Читать книгу Woman's Life in Colonial Days - Carl Holliday - Страница 15

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It was at staid Boston that Anne Hutchinson marshalled her forces; it was at peace-loving Salem that the Devil marshalled his witches in a last despairing onslaught against the saints. To many readers there may seem to be little or no connection between witchcraft and religion; but an examination of the facts leading to the execution of the various martyrs to superstition at Salem will convince the skeptical that there was a most intimate relationship between the Puritan creed and the theory of witchcraft.

Looking back after the passing of more than two hundred years, we cannot but deem it strange that such an enlightened, educated and thoroughly intelligent folk as the Puritans could have believed in the possession of this malignant power. Especially does it appear incredible when we remember that here was a people that came to this country for the exercise of religious freedom, a citizenship that was descended from men trained in the universities of England, a stalwart band that under extreme privation had founded a college within sixteen years after the settlement of a wilderness. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Massachusetts colonies were not alone in this belief in witchcraft. It was common throughout the world, and was as aged as humanity. Deprived of the aid of modern science in explaining peculiar processes and happenings, man had long been accustomed to fall back upon devils, witches, and evil spirits as premises for his arguments. While the execution of the witch was not so common an event elsewhere in the world, during the Salem period, yet it was not unknown among so-called enlightened people. As late as 1712 a woman was burned near London for witchcraft, and several city clergymen were among the prosecutors.

A few extracts from colonial writings should make clear the attitude of the Puritan leaders toward these unfortunates accused of being in league with the devil. Winthrop thus records a case in 1648: "At the court one Margaret Jones of Charlestown was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was, that she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, (men, women, and children), whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure, etc., were taken with deafness … or other violent pains or sickness. … Some things which she foretold came to pass. … Her behaviour at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour, she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc."[19]

Whether in North or in South, whether among Protestants or Catholics, this belief in witchcraft existed. In one of the annual letters of the "English Province of the Society of Jesus," written in 1656, we find the following comment concerning the belief among emigrants to Maryland: "The tempest lasted two months in all, whence the opinion arose, that it was not raised by the violence of the sea or atmosphere, but was occasioned by the malevolence of witches. Forthwith they seize a little old woman suspected of sorcery; and after examining her with the strictest scrutiny, guilty or not guilty, they slay her, suspected of this very heinous sin. The corpse, and whatever belonged to her, they cast into the sea. But the winds did not thus remit their violence, or the raging sea its threatenings. … "[20]

Even in Virginia, where less rigid religious authority existed, it was not uncommon to hear accusations of sorcery and witchcraft. The form of hysteria at length reached at Salem was the result of no sudden burst of terror, but of a long evolution of ideas dealing with the power of Satan. As early as 1638 Josselyn, a traveler in New England, wrote in New England's Rareties Discovered: "There are none that beg in the country, but there be witches too many … that produce many strange apparitions if you will believe report, of a shallop at sea manned with women; of a ship and a great red horse standing by the main-mast, the ship being in a small cove to the eastward vanished of a sudden. Of a witch that appeared aboard of a ship twenty leagues to sea to a mariner who took up the carpenter's broad axe and cleft her head with it, the witch dying of the wound at home."

The religion of Salem and Boston was well fitted for developing this very theory of malignant power in "possessed" persons. The teachings that there was a personal devil, that God allowed him to tempt mankind, that there were myriads of devils under Satan's control at all times, ever watchful to entrap the unwary, that these devils were rulers over certain territory and certain types of people—these teachings naturally led to the assumption that the imps chose certain persons as their very own. Moreover, the constant reminders of the danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea that Satan was at all times seeking to undermine the Puritan church also made it easy to believe that anyone living outside of, or contrary to, that church was an agent of the devil, in short, bewitched. As it is only the useful that survives, it was essential that the army of devils be given a work to do, and this work was evident in the spirit of those who dared to act and think in non-conformity to the rule of the church. The devil's ways, too, were beyond the comprehension of man, cunning, smooth, sly; the most godly might fall a victim, with the terrible consequence that one might become bewitched and know it not. At this stage it was the bounden duty of the unfortunate being's church brethren to help him by inducing him to confess the indwelling of an evil spirit and thus free himself from the great impostor. And if he did not confess then it were better that he be killed, lest the devil through him contaminate all. Why, says Mather, in his Wonders of the Invisible World: "If the devils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so fine a composition and operation, that scores of innocent people shall unite in confessions of a crime which we see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the wonders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of dissolution upon the world."

To avoid or counteract this desolation was the purpose of the legal proceedings at Salem. It was believed by fairly intelligent people that Satan carried with him a black book in which he induced his victims to write their names with their own blood, signifying thereby that they had given their souls into his keeping, and were henceforth his liegemen. The rendezvous of these lost and damned was deep in the forest; the time of meeting, midnight. In such a place and at such an hour the assembly of witches and wizards plotted against the saints of God, namely, the Puritans. According to Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, at the trial of one of these martyrs to superstition, George Burroughs, he was accused by eight of the confessing witches "as being the head actor at some of their hellish rendezvouzes, and one who had the promise of being a king in Satan's kingdom, now going to be erected. One of them falling into a kind of trance affirmed that G.B. had carried her away into a very high mountain, where he shewed her mighty and glorious kingdoms, and said, 'he would give them all to her, if she would write in his book.'"

In such an era, of course, the attempt was too often made to explain events, not in the light of common reason but as visitations of God to try the faith of the folk, or as devices of Satan to tempt them from the narrow Path. Such an affliction as "nerves" was not readily acknowledged, and anyone subject to fits or nervous disorders, or any child irritable or tempestuous might easily be the victim of witchcraft. Note what Increase Mather has to say on the matter when explaining the case of the children of John Goodwin of Boston: " … In the day time they were handled with so many sorts of Ails, that it would require of us almost as much time to Relate them all, as it did of them to Endure them. Sometimes they would be Deaf, sometimes Dumb, and sometimes Blind, and often, all this at once. … Their necks would be broken, so that their Neck-bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it; and yet on the sudden, it would become again so stiff that there was no stirring of their Heads. … "[21]

As we have noted in previous pages, the morbidness and super-sensitive spiritual condition of the colonists brought on by the peculiar social environment had for many years prepared the way for just such a tragic attitude toward physical and mental ailments. The usual safety vents of modern society, the common functions we may class as general "good times," were denied the soul, and it turned back to feed upon itself. The following hint by Sewall, written a few years before the witchcraft craze, is significant: "Thorsday, Novr. 12. After the Ministers of this Town Come to the Court and complain against a Dancing Master, who seeks to set up here, and hath mixt Dances, and his time of Meeting is Lecture-Day; and 'tis reported he should say that by one Play he could teach more Divinity than Mr. Willard or the Old Testament. Mr. Moodey said 'twas not a time for N.E. to dance. Mr. Mather struck at the Root, speaking against mixt Dances."[22] And again in the records by another colonist, Prince, we note: "1631. March 22. First Court at Boston. Ordered That all who have cards, dice, or 'tables' in their houses shall make way with them before the next court."[23]

But the lack of social safety valves seemingly did not suggest itself to the Puritan fathers; not the causes, but the religious effect of the matter was what those stern churchmen sought to destroy. Says Cotton Mather: "So horrid and hellish is the Crime of Witchcraft, that were Gods Thoughts as our thoughts, or Gods Wayes as our wayes, it could be no other, but Unpardonable. But that Grace of God may be admired, and that the worst of Sinners may be encouraged, Behold, Witchcraft also has found a Pardon. … From the Hell of Witchcraft our merciful Jesus can fetch a guilty Creature to the Glory of Heaven. Our Lord hath sometimes Recovered those who have in the most horrid manner given themselves away to the Destroyer of their souls."[24]

Where did this mania, this riot of superstition and fanaticism that resulted in so much sorrow and so many deaths have its beginning and origin? Coffin in his Old Times in the Colonies has summed up the matters briefly and vividly: "The saddest story in the history of our country is that of the witch craze at Salem, Mass. brought about by a negro woman and a company of girls. The negress, Tituba, was a slave, whom Rev. Samuel Parris, one of the ministers of Salem, had purchased in Barbadoes. We may think of Tituba as seated in the old kitchen of Mr. Parris's house during the long winter evenings, telling witchcraft stories to the minister's niece, Elizabeth, nine years old. She draws a circle in the ashes on the hearth, burns a lock of hair, and mutters gibberish. They are incantations to call up the devil and his imps. The girls of the village gather in the old kitchen to hear Tituba's stories, and to mutter words that have no meaning. The girls are Abigail Williams, who is eleven; Anne Putnam, twelve; Mary Walcot; and Mary Lewis, seventeen; Elizabeth Hubbard, Elizabeth Booth, and Susannah Sheldon, eighteen; and two servant girls, Mary Warren, and Sarah Churchill. Tituba taught them to bark like dogs, mew like cats, grunt like hogs, to creep through chairs and under tables on their hands and feet, and pretend to have spasms. … Mr. Parris had read the books and pamphlets published in England … and he came to the conclusion that they were bewitched. He sent for Doctor Griggs who said that the girls were not sick, and without doubt were bewitched. … The town was on fire. Who bewitches you? they were asked. Sarah Good, Sarah Osbum, and Tituba, said the girls. Sarah Good was a poor, old woman, who begged her bread from door to door. Sarah Osburn was old, wrinkled, and sickly."[25]

The news of the peculiar actions of the girls spread throughout the settlement; people flocked to see their antics. By this time the children had carried the "fun" so far that they dared not confess, lest the punishment be terrific, and, therefore, to escape the consequences, they accused various old women of bewitching them. Undoubtedly the little ones had no idea that the delusion would seize so firmly upon the superstitious nature of the people; but the settlers, especially the clergymen and the doctors, took the matter seriously and brought the accused to trial. The craze spread; neighbor accused neighbor; enemies apparently tried to pay old scores by the same method; and those who did not confess were put to death. It is a fact worth noting that the large majority of the witnesses and the greater number of the victims were women. The men who conducted the trials and passed the verdict of "guilty" cannot, of course, stand blameless; but it was the long pent-up but now abnormally awakened imagination of the women that wrought havoc through their testimony to incredible things and their descriptions of unbelievable actions. No doubt many a personal grievance, petty jealousy, ancient spite, and neighborhood quarrel entered into the conflict; but the results were out of all proportion to such causes, and remain to-day among the blackest and most sorrowful records on the pages of American history.