In the Devil's Snare (42 page)

Thomas Hutchinson,
The History of Massachusetts from the First Settlement
Thereof in 1628, until the Year 1750,
3d ed. (Boston, 1795), 2:29. Hutchinson generally relied on John Hale for this part of his narrative, but Hale offered no information about Tituba’s background. Indian allies of the English in South Carolina raided Spanish Catholic missions and settlements along the coast of modern Georgia and Florida, capturing and enslaving their Indian residents, then shipping them northward for sale. My thanks to Ann Plane for helpful conversations about “Spanish Indians” and to Alan Gallay for information on the Carolina Indian slave trade. My colleague Maria Cristina Garcia has pointed out to me that a mistress of Spanish origin would have been unlikely to engage in occult practices of any sort, but a well-to-do mestiza (more likely to have been found in such a marginal area as Florida or Georgia) might well have done so. Origins in “New Spain” could also mean that Breslaw’s theory (n. 21, above) is correct. If Tituba was a Spanish Indian, the sort of witchcraft she would have been familiar with is described in Ruth Behar, “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexican Inquisition,” in Asunción Lavrin, ed.,
Sexuality and
Marriage in Colonial Latin America
(Lincoln, Neb., 1989), 178–206. (I owe this reference to Maria Lepowsky.)

See
SWP
3:745, 756; 2:361, for the quoted descriptive phrases. By my tabulation of references in the documents, she is “Tituba Indian” or “the Indian” sixteen times and “Tituba” (or variant spellings) sixteen times. Children much younger than Betty and Abigail knew about the war. For example, in August 1691 Samuel Sewall noted in his diary that his son Joseph, then 3, said before going to bed one night, “News from Heaven, the French were come, and mention’d Canada.” See M. Halsey Thomas, ed.,
The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674–1729
(New York, 1973), 1:281.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
414. Betty Parris, the youngest afflicted girl, never testified in any court, although her name appeared on the first complaint. On the “age of credibility,” see Holly Brewer, “Age of Reason? Children, Testimony, and Consent in Early America,” in Christopher Tomlins and Bruce Mann, eds., The Many Legalities of Early America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 295–316. My thanks to Holly Brewer for allowing me to consult her then-unpublished paper, and for useful conversations on this point. In this context, it is important to note that neither Ann Putnam Jr.’s nor Abigail Williams’s age was
ever
indicated on any of the many (surviving) depositions they offered during the 1692 legal proceedings, even though most depositions contained such information. The absence suggests a certain disquiet about the age of the little girls on the part of those before whom the statements were sworn, and perhaps even a desire to conceal the youth of these witnesses in the official records of the trials in order to avoid later questions about the legitimacy of the proceedings.

On Ann Putnam Jr. and her extended family: Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed,
110–51 passim. Thomas Putnam’s military service in Rhode Island is detailed in Harriet S. Tapley, Chronicles of Danvers (Old Salem Village) Massa
chusetts, 1632–1923
(Danvers, Mass., 1923), 19–21.

See probate records of Isaac Griggs, 26 April 1690, Suffolk County Probate Files #1723, JA, MSA. Rachel Hubbard Griggs, b. c. 1628, was the daughter of the widow Elizabeth Hubbard or Hobart, who died in Boston in 1644. Rachel had two considerably older brothers, Richard and Benjamin. Nothing is known of Richard after 1644; Benjamin died on Long Island between 1675 and 1687. Either—more likely Benjamin—could have been Betty’s grandfather. See Elizabeth Hobart, will, 29 December 1643, Suffolk Probate Files #30, JA, MSA. (Thanks to Elizabeth Bouvier for locating both these sets of records for me.) On Benjamin Hubbard, see box 2, fol. 4; and box 5, fol. 1A, Esther Forbes Papers, AAS.

Quotations:
SWP
3:611–12. Ann Jr. named both Tituba and Osborne on 25 February, first identifying Good two days later. Betty Hubbard named Tituba on the 25th, Osborne on the 27th, and Good on the 28th. See
SWP
3:756 (Tituba), 611–12 (Osborne); 2:372–73 (Good). It is unclear precisely when Abigail Williams first named Osborne and Good; her vague statement (made in May) is
SWP
3:612. Possibly Ann Jr. and Betty endured earlier fits, but no dates are specified in the surviving documents.

On Sarah Osborne: Carol F. Karlsen,
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman:
Witchcraft in Colonial New England
(New York, 1987)
,
270–71; Enders A. Robinson,
The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692
(New York, 1991), 267. On Sarah Good: Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
110–12; and Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft,
139–47.

For examples of the classic story, with or without Tituba: Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 1–2; Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A
Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials
(New York, 1949), 34–38; Frances Hill,
A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
(New York, 1995), 13; Bryan Le Beau,
The Story of the Salem Witch Trials
(Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1998), 60. On Tituba’s non-role, see Rosenthal,
Salem Story,
13–14.

John Hale,
A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft
. . . (Boston, 1702), 132. The only contemporary evidence for group fortune-telling in 1692 refers to “two or three girls” in Andover employing “the sieve and scissors,” not a larger group in Salem Village using the egg and glass (venus glass) method; see “Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., 1692,” in Burr, Narratives, 181. Deodat Lawson—who was in the Village in mid- to late March and who in a sermon on 24 March speculated on possible reasons why Satan was attacking the Village— also did not mention any group fortune-telling by the afflicted girls. Instead, he primarily theorized about the contentious nature of Village life and about Villagers’ use of countermagic. Presumably, had people at the time regarded the girls’ experimentation with the occult as a precipitating factor in the crisis, Lawson would have made more than a very brief and unspecific reference to fortune-telling. See Lawson, “Christ’s Fidelity . . . ,” reprinted in Richard B. Trask, ed., “The Devil hath been raised”: A Documentary History of the Salem Village Witchcraft
Outbreak of March 1692,
rev. ed. (Danvers, Mass., 1997), 98–100.

SWP
1:227.

The question still arises as to who she was. Although some have identified her as Abigail Williams, it is unlikely that she was one of the three Salem Village children or the almost-as-young Andover accusers. Little girls did not engage in fortune-telling about future husbands; older teenagers did. What later happened to some of the older afflicted eliminates them from consideration (because they are known to have married or to have lived beyond 1697), leaving only two possibilities: Mary Warren and Susannah Sheldon. For reasons given in the epilogue, I believe the young woman Hale mentions here was probably Sheldon.

SWP
3:745; 2:355; 3:748. Note that Samuel Parris was not a formal complainant.

For biographical information, see Robinson,
Devil Discovered,
32–35, 71, 87–89. On Corwin’s mills: box 1, fol. 8, Curwen Family Papers, PEM; on Hathorne’s speculations, “Book of Eastern Claims,”
MHGR
7 (1893): 18. Corwin’s sister’s first husband was Hathorne’s brother Eleazar, who died in 1680.

The original location:
SWP
3:745; the meetinghouse: ibid., 2:357. One of the best discussions of the usual procedures followed by New England magistrates is Gail Sussman Marcus, “ ‘Due Execution of the Generall Rules of Righteousnesse’: Criminal Procedure in New Haven Town and Colony, 1638–1658,” in David D. Hall et al., eds.,
Saints & Revolutionaries: Essays on Early American History
(New York, 1984), 99–137. Clive Holmes suggested to me that clergymen might have proposed the public sessions.

Mary Beth Norton,
Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the
Forming of American Society
(New York, 1996), chapter 7, discusses the patterns of guilt and conviction. As Carol Karlsen’s summary tables demonstrate (
Devil in the
Shape of a Woman,
48, 51), of the forty-two witches tried in New England before 1692, fewer than half (twenty) were convicted, and just sixteen were executed.

This and the next paragraph are based on
SWP
2:356–57, 372. See Thomas Barnes, ed.,
The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants
of the Massachusets
(San Marino, Calif., 1975), facsimile p. 5.

This and the next paragraph are based on
SWP
2:610–11.

Calef,
MWIW,
in
WDNE
3:6.

There are two records of Tituba’s examination on March 1, Ezekiel Cheever’s (on the same sheet of paper as his notes on the Good and Osborne examinations; see SWP/SJC/PEM 1:11–12), and another, by an unidentified scribe thought to be Joseph Putnam (Sergeant Thomas’s half brother). They differ in detail but concur on main points. This paragraph and the next draw on both; see
SWP
3:747–49 (Cheever), 750–53 (Putnam). The quoted depositions:
SWP
3:756–57.

SWP
2:371, 370, form the basis for this paragraph and the next.

A summary, ibid., 3:746–47, lists all the examinations; an abstract of Tituba’s confession and other evidence, prepared for Sarah Good’s trial, reveals only one new piece of information: that a search of Tituba’s body proved that Good had pinched her legs (
SWP
2:362). Hale mentions one interrogation of Tituba in jail, and the surviving March 2 transcript fails to indicate the presence of anyone other than the magistrates and the accused (Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
415).

SWP
3:753–55.

Ibid., 2:372.

Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
415;
SWP
2:352, 668. On Proctor and her grandmother, Ann Burt, see Karlsen,
Devil in the Shape of a Woman,
142.

Richard Bernard,
A Guide to Grand-Jury Men
(London, 1627), 25 (see 11–28 passim); R.B. [Nathaniel Crouch],
The Kingdom of Darkness: Or the History of
Dæmons, Specters, Witches, Apparitions . . .
(London, 1688), A2. For the statement that Bernard and Crouch (and other authorities) were consulted by the magistrates, see Hale,
Modest Enquiry,
in Burr,
Narratives,
416.

John Darrell,
A True Narration of the Strange and Grevous Vexation by the
Devil, of 7 Persons in Lancashire . . .
(n.p., 1600), 3; William Grainge, ed.,
Daemonologia: A Discourse on Witchcraft As It Was Acted in the Family of Mr. Edward
Fairfax . . .
(Harrowgate, Eng., 1882), 67; David D. Hall, ed.,
Witch-Hunting in
Seventeenth-Century New England,
2d ed. (Boston, 1999), 149, 152. A recent study of an early incident involving fraud is James Sharpe,
The Bewitching of Anne
Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of
England
(New York, 2000). See also James Sharpe,
Instruments of Darkness:
Witches in England 1550–1750
(London, 1996); and Stuart Clark,
Thinking with
Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford, 1997).

Bernard,
Guide to Grand-Jury Men,
2, 5. See also William Perkins,
A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft . . .
(Cambridge, 1608), 38–41. For a detailed discussion of such themes in Bernard and other contemporary authors, see Stuart Clark, “Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society (c. 1520–c. 1630),” in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, eds.,
Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries
(Oxford, 1990), 45–81.

Bernard,
Guide to Grand-Jury Men
, 53–86 passim (quotations 60, 68, 73). On the distinctions among possession, obsession, and bewitchment, see David Harley, “Explaining Satan: Calvinist Psychology and the Diagnosis of Possession,”
American Historical Review
101 (1996): 310–12. For accounts of possession and exorcism on the European continent, see Lyndal Roper,
Oedipus & the Devil:
Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe
(New York, 1994), chapter 8; and Christine Worobec,
Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial
Russia (DeKalb, Ill., 2001).

Bernard,
Guide to Grand-Jury Men,
91–101 passim (quotations 92–93, 95). For an insightful contemporary explanation of why women were more likely than men to be seen as witches, see Roper,
Oedipus & the Devil,
chapter 10.

Bernard,
Guide to Grand-Jury Men,
204–12 passim (quotations 204–205, 210–12, 207, 209).

Ibid., 207, 211, 208–10.

Large portions of both Increase Mather’s
Remarkable Providences
(as the book is commonly known) and Cotton Mather’s
Memorable Providences
are reprinted in Burr,
Narratives;
see the accounts of Knapp, 21–23; Stiles, 27–30; Tocutt boy, 136–41. Crouch included Increase Mather’s tales in his 1688
Kingdom of
Darkness,
2–33, so they received wide circulation on both sides of the Atlantic. John P. Demos has given detailed accounts of the case involving Stiles (a prosecution of his grandmother, Elizabeth Morse) and of Knapp’s possession in
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
(New York, 1982)
;
see 97–152. On the English debate, see Barbara J. Shapiro,
Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, Law, and Literature
(Princeton, N.J., 1983), 212–21.