Speaker 1: Our guest today is historian Mary Beth Norton. She's a
Speaker 1: professor of American History at Cornell University, where she's taught
Speaker 1: since nineteen one. In two thousand five to two thousand six,
Speaker 1: she was also the pit Professor of American History and
Speaker 1: Institutions at the University of Cambridge. She has received four
Speaker 1: honorary degrees and has held fellowships from the Rockefeller, Guggenheim,
Speaker 1: Melon and Star Foundations, as well as from Princeton University
Speaker 1: and the Huntington Library. She is currently the president of
Speaker 1: the twelve thousand member American Historical Association. My producer is
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams had a chance to sit
Speaker 1: down with Professor Norton this past summer, and I want
Speaker 1: to share that great conversation with you today. So without
Speaker 1: further delay, let's get on with the show. This is
Speaker 1: the Unobscured Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: I'm Mary Beth Norton. I'm a professor of American history
Speaker 1: at Cornell University. I teach a bunch of courses on
Speaker 1: early America and women. I have written several books, um
Speaker 1: some of which are related to Salem Witchcraft, one of
Speaker 1: which in particular is called in the Devil's Snare subtitle
Speaker 1: the Salem Witchcraft Crisis of sixte two and very deliberately
Speaker 1: subtitled a crisis rather than trials, because the book is
Speaker 1: much broader than the trials themselves. When you call it
Speaker 1: a crisis is because there are so many things occurring
Speaker 1: outside of this very specific instance of the witch tribals.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about a few of those contributing factor well,
Speaker 1: I think in my book I argue that the most
Speaker 1: important contributing factor is the um Indian War that's going
Speaker 1: on on the northern frontier. We don't really know much
Speaker 1: about this war. I certainly didn't know much about it
Speaker 1: until it popped up as I was working on my
Speaker 1: my study of Salem Witchcraft. I did not intend to
Speaker 1: make the book what it turned out to be, which
Speaker 1: is a dual narrative of war and witchcraft. I did
Speaker 1: not understand the significance of the war until I kept
Speaker 1: coming across material relevant to the war in the stuff
Speaker 1: I was reading, and Uh, I went to look for
Speaker 1: histories of the war, and I didn't find any um
Speaker 1: And this was why I didn't anything about it. Was
Speaker 1: because there have been no modern histories of it. The
Speaker 1: most recent history to this day, the most recent history
Speaker 1: of the war, which is known as King William's War
Speaker 1: on the North in Frontier, was written by Cotton Mather
Speaker 1: and published in the sixteen nineties. Was the only comprehensive
Speaker 1: history that I found, and still there has been not one.
Speaker 1: So I did not anticipate finding the war to be
Speaker 1: as important as it turned out to be. And before
Speaker 1: there was Philip, yes, there was King Philip's War. And
Speaker 1: another problem with the literature on King Philip's War until
Speaker 1: my book was that it's always focused on King Philip's
Speaker 1: War in the south, that is, southern New England. King
Speaker 1: Philip's War is thought of as an Indian war in
Speaker 1: the old Plymouth Colony, uh in Rhode Island, and in
Speaker 1: parts of southern Massachusetts Bay. But I discovered that there
Speaker 1: was a northern part of it also, which has been
Speaker 1: given very short shrift in histories of King philips War.
Speaker 1: There is one history of King Philip's War that gives
Speaker 1: a chapter to the northern part of the war, but
Speaker 1: the King Philip's War is started in the sixteen seventies
Speaker 1: and um the leader of the Indians was King Philip Um,
Speaker 1: a Wampanoag chief who was very concerned about English encroachments
Speaker 1: on his land and very concerned about missionizing activities of
Speaker 1: the Christians in his lands. Um and he led his
Speaker 1: warriors in raids, very devastating raids on New England communities.
Speaker 1: But the war um leaked over, I think we can say,
Speaker 1: into the north. The Indians in the north, the Wabanakis
Speaker 1: did not particularly want to get involved in it, but
Speaker 1: they basically were forced to because of pressure from the
Speaker 1: Wampanoag's in the south and from the English settlers who
Speaker 1: didn't trust them because of what was happening in the South.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the English treated them extremely badly in
Speaker 1: King Philip's war, Um did all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: you can only call the furious um to them. And
Speaker 1: so they did become involved. And so the Indian War
Speaker 1: then became in the sixteen seventies, became general. Um. It
Speaker 1: was finally came to an end in more or less
Speaker 1: with a truce in sixteen seventy eight. And UH they
Speaker 1: it was devastating to the English who had settled in
Speaker 1: Maine and New Hampshire. Uh, they had abandoned their communities
Speaker 1: in that period they moved back in um and then
Speaker 1: the Second War started in sixteen eighty eight and it
Speaker 1: all happened all over again. It was devastating. It was
Speaker 1: devastating war. UM. We don't think of Maine as a
Speaker 1: very um well, we don't think of Maine is a frontier.
Speaker 1: We don't think of Maine as a prosperous area. But
Speaker 1: in fact, Maine in the sixteen seventies and sixteen nineties
Speaker 1: was really where the action was as far as um
Speaker 1: profit to be made in New England. In Boston, people
Speaker 1: had bought land, they had set up sawmills. Boston had
Speaker 1: a very vigorous ship building industry that the sawmills in
Speaker 1: Maine were providing the labor the time, the timber for
Speaker 1: the um. The There was a big business of masts
Speaker 1: of the very well built, very well developed pines which
Speaker 1: were perfect for ships masts in in Maine. And so
Speaker 1: these people who owned this property in Maine were making
Speaker 1: money handover fest and they also were fishing off the
Speaker 1: coast uh and so there was a lot of money
Speaker 1: to be made in Maine. And basically the Indian Wars
Speaker 1: devastated the economy of Maine and Maine in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways never really recovered. Um. People didn't come back
Speaker 1: until the seventeen twenties. And when they did, UM the
Speaker 1: um a lot of the entrepreneurial energy was gone. So
Speaker 1: it was really very bad. How did those same things
Speaker 1: in the economic wars that were occurring because of these wars,
Speaker 1: how did that affect the town sae Um? Well, what
Speaker 1: happened was, um all the people who had been settling
Speaker 1: in Maine had to go somewhere they if they weren't killed,
Speaker 1: and so they filtered down into Massachusetts. They filtered down,
Speaker 1: especially into Essex County, which is the northernmost county of Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: the northeastern most county, and so a lot of the
Speaker 1: people came to live in marble Head, or came to
Speaker 1: live in Salem, or came indeed to live in Salem
Speaker 1: Village uh and Um in particular. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I discovered. I didn't discover it, I learned it
Speaker 1: in other people's work, but that I've pursued to a
Speaker 1: greater extent than other people did was how many of
Speaker 1: the young female accusers were in fact refugees from the
Speaker 1: main frontier, where people whose families had been killed, even
Speaker 1: though they had survived, and they had come to um
Speaker 1: to Salem, or to the area of Salem, and we're
Speaker 1: living as servants or living with their families that were
Speaker 1: only shall we say partial families because people in the
Speaker 1: family had been killed. So UM. I argue in the
Speaker 1: book that one of the reasons why these women were
Speaker 1: so um conflicted shall we say um, was that we could,
Speaker 1: in a modern sense say they say that they were
Speaker 1: suffering from PTSD, that they had suffered such trauma on
Speaker 1: the frontier as young people, that they acted out in
Speaker 1: in ways that helped to further, if not begin, the
Speaker 1: Salem Crisis. I was very fortunate to be able to
Speaker 1: find very scattered records biographical information about the youthful experiences
Speaker 1: of three of the young women, very explicit information about
Speaker 1: what they've gone through as young children, and that was
Speaker 1: very helpful to my making my argument. Uh where I
Speaker 1: find it. I found it and actually was mostly published
Speaker 1: but in sort of obscure places, um, in compilations of
Speaker 1: documents that were done in the nineteenth century. Until I
Speaker 1: wrote my book, nobody was focusing on it. Until I
Speaker 1: wrote my book, nobody really focused on the war it
Speaker 1: was listed. If you read most other books about Salem,
Speaker 1: there'll be a first chapter, and the first chapter will
Speaker 1: say sort of underlying factors behind um Salem witchcraft, and
Speaker 1: one of them will be problems of the governance of
Speaker 1: the colony, and then there'll be other issues, but one
Speaker 1: of them will also be UM the Indian War, and
Speaker 1: it will get a few pages. UM. But the Indian
Speaker 1: War came to dominate my narrative because I think it
Speaker 1: dominated the lives of people then, and the way I
Speaker 1: said earlier, I I didn't um expect it um. But
Speaker 1: what happened was I decided to do something in my
Speaker 1: research that other people hadn't done, which was to look
Speaker 1: for letters written by anybody in the sixteen nineties, hoping
Speaker 1: that I would find comments about Salem witchcraft about which is.
Speaker 1: I was hoping I would find comments about what people
Speaker 1: thought about which is. It turned out there's only one
Speaker 1: really good set of letters that talks about witches, and
Speaker 1: it's in't Dutch, so I had to rely on somebody
Speaker 1: else's translation of those. But what I did so I
Speaker 1: was very disappointed because I got these letters that would
Speaker 1: say things like five witches hanged yesterday, But then they
Speaker 1: wouldn't say anything about what they thought about that fact.
Speaker 1: But what happened was, Um, they were not telling me
Speaker 1: about the witches. They were telling me about the Indian Wars.
Speaker 1: The letters that didn't tell me about witchcraft told me
Speaker 1: all this stuff about the Indian War. You know, my
Speaker 1: cousin tells me from Maine that thusn't such as happening,
Speaker 1: or I hear from New Hampshire that thusn't such as happened.
Speaker 1: And it's suddenly the penny dropped that that was what
Speaker 1: was really crucial, that was what was controlling people. So
Speaker 1: I um added a whole lot of stuff about the
Speaker 1: Indian War to what was my previous idea of thinking
Speaker 1: about Salem witchcraft. Let's take it and boil it down
Speaker 1: into maybe an individual and try and just imagine what
Speaker 1: it would be like for a single human being living
Speaker 1: in one of these colonies. What kinds of horrors have
Speaker 1: they or their their family? Right? Well, one of the
Speaker 1: people that I talk a lot about in the book
Speaker 1: is Mercy Lewis, who was a servant in Um the
Speaker 1: home of Thomas Putnam, which is a crucial family for
Speaker 1: the witchcraft crisis because his young daughter and Putnam Jr.
Speaker 1: Was one of the first children who accused people, and
Speaker 1: Mercy Lewis, I was able to discover, was from a
Speaker 1: family that had lived in what was then called Falmouth,
Speaker 1: Maine is now called Portland, UM for a number of
Speaker 1: years um And I discovered that basically most of her
Speaker 1: family except for her parents were wiped out in the
Speaker 1: First Indian War in King Philip's War, and then the
Speaker 1: ones who weren't killed in the First Indian War were
Speaker 1: mostly killed in the Second Indian War. She and her
Speaker 1: sister alone were left. Her sister married someone in Salem Village,
Speaker 1: UM in the late sixteen eighties, as I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: and that seemed to me why Mercy Lewis eventually made
Speaker 1: her way to that area. She also crucially was a
Speaker 1: servant for a while in the home of the Reverend
Speaker 1: George Burrows, who is a crucial figure in my book
Speaker 1: and who is someone who ties Salem Village together with
Speaker 1: um Ti, Salem Village together with um Uh the main Frontier,
Speaker 1: because he worked both places. He was both a minister
Speaker 1: in Salem Village and a minister on the main Frontier
Speaker 1: and um he um and she lived with him for
Speaker 1: a while and she became one of his key accusers,
Speaker 1: and so did Ann Putnam Jr. Become one of his
Speaker 1: key accusers. So I like to say when I give
Speaker 1: talks about Salem witchcraft, that I have spectral a spectral
Speaker 1: vision of my own, and that my spectral vision is
Speaker 1: of um uh and Putnam Jr. As the daughter of
Speaker 1: this family, and Mercy Lewis as the servant sharing a
Speaker 1: bed in what we've been called the chamber, that is
Speaker 1: an upper room above the main and floor Uh And
Speaker 1: basically Mercy Lewis filling and Putnam Junior's head full of
Speaker 1: stories of the Indian War. And we see in An
Speaker 1: Putnham juniors accusations in sixt details about things that happened
Speaker 1: in Maine and details about George Burrows that you don't
Speaker 1: see in, for example, the accusations of Abigail Williams, who
Speaker 1: is the niece of the Reverend William Paris, whether Samuel
Speaker 1: Paris in um in Salem village. That to me was
Speaker 1: very telling. It told me that Ann Putnam Jr. Had
Speaker 1: information about Maine. The only person she could have gotten
Speaker 1: that information from was Mercy Lewis, who was a servant
Speaker 1: in the household So let's talk about power within the
Speaker 1: colonies and how it ended up being subverted throughout this crisis.
Speaker 1: How about consolidated? I mean, what again, I'm fond of
Speaker 1: saying two people when I'm trying to explain what the
Speaker 1: power structure of the colony was like at the time
Speaker 1: of the Witchcraft crisis, I am fond of saying the
Speaker 1: following that making the following analogy that would be though
Speaker 1: in the US today the joint chiefs of Staff were
Speaker 1: also the president's cabinet and also the judges of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, because that's the power structure of Massachusetts at
Speaker 1: the time. The same men were the judges in the
Speaker 1: trials and the chief advisers of the governor, and the
Speaker 1: men who led the local militia in the Indian War.
Speaker 1: So you talk about consolidation of power there, it is
Speaker 1: absolutely So We've got the power dynamics of the men
Speaker 1: who are there filling all these rules, the same guys. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's just go over the gender dynamics. So we have
Speaker 1: powerful are the women, Well, the women are of different status,
Speaker 1: is um. There are the women who are married to
Speaker 1: those powerful men, and they are known as mistress. They
Speaker 1: have a title um, and so they have a certain
Speaker 1: status in the community. They don't play much of a
Speaker 1: role in the in the Salem crisis. We don't know
Speaker 1: much about them. We know about a few of them,
Speaker 1: Um asked Tad Baker about the wife of the governor,
Speaker 1: for example. Um. They we know about some of them.
Speaker 1: But mostly we have ordinary women who are known as
Speaker 1: good wives or goody and we have young women who
Speaker 1: are children. In the case of the three beginning accusers,
Speaker 1: Abigail Williams and Um, Um, come on, I'm now I'm
Speaker 1: blanking um. Abigail Williams and um and Putnam Jr. And
Speaker 1: Paris's daughter. Those are the children, and they're always called
Speaker 1: the children, and they're always separ rated by as far
Speaker 1: as other people are concerned, from the somewhat older accusers.
Speaker 1: Then you have the group of accusers who are the
Speaker 1: teenagers and twenty somethings, many of whom are servants, but
Speaker 1: not all of whom are servants. And then you have
Speaker 1: the older women, um, the good wives, the women of
Speaker 1: some stature in the community, mostly in their thirties. A
Speaker 1: couple who are older who play roles as accusers. And
Speaker 1: one of the arguments that I make in the book
Speaker 1: is that when it the children's accusations are not it's
Speaker 1: not that they're not taken seriously, it's that they don't
Speaker 1: lead to politically, they don't lead to judicial um uh,
Speaker 1: they don't lead to judicial activity until somewhat older women
Speaker 1: and girls way in. There was a rule at the
Speaker 1: time in English law that it was more it was
Speaker 1: a common law rule. I don't think it was written
Speaker 1: down anywhere that if you're that the evidence of someone
Speaker 1: under fourteen would not be acceptable in a UM in
Speaker 1: a capital case, and so the because witchcraft, of course
Speaker 1: was a capital crime. And so I think that it
Speaker 1: that in the beginning, they the authorities in Massachusetts waited
Speaker 1: in effect for older people to weigh in. And what
Speaker 1: seems to have been especially important was when women in
Speaker 1: their thirties also became accusers. When Um and Putnam Senior
Speaker 1: became an accuser, When Sarah Viber became an accuser, even
Speaker 1: though she was not a woman of particular standing in
Speaker 1: the community, my student discovered that she appeared in more
Speaker 1: prosecutions than anyone else UM, and so it was clear
Speaker 1: that a woman of that standing UM, who was seen
Speaker 1: as more mature, was more believable as far as the
Speaker 1: judges were concerned. I might add that the young woman
Speaker 1: um Oh among the accusers Susannah Sheldon, who seemed to
Speaker 1: be the craziest and she seemed to give the weirdest
Speaker 1: um accusations. If you read her statements to the court,
Speaker 1: they're very strange. She is herself a refugee from the
Speaker 1: main frontier, living with her mother. Her father is dead
Speaker 1: um and her older brother seems to have been killed
Speaker 1: in the Indian War uh. And she is often cited
Speaker 1: as an important accuser, but if you look at the
Speaker 1: legal records, she hardly ever appeared in a case. She
Speaker 1: doesn't They don't let her swear to the truth of
Speaker 1: something because I think they don't trust her. They only
Speaker 1: let people swear to the truth of something if they
Speaker 1: trust them, and I don't think they trust Susanna Sheldon.
Speaker 1: She is nuts and they seem to recognize that she's nuts.
Speaker 1: They don't say that anywhere. But so I think people
Speaker 1: who have not paid attention to the way these testimonies
Speaker 1: are used in court miss out on a number of
Speaker 1: aspects of the trial. And I will say that of
Speaker 1: the trials, and I will say that the new addition
Speaker 1: of the papers done by the international team under the
Speaker 1: direction of Bernard Rosenthal has really helped us in this
Speaker 1: regard because they give us all the legal notations on
Speaker 1: the documents that in fact sometimes we're missing from the
Speaker 1: previous addition that we had to work with, which was
Speaker 1: based on w p A transcripts done in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: So the recent edition has really helped us with understanding
Speaker 1: the legal process and how it was pursued. But back
Speaker 1: to your question about the UM, the believability or about
Speaker 1: the roles of these younger women UM. One of the
Speaker 1: things I discovered from my previous book UM called Founding
Speaker 1: Mothers and Fathers, which is about UM seventeenth century society
Speaker 1: in general and compares what happens in New England to
Speaker 1: what happens in in the Chesapeake. One of the things
Speaker 1: I discovered from that was that young women tended to
Speaker 1: be disbelieved when they spoken court. So to me, when
Speaker 1: I looked at the Salem records for the first time,
Speaker 1: one of the things I was particularly interested in figuring
Speaker 1: out was why were these young women believed, because the
Speaker 1: young women in the past were usually not believed. And
Speaker 1: of course my answer was the Indian war because the
Speaker 1: consolidation of the power um by the in the hands
Speaker 1: of the judges UM and the who were also the
Speaker 1: leaders of the war, meant that they basically wanted an
Speaker 1: explanation for why they were losing the war, and they
Speaker 1: were losing the war because of witchcraft. Qwi D. Let's
Speaker 1: get into how faith shades everything that occurred throughout this
Speaker 1: faith in what faith in witches, belief in witches everybody
Speaker 1: believes in witches greater or something a bit mystical, and
Speaker 1: how the Puritan faiths specifically shaped a lot of this well.
Speaker 1: UM Actually, Um, a lot of people in Maine were
Speaker 1: not Puritans, and so we don't know that much about
Speaker 1: what the refugees thought, the people who came down into
Speaker 1: Salem in Salem Village, because Maine was settled not by Puritans,
Speaker 1: but for the most part by members of the Church
Speaker 1: of England, one of whom was my very own ancestor.
Speaker 1: But that's another story, and so UM, the it's really
Speaker 1: hard to know the Uh. Certainly Cotton Mother, who becomes
Speaker 1: a great defender of the trials, is one of the
Speaker 1: leading young clerics of the colony. His father Increase is
Speaker 1: gone in England for the previous several years. He's in
Speaker 1: England negotiating for a new charter for the colony. Comes
Speaker 1: back with a new governor, arriving in May, by which
Speaker 1: point the witchcraft crisis is well underway. There's lots of
Speaker 1: accusations by then. So UM, certainly Samuel Parris uh is
Speaker 1: a believer in UM a very harsh version of Puritanism.
Speaker 1: He's known for his UM, very what we'd say today,
Speaker 1: hard line sermons. Uh. He was having a big dispute
Speaker 1: with members of the congregation and members of this town
Speaker 1: in Salem Village. They were happy with him. They were
Speaker 1: withholding his salary, they were withholding firewood. He was not
Speaker 1: happy and uh, so he started giving UM more and
Speaker 1: more angry sermons. Everybody had to attend. It was part
Speaker 1: of the law. Everybody had to attend church services, where
Speaker 1: they were church members or not. So everybody was hearing
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris rant and rave. And we're lucky that we
Speaker 1: have transcripts that have been published of many of those sermons,
Speaker 1: so we have an idea of what he was saying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean Puritanism was important to all these people, UM,
Speaker 1: and they were the faith was significant, and that faith
Speaker 1: included a belief in the existence of witches. In England
Speaker 1: at the time there was beginning to be skepticism about
Speaker 1: belief in witchcraft, but not in America, not really. Even
Speaker 1: when the witchcraft crisis came to an end, it wasn't
Speaker 1: because people did not believe in witchcraft. It was because
Speaker 1: they came to believe that you couldn't prove someone was
Speaker 1: a which in court legally, that was why they stopped.
Speaker 1: And we have a letter that has survived from um
Speaker 1: a magistrate in northern Essex County who who wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to a judge who was a friend of his
Speaker 1: and basically laid out, shall we say, the Puritan case
Speaker 1: for why you can't convict a which on spectral testimony,
Speaker 1: And basically his argument was like follows went as follows, um,
Speaker 1: spectral testimony must come from the devil, because God would
Speaker 1: never tell us what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker 1: When God does not speak to us this way, we
Speaker 1: all know that, so it has to come from the devil.
Speaker 1: And if you are convicting these people on spectral test
Speaker 1: on spectral evidence, you are convicting them on the testimony
Speaker 1: of the devil. And we all know, you can't trust
Speaker 1: the devil, and so that's really why they stopped the trials.
Speaker 1: That worked. That worked. It didn't stop the trials, I
Speaker 1: should say, I should stop that, because indeed they did
Speaker 1: continue the trials after the dissolution of the of the
Speaker 1: special court. They did um get um. They did in
Speaker 1: fact have three further convictions of people who had confessed,
Speaker 1: but all those people were had their convictions in effect
Speaker 1: overturned um. And in the regular courts they did not
Speaker 1: allow spectral evidence. This is the trials that occurred in
Speaker 1: January of sixte and UM. So there were no executions
Speaker 1: after late September of six and those were the last
Speaker 1: executions that were based on spectral evidence. In part I
Speaker 1: hastened to add there was always other evidence too. There
Speaker 1: was no one he was convicted solely on spectral evidence. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were the what we would call the usual kinds
Speaker 1: of evidence of witchcraft, which is neighbors accusing someone of
Speaker 1: doing um witchcraft against him from from the proceedings that
Speaker 1: had happened prior to that. The only thing that's different
Speaker 1: about an oyer in terminal court is it's a special court,
Speaker 1: as a court established by the governor for a special reason.
Speaker 1: There had been a previous oyer and terminal court in
Speaker 1: New York to try the people who had been involved
Speaker 1: in a revolt in New York. It was basically the
Speaker 1: same model. There was nothing different. Particularly, Um, nobody, I
Speaker 1: should say it was a lawyer. Um, there were no
Speaker 1: lawyers involved in this except for the first prosecutor. He
Speaker 1: was a trained English lawyer. Everybody else was not a lawyer. Um.
Speaker 1: They but they were experienced magistrates. They had served as
Speaker 1: justice as the piece for years. They had heard many
Speaker 1: small cases. They had even sometimes sat in capital cases previously.
Speaker 1: There were some pirates who were convicted and hanged previously
Speaker 1: in New England. So basically, um uh, it's not as
Speaker 1: though these are not experienced people in judicial procedures. But
Speaker 1: none of them were trained lawyers. They did have law books.
Speaker 1: We know that there was a bookstore in Boston that
Speaker 1: had law books that they bought and that they read.
Speaker 1: So we know they were self educated. Shall we say
Speaker 1: about how they should handle things? Um, But a lot
Speaker 1: of things about the trials we don't know. For example,
Speaker 1: we know there were nine judges. We know they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be five at any one trial, and that
Speaker 1: at least two of those five had to be particular people,
Speaker 1: but we don't know about anything else. We don't know
Speaker 1: how many of those people actually sat in the in
Speaker 1: the trials. We don't know who sat in particular trials,
Speaker 1: except we're sure that the chief judge, William Stowton, who
Speaker 1: was the Lieutenant governor of the colony, we know he
Speaker 1: was there pretty much all the time. We're sure he
Speaker 1: was there all the time. Other than that, we don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't know who was on the jury. We on
Speaker 1: the juries. We don't know if there were more than well,
Speaker 1: we think there was more than one jury, but we
Speaker 1: don't know how many people actually served. We don't know
Speaker 1: if there were different juries for different trials. We do
Speaker 1: know that George Burrows challenged jurors in his trial and
Speaker 1: so new jurors had to be seated, but that's it.
Speaker 1: We don't know if the people who were the jurors
Speaker 1: before in the trials before Burrows were all the same guys.
Speaker 1: Was it the same people again? And again we don't
Speaker 1: know that. Um. We know that there was a second
Speaker 1: grand jury impaneled later in the system, because we've seen
Speaker 1: the the call for the new grand jury. But again
Speaker 1: we don't know was the first grand did the first
Speaker 1: grand jury sit throughout the entire early period of the trials.
Speaker 1: We have no idea. Those records are all gone. So
Speaker 1: even though we have a lot of records that survived,
Speaker 1: there's many procedural things we don't know. And probably the
Speaker 1: best procedural infidence we have is the notations on some
Speaker 1: of the documents by the court color Um and he
Speaker 1: Um he made uh notations about whether something was sworn
Speaker 1: before the grand jury, whether it was sworn in court itself,
Speaker 1: And so sometimes you get documents where they say sworn
Speaker 1: in before the grand jury and nothing else, And then
Speaker 1: there's other documents that say sworn in court and nothing else.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you get things that are said sworn and
Speaker 1: we were the grand jury and sworn in court, But
Speaker 1: you don't know what the missing evidence means. And sometimes
Speaker 1: he even wrote a note on something which said, sometimes
Speaker 1: people just gave their testimony orally, and I didn't write
Speaker 1: it down. So we have one note that says that,
Speaker 1: So who knows? Um Actually, sort of ironically, the best
Speaker 1: evidence we have about the conduct of the trials comes
Speaker 1: from Cotton Mathers account of five of the trials, written
Speaker 1: to defend the trials themselves written to defend the verdicts
Speaker 1: in his book, and he wonders of the invisible world,
Speaker 1: and he gives us kind of blow by blow descriptions
Speaker 1: of what happened in the various trials. And so we
Speaker 1: can see in some of those cases that we have
Speaker 1: the evidence of the testimony that he talks about, but
Speaker 1: in other cases we don't have the evidence of the
Speaker 1: testimony that he talks about. I think I and everybody
Speaker 1: else sort of assumes that he's telling the truth when
Speaker 1: he tells you that this is the testimony that's given
Speaker 1: in those cases, because there were too many people who
Speaker 1: were there and who could have said, no, no, you're
Speaker 1: a liar cotton mother if you're telling telling us things
Speaker 1: that didn't actually happen in the court room. And so
Speaker 1: we think that he did, in fact work off of
Speaker 1: records that are now lost. He got those records from
Speaker 1: the court clerk, from Steven Sewell, who was the court clerk.
Speaker 1: And you know, we know that because he thanks Steven
Speaker 1: Sewell for he asked Steven Sewell for those records, and
Speaker 1: he thanks Steven so for those records. So um, there
Speaker 1: we can pretty much believe them, because in fact, when
Speaker 1: we do have the written testimony that he describes, it's accurate.
Speaker 1: I mean, he describes it accurately, So we just sort
Speaker 1: of have to make certain assumptions. But he doesn't tell
Speaker 1: us how many judges were there or or things like that.
Speaker 1: So um, but he does tell us that the accusers
Speaker 1: came in. He does tell us that confessors came in
Speaker 1: and so forth, so we do have that information from him.
Speaker 1: Now Here there are so many ideas of what a
Speaker 1: which could be, but in there is an idea of
Speaker 1: what a which is. Essentially that's commonly shared with a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Can you describe what in or before
Speaker 1: there were basically which was basically believed to be someone
Speaker 1: who had some kind of access to a cult information
Speaker 1: and powers and that. But there were a disagreement about
Speaker 1: that because there were some people who thought that that
Speaker 1: had to mean that they were in touch with the devil.
Speaker 1: There were other people who thought, no, no, there were
Speaker 1: what you might call today a white witch or a
Speaker 1: useful witch who could for example, tell your fortune. Um,
Speaker 1: that was someone who had some mystical power. Um. The
Speaker 1: the ministers would say that that meant the person had
Speaker 1: to be in touch with the devil, because that God
Speaker 1: would never tell you what's the future, was that the
Speaker 1: devil might. And so any fortune teller, as far as
Speaker 1: the ministers were concerned, was a witch as far as
Speaker 1: local people were concerned. That isn't true. Uh, Well, a
Speaker 1: witch who could tell the future or a fortune teller,
Speaker 1: it was not necessarily an evil person. Was someone who
Speaker 1: could just help you or could give you a potion.
Speaker 1: If you were in love with someone who wasn't in
Speaker 1: love with you, you could get a spell to help you, um,
Speaker 1: make that person fall in love with you. Or if
Speaker 1: you wanted to know what had happened to your husband
Speaker 1: who was had been at sea for years, was he
Speaker 1: going to come home? The which or the fortune teller
Speaker 1: could tell you that sort of thing. In fact, there's
Speaker 1: one of the women who's accused of witchcraft in s
Speaker 1: who seems to have specialized in telling women that their
Speaker 1: husbands were never going to come home, that they were widows. Um.
Speaker 1: She seems to have liked to have given them bad news.
Speaker 1: So um, there's that kind of witchcraft. And then there's
Speaker 1: the kind of witchcraft where a witch is seen as
Speaker 1: being evil and uh seeking to do bad things to people.
Speaker 1: She doesn't like. It's almost always a woman, not entirely.
Speaker 1: It can be a man, and the as far as
Speaker 1: the local people are concerned, as a woman, as far
Speaker 1: as the ministers are concerned, it could be a man.
Speaker 1: I should add that. And that would be if you
Speaker 1: get in trouble with somebody and they have and and
Speaker 1: let's say you have an argument with your neighbor. Um.
Speaker 1: Your neighbor's cows got into your cornfield. You're really mad.
Speaker 1: You go and have a conversation. More than a conversation.
Speaker 1: You yell at your neighbor. And it's an older woman,
Speaker 1: and she says, I'll get you, because you know it
Speaker 1: was the problem was the fence around your corn It
Speaker 1: wasn't my cows. If you'd had a better fence, this
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened. And so some kind of disagreement occurs
Speaker 1: um within the neighborhood um. And that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of witchcraft accusations come from. There's actually a very excellent
Speaker 1: book about witchcraft, mostly in Europe to a certain extent
Speaker 1: in America called Witches and Neighbors, and it's about the
Speaker 1: by guy named Robin Briggs, who's a British historian and
Speaker 1: he makes a very strong case that a lot of
Speaker 1: these witchcraft cases involve disputes among neighbors. Kind of standard
Speaker 1: common disputes among neighbors. But let's say, Um, that dispute
Speaker 1: about the cows in the cornfield happened, and then three
Speaker 1: days later, UM, you who have been cursed out by
Speaker 1: the supposed witch, that is, by your neighbor, you start
Speaker 1: to have some other kind of a problem, like one
Speaker 1: of your cows breaks its leg and you have to
Speaker 1: kill it or um, or your beer goes sour, or
Speaker 1: the milk won't churn properly into butter, or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then you begin to think to yourself, I wonder
Speaker 1: if that neighbor bewitched my cow, or bewitched me, or
Speaker 1: bewitched my my child, if my child is sick, or
Speaker 1: something like that. So that's the kind of thing that happens.
Speaker 1: And I might say that witchcraft is very much becomes
Speaker 1: a default explanation for things that are inexplicable otherwise, UM,
Speaker 1: for sudden illnesses. UM. Human beings always like to have
Speaker 1: causes for things. It's why I think we have so
Speaker 1: many conspiracy theories these days. There has to be something
Speaker 1: important that happened, happens to cause something important, and so
Speaker 1: there has to be a conspiracy. Well, that's the same
Speaker 1: kind of thing about witchcraft. You have to have some
Speaker 1: reason for something bad happening, and so you attribute it
Speaker 1: to a witch. And that's basically the seventeenth century exploit
Speaker 1: nation for things. That makes so much sense to me
Speaker 1: than why the doctor ends up being a person who
Speaker 1: goes in and we'll say, oh, there's some witchcraft reckring
Speaker 1: here because it's outside of his understanding. Yeah, the doctor
Speaker 1: who well, he wasn't a trained doctor. He was just
Speaker 1: a local guy who seemed to know something about medicine,
Speaker 1: Doctor Briggs, Dr Griggs. Rather, doctor Griggs seemed to know
Speaker 1: something about medicine. And in fact he's really not a
Speaker 1: very lettered guy. I discovered that he signed an important
Speaker 1: legal document with an X. I mean, it's not even
Speaker 1: clear the guy's literate. Um, but he is the local doctor.
Speaker 1: He is the equivalent of the local doctor in Salem village,
Speaker 1: and so um, Yes, when he can't diagnose the little
Speaker 1: girls as to what's wrong with them, he the default
Speaker 1: is it's it's witchcraft. But of course they don't immediately
Speaker 1: turn to the legal process. And I think that's something
Speaker 1: we don't understand today, because there was a legal there
Speaker 1: was a process for dealing religiously with which after accusations
Speaker 1: and basically the first thing that happens is that Samuel
Speaker 1: Paris calls in neighboring ministers to pray and fast over
Speaker 1: these girls, and that's supposed to solve the problem, and
Speaker 1: they go. That goes on for some weeks. We don't
Speaker 1: know for sure how long, but it seems to be
Speaker 1: about a month that um, that this happens before and
Speaker 1: before they decide they're not going to deal with it religiously,
Speaker 1: they're going to have to deal with it legally. Market
Speaker 1: care of your son's were tortured? Yes, how was torture
Speaker 1: used in these That's the only time we know that
Speaker 1: there was any evidence or any statement about physical torture
Speaker 1: being used. We know that, um, eventually sleeplessness was used
Speaker 1: and um, harsh words shall we say. But the only
Speaker 1: time that torture is a edged is with the sons
Speaker 1: of Martha Carrier, and they were tied neck and heels,
Speaker 1: as it was said, which was in fact a punishment.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily thought of as torture at the time.
Speaker 1: So um, the question of why people confessed has always
Speaker 1: been something that people have been wondering about. But when
Speaker 1: it became clear, as it became clear later in the
Speaker 1: trials that if you confessed you would be kept alive
Speaker 1: so you could testify against other people, is when more
Speaker 1: and more people started to confess. Um. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I noticed was that when adults confessed late
Speaker 1: in the sequence of the trials, they accused only people
Speaker 1: who were already dead, who had already been hanged, or
Speaker 1: they accused people who had been accused by other people.
Speaker 1: They did not name new people. It seemed clear to
Speaker 1: me that it was very strategic when they confessed. They
Speaker 1: did not want to hurt anyone who wasn't already um
Speaker 1: hanged or already had been accused of others. However, children
Speaker 1: didn't do that, and a lot of their later confessors
Speaker 1: were children or very young teenagers. And they're the ones
Speaker 1: who just seems to have thrown names around with great
Speaker 1: abandoned and they're the ones who led to many of
Speaker 1: the later accusations was confessions by children. And this, of
Speaker 1: course was in and over. That's where people were confessing
Speaker 1: was in andover. It's very interesting. Um, it's a completely
Speaker 1: different pattern in Andover than you get in Salem Village.
Speaker 1: Salem Village, people accused their enemies. In and Over people
Speaker 1: accused their friends and their relatives. Um, there's this one
Speaker 1: family where five sisters and the mother all confessed and
Speaker 1: basically accuse each other and say they're all working together. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's Um, it's a very different pattern.
Speaker 1: And I know there's someone now working on and Over,
Speaker 1: and I hope that that person can explain the pattern
Speaker 1: in and Over, because I certainly had no particularly good
Speaker 1: explanation for it. Did the differences in the patterns in
Speaker 1: and Over effect how the rest of the trials went
Speaker 1: in Salem? Did lead to changes in how the trials
Speaker 1: were conducted. Most of the Andover confessions came very late
Speaker 1: in the day. Um. They the Andover confessions didn't start
Speaker 1: until the fifte July, and at that point there were
Speaker 1: only the August and September trial sessions left. So UM,
Speaker 1: it didn't have that much of an effect. I mean,
Speaker 1: the confessors did come in, it wasn't. The confessors were
Speaker 1: important in the lay her phases of the trials, but
Speaker 1: not all of them were from Andover So Um, not
Speaker 1: all the confessors who came in were from Andover, So
Speaker 1: I don't I wouldn't say that there was any big
Speaker 1: difference made by it. I guess the Andover face is
Speaker 1: Later there was a thought that perhaps witchcraft were in
Speaker 1: in the family in a way or was passed down. Uh.
Speaker 1: Pregnancy was an excuse in England. It was. It was
Speaker 1: in English law. Um. It was called pleading your belly.
Speaker 1: When a woman was accused of a with a woman
Speaker 1: was convicted of a capital offense, she could, as they said,
Speaker 1: plead her belly and if she was pregnant, if the
Speaker 1: midwives confirmed that she was pregnant, then she wasn't hanged
Speaker 1: until after she gave birth. And in this case, Um
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Procter, the fact that she was pregnant saved her
Speaker 1: because by the time she gave birth the executions had ended,
Speaker 1: so it'd saved her. Um a fortuitous pregnancy. But that
Speaker 1: was um. That was the standard English practice was you
Speaker 1: could plead your belly. Um. There were female pirates who
Speaker 1: pleaded their bellies and were not executed as a result,
Speaker 1: at least not until after they gave birth. So it
Speaker 1: was it was nothing unusual but you're right that it
Speaker 1: was thought that witchcraft could run in the family, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't just um blood. It could also be someone
Speaker 1: in the same household. So someone who's um a servant
Speaker 1: whose mistress was accused of being a witch might necessarily
Speaker 1: might come under suspicion or vice versa. If a servant
Speaker 1: was accused of being a witch or thought to be
Speaker 1: a witch, was the mistress come under suspicion? That seemed
Speaker 1: to have happened with one of the three um enslaved
Speaker 1: Africans who's accused in Salem, That the mistress came under
Speaker 1: suspicion because the servant was accused, and so um or
Speaker 1: friends women who were close friends. If a woman was
Speaker 1: a close friend with someone who was thought to be
Speaker 1: a witch, that also was a suspicious circumstance and might
Speaker 1: lead one to at least come under some cloud of suspicion.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Brows and Carrier being called the King
Speaker 1: and Queen of Hell. Well, what's really interesting is that
Speaker 1: Martha Carrier is first called the Queen of Hell by
Speaker 1: a confessor. Burrows becomes the figured as the leader of
Speaker 1: the witches thanks to the confessors um but also because
Speaker 1: of the original accusations by and Putnam during Junior and
Speaker 1: Mercy Lewis. Um Burrows is the right person to be
Speaker 1: the leader of the Witches because he's a minister, and
Speaker 1: because he's a kind of a weird minister. That is,
Speaker 1: he's never been ordained, um, he's been educated at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and because there's all kinds of us about him, which
Speaker 1: I explore in my book. He's he has a very
Speaker 1: peculiar relationship with his wives. It's hard to know a
Speaker 1: lot about the details, but he seems to have been
Speaker 1: quite brutal and quite an aggressive husband. Uh. He at
Speaker 1: least is accused of um beating them UM or at
Speaker 1: least being very controlling of them. Uh. He wants them
Speaker 1: to quote keep his secrets, and so the question becomes,
Speaker 1: what are those secrets he wants them to keep. Um.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of rumors that swirl around him.
Speaker 1: At his trial. There's testimony that he has unusual strength,
Speaker 1: which is based on his own boasting about his strength.
Speaker 1: So it comes back to haunt him. Uh. He is
Speaker 1: someone who is very mysterious, and I would have loved
Speaker 1: to have found out more about him. I did everything
Speaker 1: I could to find out what I could, But um,
Speaker 1: he is a mysterious guy. Um he's said to have
Speaker 1: prominent relatives in England. I never tracked that down, so
Speaker 1: I don't know. But he is someone who aroused a
Speaker 1: lot of comment. Um, who had a parlous relationship with
Speaker 1: Salem Village when he was the minister in Salem Village.
Speaker 1: He seems to have been much more popular when he
Speaker 1: was a minister in Falmouth, Maine. That is, um he
Speaker 1: was there before King Phillips floor. He then left and
Speaker 1: they wanted him to come back, which he did so
Speaker 1: he um he did. He was treated better in Maine.
Speaker 1: He certainly was more highly regarded in Maine than he
Speaker 1: was in Salem Village. Perhaps it was because he was educated.
Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of educated people in the main frontier,
Speaker 1: and they may have like the fact that he was
Speaker 1: a Harvard graduate, even if he wasn't an ordained minister.
Speaker 1: There does seem to have been some kind of a
Speaker 1: a debate about where he would be, whether he would
Speaker 1: be in Falmouth or maybe in black Point. There was
Speaker 1: some attempt to attract him someplace else to black Point
Speaker 1: as a minister. So um he had a different standing
Speaker 1: on the frontier than he had in Salem village. Was
Speaker 1: it significant that he was able to recite the Lord's prayer?
Speaker 1: It was believed that a witch could not accurately recite
Speaker 1: the Lord's prayer. And indeed that was a test that
Speaker 1: was tried on some other people and who could not
Speaker 1: do it some of the accused. Um, I was tried
Speaker 1: on John Willard and he couldn't do it. So when
Speaker 1: George Burrows at the gallows recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly,
Speaker 1: the account says. The eyewitness account says that he that
Speaker 1: there was a murmur in the crowd and that they
Speaker 1: thought that he could not be a witch until Cotton
Speaker 1: Mother came up on horseback and said, no, no, a
Speaker 1: witch can do what he did, So then they hanged him.
Speaker 1: Um that's one time at which Cotton Mother is said
Speaker 1: Jof had a real definite impact on the trials himself,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just writing about it. That's one of
Speaker 1: the most well known events that occurs. Another one is
Speaker 1: the pressing death of Giles Corey Right. How unusual was
Speaker 1: that act within the context of the rest of the
Speaker 1: civilization to that point, Um, it was extremely unusual in
Speaker 1: the context of New England. Never was done at anybody
Speaker 1: else that we know of. And um, we don't even
Speaker 1: know why they did it. Um. It was a traditional
Speaker 1: medieval English punishment to force someone to enter a plea.
Speaker 1: But you have to understand, although we say it was
Speaker 1: because Giles Corey didn't ender a plea, he did actually
Speaker 1: say he was not guilty. He did say that we
Speaker 1: would say that was entering a plea. But he had
Speaker 1: to answer a second ritual question. And the second ritual
Speaker 1: question was and how will you be tried? And he
Speaker 1: was supposed to say, by God in my country, and
Speaker 1: he refused to say that. And that's why they decided
Speaker 1: to um use this traditional English punishment. How they came
Speaker 1: up with that is not known, um, And who basically
Speaker 1: decided it is not known, but probably was William Stowton,
Speaker 1: who was a very hardline guy, uh, who was the
Speaker 1: chief Justice and the Lieutenant governor. But Giles Corey was
Speaker 1: not a nice man. I mean he has this in
Speaker 1: in um. He becomes kind of a hero in um
Speaker 1: um Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, But um, he had
Speaker 1: beaten a servant to death a few some years earlier.
Speaker 1: He was not a nice guy. And so it thought
Speaker 1: he was just being his old, irascible, nasty self when
Speaker 1: he refused to cooperate with the court. How significant was
Speaker 1: Increased either in the ending of this trinals Well, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to know. We don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: infant evidence about how all the trials ended. We have
Speaker 1: very sparse efidence. In fact, we have Samuel Sewell's diary
Speaker 1: that tells us about certain things that very briefly, that
Speaker 1: were said in um meetings of the council, um said
Speaker 1: by the Governor, by William Phipps, um. And we have
Speaker 1: some pamphlets, and it's certainly true that Increase Mather wrote
Speaker 1: a pamphlet that raised some questions. But Increase Mather also
Speaker 1: explicitly said that he agreed with his son Cotton, and
Speaker 1: Cotton wrote this this not just a pamphlet, a book
Speaker 1: wanders of the invisible world, defending the trials. And even
Speaker 1: though Increased Mather says um in his in his it's
Speaker 1: more than a pamphlet. It's it's not but it's not
Speaker 1: a book. I don't know how to describe it. Even
Speaker 1: though he says in his treatise that you have to
Speaker 1: be very careful about these trials. He still says he
Speaker 1: would have convicted George Burrows, so it's not as though
Speaker 1: he's a complete opponent of the trials, nor is god
Speaker 1: Samuel Willard, who also writes about the trials at the time,
Speaker 1: and who's whose publication when it appears, is said to have
Speaker 1: have been published in Philadelphia when it clearly wasn't. It
Speaker 1: was published in Boston, who had fake publication information on
Speaker 1: the title page, because Phipps had basically said no publications
Speaker 1: about about the trials to try to keep the debate down.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just really hard to know exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: except we do know. We can't say that public opinion
Speaker 1: did seem to turn against the trials, and they did
Speaker 1: seem to turn against the trials after the second set
Speaker 1: of accusations, after the accusation, after the sorry, after the
Speaker 1: second set of trials and executions, and the executions on
Speaker 1: the two September UM opinion seems to have turned pretty
Speaker 1: strongly against the trials after that. And I would speculate
Speaker 1: that it's because those people were hanged with a lot
Speaker 1: less evidence than people had been hanged with before those
Speaker 1: trials were rushed um, and they did seem to be
Speaker 1: rushed to judgment and those trials, and so I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that led to deep concerns
Speaker 1: among people among what we say thinking people in Boston,
Speaker 1: U and in Salem. That caused an uproar. And then
Speaker 1: in addition, in October, when Increase Mather goes to the
Speaker 1: prison in Salem to talk to a group of women
Speaker 1: who had confessed and they all take it back, and
Speaker 1: that too, I think was important, and that was about
Speaker 1: the middle of October's that was about three weeks after
Speaker 1: the last set of executions. Um, when they take it
Speaker 1: back and they talk about how they were basically convinced,
Speaker 1: convinced to confess by magistrates, sometimes by their own relatives,
Speaker 1: who said, well, you may not realize you were a witch,
Speaker 1: but you clearly were because of X, and then cited
Speaker 1: some evidence to them. So UM, I think that was
Speaker 1: also very meaningful in helping to convince Phips that he
Speaker 1: could not maintain the trials any longer, or at least
Speaker 1: the trials in the court of or Your in terminal,
Speaker 1: that the rules had to change, and that spectral evidence
Speaker 1: could not be allowed. When the trials continued in January
Speaker 1: under the regular courts. I might add that, of course,
Speaker 1: throughout this entire period, there was no regular court system
Speaker 1: until the Massachusett Its Assembly could meet in the fall
Speaker 1: under the new charter, and they could have passed a
Speaker 1: law to establish a court system, which then held the
Speaker 1: trials in January and in May um But the only
Speaker 1: court going was the Court of Orio and Terminer until
Speaker 1: until the legislature met and adopted that law. Let's oh dear,
Speaker 1: that's way back well if since Samuel Parris rejected the
Speaker 1: Halfway Covenant, what it meant was that people who had
Speaker 1: been baptized as children but who could not satisfy the
Speaker 1: church with testimony that they had achieved saving faith, that
Speaker 1: they had experienced saving faith, that they were not allowed
Speaker 1: to be members of the church. They had to attend
Speaker 1: church services, but they were not allowed to be the
Speaker 1: official members of the church. The Halfway Covenant allowed people
Speaker 1: who had been baptized as children but had not yet
Speaker 1: experienced saving faith two in effect, be members of the church,
Speaker 1: to be under the church's supervision and to have communion,
Speaker 1: and to have their babies baptized. Samuel Paris, by taking
Speaker 1: a hard line on the Halfway Covenant, meant that people
Speaker 1: in Salem village who had been baptized as children could
Speaker 1: not be halfway members. And therefore, for example, when the
Speaker 1: church had communion, which they did once a month, they
Speaker 1: had to get up and leave. They could not stay
Speaker 1: and this really divided the congregation in dramatic ways. UM.
Speaker 1: And it meant that people could not have their babies baptized,
Speaker 1: which was a very important thing when there was heavy
Speaker 1: infant mortality. You want to have your baby baptized, um
Speaker 1: at a time when um of children died statistic before
Speaker 1: the age of one. Can we talk about captivity narratives, well,
Speaker 1: captivity narratives were published accounts by people of their captivities
Speaker 1: by Indians, and of course the best known one was
Speaker 1: that of Mary Rowlinson from King Philip's War, and she
Speaker 1: was in fact a captive of Weetamu, who was an
Speaker 1: associate of King Philip. That was published at the time.
Speaker 1: Many of the things we now call captivity narratives are
Speaker 1: published later, So it's not so much narratives are captivity
Speaker 1: narratives as it is the experience of the captives themselves
Speaker 1: and how that's those stories would have spread through the community.
Speaker 1: So it's not so much the publications except for Mary Rowlinson,
Speaker 1: as it is the actual experience of captivity and how
Speaker 1: people would have talked about it. Um. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I talked about in my book is the
Speaker 1: accounts that were well known of people who had been
Speaker 1: captured in the in in King Philip's War UM and
Speaker 1: had experienced various um trials and tribulations shall we say,
Speaker 1: and indeed atrocities what we would call atrocities um committed
Speaker 1: by the native people on them, especially if they tried
Speaker 1: to escape um so um and how that seems to
Speaker 1: have been in the minds of people in in Essex County,
Speaker 1: in visions of someone being roasted over a fire for example,
Speaker 1: or um uh visions or accounts of people who tried
Speaker 1: to escape from their Indian captors as they were trekking
Speaker 1: north to Canada after captivity, being being tomahawked in the
Speaker 1: head something like that. Um. So we know those stories
Speaker 1: were spread around, that they were published or not. It
Speaker 1: was definitely definitely in people's minds. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that struck me as I was reading the material
Speaker 1: was how present the Indian War was in people's minds. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the accused people UM Sarah Osborne talks about
Speaker 1: having nightmares of Indians and one of the women who confessed,
Speaker 1: Mary toothacre Um talks about Um how she confessed because
Speaker 1: Um the devil came to her in the shape of
Speaker 1: an Indian and told her that he would save that
Speaker 1: if she became a witch, he would save her from
Speaker 1: the Indians. And since he came to her in the
Speaker 1: shape of an Indian, she believed him and so she confessed,
Speaker 1: and she actually never took it back. What's interesting is
Speaker 1: that she Um was in jay all she was from
Speaker 1: bill Rica and she was in jail in Salem when
Speaker 1: the Indians attacked her neighborhood in bill Rica and killed
Speaker 1: her closest neighbor. She was in jail confessing to being
Speaker 1: a witch at the instigation of the devil in the
Speaker 1: shape of an Indian, and she never took it back.
Speaker 1: She literally never took it back. Her wife was saved
Speaker 1: by being by confessing to be a witch. She would
Speaker 1: have been killed if she had been in bell Rica
Speaker 1: that weekend, and instead she was in Salem in jail.
Speaker 1: But then she was killed several years later in another
Speaker 1: Indian raid. And bill Rick is only twenty miles from Salem.
Speaker 1: And that just shows you how close the war was
Speaker 1: to what was going on. That's the big question. How
Speaker 1: widespread is the war? Well, as I said, it's about
Speaker 1: twenty bill Rick is only twenty miles away. Now, that
Speaker 1: was the closest attack that I know of to Salem.
Speaker 1: But remember all these people had relatives in Maine and
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, and people in Maine and New Hampshire were
Speaker 1: constantly under threat, UM. Even in the WHOA in the
Speaker 1: most southern parts of Maine and New Hampshire. In UM
Speaker 1: what's now Portsmouth which was then called Strawberry Bank, what
Speaker 1: was wells Main, there were attacks nearby UM all the time, UM,
Speaker 1: and they were UM. People felt under constant threat, shall
Speaker 1: we say. UM. So the attack in bill Rico was
Speaker 1: the closest, but eventually later in the war, actually after,
Speaker 1: there was a big attack on ian over UM. So
Speaker 1: it's not as though the war wasn't right there. And
Speaker 1: of course remember these are the men, are militiamen, and
Speaker 1: they're going out to fight. So all the above, So
Speaker 1: how was military service treated at that time? UM. Military
Speaker 1: service was an obligation of UM all men between the
Speaker 1: ages of sixteen and fifty and Uh, they were supposed
Speaker 1: to keep muskets at the ready and have ammunition. Everybody
Speaker 1: supposed to have their own gun and their own ammunition,
Speaker 1: and they were to be there to be called on
Speaker 1: when they were needed. And so um. A lot of
Speaker 1: times the men were indeed called up in both King
Speaker 1: Philip's War and King William's War to go up to
Speaker 1: the frontier, to go north to the frontier and to fight.
Speaker 1: And there are some um, very detailed accounts that have
Speaker 1: survived to us of some of the battles that occurred,
Speaker 1: especially around Black Point in southern Maine. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a pretty definite fear that exists in the colonies at
Speaker 1: the time of the indigenous neighbors that not far How
Speaker 1: were they written about within the community, they're written about you,
Speaker 1: and it varies because, of course, for years they had
Speaker 1: had relatively peaceful relationships with them. It wasn't as though
Speaker 1: this was a constant warfare. I mean until the sixteen seventies,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of trading going on, a lot
Speaker 1: of back and forth, um um travel and so forth. Um.
Speaker 1: They're written about very matter of fact. We actually they're
Speaker 1: not written about is as um like savage as we
Speaker 1: don't understand because they didn't know they knew each other. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the best accounts we have is from the
Speaker 1: initial attack on Falmouth in UM six in the sixty
Speaker 1: five and basically, UM, a Wabanaki who is known in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood comes in and and comes to a farm
Speaker 1: and says, UM, I know you're missing a cow. I
Speaker 1: know who took that cow. I will help you find it.
Speaker 1: So this is, you know, not a big deal. Then
Speaker 1: of course what he does is he leads the other
Speaker 1: people to attack the farm. But that's another matter. UM.
Speaker 1: But we can see that there's a you know, the
Speaker 1: arrival of a an Indian on your doorstep is not
Speaker 1: necessarily um, a frightening event or um. One of the
Speaker 1: incidents that I talked about in great detail in the
Speaker 1: book happens in New Hampshire where a group of Indians
Speaker 1: comes to trade at a trading post, as we say,
Speaker 1: they're doing, and then UM, it's a cold night. The
Speaker 1: women say can we sleep inside the The traders say sure,
Speaker 1: the women, women sleep inside, But when everybody's asleep, they
Speaker 1: opened the doors and the men come in and attack.
Speaker 1: The trader and his men, who are known for years
Speaker 1: for having for having cheated the Indian. So it's a
Speaker 1: chance for them to get back at the at the
Speaker 1: at the traders. So it's um. But you see this
Speaker 1: sort of pattern of what you might call standard interaction
Speaker 1: that has been broken by these wars accused. They escape
Speaker 1: from jail. Yes, how did that come about? Well, if
Speaker 1: you pay attention to where they are. Remember, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people in jail. Um, they're not just
Speaker 1: in Salem. The jail in Salem is too small to
Speaker 1: hold them all. The jail in Salem Town, as we're
Speaker 1: talking about, there's too small to hold them all. So
Speaker 1: they've been scattered around other places. And it happens that
Speaker 1: a lot of the leading people who are used of
Speaker 1: being which is are sent to Boston. And I am
Speaker 1: convinced that the Boston jailer had his hand out for
Speaker 1: bribes and that it was from the Boston jail that
Speaker 1: a lot of these people escaped. So um, it's not
Speaker 1: written down anywhere, but he basically took money to let
Speaker 1: people go. I think there's no question, um, in my mind,
Speaker 1: there's no question my mind that he was He was
Speaker 1: bribable and probably earned a pretty penny from letting all
Speaker 1: these wealthy people go, one of them being my very
Speaker 1: own ancestor, Mary Bradberry, who was held and suddenly managed
Speaker 1: to escape. Guess what, she had a wealthy husband. So
Speaker 1: is there any particular reason why they fled over a
Speaker 1: lot of them to refuge in New York. Well, New
Speaker 1: York was seen as a more open society. It was
Speaker 1: more diverse, There were lots of people are from different places.
Speaker 1: It wasn't controlled by Puritans. Remember Anne Hutchinson fled to
Speaker 1: New York too when she was fleeing from the um
Speaker 1: from the Puritan authorities in first Massachusetts Bay and then
Speaker 1: ultimately Rhode Island. When she thought they were going to
Speaker 1: come after her in Rhode Island, she doo fled to
Speaker 1: New York. So it's not that surprising that they went
Speaker 1: to New York. It's the closest place that seems to
Speaker 1: offer them some kind of refuge. And by the way,
Speaker 1: these are not the only people who are accused of
Speaker 1: which is in the seventeenth century who go to New York.
Speaker 1: There are other recorded cases of similar people. Um. I
Speaker 1: might add that I went to New York. I went
Speaker 1: to look at correspondence from the period, and I went
Speaker 1: looking I was hoping I would find a letter from
Speaker 1: somebody saying guests who I met at dinner last night,
Speaker 1: But I didn't find any such letter. I was hoping
Speaker 1: I would see some evidence of somebody who had fled
Speaker 1: from Boston while they were or fled from Boston or
Speaker 1: Salem or whatever while they were in New York. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a trace of it. Too bad, one
Speaker 1: of the many things I couldn't find. There were many
Speaker 1: things I looked for that I couldn't find. Well, we
Speaker 1: have fips, yes, and he writes his report in October.
Speaker 1: How does he position himself with regards to the trial.
Speaker 1: Phipps is really good at covering his butt. Phipps is
Speaker 1: a master at not letting on that he knew the
Speaker 1: all along it was going on. I mean, Phipps rice
Speaker 1: this letter saying to the people in London, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I just got back. I been fighting Indians on the
Speaker 1: frontier all summer, and I came back and I found
Speaker 1: this horrible situation, and I stopped it. That was so untrue.
Speaker 1: He was true that he was just back from the frontier,
Speaker 1: but he'd only been on the frontier for two weeks
Speaker 1: at that time. And so, and I show in my
Speaker 1: book that he was meeting with members of the Council
Speaker 1: who were also the judges, who were also the military
Speaker 1: leaders regularly throughout the summer. Those minutes are available in
Speaker 1: the records in England and they show that Phipps was
Speaker 1: talking to them regularly. So don't tell me they never
Speaker 1: said anything about the witchcraft trials because that was the
Speaker 1: biggest thing going on. It's not written down that they
Speaker 1: had those conversations, but of course they did. And of
Speaker 1: course he wanted to get out from under and he did.
Speaker 1: I mean he he didn't actually because he was recalled
Speaker 1: and they were going to challenge him. He was he
Speaker 1: was under a lot of pressure to be challenged in England,
Speaker 1: and then he died before he could be called before
Speaker 1: the Privy Council. So it's not as though he completely escaped,
Speaker 1: but he did. That letter was such a stunning letter
Speaker 1: to me when I founded, where he basically said, oh
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about what was happening. I was gone.
Speaker 1: It was not true. He knew absolutely is happening. It's
Speaker 1: a great political move. And Tad Baker to tell you
Speaker 1: more about that, since he's a biographer of Phipps asked
Speaker 1: him as well. Okay, so Stonton is seeing that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of dissent for the especially execution, right, why
Speaker 1: is he so set on? Stouton is a real hard
Speaker 1: line guy. I mean, that's all we know. We don't
Speaker 1: know a lot about Stoton. Like many other people who
Speaker 1: were involved in the trials, his papers have not survived
Speaker 1: and or his personal papers have not survived. What we
Speaker 1: basically have from Stoughton is some sermons, and recently, by
Speaker 1: the way, some new and sermons of his have been discovered.
Speaker 1: But basically we just don't know much about him. Um,
Speaker 1: he was a bachelor, he never married. Um, he was
Speaker 1: back and forth to England. He was an ordained minister
Speaker 1: as well as a judge, and he was a man
Speaker 1: of considerable standing in Massachusetts Bake Colony. But um, he
Speaker 1: we just don't know a lot about him. He did
Speaker 1: not if he kept personal records, they have not survived,
Speaker 1: So we just don't know. He's he's a mysterious figure
Speaker 1: because he is so hardline. He is so hardline. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know what happened to the papers of the judge
Speaker 1: Wait Winthrop. I'm convinced I do, because wait Winthrop's papers
Speaker 1: were purged. I mean, I don't think wait Winthrop purged them,
Speaker 1: but I think a descendant of his purged them before
Speaker 1: he gave them to the Massachusetts Historical Society. We have
Speaker 1: extensive correspondence from wait Winthrop Um, who was a judge,
Speaker 1: It was a militia officer, was a member of the
Speaker 1: council Um. We have extensive evidence of letters from him
Speaker 1: to his brother fitz John Winthrop in the late sixteen eighties.
Speaker 1: In sixteen ninety one. There are no surviving letters for sixteen.
Speaker 1: There are no surviving letters for sixteen, and there are
Speaker 1: lots of letters for sixteen ninet war, and there are
Speaker 1: there thereafter. And so I know, probably not Winthrop himself,
Speaker 1: but probably the descendant who gave the papers to the
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Historical Society said m I don't want these letters
Speaker 1: to survive, and so he threw them in the fire,
Speaker 1: so we don't have them. It will be lovely to
Speaker 1: know what way threw. Witrop wrote to his brother about
Speaker 1: what it was like to be a judge in the
Speaker 1: witchcraft trials, which is what I was looking for when
Speaker 1: I went to look at the papers, and I didn't
Speaker 1: find them. The only record I ever found from someone
Speaker 1: who was a judge in a witchcraft trial talking about
Speaker 1: his reaction to the to an accuser came from Connecticut,
Speaker 1: not from Massachusetts. Well, and my answer is the Indian
Speaker 1: the Indian War. I mean, it's the with the fears
Speaker 1: of the Indian War, because I think the trigger um
Speaker 1: to making it explode the way it did is the
Speaker 1: confession of Abigail Hobbs. And Abigail Fobbs was from the
Speaker 1: Main Frontier. She was a refugee from the Main Frontier.
Speaker 1: She was a teenager. She was the third person to
Speaker 1: confess to being a witch, after Tichiba and Dorcas Dorothy Good,
Speaker 1: and she um basically said that the devil had recruited
Speaker 1: her in the woods outside her home in Falmouth, Maine,
Speaker 1: four years earlier. And she's the one who made the
Speaker 1: connection to the Main Frontier. She's the one who made
Speaker 1: the connection to the witches. And as I show in
Speaker 1: my book, the number of accusations just absolutely exploded after
Speaker 1: Abigail Hobbs's confession. So I think that's what made the difference,
Speaker 1: and that's what convinced me that the Indian War was
Speaker 1: the crucial thing. Because she was the one who introduced
Speaker 1: the Indian War into the narrative, and then everything blew up.
Speaker 1: There have been so many explanations over the years about
Speaker 1: how and white these illness, these afflictions could. Today people
Speaker 1: tend to want medical explanations for the kinds of afflictions
Speaker 1: that we see. Therefore, some people have said epileptic fits.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that there's any epilepsy involved here. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people have said ergot poisoning. Well, ergot poisoning is
Speaker 1: maybe possible, but not as possible as people think. And
Speaker 1: even if it was, it doesn't explain anything of significance
Speaker 1: because what is significant is not the fact that people
Speaker 1: had hallucinations. It's what they saw in those hallucinations and
Speaker 1: how they described what was happening to them. That is
Speaker 1: that they were being attacked by the specters of witches.
Speaker 1: And you can have a hallucination without having that kind
Speaker 1: of a vision. So I don't see or good. Even
Speaker 1: if it's possible, um, which I don't, which I think
Speaker 1: is very unlikely, is a real explain nation. Um. The
Speaker 1: I researched for my book cases in England and America
Speaker 1: before sixto, in which young children began to have what
Speaker 1: were described as fits that were then attributed to witchcraft.
Speaker 1: And I discovered that it was a not unusual pattern.
Speaker 1: It was it wasn't as though it was common, but
Speaker 1: it was known. It was a known pattern, and it
Speaker 1: was a pattern when um children were in intensely, intensely
Speaker 1: religious households, as indeed they were in the household of
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris. So it does seem to be a kind
Speaker 1: of a conversion um experience UM after over you know event.
Speaker 1: And indeed, in the eighteenth century, during the Great Awakening,
Speaker 1: these kinds of quote fits were interpreted as conversion ext experiences.
Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century they were can they were they
Speaker 1: were um interpreted as hysterical fits on the part of women.
Speaker 1: In the twentieth century and the twenty one century they're
Speaker 1: they're um interpreted as medical things, as things that have
Speaker 1: to do with medicine. I mean, these behaviors are known.
Speaker 1: They just have different interpretations at different times. And in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century they were the interpretation was witchcraft. UM.
Speaker 1: It's not as though these are these are totally unknown
Speaker 1: um events, totally unknown reactions of young women, mostly to
Speaker 1: different circumstances. So I I think that's what was going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, why, as I said, I think that the
Speaker 1: that the the a lot of the basis of the
Speaker 1: main refugees accusations can be attributed to pts d Um.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that a couple, at least one
Speaker 1: of the accusers in Salem Village is faking it. And
Speaker 1: that's Sarah vibber Um, the thirtysomething housewife. We could call
Speaker 1: her the goody vibber who if you look at her,
Speaker 1: everything she says is sort of me too. She never
Speaker 1: is the initial accuser of anybody, but when somebody comes
Speaker 1: forward with an accusation, she'll say, oh, yeah, that happened
Speaker 1: to me too, that happened to me also, And then
Speaker 1: she is regarded as a crucial witness by the judges
Speaker 1: because she is older. Um, we just don't We don't
Speaker 1: know enough about her background. Um. It would be wonderful
Speaker 1: if we could know more about her. We know that
Speaker 1: she's married to her second husband, but we don't know
Speaker 1: who her first husband was, and we don't know who
Speaker 1: her husband's first wife was. It's just really really hard
Speaker 1: to find out about her. So, but she seems to
Speaker 1: me to be someone who whose testimony is dubious even
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century. Think about today in this country,
Speaker 1: right now, in the world, right now, we aren't different,
Speaker 1: but we had the same fears, we had the same anxiety, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean right now. I mean, well, if you look
Speaker 1: in the fifties, there's a fear of communists. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what Arthur Miller built the Crucible around, that kind
Speaker 1: of fear that developed the UM McCarthyite UM atmosphere that
Speaker 1: he was writing about UM and making the analogy. Today, UM,
Speaker 1: we see a lot of UM comments about fears of UM, Muslims,
Speaker 1: Sharia law, and so forth, even though there's no actual
Speaker 1: evidence that anyone is ever trying to impose Sharia law
Speaker 1: in the United States. There's UM, a lot of UM.
Speaker 1: There are some people out there who believe it, or
Speaker 1: who least say they believe it. So it's not as
Speaker 1: though UM, especially in the wake of nine eleven, that
Speaker 1: we are free from fears of the mysterious unknown. And
Speaker 1: in the and in the I would say, in the
Speaker 1: eighties there was the fear of There was the fear
Speaker 1: of the Satanic rituals in child child care facilities, which
Speaker 1: in retrospects seems really weird and strange, but led to
Speaker 1: the arrest and conviction of a number of people. So uh,
Speaker 1: and that's been written about in the context of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: So um scholarship about witchcraft. John Demos did that. So
Speaker 1: what don't ask you enough about? Oh, dear, I would
Speaker 1: say that what people don't ask me enough about is
Speaker 1: actually a topic we've talked to fair amount about, which
Speaker 1: is about the power structure and about the role of
Speaker 1: the judges and the guilt of the judges. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you people today tend when they think about sale
Speaker 1: and witchcraft and they think about who's responsible, they blame
Speaker 1: the young accusers, especially the young quote hysterical female accusers.
Speaker 1: I don't blame them. I blame the judges who should
Speaker 1: have been, by modern parlance, the adults in the room.
Speaker 1: They should have stopped it, and they could have stopped it.
Speaker 1: And in Connecticut in the early sixteen sixties, the then
Speaker 1: governor John Winthrop Jr. Did stop it when there was
Speaker 1: a movement towards a potential witchcraft crisis where there were
Speaker 1: ten or twelve accusations and there was the possibility of more.
Speaker 1: And he basically he was a scientifically minded guy, and
Speaker 1: he basically put a stop to it. So the judges
Speaker 1: could have put a stop to this, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things I wanted to do
Speaker 1: with my book was to play the blame where I
Speaker 1: think it belonged, because it doesn't belong with the quote
Speaker 1: hysterical girls, which is the way it's usually presented in
Speaker 1: popular culture, because it didn't have to go the way
Speaker 1: it went. It didn't have to happen, and the the
Speaker 1: man who could have stopped it didn't because it was
Speaker 1: to their benefit not to stop it. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: that's I would say what people don't know enough about. Um.
Speaker 1: The myth that it was the responsibility of the girls
Speaker 1: really starts right after, right in the wake of the
Speaker 1: Witchcraft crisis, right in the very first critiques. People who
Speaker 1: are criticizing the Witchcraft trials do not criticize the judges.
Speaker 1: They explicitly don't criticize the judges. Increase Mather does not
Speaker 1: criticize the judges. The other critics, early critics of the
Speaker 1: trials do not criticize the judges. They criticize the accusers.
Speaker 1: And so in sort of in American mythology, it's the
Speaker 1: US quote hysterical females who are responsible. But that's not right.
Speaker 1: It's the judges who are responsible. This episode of Unobscured
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me mav Frederick and Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: with music by Chad Lawson and audio engineering by Alex Williams.
Speaker 1: The Unobscured website has everything you need to get the
Speaker 1: most out of the podcast. There's a resource library of maps, charts,
Speaker 1: and links to Salem document archives online, as well as
Speaker 1: a suggested reading list and a page with all of
Speaker 1: our historian biographies. And as always, thanks for supporting this show.
Speaker 1: If you love it, head over to Apple podcasts dot
Speaker 1: com slash Unobscured and leave a written review and a
Speaker 1: star rating. It makes a huge difference for the show's growth,
Speaker 1: and as always, thanks for listening.