01 October 2023
“Mary Warin upon her oath yt she hath taken affirms to ye Jury of Inqwest that Ann Puddeator hath often afflicted me by biting me, pinching me, sticking pins in me and choaking me…”.[1] This claim was echoed throughout Salem Massachusetts and the entirety of Early Colonial America as the fervor of witch hunts raged in the 17th Century. Those accused of these acts were not actually there in person pinching, biting or choking their accusers, however. These were said to be “Apperishtion”[2], or spirits, or ghostly forms who were causing this damage. The passage of time and evolution of culture has allowed for casting a backwards glance at this period and seeing only evil in those who would persecute and testify against those accused. The profession of History, however, requires the view of the time to come through the lens of the time in order to gain an accurate understanding of occurrences. This will allow for the recognition that those accused of this witchcraft in Early Colonial America were guilty of little aside from being either poor, outcast, or political targets when these things were counter to the ideals of the Puritan church and its parishioners who were plagued with old world superstitions.
No human being is born with prejudices against another person or race. Prejudices are always a product of the environment one is raised in. The fear of witchcraft and those who may have been practicing it was not a fear that early Colonial Americans woke up one day and decided to adopt, it was one they carried with them from the old world. Before the first English settlement was established in the New World, witchcraft, and those thought to practice it, were persecuted, prosecuted, and killed in the Old World. Law placed into effect by Henry VIII in 1542 explicitly placed witchcraft in the name of the statute against it.[3] From this early time, witchcraft prejudice, or what was believed to be the practice of witchcraft, had its place in English Law. While this initial law was modified over the course of the next hundred years to bring it more in line with Continental Europe’s views on witchcraft, this would set the standard to which early Colonial Americas witchcraft laws were established.[4] One such law in Massachusetts under “Capital Laws” dated 1672 states “If any Man or Woman be a Witch, that is, Hath or Consulteth with a familiar Spirit they shall be put to death”.[5] This law echoed many found in Colonial America at this time and assists with the conclusion that early colonial settlers brought their prejudices against witchcraft with them to the New World.
Establishment in law was not the only prejudice that the colonists brought with them from the Old World. Prejudice against a certain sex also traveled across the Atlantic. While witchcraft accusations targeted both men and women, and the law from Massachusetts at the time reflect equal treatment under that law, it was predominantly women who were accused of witchcraft. One dominant ideal that followed from the Old World to the new pertaining to women and witchcraft was that of women who gave birth to malformed babies, either stillborn or living, were suspect. This made them suspicious in the minds of their community members as did if the woman was solitary and of lower class.[6] Also, a simple misunderstanding of womanhood by religious powers, who were almost entirely male, could have also played a role in women being persecuted at a higher rate then men as some things that a woman went through were just not understood.
Sometimes, however, men and women were lumped together in their being accused of witchcraft. Throughout the 17th Century married couples were accused of witchcraft at a surprising rate. Being accused of witchcraft in the mid-17th Century likely revolved around a couple having fewer children than was expected by the community and thus making the couple suspect during a time when early colonial communities were trying to bolster their populations.[7] However, in the late 17th century, during the Salem Witch Trials, the couples accused appear to have been on par with the birth rate expected of the community or the communities were thriving to a point where child rearing and adding to the population were not as important factors.[8] This suggests that towards the end of the century colonial mentality had shifted from the ability to bear children and add to the working populace to the caring for the community that was there and maintaining religious integrity in a time when it was felt that morality was in decline.[9]
As laws and gender roles and misunderstandings followed the early colonial settlers across the Atlantic from the Old World, so too did religious practices, with some being far more stringent as the colonials attempted to make a Godlier society for themselves. The Christian religion in England was in a state of disarray in the 16th Century as the English Reformation ripped through the island beginning with Henry VIII and eventually stabilizing, somewhat, with James I. James I would leave his own mark on what would become the witch trials with his own witch trials while he was James VI of Scottland before uniting the crowns in 1603. By the time the Puritans were getting their colonies established, religious persecution in England had returned. The focus of these colonies, however, was separate from the Church of England in that it saw the Bible as the “soul source of moral truth.”[10]
In 17th Century New England religion held power over every aspect of colonial life. The covenant that bound an individual to the laws of God was utilized to create the covenant that bound the individual to the laws of the society, thus merging religion and law.[11] As is seen throughout history, humanity is fallible and often becomes even more so when given any sort of power. Church officials in the 17th Century were given great power as the leaders of the church and communities alike. There was no delineation like there would become in the early 18th Century. The case of Anne Hutchinson in the 1630s is a great example of the church and civil leadership, one and the same at the time, being not only threatened, but threatened by a female and showing their fallibility. For the crimes of preaching to her own congregation in her home and questioning the powers that be, Hutchinson was banished from the community.[12] This instance shows the power that religious affairs, and religious leaders, had over aspects of everyday life in early Colonial America along with what happened to those who chose to challenge that power.
Race also played a role in the witchcraft fervor of early Colonial America, though not in the way that most would probably suspect. While blacks at the time sat on the bottom rung of society, one could easily assume that they would be executed if they were to be accused of witchcraft. This was false, however. While some blacks were accused of witchcraft, fewer were actually sentenced to die because of it, even though some gave confessions.[13] While blacks made up a very small portion of the early colonial population, accusations of witchcraft were still made against them for a variety of reasons including their own cultural and religious observances along with simply the color of their skin.[14] It is indeed possible that the unwillingness to kill blacks who were accused of practicing witchcraft is because colonial whites were inherently afraid of their power even after their deaths.[15] This is reflected in white colonials burning the bodies of blacks who were killed for any reason as opposed to burying them, the belief that there was still power in the corpse’s shows white’s belief in the magical powers of blacks.[16]
The impact that blacks had on the persecution of early colonial American witchcraft fervor is important to note and dissect. As these individuals were taken from their homes and culture and thrust into a Puritan society, it is easy to conclude that whites saw their practices as dark and unholy. One must also understand that some of these individuals were actually practicing witchcraft based off of their cultures. This true witchcraft was seen as far more powerful than the witchcraft that whites were accused of as it was an accurate portrayal of black culture whether they came from the Caribbean or Africa. The importance of this information is that it shows that there was indeed an understanding of different kinds of witchcraft and that the witchcraft practiced by blacks was not the same as the witchcraft that whites were often accused of. The understanding of the power of black witchcraft practiced by those of other cultures was more frightening than the witchcraft political and religious leaders were putting whites to death for, explaining the lower number of blacks killed after being accused of witchcraft.
While witch trials took place all across Colonial America, the Salem witch Trials are the best known due to records of the trials themselves. Cotton Mather is seen as a polarizing character at this time who is often remembered as a blood thirsty witch burner who stood to gain great power and influence during the trials. While he did gain power and influence it is worth noting that even he recognized that care must be taken to ensure that innocents are not being put to death when he stated “Be careful. Carry the knife with such exactness, that on one side no innocent blood be shed by too excessive zeal, and, on the other, no shelter be given to any work of darkness.”[17] As stated in the introduction of this paper, it is easy to see Mather as an evil doer pushing the witch trials for power and this quote suggests that he understood the need to not condemn the innocent while at the same time pushing to condemn the guilty of something that there was no way to be guilty of.
Salem was not the only early colony where witchcraft and with trials were an issue. One such colony was that of Virginia. Virginian’s fears of witchcraft stemmed from the earlies arrivals of those who came to Jamestown and were largely influenced by the English King of the time, James I, who had written books on witchcraft and penned laws against it.[18] When establishing society in Virginia, these early Colonials were also introduced to Native Americans whose own culture added to the lore of dark magic being inherent in the New World. The practices of these natives and their dedication to spirits and not a God led the colonists do see them as objects of the devil.[19] These preconceived prejudices brought across the Atlantic along with witnessing a culture never before experienced added to the fuel that would ignite the Virginia Witchcraft crisis.
As more people moved into the colony, witchcraft hysteria began to grow until a point when no one was safe from accuse. Men, women, children, and even animals would face accusations of practicing witchcraft.[20] Throughout these trials, however, no person was put to death in the Colony of Virginia for the practice of witchcraft. The closest accused was Katherine Grady who was accused as a great storm tormented the ship that she was being brought across the Atlantic on. She appears to only be the unlucky recipient of the crews search for a cause of the storm with what appears to be no evidence of any sort of witchcraft practice. She was hung off the coast of Virginia.[21]
Like Virginia, Connecticut also had its share of witch fervor and trials. Connecticut executed eleven out of the 34 people tried for witchcraft in the colony giving them a 1:3 ratio and earning them the moniker of the most lethal of the witch hunters.[22] Witch trials and hunts ran rampant in Connecticut in the early to mid-17th century until the Governor John Winthrop Jr. settled them down as he did not believe that everything unexplainable was necessarily the work of evil spirits or the devil.[23] This was an important point in the history of witch trials in Connecticut as it began a phase of asking if there could be other explanations for the occurrences being blamed on witchcraft.
In early colonial Connecticut one can understand that it would be possible to confuse being bewitched by the devil with any number of mental illnesses. Sigmund Freud even reiterated this belief when debunking witchcraft as just that, a confusion with mental illness.[24] It is also possible, however, that early colonials in Connecticut understood the differentiation between the mentally ill and those practicing witchcraft. This can be proven by the colonies provision for the care of a mentally ill person in New Haven.[25] The ability to discern between mental illness and witchcraft is an important distinction in this argument. While the colonials of Connecticut may have begun to understand that there could be more to strange occurrences than witchcraft, they were also able to tell the difference between an insane person and one they perceived to be bewitched by the devil.
Connecticut colonials may have been discovering that natural illnesses could be the reason behind seemingly unexplainable occurrences being blamed on witchcraft. In one case in Connecticut a girl was being tormented by what appear to be hallucinations, a local healer then recommended burning a feather under her nose as the afflictions could be caused by natural sickness.[26] This natural illness was simply hysteria and the healer was attempting to calm the hysteria with a well known remedy at the time, burning a feather under the victim’s nose.[27] This relatively simple remedy to an affliction like hysteria is another example of colonials in Connecticut understanding that witchcraft was not the only explanation for the seemingly unexplainable.
While the witch trials and executions in early colonial America were horrendous as they put to death people obviously, now, innocent of that which they were being accused, these trials, especially the Salem trials, brought around the slow quieting of witch hysteria in North America which may not have happened if these trials had not so publicly taken place and required colonial leadership to truly look at how they were being conducted. The witch hysteria that swept through Massachusetts had a lasting impact as those accused were not the lowborn, poor, loner prototype that had typically been tossed on to the pyre historically. Those in Salem accused came from every walk of life and included religious churchgoers themselves. In the aftermath of the Salem trials great work was done within the colony to make especially sure that more stringent practices were put in place on identifying and trying suspected witches.[28] The spotlight placed on Salem after the trials brought about substantial amounts of ridicule on how the trials were tried and how the accusations were even taken seriously to begin with.[29] It appears that most from the outside of the hysteria within Salem, viewed it with a reserved lens that bordered on ridiculous.
Not all in the aftermath shared in the belief that the trials and accusations were conducted poorly. Samuel Gardner Drake in his work Annals of Witchcraft in New England, and Elsewhere in the United States, From Their First Settlement: Drawn Up From Unpublished and Other Well Authenticated Records of the Alleged Operations of Witches and Their Instigator, the Devil, does not necessarily rebuke the officials and people of Salem for what happened during the witch trials, but instead relates it to what has been discussed earlier in this paper, that they were only a product of their times.[30] This is a hard stance to understand, however, as other areas of Puritan New England had begun to understand that unexplained occurrences may have other explanations that witchcraft as was showcased in Connecticut.
Worse than accepting that the Salem tragedy was a product of its time was the apparent blame placed on the devil instead of on the people themselves who perpetuated it. On August 1, 1692, Ministers of the Cambridge Association came together to discuss “Whether ye divels may not sometimes have a permission to represent an innocent person as tormenting such as are under diabolical molestations”.[31] This places the entirety of the blame for the outrageous accusations and the executions that followed the convictions on the devil. Special not must also be made to the number of writings that came out during the time of the Salem Witch Trials from Cotton Mathers and Increase Mathers respectively, the vast majority of which was in defense of how the trials were handled and heaped praise on the magistrates who conducted them.[32] No such great defense need be conducted for righteous acts.
In the end the witch trials in early colonial America left their mark on the history of the soon to be country, Christianity, and the colonial judicial system when it came to witchcraft. There was no diabolical witchcraft taking place that harmed anyone. There was, however, substantial hysteria surrounding witchcraft that killed many and harmed the lives and reputations of even more. Actual guilt of any wrongdoing was set aside for perceived guilt of perceived witchcraft. While some were pronounced guilty due to confessions, it must be questioned as to how these confessions were obtained as that would relate much of the truth behind their accuracy. While the majority of those accused of witchcraft in early colonial America were poor or outcast, the Salem trials targeted political opponents as well along with whomever the accusers seemed to have an agenda against. Not because these individuals were guilty of any such witchcraft. While history must be studied through the lens of the time to truly understand the actions of the people, this targeted study does not require the historian to sacrifice the concepts of morality and justice.
Notes:
[1] W. Elliot Woodward, “Mary Warren v. Ann Pudeator” in Records of Salem Witchcraft: Copied from the Original Documents (Roxbury, Mass, 1864) 18.
[2] Woodward “Mary Warren v. Ann Pudeator” 18.
[3] Alaina R. Franklin, “Dangerous Expectations: Uncovering what Triggered the Hunt for Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England” (Colorado State University, 2022) 10.
[4] Franklin “Dangerous Expectations: Uncovering what Triggered the Hunt for Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England” 11.
[5] Ano and Massachusetts, The General Laws of the Massachusetts Colony 1672, 14.
[6] Franklin, “Dangerous Expectations: Uncovering what Triggered the Hunt for Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England”, 16.
[7] Paul Moyer, “Diabolical Duos: Witch Spouses in Early New England” (2022) 373.
[8] Moyer, “Diabolical Duos: Witch Spouses in Early New England”, 374.
[9] Moyer, “Diabolical Duos: Witch Spouses in Early New England”, 375.
[10] Franklin, “Dangerous Expectations: Uncovering what Triggered the Hunt for Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England”, 20.
[11] Ernest King and Franklin G. Mixon, “Religiosity and the Political Economy of the Salem Witch Trials” (Fort Collins, 2010) 2-3.
[12] Ernest King and Franklin G. Mixon, “Religiosity and the Political Economy of the Salem Witch Trials” (Fort Collins, 2010) 3.
[13] Timothy J. McMillan, “Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England.” (1995) 1.
[14] Timothy J. McMillan, “Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England.” (1995) 1.
[15] Timothy J. McMillan, “Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England.” (1995) 8.
[16] Timothy J. McMillan, “Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England.” (1995) 10.
[17] Cotton Mather in William Pool’s The Mather Papers: Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft, (Boston 1868) 22.
[18] Carson O. Hudson Jr, Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia, (Chicago, 2019) 69.
[19] Carson O. Hudson Jr, Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia, (Chicago, 2019) 70-71.
[20] Carson O. Hudson Jr, Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia, (Chicago, 2019) 72.
[21] Carson O. Hudson Jr, Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia, (Chicago, 2019) 80.
[22] Cynthia Wolfe Boynton, Connecticut Witch Trials: The First Panic in the New World, (Charlston, SC 2014) 34.
[23] [23] Cynthia Wolfe Boynton, Connecticut Witch Trials: The First Panic in the New World, (Charlston, SC 2014) 41.
[24] Lawrence B. Goodheart, “The Distinction Between Witchcraft and Madness in Colonial Connecticut”, (2002) 1.
[25] Lawrence B. Goodheart, “The Distinction Between Witchcraft and Madness in Colonial Connecticut”, (2002) 2-3.
[26] Joeseph Pantegelo, “Burning Feathers: A Hint at Hysteria in a Connecticut Witchcraft Case.” (London, 2021) 2.
[27] Joeseph Pantegelo, “Burning Feathers: A Hint at Hysteria in a Connecticut Witchcraft Case.” (London, 2021) 3.
[28] Marc Callis, “The Aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials in Colonial America (2005) 4.
[29] Marc Callis, “The Aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials in Colonial America (2005) 7.
[30] Samuel Gardner Drake, Annals of Witchcraft in New England, and Elsewhere in the United States, From Their First Settlement: Drawn Up From Unpublished and Other Well Authenticated Records of the Alleged Operations of Witches and Their Instigator, the Devil, (1869) 8.
[31] Clive Holmes, “The Opinion of the Cambridge Association, 1 August 1692: A Neglected Text of the Salem Witch Trials” (2016) 644.
[32] Holmes, “The Opinion of the Cambridge Association, 1 August 1692: A Neglected Text of the Salem Witch Trials” (2016) 665.
Bibliography:
Anon and Massachusetts. The General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony 1672.
Boynton, Cynthia Wolfe. Connecticut Witch Trials: The First Panic in the New World. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014.
Callis, Marc. “The Aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials in Colonial America.” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 33, no. 2 (2005): 187.
Drake, Samuel Gardner. Annals of Witchcraft in New England, and Elsewhere in the United States, From Their First Settlement: Drawn Up From Unpublished and Other Well Authenticated Records of the Alleged Operations of Witches and Their Instigator, the Devil. Vol. no. 8. Boston: W. E. Woodward, 1869.
Franklin, Alaina R. “Dangerous Expectations: Uncovering what Triggered the Hunt for Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England.” Order No. 29062768, Colorado State University, 2022. In PROQUESTMS ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/dangerous-expectations-uncovering-what-triggered/docview/2674363034/se-2.
Goodheart, Lawrence B. “The Distinction Between Witchcraft and Madness in Colonial Connecticut.” History of Psychiatry 13, no. 52 (2002): 433-444.
Holmes, Clive. “The Opinion of the Cambridge Association, 1 August 1692: A Neglected Text of the Salem Witch Trials.” The New England Quarterly 89, no. 4 (2016): 643-667.
Jr., Carson O. Hudson. Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing Inc, 2019.
King, Ernest W. and Franklin G. Mixon. “Religiosity and the Political Economy of the Salem Witch Trials.” The Social Science Journal (Fort Collins) 47, no. 3 (2010): 678-688
McMillan, Timothy J. “Black Magic: Witchcraft, Race, and Resistance in Colonial New England.” Journal of Black Studies 25, no. 1 (1994): 99-117.
Moyer, Paul B. “Diabolical Duos: Witch Spouses in Early New England.” Early American Studies 20, no. 3 (2022): 371-406.
Pentangelo, Joseph. “Burning Feathers: A Hint at Hysteria in a Connecticut Witchcraft Case.” Folklore (London) 132, no. 1 (2021): 59-71.
Poole, William. The Mather Papers: Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft. Boston: n,p, 1868.
Woodward, W. Elliot. Records of Salem Witchcraft: Copied from the Original Documents. Vol. LAC 21940.;no. I-II.;no. I-II;. Roxbury, Mass: Privately printed for W.E. Woodward, 1864.
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