,319
Speaker 1: to have some other kind of a problem, like one

554
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: of your cows breaks its leg and you have to

555
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:04,680
Speaker 1: kill it or um, or your beer goes sour, or

556
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:08,759
Speaker 1: the milk won't churn properly into butter, or something like that.

557
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 1: And then you begin to think to yourself, I wonder

558
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: if that neighbor bewitched my cow, or bewitched me, or

559
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: bewitched my my child, if my child is sick, or

560
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:21,280
Speaker 1: something like that. So that's the kind of thing that happens.

561
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: And I might say that witchcraft is very much becomes

562
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: a default explanation for things that are inexplicable otherwise, UM,

563
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:36,359
Speaker 1: for sudden illnesses. UM. Human beings always like to have

564
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 1: causes for things. It's why I think we have so

565
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,320
Speaker 1: many conspiracy theories these days. There has to be something

566
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:46,800
Speaker 1: important that happened, happens to cause something important, and so

567
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: there has to be a conspiracy. Well, that's the same

568
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 1: kind of thing about witchcraft. You have to have some

569
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: reason for something bad happening, and so you attribute it

570
00:36:56,719 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 1: to a witch. And that's basically the seventeenth century exploit

571
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: nation for things. That makes so much sense to me

572
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:06,399
Speaker 1: than why the doctor ends up being a person who

573
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:10,320
Speaker 1: goes in and we'll say, oh, there's some witchcraft reckring

574
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 1: here because it's outside of his understanding. Yeah, the doctor

575
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: who well, he wasn't a trained doctor. He was just

576
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 1: a local guy who seemed to know something about medicine,

577
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: Doctor Briggs, Dr Griggs. Rather, doctor Griggs seemed to know

578
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: something about medicine. And in fact he's really not a

579
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 1: very lettered guy. I discovered that he signed an important

580
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 1: legal document with an X. I mean, it's not even

581
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: clear the guy's literate. Um, but he is the local doctor.

582
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,760
Speaker 1: He is the equivalent of the local doctor in Salem village,

583
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: and so um, Yes, when he can't diagnose the little

584
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: girls as to what's wrong with them, he the default

585
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: is it's it's witchcraft. But of course they don't immediately

586
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: turn to the legal process. And I think that's something

587
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: we don't understand today, because there was a legal there

588
00:37:55,840 --> 00:38:01,439
Speaker 1: was a process for dealing religiously with which after accusations

589
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 1: and basically the first thing that happens is that Samuel

590
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: Paris calls in neighboring ministers to pray and fast over

591
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: these girls, and that's supposed to solve the problem, and

592
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 1: they go. That goes on for some weeks. We don't

593
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: know for sure how long, but it seems to be

594
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: about a month that um, that this happens before and

595
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: before they decide they're not going to deal with it religiously,

596
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: they're going to have to deal with it legally. Market

597
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 1: care of your son's were tortured? Yes, how was torture

598
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:40,319
Speaker 1: used in these That's the only time we know that

599
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: there was any evidence or any statement about physical torture

600
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 1: being used. We know that, um, eventually sleeplessness was used

601
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:57,240
Speaker 1: and um, harsh words shall we say. But the only

602
00:38:57,280 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: time that torture is a edged is with the sons

603
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: of Martha Carrier, and they were tied neck and heels,

604
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 1: as it was said, which was in fact a punishment.

605
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily thought of as torture at the time.

606
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:20,920
Speaker 1: So um, the question of why people confessed has always

607
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: been something that people have been wondering about. But when

608
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: it became clear, as it became clear later in the

609
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: trials that if you confessed you would be kept alive

610
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 1: so you could testify against other people, is when more

611
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: and more people started to confess. Um. And one of

612
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: the things I noticed was that when adults confessed late

613
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:55,760
Speaker 1: in the sequence of the trials, they accused only people

614
00:39:56,560 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 1: who were already dead, who had already been hanged, or

615
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: they accused people who had been accused by other people.

616
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: They did not name new people. It seemed clear to

617
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: me that it was very strategic when they confessed. They

618
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:14,800
Speaker 1: did not want to hurt anyone who wasn't already um

619
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:20,240
Speaker 1: hanged or already had been accused of others. However, children

620
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 1: didn't do that, and a lot of their later confessors

621
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: were children or very young teenagers. And they're the ones

622
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 1: who just seems to have thrown names around with great

623
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:35,239
Speaker 1: abandoned and they're the ones who led to many of

624
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 1: the later accusations was confessions by children. And this, of

625
00:40:38,760 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 1: course was in and over. That's where people were confessing

626
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 1: was in andover. It's very interesting. Um, it's a completely

627
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: different pattern in Andover than you get in Salem Village.

628
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: Salem Village, people accused their enemies. In and Over people

629
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: accused their friends and their relatives. Um, there's this one

630
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:00,319
Speaker 1: family where five sisters and the mother all confessed and

631
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:05,240
Speaker 1: basically accuse each other and say they're all working together. Um.

632
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: So it's just it's Um, it's a very different pattern.

633
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: And I know there's someone now working on and Over,

634
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: and I hope that that person can explain the pattern

635
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 1: in and Over, because I certainly had no particularly good

636
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:22,279
Speaker 1: explanation for it. Did the differences in the patterns in

637
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 1: and Over effect how the rest of the trials went

638
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: in Salem? Did lead to changes in how the trials

639
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:35,839
Speaker 1: were conducted. Most of the Andover confessions came very late

640
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,720
Speaker 1: in the day. Um. They the Andover confessions didn't start

641
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 1: until the fifte July, and at that point there were

642
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 1: only the August and September trial sessions left. So UM,

643
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: it didn't have that much of an effect. I mean,

644
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:58,279
Speaker 1: the confessors did come in, it wasn't. The confessors were

645
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,560
Speaker 1: important in the lay her phases of the trials, but

646
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 1: not all of them were from Andover So Um, not

647
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 1: all the confessors who came in were from Andover, So

648
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: I don't I wouldn't say that there was any big

649
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: difference made by it. I guess the Andover face is

650
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: Later there was a thought that perhaps witchcraft were in

651
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: in the family in a way or was passed down. Uh.

652
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: Pregnancy was an excuse in England. It was. It was

653
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 1: in English law. Um. It was called pleading your belly.

654
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: When a woman was accused of a with a woman

655
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: was convicted of a capital offense, she could, as they said,

656
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: plead her belly and if she was pregnant, if the

657
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:39,399
Speaker 1: midwives confirmed that she was pregnant, then she wasn't hanged

658
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:43,000
Speaker 1: until after she gave birth. And in this case, Um

659
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Procter, the fact that she was pregnant saved her

660
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:51,760
Speaker 1: because by the time she gave birth the executions had ended,

661
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: so it'd saved her. Um a fortuitous pregnancy. But that

662
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: was um. That was the standard English practice was you

663
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:06,319
Speaker 1: could plead your belly. Um. There were female pirates who

664
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: pleaded their bellies and were not executed as a result,

665
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: at least not until after they gave birth. So it

666
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: was it was nothing unusual but you're right that it

667
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,319
Speaker 1: was thought that witchcraft could run in the family, and

668
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: it wasn't just um blood. It could also be someone

669
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: in the same household. So someone who's um a servant

670
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 1: whose mistress was accused of being a witch might necessarily

671
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 1: might come under suspicion or vice versa. If a servant

672
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 1: was accused of being a witch or thought to be

673
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: a witch, was the mistress come under suspicion? That seemed

674
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: to have happened with one of the three um enslaved

675
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: Africans who's accused in Salem, That the mistress came under

676
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 1: suspicion because the servant was accused, and so um or

677
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,320
Speaker 1: friends women who were close friends. If a woman was

678
00:43:57,360 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: a close friend with someone who was thought to be

679
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: a witch, that also was a suspicious circumstance and might

680
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 1: lead one to at least come under some cloud of suspicion.

681
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Brows and Carrier being called the King

682
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:19,879
Speaker 1: and Queen of Hell. Well, what's really interesting is that

683
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:25,839
Speaker 1: Martha Carrier is first called the Queen of Hell by

684
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: a confessor. Burrows becomes the figured as the leader of

685
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 1: the witches thanks to the confessors um but also because

686
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: of the original accusations by and Putnam during Junior and

687
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 1: Mercy Lewis. Um Burrows is the right person to be

688
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: the leader of the Witches because he's a minister, and

689
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: because he's a kind of a weird minister. That is,

690
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,640
Speaker 1: he's never been ordained, um, he's been educated at Harvard,

691
00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 1: and because there's all kinds of us about him, which

692
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:04,439
Speaker 1: I explore in my book. He's he has a very

693
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:07,719
Speaker 1: peculiar relationship with his wives. It's hard to know a

694
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 1: lot about the details, but he seems to have been

695
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: quite brutal and quite an aggressive husband. Uh. He at

696
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 1: least is accused of um beating them UM or at

697
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 1: least being very controlling of them. Uh. He wants them

698
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: to quote keep his secrets, and so the question becomes,

699
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: what are those secrets he wants them to keep. Um.

700
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,879
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of rumors that swirl around him.

701
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: At his trial. There's testimony that he has unusual strength,

702
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 1: which is based on his own boasting about his strength.

703
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 1: So it comes back to haunt him. Uh. He is

704
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: someone who is very mysterious, and I would have loved

705
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: to have found out more about him. I did everything

706
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,240
Speaker 1: I could to find out what I could, But um,

707
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: he is a mysterious guy. Um he's said to have

708
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:02,799
Speaker 1: prominent relatives in England. I never tracked that down, so

709
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 1: I don't know. But he is someone who aroused a

710
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: lot of comment. Um, who had a parlous relationship with

711
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:15,720
Speaker 1: Salem Village when he was the minister in Salem Village.

712
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: He seems to have been much more popular when he

713
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 1: was a minister in Falmouth, Maine. That is, um he

714
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: was there before King Phillips floor. He then left and

715
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:30,359
Speaker 1: they wanted him to come back, which he did so

716
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 1: he um he did. He was treated better in Maine.

717
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 1: He certainly was more highly regarded in Maine than he

718
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: was in Salem Village. Perhaps it was because he was educated.

719
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of educated people in the main frontier,

720
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:47,759
Speaker 1: and they may have like the fact that he was

721
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:50,280
Speaker 1: a Harvard graduate, even if he wasn't an ordained minister.

722
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:52,839
Speaker 1: There does seem to have been some kind of a

723
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,080
Speaker 1: a debate about where he would be, whether he would

724
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: be in Falmouth or maybe in black Point. There was

725
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 1: some attempt to attract him someplace else to black Point

726
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 1: as a minister. So um he had a different standing

727
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: on the frontier than he had in Salem village. Was

728
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: it significant that he was able to recite the Lord's prayer?

729
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:14,960
Speaker 1: It was believed that a witch could not accurately recite

730
00:47:15,000 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 1: the Lord's prayer. And indeed that was a test that

731
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: was tried on some other people and who could not

732
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:24,879
Speaker 1: do it some of the accused. Um, I was tried

733
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: on John Willard and he couldn't do it. So when

734
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 1: George Burrows at the gallows recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly,

735
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 1: the account says. The eyewitness account says that he that

736
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:42,760
Speaker 1: there was a murmur in the crowd and that they

737
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: thought that he could not be a witch until Cotton

738
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: Mother came up on horseback and said, no, no, a

739
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:53,320
Speaker 1: witch can do what he did, So then they hanged him.

740
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:56,919
Speaker 1: Um that's one time at which Cotton Mother is said

741
00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 1: Jof had a real definite impact on the trials himself,

742
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 1: as opposed to just writing about it. That's one of

743
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: the most well known events that occurs. Another one is

744
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:14,239
Speaker 1: the pressing death of Giles Corey Right. How unusual was

745
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: that act within the context of the rest of the

746
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: civilization to that point, Um, it was extremely unusual in

747
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:24,720
Speaker 1: the context of New England. Never was done at anybody

748
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 1: else that we know of. And um, we don't even

749
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: know why they did it. Um. It was a traditional

750
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:38,919
Speaker 1: medieval English punishment to force someone to enter a plea.

751
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 1: But you have to understand, although we say it was

752
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: because Giles Corey didn't ender a plea, he did actually

753
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: say he was not guilty. He did say that we

754
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,479
Speaker 1: would say that was entering a plea. But he had

755
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: to answer a second ritual question. And the second ritual

756
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 1: question was and how will you be tried? And he

757
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 1: was supposed to say, by God in my country, and

758
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: he refused to say that. And that's why they decided

759
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: to um use this traditional English punishment. How they came

760
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: up with that is not known, um, And who basically

761
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:14,760
Speaker 1: decided it is not known, but probably was William Stowton,

762
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 1: who was a very hardline guy, uh, who was the

763
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 1: chief Justice and the Lieutenant governor. But Giles Corey was

764
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:27,920
Speaker 1: not a nice man. I mean he has this in

765
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 1: in um. He becomes kind of a hero in um

766
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 1: um Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, But um, he had

767
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 1: beaten a servant to death a few some years earlier.

768
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: He was not a nice guy. And so it thought

769
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: he was just being his old, irascible, nasty self when

770
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 1: he refused to cooperate with the court. How significant was

771
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:55,839
Speaker 1: Increased either in the ending of this trinals Well, it's

772
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:58,080
Speaker 1: really hard to know. We don't have a lot of

773
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: infant evidence about how all the trials ended. We have

774
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:08,120
Speaker 1: very sparse efidence. In fact, we have Samuel Sewell's diary

775
00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 1: that tells us about certain things that very briefly, that

776
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 1: were said in um meetings of the council, um said

777
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: by the Governor, by William Phipps, um. And we have

778
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 1: some pamphlets, and it's certainly true that Increase Mather wrote

779
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:34,240
Speaker 1: a pamphlet that raised some questions. But Increase Mather also

780
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:38,080
Speaker 1: explicitly said that he agreed with his son Cotton, and

781
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 1: Cotton wrote this this not just a pamphlet, a book

782
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 1: wanders of the invisible world, defending the trials. And even

783
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:52,319
Speaker 1: though Increased Mather says um in his in his it's

784
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: more than a pamphlet. It's it's not but it's not

785
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 1: a book. I don't know how to describe it. Even

786
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 1: though he says in his treatise that you have to

787
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: be very careful about these trials. He still says he

788
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:09,919
Speaker 1: would have convicted George Burrows, so it's not as though

789
00:51:10,040 --> 00:51:16,760
Speaker 1: he's a complete opponent of the trials, nor is god

790
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:22,720
Speaker 1: Samuel Willard, who also writes about the trials at the time,

791
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 1: and who's whose publication when it appears, is said to have

792
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: have been published in Philadelphia when it clearly wasn't. It

793
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: was published in Boston, who had fake publication information on

794
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: the title page, because Phipps had basically said no publications

795
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:44,720
Speaker 1: about about the trials to try to keep the debate down.

796
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: So it's it's just really hard to know exactly what happened,

797
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:53,280
Speaker 1: except we do know. We can't say that public opinion

798
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 1: did seem to turn against the trials, and they did

799
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: seem to turn against the trials after the second set

800
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: of accusations, after the accusation, after the sorry, after the

801
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: second set of trials and executions, and the executions on

802
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:14,400
Speaker 1: the two September UM opinion seems to have turned pretty

803
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:19,920
Speaker 1: strongly against the trials after that. And I would speculate

804
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,959
Speaker 1: that it's because those people were hanged with a lot

805
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: less evidence than people had been hanged with before those

806
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:32,839
Speaker 1: trials were rushed um, and they did seem to be

807
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:37,279
Speaker 1: rushed to judgment and those trials, and so I think

808
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that led to deep concerns

809
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 1: among people among what we say thinking people in Boston,

810
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:50,799
Speaker 1: U and in Salem. That caused an uproar. And then

811
00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:55,360
Speaker 1: in addition, in October, when Increase Mather goes to the

812
00:52:55,520 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: prison in Salem to talk to a group of women

813
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: who had confessed and they all take it back, and

814
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:08,359
Speaker 1: that too, I think was important, and that was about

815
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,799
Speaker 1: the middle of October's that was about three weeks after

816
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:16,000
Speaker 1: the last set of executions. Um, when they take it

817
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: back and they talk about how they were basically convinced,

818
00:53:19,760 --> 00:53:25,319
Speaker 1: convinced to confess by magistrates, sometimes by their own relatives,

819
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:28,399
Speaker 1: who said, well, you may not realize you were a witch,

820
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:30,960
Speaker 1: but you clearly were because of X, and then cited

821
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 1: some evidence to them. So UM, I think that was

822
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: also very meaningful in helping to convince Phips that he

823
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:42,439
Speaker 1: could not maintain the trials any longer, or at least

824
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:44,440
Speaker 1: the trials in the court of or Your in terminal,

825
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 1: that the rules had to change, and that spectral evidence

826
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:51,400
Speaker 1: could not be allowed. When the trials continued in January

827
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,399
Speaker 1: under the regular courts. I might add that, of course,

828
00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:58,080
Speaker 1: throughout this entire period, there was no regular court system

829
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:02,840
Speaker 1: until the Massachusett Its Assembly could meet in the fall

830
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:06,279
Speaker 1: under the new charter, and they could have passed a

831
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: law to establish a court system, which then held the

832
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: trials in January and in May um But the only

833
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 1: court going was the Court of Orio and Terminer until

834
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:24,719
Speaker 1: until the legislature met and adopted that law. Let's oh dear,

835
00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:29,880
Speaker 1: that's way back well if since Samuel Parris rejected the

836
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:34,239
Speaker 1: Halfway Covenant, what it meant was that people who had

837
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: been baptized as children but who could not satisfy the

838
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: church with testimony that they had achieved saving faith, that

839
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:48,600
Speaker 1: they had experienced saving faith, that they were not allowed

840
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,400
Speaker 1: to be members of the church. They had to attend

841
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: church services, but they were not allowed to be the

842
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 1: official members of the church. The Halfway Covenant allowed people

843
00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 1: who had been baptized as children but had not yet

844
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 1: experienced saving faith two in effect, be members of the church,

845
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,440
Speaker 1: to be under the church's supervision and to have communion,

846
00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:17,280
Speaker 1: and to have their babies baptized. Samuel Paris, by taking

847
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 1: a hard line on the Halfway Covenant, meant that people

848
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 1: in Salem village who had been baptized as children could

849
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 1: not be halfway members. And therefore, for example, when the

850
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: church had communion, which they did once a month, they

851
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:36,320
Speaker 1: had to get up and leave. They could not stay

852
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 1: and this really divided the congregation in dramatic ways. UM.

853
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 1: And it meant that people could not have their babies baptized,

854
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,800
Speaker 1: which was a very important thing when there was heavy

855
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:54,239
Speaker 1: infant mortality. You want to have your baby baptized, um

856
00:55:54,280 --> 00:56:00,399
Speaker 1: at a time when um of children died statistic before

857
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:05,760
Speaker 1: the age of one. Can we talk about captivity narratives, well,

858
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: captivity narratives were published accounts by people of their captivities

859
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:16,640
Speaker 1: by Indians, and of course the best known one was

860
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:21,759
Speaker 1: that of Mary Rowlinson from King Philip's War, and she

861
00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:26,279
Speaker 1: was in fact a captive of Weetamu, who was an

862
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:30,640
Speaker 1: associate of King Philip. That was published at the time.

863
00:56:31,080 --> 00:56:33,400
Speaker 1: Many of the things we now call captivity narratives are

864
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:37,640
Speaker 1: published later, So it's not so much narratives are captivity

865
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 1: narratives as it is the experience of the captives themselves

866
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: and how that's those stories would have spread through the community.

867
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 1: So it's not so much the publications except for Mary Rowlinson,

868
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: as it is the actual experience of captivity and how

869
00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: people would have talked about it. Um. And one of

870
00:56:56,160 --> 00:56:58,880
Speaker 1: the things I talked about in my book is the

871
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:05,279
Speaker 1: accounts that were well known of people who had been

872
00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: captured in the in in King Philip's War UM and

873
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 1: had experienced various um trials and tribulations shall we say,

874
00:57:15,600 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: and indeed atrocities what we would call atrocities um committed

875
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: by the native people on them, especially if they tried

876
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: to escape um so um and how that seems to

877
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 1: have been in the minds of people in in Essex County,

878
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:38,840
Speaker 1: in visions of someone being roasted over a fire for example,

879
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:47,120
Speaker 1: or um uh visions or accounts of people who tried

880
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 1: to escape from their Indian captors as they were trekking

881
00:57:50,560 --> 00:57:55,440
Speaker 1: north to Canada after captivity, being being tomahawked in the

882
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:58,920
Speaker 1: head something like that. Um. So we know those stories

883
00:57:59,040 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 1: were spread around, that they were published or not. It

884
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 1: was definitely definitely in people's minds. And one of the

885
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 1: things that struck me as I was reading the material

886
00:58:10,600 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: was how present the Indian War was in people's minds. Um.

887
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:22,600
Speaker 1: One of the accused people UM Sarah Osborne talks about

888
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 1: having nightmares of Indians and one of the women who confessed,

889
00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:37,000
Speaker 1: Mary toothacre Um talks about Um how she confessed because

890
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 1: Um the devil came to her in the shape of

891
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 1: an Indian and told her that he would save that

892
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 1: if she became a witch, he would save her from

893
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 1: the Indians. And since he came to her in the

894
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:53,280
Speaker 1: shape of an Indian, she believed him and so she confessed,

895
00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:56,880
Speaker 1: and she actually never took it back. What's interesting is

896
00:58:56,920 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: that she Um was in jay all she was from

897
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:05,720
Speaker 1: bill Rica and she was in jail in Salem when

898
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:10,000
Speaker 1: the Indians attacked her neighborhood in bill Rica and killed

899
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,280
Speaker 1: her closest neighbor. She was in jail confessing to being

900
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 1: a witch at the instigation of the devil in the

901
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 1: shape of an Indian, and she never took it back.

902
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:24,360
Speaker 1: She literally never took it back. Her wife was saved

903
00:59:24,480 --> 00:59:26,560
Speaker 1: by being by confessing to be a witch. She would

904
00:59:26,560 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 1: have been killed if she had been in bell Rica

905
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 1: that weekend, and instead she was in Salem in jail.

906
00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:35,840
Speaker 1: But then she was killed several years later in another

907
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:39,120
Speaker 1: Indian raid. And bill Rick is only twenty miles from Salem.

908
00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: And that just shows you how close the war was

909
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 1: to what was going on. That's the big question. How

910
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 1: widespread is the war? Well, as I said, it's about

911
00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:50,720
Speaker 1: twenty bill Rick is only twenty miles away. Now, that

912
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:54,880
Speaker 1: was the closest attack that I know of to Salem.

913
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 1: But remember all these people had relatives in Maine and

914
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, and people in Maine and New Hampshire were

915
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: constantly under threat, UM. Even in the WHOA in the

916
01:00:05,200 --> 01:00:08,520
Speaker 1: most southern parts of Maine and New Hampshire. In UM

917
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:11,439
Speaker 1: what's now Portsmouth which was then called Strawberry Bank, what

918
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:17,880
Speaker 1: was wells Main, there were attacks nearby UM all the time, UM,

919
01:00:17,920 --> 01:00:25,040
Speaker 1: and they were UM. People felt under constant threat, shall

920
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 1: we say. UM. So the attack in bill Rico was

921
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:30,680
Speaker 1: the closest, but eventually later in the war, actually after,

922
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:34,320
Speaker 1: there was a big attack on ian over UM. So

923
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 1: it's not as though the war wasn't right there. And

924
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,360
Speaker 1: of course remember these are the men, are militiamen, and

925
01:00:40,360 --> 01:00:43,720
Speaker 1: they're going out to fight. So all the above, So

926
01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:47,360
Speaker 1: how was military service treated at that time? UM. Military

927
01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 1: service was an obligation of UM all men between the

928
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: ages of sixteen and fifty and Uh, they were supposed

929
01:00:54,560 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: to keep muskets at the ready and have ammunition. Everybody

930
01:00:57,680 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: supposed to have their own gun and their own ammunition,

931
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: and they were to be there to be called on

932
01:01:02,280 --> 01:01:05,320
Speaker 1: when they were needed. And so um. A lot of

933
01:01:05,360 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: times the men were indeed called up in both King

934
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:10,640
Speaker 1: Philip's War and King William's War to go up to

935
01:01:10,680 --> 01:01:14,480
Speaker 1: the frontier, to go north to the frontier and to fight.

936
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:19,800
Speaker 1: And there are some um, very detailed accounts that have

937
01:01:19,880 --> 01:01:22,680
Speaker 1: survived to us of some of the battles that occurred,

938
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:26,480
Speaker 1: especially around Black Point in southern Maine. So there's there's

939
01:01:26,520 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: a pretty definite fear that exists in the colonies at

940
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:34,439
Speaker 1: the time of the indigenous neighbors that not far How

941
01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:38,160
Speaker 1: were they written about within the community, they're written about you,

942
01:01:38,560 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 1: and it varies because, of course, for years they had

943
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:43,840
Speaker 1: had relatively peaceful relationships with them. It wasn't as though

944
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 1: this was a constant warfare. I mean until the sixteen seventies,

945
01:01:47,520 --> 01:01:49,640
Speaker 1: there was a lot of trading going on, a lot

946
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:56,000
Speaker 1: of back and forth, um um travel and so forth. Um.

947
01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:59,000
Speaker 1: They're written about very matter of fact. We actually they're

948
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:01,920
Speaker 1: not written about is as um like savage as we

949
01:02:01,920 --> 01:02:06,280
Speaker 1: don't understand because they didn't know they knew each other. Um.

950
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: One of the best accounts we have is from the

951
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 1: initial attack on Falmouth in UM six in the sixty

952
01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:18,000
Speaker 1: five and basically, UM, a Wabanaki who is known in

953
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:21,520
Speaker 1: the neighborhood comes in and and comes to a farm

954
01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:24,800
Speaker 1: and says, UM, I know you're missing a cow. I

955
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: know who took that cow. I will help you find it.

956
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:30,960
Speaker 1: So this is, you know, not a big deal. Then

957
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:32,800
Speaker 1: of course what he does is he leads the other

958
01:02:32,960 --> 01:02:36,200
Speaker 1: people to attack the farm. But that's another matter. UM.

959
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:38,440
Speaker 1: But we can see that there's a you know, the

960
01:02:38,520 --> 01:02:41,720
Speaker 1: arrival of a an Indian on your doorstep is not

961
01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:47,920
Speaker 1: necessarily um, a frightening event or um. One of the

962
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 1: incidents that I talked about in great detail in the

963
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 1: book happens in New Hampshire where a group of Indians

964
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:58,560
Speaker 1: comes to trade at a trading post, as we say,

965
01:02:58,560 --> 01:03:01,720
Speaker 1: they're doing, and then UM, it's a cold night. The

966
01:03:01,760 --> 01:03:07,360
Speaker 1: women say can we sleep inside the The traders say sure,

967
01:03:07,520 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: the women, women sleep inside, But when everybody's asleep, they

968
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:13,400
Speaker 1: opened the doors and the men come in and attack.

969
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 1: The trader and his men, who are known for years

970
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: for having for having cheated the Indian. So it's a

971
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:23,440
Speaker 1: chance for them to get back at the at the

972
01:03:23,880 --> 01:03:27,120
Speaker 1: at the traders. So it's um. But you see this

973
01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:30,600
Speaker 1: sort of pattern of what you might call standard interaction

974
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:35,520
Speaker 1: that has been broken by these wars accused. They escape

975
01:03:35,560 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 1: from jail. Yes, how did that come about? Well, if

976
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:43,120
Speaker 1: you pay attention to where they are. Remember, there are

977
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:46,280
Speaker 1: a lot of people in jail. Um, they're not just

978
01:03:46,440 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 1: in Salem. The jail in Salem is too small to

979
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:51,960
Speaker 1: hold them all. The jail in Salem Town, as we're

980
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:54,280
Speaker 1: talking about, there's too small to hold them all. So

981
01:03:54,400 --> 01:03:57,560
Speaker 1: they've been scattered around other places. And it happens that

982
01:03:57,640 --> 01:04:00,400
Speaker 1: a lot of the leading people who are used of

983
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:04,040
Speaker 1: being which is are sent to Boston. And I am

984
01:04:04,040 --> 01:04:06,440
Speaker 1: convinced that the Boston jailer had his hand out for

985
01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:09,840
Speaker 1: bribes and that it was from the Boston jail that

986
01:04:09,880 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 1: a lot of these people escaped. So um, it's not

987
01:04:15,160 --> 01:04:20,360
Speaker 1: written down anywhere, but he basically took money to let

988
01:04:20,360 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 1: people go. I think there's no question, um, in my mind,

989
01:04:23,320 --> 01:04:25,680
Speaker 1: there's no question my mind that he was He was

990
01:04:25,720 --> 01:04:30,120
Speaker 1: bribable and probably earned a pretty penny from letting all

991
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:33,800
Speaker 1: these wealthy people go, one of them being my very

992
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 1: own ancestor, Mary Bradberry, who was held and suddenly managed

993
01:04:39,640 --> 01:04:44,480
Speaker 1: to escape. Guess what, she had a wealthy husband. So

994
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:52,840
Speaker 1: is there any particular reason why they fled over a

995
01:04:52,840 --> 01:04:55,000
Speaker 1: lot of them to refuge in New York. Well, New

996
01:04:55,080 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 1: York was seen as a more open society. It was

997
01:04:58,120 --> 01:05:01,120
Speaker 1: more diverse, There were lots of people are from different places.

998
01:05:01,160 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 1: It wasn't controlled by Puritans. Remember Anne Hutchinson fled to

999
01:05:04,920 --> 01:05:08,600
Speaker 1: New York too when she was fleeing from the um

1000
01:05:08,720 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 1: from the Puritan authorities in first Massachusetts Bay and then

1001
01:05:12,120 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 1: ultimately Rhode Island. When she thought they were going to

1002
01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:16,080
Speaker 1: come after her in Rhode Island, she doo fled to

1003
01:05:16,120 --> 01:05:19,960
Speaker 1: New York. So it's not that surprising that they went

1004
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:22,920
Speaker 1: to New York. It's the closest place that seems to

1005
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:25,000
Speaker 1: offer them some kind of refuge. And by the way,

1006
01:05:25,040 --> 01:05:27,040
Speaker 1: these are not the only people who are accused of

1007
01:05:27,080 --> 01:05:29,919
Speaker 1: which is in the seventeenth century who go to New York.

1008
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:34,840
Speaker 1: There are other recorded cases of similar people. Um. I

1009
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:37,919
Speaker 1: might add that I went to New York. I went

1010
01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:42,280
Speaker 1: to look at correspondence from the period, and I went

1011
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 1: looking I was hoping I would find a letter from

1012
01:05:44,840 --> 01:05:47,480
Speaker 1: somebody saying guests who I met at dinner last night,

1013
01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:50,760
Speaker 1: But I didn't find any such letter. I was hoping

1014
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:54,520
Speaker 1: I would see some evidence of somebody who had fled

1015
01:05:54,640 --> 01:05:57,240
Speaker 1: from Boston while they were or fled from Boston or

1016
01:05:57,240 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 1: Salem or whatever while they were in New York. But

1017
01:05:59,200 --> 01:06:01,480
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a trace of it. Too bad, one

1018
01:06:01,520 --> 01:06:04,400
Speaker 1: of the many things I couldn't find. There were many

1019
01:06:04,440 --> 01:06:07,880
Speaker 1: things I looked for that I couldn't find. Well, we

1020
01:06:07,960 --> 01:06:11,040
Speaker 1: have fips, yes, and he writes his report in October.

1021
01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:15,640
Speaker 1: How does he position himself with regards to the trial.

1022
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 1: Phipps is really good at covering his butt. Phipps is

1023
01:06:24,800 --> 01:06:29,080
Speaker 1: a master at not letting on that he knew the

1024
01:06:29,120 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 1: all along it was going on. I mean, Phipps rice

1025
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:37,400
Speaker 1: this letter saying to the people in London, oh my god,

1026
01:06:37,520 --> 01:06:40,200
Speaker 1: I just got back. I been fighting Indians on the

1027
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:43,480
Speaker 1: frontier all summer, and I came back and I found

1028
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 1: this horrible situation, and I stopped it. That was so untrue.

1029
01:06:48,560 --> 01:06:51,320
Speaker 1: He was true that he was just back from the frontier,

1030
01:06:51,320 --> 01:06:53,400
Speaker 1: but he'd only been on the frontier for two weeks

1031
01:06:53,440 --> 01:06:57,760
Speaker 1: at that time. And so, and I show in my

1032
01:06:57,880 --> 01:07:00,640
Speaker 1: book that he was meeting with members of the Council

1033
01:07:00,760 --> 01:07:04,520
Speaker 1: who were also the judges, who were also the military

1034
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:09,320
Speaker 1: leaders regularly throughout the summer. Those minutes are available in

1035
01:07:09,760 --> 01:07:13,240
Speaker 1: the records in England and they show that Phipps was

1036
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:17,240
Speaker 1: talking to them regularly. So don't tell me they never

1037
01:07:17,280 --> 01:07:19,520
Speaker 1: said anything about the witchcraft trials because that was the

1038
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:23,440
Speaker 1: biggest thing going on. It's not written down that they

1039
01:07:23,480 --> 01:07:26,960
Speaker 1: had those conversations, but of course they did. And of

1040
01:07:27,000 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 1: course he wanted to get out from under and he did.

1041
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:34,440
Speaker 1: I mean he he didn't actually because he was recalled

1042
01:07:34,640 --> 01:07:37,000
Speaker 1: and they were going to challenge him. He was he

1043
01:07:37,080 --> 01:07:40,600
Speaker 1: was under a lot of pressure to be challenged in England,

1044
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:43,720
Speaker 1: and then he died before he could be called before

1045
01:07:43,760 --> 01:07:47,760
Speaker 1: the Privy Council. So it's not as though he completely escaped,

1046
01:07:47,880 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 1: but he did. That letter was such a stunning letter

1047
01:07:52,200 --> 01:07:55,240
Speaker 1: to me when I founded, where he basically said, oh

1048
01:07:55,400 --> 01:07:57,760
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about what was happening. I was gone.

1049
01:07:58,160 --> 01:08:01,080
Speaker 1: It was not true. He knew absolutely is happening. It's

1050
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:04,880
Speaker 1: a great political move. And Tad Baker to tell you

1051
01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:09,440
Speaker 1: more about that, since he's a biographer of Phipps asked

1052
01:08:09,480 --> 01:08:12,920
Speaker 1: him as well. Okay, so Stonton is seeing that there's

1053
01:08:13,160 --> 01:08:19,400
Speaker 1: a lot of dissent for the especially execution, right, why

1054
01:08:19,479 --> 01:08:23,679
Speaker 1: is he so set on? Stouton is a real hard

1055
01:08:23,760 --> 01:08:26,240
Speaker 1: line guy. I mean, that's all we know. We don't

1056
01:08:26,280 --> 01:08:29,320
Speaker 1: know a lot about Stoton. Like many other people who

1057
01:08:29,320 --> 01:08:33,000
Speaker 1: were involved in the trials, his papers have not survived

1058
01:08:33,600 --> 01:08:36,000
Speaker 1: and or his personal papers have not survived. What we

1059
01:08:36,080 --> 01:08:39,720
Speaker 1: basically have from Stoughton is some sermons, and recently, by

1060
01:08:39,720 --> 01:08:42,320
Speaker 1: the way, some new and sermons of his have been discovered.

1061
01:08:42,680 --> 01:08:46,560
Speaker 1: But basically we just don't know much about him. Um,

1062
01:08:46,680 --> 01:08:50,280
Speaker 1: he was a bachelor, he never married. Um, he was

1063
01:08:50,360 --> 01:08:53,679
Speaker 1: back and forth to England. He was an ordained minister

1064
01:08:53,880 --> 01:08:57,160
Speaker 1: as well as a judge, and he was a man

1065
01:08:57,240 --> 01:09:01,840
Speaker 1: of considerable standing in Massachusetts Bake Colony. But um, he

1066
01:09:03,280 --> 01:09:05,439
Speaker 1: we just don't know a lot about him. He did

1067
01:09:05,479 --> 01:09:08,720
Speaker 1: not if he kept personal records, they have not survived,

1068
01:09:09,080 --> 01:09:11,920
Speaker 1: So we just don't know. He's he's a mysterious figure

1069
01:09:12,120 --> 01:09:15,840
Speaker 1: because he is so hardline. He is so hardline. I mean,

1070
01:09:15,880 --> 01:09:19,120
Speaker 1: I know what happened to the papers of the judge

1071
01:09:19,160 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 1: Wait Winthrop. I'm convinced I do, because wait Winthrop's papers

1072
01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:25,639
Speaker 1: were purged. I mean, I don't think wait Winthrop purged them,

1073
01:09:25,640 --> 01:09:28,759
Speaker 1: but I think a descendant of his purged them before

1074
01:09:28,760 --> 01:09:31,920
Speaker 1: he gave them to the Massachusetts Historical Society. We have

1075
01:09:32,160 --> 01:09:36,759
Speaker 1: extensive correspondence from wait Winthrop Um, who was a judge,

1076
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:39,600
Speaker 1: It was a militia officer, was a member of the

1077
01:09:39,640 --> 01:09:44,960
Speaker 1: council Um. We have extensive evidence of letters from him

1078
01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:51,120
Speaker 1: to his brother fitz John Winthrop in the late sixteen eighties.

1079
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:54,559
Speaker 1: In sixteen ninety one. There are no surviving letters for sixteen.

1080
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:58,439
Speaker 1: There are no surviving letters for sixteen, and there are

1081
01:09:58,479 --> 01:10:00,920
Speaker 1: lots of letters for sixteen ninet war, and there are

1082
01:10:00,960 --> 01:10:05,120
Speaker 1: there thereafter. And so I know, probably not Winthrop himself,

1083
01:10:05,120 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 1: but probably the descendant who gave the papers to the

1084
01:10:07,920 --> 01:10:11,240
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Historical Society said m I don't want these letters

1085
01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:13,679
Speaker 1: to survive, and so he threw them in the fire,

1086
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:16,840
Speaker 1: so we don't have them. It will be lovely to

1087
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:20,439
Speaker 1: know what way threw. Witrop wrote to his brother about

1088
01:10:20,479 --> 01:10:22,600
Speaker 1: what it was like to be a judge in the

1089
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:24,880
Speaker 1: witchcraft trials, which is what I was looking for when

1090
01:10:24,920 --> 01:10:26,760
Speaker 1: I went to look at the papers, and I didn't

1091
01:10:26,800 --> 01:10:31,400
Speaker 1: find them. The only record I ever found from someone

1092
01:10:31,439 --> 01:10:35,120
Speaker 1: who was a judge in a witchcraft trial talking about

1093
01:10:36,120 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 1: his reaction to the to an accuser came from Connecticut,

1094
01:10:40,520 --> 01:10:46,719
Speaker 1: not from Massachusetts. Well, and my answer is the Indian

1095
01:10:46,920 --> 01:10:49,040
Speaker 1: the Indian War. I mean, it's the with the fears

1096
01:10:49,240 --> 01:10:52,240
Speaker 1: of the Indian War, because I think the trigger um

1097
01:10:52,280 --> 01:10:55,760
Speaker 1: to making it explode the way it did is the

1098
01:10:55,920 --> 01:11:00,640
Speaker 1: confession of Abigail Hobbs. And Abigail Fobbs was from the

1099
01:11:00,640 --> 01:11:03,599
Speaker 1: Main Frontier. She was a refugee from the Main Frontier.

1100
01:11:03,680 --> 01:11:08,160
Speaker 1: She was a teenager. She was the third person to

1101
01:11:08,200 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 1: confess to being a witch, after Tichiba and Dorcas Dorothy Good,

1102
01:11:14,360 --> 01:11:20,960
Speaker 1: and she um basically said that the devil had recruited

1103
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:24,280
Speaker 1: her in the woods outside her home in Falmouth, Maine,

1104
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:28,519
Speaker 1: four years earlier. And she's the one who made the

1105
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:30,599
Speaker 1: connection to the Main Frontier. She's the one who made

1106
01:11:30,640 --> 01:11:34,080
Speaker 1: the connection to the witches. And as I show in

1107
01:11:34,160 --> 01:11:38,960
Speaker 1: my book, the number of accusations just absolutely exploded after

1108
01:11:39,040 --> 01:11:42,280
Speaker 1: Abigail Hobbs's confession. So I think that's what made the difference,

1109
01:11:42,520 --> 01:11:45,439
Speaker 1: and that's what convinced me that the Indian War was

1110
01:11:45,479 --> 01:11:47,519
Speaker 1: the crucial thing. Because she was the one who introduced

1111
01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:52,639
Speaker 1: the Indian War into the narrative, and then everything blew up.

1112
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:56,160
Speaker 1: There have been so many explanations over the years about

1113
01:11:57,040 --> 01:12:02,599
Speaker 1: how and white these illness, these afflictions could. Today people

1114
01:12:02,720 --> 01:12:07,880
Speaker 1: tend to want medical explanations for the kinds of afflictions

1115
01:12:07,920 --> 01:12:11,559
Speaker 1: that we see. Therefore, some people have said epileptic fits.

1116
01:12:12,720 --> 01:12:16,559
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that there's any epilepsy involved here. Um.

1117
01:12:16,640 --> 01:12:21,040
Speaker 1: Some people have said ergot poisoning. Well, ergot poisoning is

1118
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:26,120
Speaker 1: maybe possible, but not as possible as people think. And

1119
01:12:26,280 --> 01:12:31,240
Speaker 1: even if it was, it doesn't explain anything of significance

1120
01:12:31,400 --> 01:12:35,519
Speaker 1: because what is significant is not the fact that people

1121
01:12:35,600 --> 01:12:39,800
Speaker 1: had hallucinations. It's what they saw in those hallucinations and

1122
01:12:39,880 --> 01:12:43,000
Speaker 1: how they described what was happening to them. That is

1123
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:46,000
Speaker 1: that they were being attacked by the specters of witches.

1124
01:12:46,760 --> 01:12:49,920
Speaker 1: And you can have a hallucination without having that kind

1125
01:12:49,960 --> 01:12:53,439
Speaker 1: of a vision. So I don't see or good. Even

1126
01:12:53,479 --> 01:12:56,200
Speaker 1: if it's possible, um, which I don't, which I think

1127
01:12:56,320 --> 01:13:01,600
Speaker 1: is very unlikely, is a real explain nation. Um. The

1128
01:13:02,320 --> 01:13:08,640
Speaker 1: I researched for my book cases in England and America

1129
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:13,880
Speaker 1: before sixto, in which young children began to have what

1130
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:18,160
Speaker 1: were described as fits that were then attributed to witchcraft.

1131
01:13:19,040 --> 01:13:21,839
Speaker 1: And I discovered that it was a not unusual pattern.

1132
01:13:22,040 --> 01:13:24,559
Speaker 1: It was it wasn't as though it was common, but

1133
01:13:24,840 --> 01:13:28,400
Speaker 1: it was known. It was a known pattern, and it

1134
01:13:28,479 --> 01:13:33,360
Speaker 1: was a pattern when um children were in intensely, intensely

1135
01:13:33,479 --> 01:13:37,600
Speaker 1: religious households, as indeed they were in the household of

1136
01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:42,040
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris. So it does seem to be a kind

1137
01:13:42,120 --> 01:13:51,040
Speaker 1: of a conversion um experience UM after over you know event.

1138
01:13:51,760 --> 01:13:55,640
Speaker 1: And indeed, in the eighteenth century, during the Great Awakening,

1139
01:13:56,120 --> 01:14:00,600
Speaker 1: these kinds of quote fits were interpreted as conversion ext experiences.

1140
01:14:01,320 --> 01:14:04,280
Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century they were can they were they

1141
01:14:04,280 --> 01:14:09,200
Speaker 1: were um interpreted as hysterical fits on the part of women.

1142
01:14:10,160 --> 01:14:12,400
Speaker 1: In the twentieth century and the twenty one century they're

1143
01:14:13,160 --> 01:14:17,360
Speaker 1: they're um interpreted as medical things, as things that have

1144
01:14:17,479 --> 01:14:21,200
Speaker 1: to do with medicine. I mean, these behaviors are known.

1145
01:14:21,680 --> 01:14:24,760
Speaker 1: They just have different interpretations at different times. And in

1146
01:14:24,800 --> 01:14:31,040
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century they were the interpretation was witchcraft. UM.

1147
01:14:31,080 --> 01:14:34,839
Speaker 1: It's not as though these are these are totally unknown

1148
01:14:35,320 --> 01:14:42,320
Speaker 1: um events, totally unknown reactions of young women, mostly to

1149
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:47,640
Speaker 1: different circumstances. So I I think that's what was going on.

1150
01:14:47,680 --> 01:14:49,400
Speaker 1: I mean, why, as I said, I think that the

1151
01:14:50,200 --> 01:14:55,160
Speaker 1: that the the a lot of the basis of the

1152
01:14:55,200 --> 01:15:02,679
Speaker 1: main refugees accusations can be attributed to pts d Um.

1153
01:15:02,720 --> 01:15:07,759
Speaker 1: It seems to me that a couple, at least one

1154
01:15:07,920 --> 01:15:12,599
Speaker 1: of the accusers in Salem Village is faking it. And

1155
01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:17,639
Speaker 1: that's Sarah vibber Um, the thirtysomething housewife. We could call

1156
01:15:17,720 --> 01:15:21,679
Speaker 1: her the goody vibber who if you look at her,

1157
01:15:21,720 --> 01:15:24,320
Speaker 1: everything she says is sort of me too. She never

1158
01:15:25,080 --> 01:15:29,120
Speaker 1: is the initial accuser of anybody, but when somebody comes

1159
01:15:29,160 --> 01:15:31,719
Speaker 1: forward with an accusation, she'll say, oh, yeah, that happened

1160
01:15:31,720 --> 01:15:34,479
Speaker 1: to me too, that happened to me also, And then

1161
01:15:34,560 --> 01:15:39,120
Speaker 1: she is regarded as a crucial witness by the judges

1162
01:15:39,320 --> 01:15:42,880
Speaker 1: because she is older. Um, we just don't We don't

1163
01:15:42,920 --> 01:15:45,320
Speaker 1: know enough about her background. Um. It would be wonderful

1164
01:15:45,360 --> 01:15:48,200
Speaker 1: if we could know more about her. We know that

1165
01:15:48,280 --> 01:15:50,479
Speaker 1: she's married to her second husband, but we don't know

1166
01:15:50,520 --> 01:15:52,559
Speaker 1: who her first husband was, and we don't know who

1167
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:56,000
Speaker 1: her husband's first wife was. It's just really really hard

1168
01:15:56,080 --> 01:16:00,160
Speaker 1: to find out about her. So, but she seems to

1169
01:16:00,200 --> 01:16:05,160
Speaker 1: me to be someone who whose testimony is dubious even

1170
01:16:05,200 --> 01:16:10,639
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century. Think about today in this country,

1171
01:16:10,720 --> 01:16:14,240
Speaker 1: right now, in the world, right now, we aren't different,

1172
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:17,639
Speaker 1: but we had the same fears, we had the same anxiety, sure,

1173
01:16:17,920 --> 01:16:19,840
Speaker 1: I mean right now. I mean, well, if you look

1174
01:16:19,880 --> 01:16:22,080
Speaker 1: in the fifties, there's a fear of communists. I mean,

1175
01:16:22,160 --> 01:16:26,240
Speaker 1: that's what Arthur Miller built the Crucible around, that kind

1176
01:16:26,280 --> 01:16:31,600
Speaker 1: of fear that developed the UM McCarthyite UM atmosphere that

1177
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:36,559
Speaker 1: he was writing about UM and making the analogy. Today, UM,

1178
01:16:36,800 --> 01:16:43,680
Speaker 1: we see a lot of UM comments about fears of UM, Muslims,

1179
01:16:43,800 --> 01:16:46,960
Speaker 1: Sharia law, and so forth, even though there's no actual

1180
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:50,920
Speaker 1: evidence that anyone is ever trying to impose Sharia law

1181
01:16:51,000 --> 01:16:55,080
Speaker 1: in the United States. There's UM, a lot of UM.

1182
01:16:55,479 --> 01:16:57,360
Speaker 1: There are some people out there who believe it, or

1183
01:16:57,400 --> 01:17:00,720
Speaker 1: who least say they believe it. So it's not as

1184
01:17:00,800 --> 01:17:04,800
Speaker 1: though UM, especially in the wake of nine eleven, that

1185
01:17:04,880 --> 01:17:10,120
Speaker 1: we are free from fears of the mysterious unknown. And

1186
01:17:10,160 --> 01:17:11,680
Speaker 1: in the and in the I would say, in the

1187
01:17:11,720 --> 01:17:15,360
Speaker 1: eighties there was the fear of There was the fear

1188
01:17:15,479 --> 01:17:21,200
Speaker 1: of the Satanic rituals in child child care facilities, which

1189
01:17:21,400 --> 01:17:25,040
Speaker 1: in retrospects seems really weird and strange, but led to

1190
01:17:25,240 --> 01:17:30,720
Speaker 1: the arrest and conviction of a number of people. So uh,

1191
01:17:30,720 --> 01:17:33,280
Speaker 1: and that's been written about in the context of witchcraft.

1192
01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:37,200
Speaker 1: So um scholarship about witchcraft. John Demos did that. So

1193
01:17:37,800 --> 01:17:43,400
Speaker 1: what don't ask you enough about? Oh, dear, I would

1194
01:17:43,400 --> 01:17:46,320
Speaker 1: say that what people don't ask me enough about is

1195
01:17:46,360 --> 01:17:48,679
Speaker 1: actually a topic we've talked to fair amount about, which

1196
01:17:48,720 --> 01:17:54,000
Speaker 1: is about the power structure and about the role of

1197
01:17:54,040 --> 01:17:57,679
Speaker 1: the judges and the guilt of the judges. Really, I mean,

1198
01:17:57,720 --> 01:18:03,040
Speaker 1: if you people today tend when they think about sale

1199
01:18:03,040 --> 01:18:07,360
Speaker 1: and witchcraft and they think about who's responsible, they blame

1200
01:18:07,720 --> 01:18:13,000
Speaker 1: the young accusers, especially the young quote hysterical female accusers.

1201
01:18:13,760 --> 01:18:18,400
Speaker 1: I don't blame them. I blame the judges who should

1202
01:18:18,400 --> 01:18:21,440
Speaker 1: have been, by modern parlance, the adults in the room.

1203
01:18:21,600 --> 01:18:25,120
Speaker 1: They should have stopped it, and they could have stopped it.

1204
01:18:25,920 --> 01:18:30,479
Speaker 1: And in Connecticut in the early sixteen sixties, the then

1205
01:18:30,600 --> 01:18:35,080
Speaker 1: governor John Winthrop Jr. Did stop it when there was

1206
01:18:35,160 --> 01:18:42,000
Speaker 1: a movement towards a potential witchcraft crisis where there were

1207
01:18:42,000 --> 01:18:45,679
Speaker 1: ten or twelve accusations and there was the possibility of more.

1208
01:18:46,160 --> 01:18:49,040
Speaker 1: And he basically he was a scientifically minded guy, and

1209
01:18:49,120 --> 01:18:51,479
Speaker 1: he basically put a stop to it. So the judges

1210
01:18:51,560 --> 01:18:53,759
Speaker 1: could have put a stop to this, but they didn't.

1211
01:18:54,200 --> 01:18:57,240
Speaker 1: And so one of the things I wanted to do

1212
01:18:57,320 --> 01:18:59,360
Speaker 1: with my book was to play the blame where I

1213
01:18:59,360 --> 01:19:01,920
Speaker 1: think it belonged, because it doesn't belong with the quote

1214
01:19:01,960 --> 01:19:06,960
Speaker 1: hysterical girls, which is the way it's usually presented in

1215
01:19:07,040 --> 01:19:11,840
Speaker 1: popular culture, because it didn't have to go the way

1216
01:19:11,880 --> 01:19:15,960
Speaker 1: it went. It didn't have to happen, and the the

1217
01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:18,200
Speaker 1: man who could have stopped it didn't because it was

1218
01:19:18,240 --> 01:19:22,120
Speaker 1: to their benefit not to stop it. Um. So that's

1219
01:19:22,160 --> 01:19:26,720
Speaker 1: that's I would say what people don't know enough about. Um.

1220
01:19:26,840 --> 01:19:29,599
Speaker 1: The myth that it was the responsibility of the girls

1221
01:19:29,720 --> 01:19:34,680
Speaker 1: really starts right after, right in the wake of the

1222
01:19:34,720 --> 01:19:39,120
Speaker 1: Witchcraft crisis, right in the very first critiques. People who

1223
01:19:39,160 --> 01:19:44,040
Speaker 1: are criticizing the Witchcraft trials do not criticize the judges.

1224
01:19:44,080 --> 01:19:47,680
Speaker 1: They explicitly don't criticize the judges. Increase Mather does not

1225
01:19:47,720 --> 01:19:51,439
Speaker 1: criticize the judges. The other critics, early critics of the

1226
01:19:51,479 --> 01:19:55,360
Speaker 1: trials do not criticize the judges. They criticize the accusers.

1227
01:19:55,439 --> 01:19:59,880
Speaker 1: And so in sort of in American mythology, it's the

1228
01:20:00,040 --> 01:20:04,280
Speaker 1: US quote hysterical females who are responsible. But that's not right.

1229
01:20:04,479 --> 01:20:15,960
Speaker 1: It's the judges who are responsible. This episode of Unobscured

1230
01:20:16,080 --> 01:20:19,800
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me mav Frederick and Alex Williams,

1231
01:20:19,800 --> 01:20:23,920
Speaker 1: with music by Chad Lawson and audio engineering by Alex Williams.

1232
01:20:24,360 --> 01:20:27,439
Speaker 1: The Unobscured website has everything you need to get the

1233
01:20:27,479 --> 01:20:31,639
Speaker 1: most out of the podcast. There's a resource library of maps, charts,

1234
01:20:31,720 --> 01:20:35,400
Speaker 1: and links to Salem document archives online, as well as

1235
01:20:35,400 --> 01:20:38,240
Speaker 1: a suggested reading list and a page with all of

1236
01:20:38,280 --> 01:20:43,000
Speaker 1: our historian biographies. And as always, thanks for supporting this show.

1237
01:20:43,400 --> 01:20:46,360
Speaker 1: If you love it, head over to Apple podcasts dot

1238
01:20:46,439 --> 01:20:50,000
Speaker 1: com slash Unobscured and leave a written review and a

1239
01:20:50,040 --> 01:20:53,320
Speaker 1: star rating. It makes a huge difference for the show's growth,

1240
01:20:54,479 --> 01:20:57,120
Speaker 1: and as always, thanks for listening.