The world-renowned and momentous display of extraordinary manifestations,
known the world over as _Salem Witchcraft_, originated and was mainly
manifested in what was then called Salem Village--territory distinct from
Salem _proper_--embracing the present town of Danvers, together with parts
of Beverly, Wenham, Topsfield, and Middleton, in the County of Essex and
State of Massachusetts.
There, in the family of the Rev. Samuel Parris, minister at the Village,
on the 29th of February, 1692, mysterious causes had wrought strange
maladies upon two young girls during the six preceding weeks, which
excited great public alarm, and produced such mental agitation that the
civil authorities were called upon to give the matter official attention.
The true origin and the actual authors and enactors of that tragedy are
among the prime objects of our present researches. It is not our purpose
to furnish a _full_ history, but to scrutinize and test the hypotheses of
other writers; and give a solution of the origin and specification of the
actors and effects of that tragedy different--widely different--from the
prevalent modern ones. Upham, Drake, and Fowler all agree in fundamentals.
All of them have assumed that the agents and forces which evolved those
marvelous operations were scarcely, if anything, other than ten or twelve
respectable girls, from nine to twenty years of age, together with a few
married women and a few men, voluntarily exercising and manifesting only
their own wayward constitutional faculties and forces, in the performance
of tricks, impositions, and malignancies; and with none other than
lamentable results. Their positions we deem open to deserved attack, and
we expect to overthrow much that has been reared upon them, by using facts
abounding in the primitive records of testimony given in at trials for
witchcraft as our chief instrumentalities. The three expounders just named
have rested much upon allegations that the girls and women alluded to
above had, just previous to the strange outburst of terrors at the
Village, been accustomed to meet as _a circle_, and at their meetings put
themselves in training for the efficient and successful performance of
what soon after transpired through them. Our readings of the records
pertaining to Salem witchcraft have, as we know and freely confess, fallen
short of complete exhaustion; and yet we have read much, and also have
failed to find any remembered allusion to such a circle prior to its
mention in the present century.
Upham states (vol. ii. pp. 2 and 386) that "for a period embracing about
two months they" (certain girls and women) "had been in the habit of
meeting together, and spending the long winter evenings, _at Mr. Parris's
house_, practicing the arts of fortune-telling, jugglery, and magic."
Drake says ("Annals of Witchcraft," p. 189) that "these females instituted
frequent meetings, or got up, as it would now be styled, a club, which was
called a circle. _How frequent they had these meetings is not stated_;
but it was soon ascertained that they met to try projects, or to do or
produce superhuman acts."
Fowler remarks, in Woodward's Series (vol. iii. pp. 204 and 205), that
"Mary Warren, one of the most violent of the accusing girls, lived with
John Proctor," who, "out of patience with the meetings of the girls
composing this circle," &c. "It is at the meeting of this circle of eight
girls, _for the purpose of practicing palmistry and fortune-telling_, that
we discover the germ or the first origin of the delusion."
The position of each of these writers substantially is, that the accusing
girls, at circle meetings which they held, qualified themselves for the
parts they subsequently performed, wherein, Fowler says, "their whole
course, as seen by their depositions, discloses much malignancy."
Upham has told us that these meetings were held "at Mr. Parris's house,"
and that they occurred within the space of "about two months ... during
the winter of 1691 and 1692." Drake found no statement as to "how frequent
they had these meetings," and Fowler finds in them "the germ ... of the
delusion." We have found no mention at all of this circle in the more
ancient records and accounts, and not one of the authors named makes
mention of the source of his information. Those men, two of whom are our
personal acquaintances and friends, would not state anything which they
did not believe to be true. We therefore shall not gainsay their
allegations. Still, we feel privileged to doubt whether their uncertain
number of meetings during the short space of two winter months, held _at
the minister's own house_, and under an eye as vigilant as that of Mr.
Parris, could have furnished those girls with opportunity to learn very
much in any arts whose practice would not receive the approbation of the
Rev. Master of the house--not much could they there of themselves learn,
at their few meetings in two months, of the anti-Christian arts of
"palmistry ... and fortune-telling;" not much could they then and there
accomplish in the way "of becoming," by their voluntary efforts, "experts
in the wonders of necromancy, magic, and Spiritualism."
The general purpose of any stated meetings "at Mr. Parris's house,"
naturally and almost necessarily had his approbation; and the presumption
from his general character is, that he was neither the good-natured
indolent man who let others take their own course, however wayward, nor
the absent-minded one whom children or even bright adults could easily and
repeatedly deceive and hoodwink. The probability seems excessively small
that such a one as he would permit repeated gatherings under his own roof
for the special purpose of acquiring knowledge of and skill in practicing
tabooed arts. Whatever their authority for it, the writers referred to
imply that the members of a circle of girls and misses, meeting statedly
"_at Mr. Parris's house_," there very expeditiously qualified themselves
to become not only most efficient actors of long-continued dissimulation,
imposture, cunning, devilish trickery, and fiendish malice, but also to be
_bona fide_ concoctors and successful executors of vastly complicated,
deep, and broad schemes of hellish outrages upon parents, neighbors, and
the country.
Wiser heads and greater powers than those girls possessed were manifested
by the acts they _seemed_ to perform. In a literary sense they were
uncultured; but they, doubtless, had been subject to as good domestic,
social, moral, and religious teachings and example as existed in any
community. The literary deficiencies of the girls are indicated in the
following extracts:--
Drake says, "They were generally very ignorant, for out of the eight but
two could write their names. Such were the characters which set in motion
that stupendous tragedy which ended in blood and ruin." In vol. i. p. 486,
Upham says, "How those young country girls, some of them mere children,
most of them wholly illiterate, could have become familiar with such
fancies to such an extent, is truly surprising.... In the Salem witchcraft
proceedings, the superstition of the middle ages was embodied in real
action. All its extravagances, absurdities, and monstrosities appear in
their application to human experience."
Such, according to their own concessions, was the feebleness of the agents
whom the historians credited with performances which seem superhuman, and
required for their production intellect and forces above what any
community has often witnessed. Notwithstanding the inherent and
insuperable incompetency of such persons to voluntarily devise and perform
what has been ascribed to them, those females have been earnestly set
forth as the actual and almost impromptu devisers and enactors of as
intricate and effective a scheme for inflicting tortures and misery upon a
vast multitude of human beings as has rarely been found in the annals of
the race. If it be admitted that they, through frequent meetings at the
parsonage, became fitted to conjure up and control the devastating monster
that had his lair and foraging-grounds at Salem Village, the presumption
amounts closely to certainty that those gatherings were ostensibly held
for some laudable object. Meetings for some purpose may possibly have been
held when and where the historians assume them to have occurred. But if
so, it is our privilege to assume the possibility that the meetings were
availed of by unseen intelligences of some grade, for developing into
facile mediums such members of the circle as were constitutionally
impressible and controllable by spirits; and, if so, the meetings may have
become productive of results widely different from any contemplated by
either the members themselves or the master of the house in which they
met.
In his general history of Salem Village, introductory to that of its
witchcraft, Upham, giving us the geographical positions of their several
residences, and also their relations and positions in domestic life,
furnishes ample grounds for very strong presumption that frequent
attendance upon sportive meetings at the parsonage must have been so
inconvenient and onerous to several of those girls, that they would not
have been present many times in the short space of two months. Ann Putnam,
a sensitive girl only twelve years old, and Mercy Lewis, a servant girl,
or "the maid," in the family of Ann's father, two of the most efficient
pupils in that necromantic school, resided together in a home situated not
less than two and a half miles distant, in a north-westerly direction
from the specified place of the meetings. Elizabeth Hubbard, an important
member, lived about the same distance off, on a different road at the
east. On a still different road, and equally as far away at the
south-east, resided Sarah Churchill; and quite as remote, at the south,
was the home of Mary Warren; and the last two must take divergent roads
when they had gone only a little more than half way home. Each one of
these five was very conspicuous amid the ostensible accusers, and the
genuinely "afflicted ones." Excepting Ann Putnam, each was old enough to
be an efficient helper in household labors, and each, unless we except
Elizabeth Hubbard,--and such exception is hardly needful, because, though
a niece of his wife, she is mentioned as Dr. Griggs's "maid," which
probably implies that she was compensated for services she
rendered,--excepting Ann Putnam, each of them was "out at service."
What, therefore, is the probability that these five girls, with any great
frequency or regularity, went to and returned home from avowedly sportive
or necromantic meetings _at the parsonage_? Each of them would have to
travel, in going and returning, not less than five or six miles, mostly
along separate routes, in winter's shortest days, by lonely and crooked
roads, through miles of dark forests, over winter's snows, and amid its
freezing airs. What is the probability that such persons, so
circumstanced, would either desire to go, or be permitted by parents and
employers to go, frequently and regularly to such meetings? Slight--very
slight--because both natural and domestic obstacles must have been great.
Were horses, vehicles, and drivers, or were even saddle-horses, regularly
at the command of such girls for conveyance to and from such meetings?
Would such persons, if physically strong and courageous enough to go on
foot, be often spared by their employers to spend long winter evenings,
and two hours more for travel, in practicing "fortune-telling, necromancy,
and magic"? Such questions of themselves put forth a negative answer.
Frequent attendance by such members of the circle was next to an
impossibility. If they learned much upon any subject at the very few
meetings which circumstances would permit them to attend in the short
space of two months, they were very apt pupils indeed. That they became
very considerably modified and unfolded in certain directions in
consequence of meeting together occasionally is very credible.
We should concede its probable correctness, were an historian to make the
supposition that the two Indian slaves in Mr. Parris's kitchen, John
Indian and his wife Tituba, often amused themselves and any young folks or
other visitors, who there basked in genial light and warmth from blazing
logs in a huge New England fireplace on a cold winter's evening, by
rehearsing ghost stories and magic lore, and performing any such feats in
fortune-telling or other mystical doings as they might be able to exhibit,
or as might transpire through them. That the little girls, Elizabeth,
daughter of Mr. Parris, and Abigail Williams, his niece, were accustomed
to spend many cold winter evenings in the warm kitchen of their own home
is very credible. Mary Walcut and Susanna Sheldon, who lived in the near
neighborhood, perhaps dropped in frequently. But the majority of those
whose astonishing proficiency in performing what Drake said the circle met
for, viz., "to do or produce superhuman acts," and for _learning_, as
Upham would say, how to manifest "the superstition of the middle ages ...
embodied in real action,"--the _majority_ of those girls obviously must
have had only very restricted opportunities for study and practice at the
parsonage. It is not at all improbable that each of them was present in
that kitchen occasionally during two months of that winter; nor that each
of them was impregnated by the auras of that place and of its occupants
both visible and invisible; nor that the physical and psychic soils in
each were there mellowed, and also sown with some seed which produced
unlooked-for fruits during the following spring and summer.
Mediumistic capabilities are innate peculiarities, measurably hereditary,
and nearly always amenable to special conditions and surroundings for
conspicuous development. King Saul became a prophet, i. e., a medium, only
when he met, mingled with, and imbibed emanations from prophets or
mediums. Messengers whom he sent to the prophets succumbed to new and
developing influences upon arriving at their destination, and became
suddenly prophets themselves. Latent germs of spiritualistic capabilities,
if permeated by quickening auras, which often emanate from positive
mediums, frequently unfold into mediumship, as naturally as specific
elements, reaching latent germs in many human systems, expand those germs
into measles, or into whooping-cough; or as naturally as listening to
soul-stirring music energizes latent capabilities in many who are acted
upon by its strains, and helps such to become themselves better musicians
than before.
The parsonage kitchen--that nestling-place of John Indian and his wife
Tituba--may have been that winter a little Delphos, or a little Mount
Horeb, that is, a spot where developing nourishments of mediumistic germs
were collected in unusual abundance, and were unwontedly operative. We are
not only ready to admit, but deem it probable, that any susceptible
persons who came into the presence of John and Tituba, in their special
room, may have there imbibed properties unsought and unperceived which
fostered the development of such visitors into tools or instruments, by
the use of which the genuine authors of Salem witchcraft brought out their
work upon a public stage, and prosecuted its terrific enactment.
Smothering our serious doubts whether any regular meetings at stated times
were arranged for or held, we are entirely ready to let the supposition
stand that gatherings, more or less extensive, occasionally occurred, at
which fortune-telling, necromancy, magic, or Spiritualism, was made the
subject of either sportive or serious attention, and we will let results
indicate who managed the visible performers during the exercises or
entertainments there.
Upham's beautifully rhetorical and eloquent efforts to show that because
they, as he states, held a number of meetings for learning and practicing
mystic arts, those rustic, illiterate girls thereby and thereat qualified
themselves to concoct and accomplish of their own accord, and by their
histrionic and malicious capabilities, all that mighty scheme or plan
which his predecessor and himself lay to their charge, fail, entirely
fail, to meet the fair demands of that common sense which rigidly requires
forces and agents adequate in their nature and conditions to produce all
effects which are ascribed to them.
Fowler seems to have inferred from some statements ascribed to Proctor,
that the latter threatened to go and force Mary Warren to leave the
_circle_. We do not so read the account.
The morning of March 25,--that is, the next morning after the examination
of Rebecca Nurse,--John Proctor said "he was going to fetch home his jade"
(Mary Warren); "he left her there" (at the village) "last night, and had
rather given 40c than let her come up." That is, apparently, he had rather
have given that sum than to have had her be present at the examination of
Mrs. Nurse; for, continued he, "if they were let alone, Sr., we should all
be devils and witches quickly; they should rather be had to the whipping
post; but he would fetch his jade home and thrust the devil out of her,
... crying, hang them--hang them. And also added, that when she was first
taken with fits he kept her close to the wheel, and threatened to thrash
her, and then she had no more fits till the next day" (when) "he was gone
forth, and then she must have her fits again forsooth," &c.--_Woodward's
Series_, vol. i. p. 63.
It is obvious from the above that Proctor's objection was to his jade's
attendance upon the examination of the accused--to her attendance at
court--and not at the circle, which, according to Upham, should have
closed its meetings a month at least before the 25th of March. And yet S.
P. Fowler says (Woodward's Series, vol. iii. p. 204), that "Proctor, out
of all patience with the _meetings of the girls composing this circle_,
one day said he was going to the village to bring Mary Warren, the jade,
home." Most readers will infer from such a statement that Proctor proposed
to take the girl away from the "circle;" but the statement from which the
annotator drew his information, when taken in connection with its date,
clearly shows that the threats to bring home the jade and thrash her were
subsequent to the assemblages of the circle, and were made at a time when
the girls were being used as witnesses before the examining magistrates.
That which tried the resolute man's patience, was not the meetings of the
_circle_, but the testimony of the girls in court, which threatened to
make all the people "devils and witches quickly."
Proctor's stopping the _fits_, by threats to thrash the girl, intimates
that the fits were measurably controllable by the will of some one. That
much may be true in relation to almost all diseases and maladies of the
body, but probably not as much so in most other kinds as in those which
are imposed by a will that has no natural alliance with the agitated body.
Under the influence of threats, the girl would naturally struggle to get
full possession of all her own powers and faculties, and the effort would
put her own elements in such commotion that for a time no foreign will
could get control over her form. Threats, medicines of certain kinds, and
many other applications, may temporally render almost any medium's system
uncontrollable by spirits. Calmness, both of mind and body, and darkness,
too, which is less positive and disintegrating than light, in action upon
instruments made and used by spirits, are very helpful to control of
borrowed forms.
In some of his comments (vol. ii. p. 434) Upham wrote more wisely than
himself seems to have known. Words from his pen state that "one of the
sources of the delusion of 1692, was ignorance of many natural laws that
have been revealed by modern science. A vast amount of knowledge on these
subjects has been attained since that time." True, true indeed. And had
the author of that statement been familiar with important portions of that
"vast amount of" new "knowledge," he himself, as readily as those who are
better versed in a certain class of modern revealments, would have seen
and felt the perfect childishness of his attempt to make those rustic
girls the conscious contrivers and perverse and malignant actors of the
whole of the vast, complicated, and terrific tragedy of Salem witchcraft.
He might have known when he wrote, he ought to have known then, that Dr.
Robert Hare, of Philadelphia, who was eminent, distinctly and broadly
eminent, as a scientist, had in 1855 published to the world a rigidly
scientific _demonstration_ that some unseen agent, intelligent enough to
understand and comply with verbal requests, repeatedly moved the arms of
scale-beams contrary to the normal action of gravitation. Science, there
and then, revealed the existence of some natural law or laws which permit
unseen and impalpable intelligences, under some conditions, to put forth
action upon matter, with force and to extent, which man can measure in
pounds avoirdupois. That single achievement of modern science teaches the
wisdom of exempting seemingly diabolized and mischievous children from
charge of being devils incarnate, until we have determined whether some
beings of greater powers and different dispositions may not have usurped
control of youthful and pliant human forms, and through them manifested
schemes and pranks that originated in supernal brains, and were enacted by
use of such forces as can be manipulated by none below disembodied
intelligences.
Obviously he who was cognizant that science had made recent discoveries,
suffered himself to remain in ignorance of what to him, as witchcraft
historian, were the most pertinent and important parts of the knowledge
recently gained; ignorant of those parts which were most closely connected
with philosophical solution of the mysteries which pervaded the history he
was elaborating. His blindness to what science--yes, to what exact
physical science--by her rigid processes of weighing and measuring had
positively _demonstrated_, bespeaks his short-comings, and would bespeak
the unphilosophical stand-point of any historian of, or critic upon, the
world's marvels, who, since the day of Hare, ignores the light radiating
from his demonstration, and continues to grope on in darkness which use of
that light would dispel. Take into the catalogue of natural agents and
forces all those whose existence and action, science, as applied by Dr.
Hare twenty years ago, and again by Mr. Crookes and others in England more
recently, backed, too, by the observations and tests of thousands less
erudite, has _demonstrated_, and then all occasion to look upon our
fathers as numskulls, and their daughters as proficient devils, at once
disappears. New England soil, two centuries ago, was not populated mainly
by jack-asses; and even had it been, their offspring would have been
neither monkeys nor hyenas.
Since the work by Dr. Hare, entitled "Spiritualism Scientifically
Demonstrated," may not be readily accessible by many readers, his
description of one demonstrative process is quoted from page 49, as
follows:--
"A board, being about four feet in length, is supported by a rod, as a
fulcrum, at about one foot from one end, and, of course, three feet from
the other, which is suspended on a spring balance. A glass vase, about
nine inches in diameter and five inches in hight, having a knob to hold it
by, when inverted had this knob inserted in a hole made in the board six
inches, nearly, from the fulcrum. Thus the vase rested on the board mouth
upward. A wire-gauze cage, such as is used to keep flies from sugar, was
so arranged by a well-known means as to slide up or down on two iron rods,
one on each side of the trestle supporting the fulcrum. By these
arrangements it was so adjusted as to descend into the vase until within
an inch and a half of the bottom, while the inferiority of its dimensions
prevented it from coming elsewhere within an inch of the parietes of the
vase. Water was poured into the vase so as to rise into the cage till
within about an inch and an half of the brim. A well-known medium (Gordon)
was induced to plunge his hands, clasped together, to the bottom of the
cage, holding them perfectly still. As soon as those conditions were
attained, the apparatus being untouched by any one excepting the medium as
described, I invoked the aid of my spirit friends. A downward force was
repeatedly exerted upon the end of the board appended to the balance,
equal to three pounds' weight nearly;... the distance of the hook of the
balance from the fulcrum on which the board turned was six times as great
as the cage in which the hands were situated. Consequently a force of
3x6=18 pounds must have been exerted."
The above experiment was performed in Dr. Hare's own laboratory, in the
presence and under the watchful scrutiny of John M. Kennedy, Esq., and was
made with extraordinary care, because Professor Henry had just treated a
similar result formerly obtained as incredible. Plate III. in the book
furnishes a diagram illustrating Dr. Hare's apparatus. This experimenter,
whom Alfred R. Wallace calls America's foremost chemist, had spent very
many years in both constructing and in using, as a scientist, varied kinds
of apparatus for testing the presence and action of subtile forces in
nature, and he was competent to know, and did know as well as any other
man whatsoever in the world's great body of scientists, when results were
obtained to positive certainty. He _proved_ that some invisible and
intelligent power moved his scale-beam contrary to the action of
gravitation. The above demonstration, accompanied by many other evidences
of spirit-action upon matter through mediums, had been published twelve
years when Upham put forth his work. Therefore he was either ignorant of
or he ignored late discoveries of science which had revolutionizing
applicability to the very theories which he was putting forth.
After having eloquently depicted the sad results of witchcraft, that
author says (vol. ii. p. 427), "Let those results for ever stand
conspicuous, beacon-monuments, warning us and coming generations against
superstition in every form, and all credulous and vain attempts to
penetrate beyond the legitimate boundaries of human knowledge." If there
ever was "a _credulous and vain attempt_ to penetrate beyond the
legitimate boundaries of human knowledge," one was made by him who sought
to find that the keen-eyed, energetic, common-sense, virtuous, religious
men of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century lacked common sagacity,
and that their little girls rivaled Satan himself in malignity. Most
seriously we ask whether forces which can be and have been measured by
palpable scales, are "beyond the legitimate boundaries of human
knowledge?" We ask whether, anywhere in the universe, there exist
boundaries beyond which it is, or can be, illegitimate for man to go in
search after agents and forces which either habitually or occasionally act
legitimately upon him in this mortal life?
Another question is suggested by the foregoing quotation. Would not
positive knowledge that there are unseen agents and forces within the
realms of nature that can legitimately exhibit the phenomena once deemed
witchcrafts, transfer such phenomena from the domain of either
superstition or crime into that of science or that of beneficence? Surely
it would. And, therefore, how can one possibly work more efficiently for
depopulating the domain of superstition, than by bringing its inhabitants
forth and colonizing them on the lands of knowledge and science? Shall we
comply with the historian's advice, and still continue to leave what
ignorance denominates hobgoblins and ghosts to remain shrouded in
appalling mists, and thus aid them to continue to be to coming generations
the same awful beings they were to the generations past? Or shall we, on
the other hand, now, while experience and science are showing that such
work is practicable, push discovery onward till we both find laws and
learn conditions which permit closer access of disembodied beings to us,
and which also permit most beneficent reciprocal action between them and
us, just as soon as familiarity, confidence, calmness, and mutual trust
make their access easy? Which shall we do? Which is most scientific? Which
is most dutiful to God and friendly to man? Which? Is ignorance of, or is
knowledge of, nature's forces and inhabitants the greater blessing? Which?
Away with ignorance where knowledge is attainable.
We choose to learn as much concerning the universe and its inhabitants as
God gives us power and opportunities to acquire; not fearing his censure,
but trusting to win his approbation, by so doing. When one learns that
issuers from the vailed realms of spirit-land are only earth's emancipated
children revisiting their former homes, the cry that devils are coming
lacks any startling power. Faith, and even knowledge, sometimes says, "It
is my friends and loved ones and those who love me, who are in the
circumambient hosts, and I will do what I may to facilitate their more
sensible approach; will extend toward them a friendly and helping hand."
Only superstition and ignorance quail and skulk before visitants that come
from unseen realms; knowledge stands fast and meets them with welcome and
joy.
The "legitimate boundaries of knowledge"! Where are they? Surely not
within any domain where knowledge can supersede ignorance and its
consequent superstitions.
Perhaps only few persons who give credence to the substantial accuracy of
the transmitted statements of witchcraft facts, will dissent from
Hutchinson's obvious meaning when he said that "some of them seem to be
more than natural;" that is, as we suppose him to have meant, they seem to
have required for their production something beyond the recognized powers
of embodied human beings. He, however, in spite of such seeming, sought to
lead other minds to fancy that fraud and malice acting upon credulity--in
other words, that cunning and malicious embodied human beings, and none
other--were concerned in their manifestation. Upham and Drake have not
only followed Hutchinson's lead in excluding invisible agents, but have
omitted to admit that some of the facts _seem_ to be more than natural.
They blindly fancy that they find resident in human minds and hearts of
seeming brilliancy and goodness, capabilities of artfulness, malice, and
might which wrest from Satan's brow all laurels which the world has meeded
to him for his imputed prowess on witchcraft's battlefields. As one of the
human race, we protest against such slander of our kindred humans while
embodied, none of whom, while dwellers here below, were ever smelted in
fires hot enough to elicit from their own interiors some forces which were
put in action through their forms--forces which, in common parlance,
though not in absolute fact, were "more than natural." Events fearfully
mysterious have long been, and now often are, spoken of as the productions
of beings, or at least of One Special being, lurking somewhere away off
beyond the outmost limits of nature. But each and every hiding-place of
even Old Nick is somewhere within those limits, and even he can never and
nowhere act otherwise than in obedience to nature's laws. How far up,
down, around, do natural forces and agents extend and operate? If there be
a fixed limit to nature's domain, where is it? When life departs from
man's body, are the forces which continue to act upon his invisible
spirit, whether that continues to be or ceases to be a conscious
individuality,--are the forces which then act upon it and which bear it to
its appropriate position in spirit spheres, _natural_ forces, or are they
other?
When man escapes from his gross and sluggish encasement, and becomes--as
the reappearance of many of the race teaches that he does--a freed spirit,
he does not escape from within the realm of nature, nor pass to where
natural substances and forces cease to sustain and act upon him. The word
"supernatural" as well as its equivalent phrase, "more than natural," is
often misleading; it tends to generate supposition that nature
_terminates_ where man's external senses cease to take cognizance.
Absolutely, however, as we believe, all beings, including even God, and
all things whatsoever, are parts of nature; so that the word
"supernatural" can scarcely find place for rigid, unqualified application.
No objection to its usual application is here intended, provided it is not
used to convey the idea that things to which it is applied are the work of
intelligence above and beyond the control and restrictions of universal
laws or forces; provided it does not intimate that the works are what
theology has called miracles, i. e., acts "contrary to the established
course of things." Such works probably never did and never can occur.
Higher and unrecognized laws are availed of whenever known laws are
thwarted in their results, as when the magnet takes the steel upward in
spite of gravitation: gravitation works on with as much steadiness and
force as over, while the magnet overpoweringly pulls against it. The
overbalancing magnetic force does not act "contrary to the established
course of things," but simply performs its own functions in full harmony
with that course; so of all mysterious events in the vast universe. All
move on in obedience to law; all events are outworkings of universal
forces, none of which are ever broken or suspended, though sometimes some
of them are restrained by other and counteracting forces from manifesting
their usual results.
All the marvelous works of both ancient and modern Spiritualism may have
occurred, and yet none of them have been, in fact, "more than natural,"
however much so some minds may be accustomed to deem them. Take psychic
forces as natural instrumentalities, take both embodied and disembodied
intelligences who had skill and power for the control of such forces, and
with these take also others who had special susceptibilities for yielding
to psychic action, and you will then have in your conceptions ample
natural means for the production of each and every marvel that was ever
described in human history, and all such may have been produced without
any more help or hindrance in kind from either God or the devil, than we
all receive in the ordinary acts of daily life. Bring in what is meant by
either magnetism, or mesmerism, or psychology, or psychism, or by any
other term expressive of that action upon and within a human being, which
lets either his own spirit-senses or the forces of some outside
intelligence get play therein independent of and superior to the owner's
outer or physical senses, and we then may have fitting and adequate
instrumentality through which finite intelligence can legitimately produce
all the marvels that human eyes have ever witnessed. Professor Cromwell F.
Varley, one of England's most eminent electricians, said, when addressing
a committee of the London Dialectical Society, "I believe the mesmeric
trance and the spiritual trance are produced by similar means, and I
believe the mesmeric and the spiritual forces are the same. They are both
the action of a spirit, and the difference between the spiritual trance
and the mesmeric trance I believe is this: in the mesmeric trance, the
will that overpowers or entrances the patient is in a human body; in the
spiritual trance, that will which overpowers the patient is not in a human
body."
The position taken by Mr. Varley, whose observations were made mostly
within his own domestic circle, and whose professional pursuits led him to
be a constant and careful observer of the nature, properties, and actions
of delicate forces, is worthy of much regard. His view is probably in
harmony with the conclusion of most minds which have studied carefully the
outworkings of mesmerism and Spiritualism. The two isms, in some views of
them, are essentially one in nature, the latter being the butterfly or
moth that came from out the former. The grub and its moth are the same
being in different stages of development. Multitudes of human beings
raised, and to be raised, from lower to higher development have their
habitats along the line where the material and spiritual interblend, and
some are measurably amphibious there--can move and act in either of two
auras. The younger, or less advanced, flesh-clad mesmerists, prevailingly
abide in the material, while spirits have their most congenial residence
generally beyond where the palpably material extends; but either class can
at times bring under their control the physical systems of many human
beings.
By means of this psychism, or this outworking of soul power, there may be
kept up reciprocal action or intercommunion between what are usually
called the material and spiritual worlds, both of which absolutely are
natural, and are pervaded by interacting natural forces which are at the
service of peculiarly endowed, or constituted, or unfolded persons, who
are, or may become, competent and disposed to use them. A disembodied
spirit no more needs special permission or aid from Omnipotence for acting
upon men and matter, than the diver needs such for deep descents beneath
the water's surface. Natural permission for spirits to reincase themselves
in, or to act upon, palpable matter, is as free and full as man's is to
put on submarine armor.
This much we have said for the purpose of disclosing our stand-points of
observations and reasonings pertaining to Salem witchcraft, and now come
to more direct consideration of that special topic.
At Salem Village about a dozen people, mostly the girls previously named,
were strangely and grievously tormented, at short intervals, during
several months. They often endured contortions, convulsions, and very
acute sufferings. At times many of them became deaf, dumb, blind, &c.
Seemingly to beholders they personally performed most strange and
incredible feats of strength and simulations, and made astounding
utterances. Because of these doings and sufferings they were, after some
weeks of observation, deemed to be "under an evil hand"--were pronounced
_bewitched_, and were termed, in the parlance of that day, "the
afflicted."
According to the faith of those times, no person could be bewitched in any
other way than through some other embodied person who had entered into a
covenant with the _Devil_, and voluntarily become his instrument or his
agent. It was then assumed, also, that the afflicted ones could perceive
who the person or persons were through whom the devil tormented them.
Consequently the sufferers were teased, coaxed, or driven to name some one
or more who was causing their sufferings. Those named by the sufferers as
producers of their maladies were called the accused, or were said to be
"cried out upon."
Belief in the ability of the afflicted to designate accurately their
afflicters, was then prevalent; but though probably born of facts in human
experience, and in itself fundamentally correct, it was indiscreetly and
harmfully applied. The mediumistic or psychologized condition often
renders its subjects practically independent of time, space, and gross
matter, and makes them possessors of ability to feel, or rather to
_sense_, contact with the properties of some peculiarly constituted
mortals, even though such persons at the time be physically many miles
away. The persons from whom such agitating emanations would proceed would
generally themselves be highly mediumistic.
If the inner or spiritual perceptive organs of Mr. Parris, Dr. Griggs,
Thomas Putnam, and their consulting associates, of whom we shall speak
hereafter, were inextricably interblended with their outer bodies, so that
they were, par excellence, non-mediumistic, their presence near the bodies
of persons infilled with abnormal properties by spirits might be
imperceptible by the entranced, while either the poor, "melancholy,
distracted" (?) Sarah Good, or "bed-rid" Mrs. Osburn (who will come into
notice on a future page), if highly mediumistic, might, though being then
in their distant homes bodily, be present as spirits, and their emanations
might be distinctly felt by the suffering girls, and be by them visibly
traced to their sources. Mediumistic states or entrancements, however
induced, often bring their subjects into rapport with other mediumistic
persons afar off, while they as often shut off sensibility to the presence
of the physically imprisoned or very slightly impressible ones who are
near by. The saying that "birds of a feather flock together" apparently
has more constant application outside of gravitation's dominating reach
than within it--more among relatively freed spirits than among rigidly
body-hampered ones.
That there exist special occult forces, whose action frequently enables
mediumistic persons, while under spirit manipulations, to know assuredly
that emanations from special human organisms act upon them to either
their pleasure or their annoyance is very clearly indicated by the
experiences of some modern mediums; for these are often heard to speak of
influences coming to their help or their harm from particular persons,
who, at the time, are known to be miles away. Mediumistic intuitions often
very accurately trace influences to some definite mundane source; that
source frequently is where the disembodied operating spirit gets such an
equivalent to a nervous fluid as is needful to give him or her contact
with and control over matter. Some mediumistic systems may at times
contain enough of such quasi nerve-producing elements to meet all the
needs of the controlling spirit, while others usually lack them to such
extent that drafts to supply the deficiency are made from the systems of
others more or less remote from the point of application. If the harassed
and tortured children in the family of Mr. Parris were acted upon by
spirits, they might be, at times, able to _sense_ the fact that forceful
action upon them came perceptibly forth from the bodily forms of
particular living persons. Broad human observation and experience through
the ages had generated conclusion that bewitched persons could designate
those from whom their inflictions came. Therefore our fathers would with
conscious propriety ask any one whom they supposed to be under "an evil
hand," "Who hurts you?" They would look for an answer, and, if one came,
would deem it correct. It was, then, logically necessary for them to
confide in the accuracy of any responses which might issue from the lips
of the sufferers, so long as their creed was made chief premise. Sneers at
belief that psychologized persons know from whom the force comes which
generates their condition, may argue less knowledge in the sneerer's
brain, of forces and agents that sometimes act upon men, than in the heads
of those who in former days sought to learn from bewitched girls what
particular persons afflicted them. The world, while learning much, may
have been forgetting some important knowledge.
The belief held by many of our forefathers, that the afflicted would
generally know that afflicting forces came to them from the persons whom
they named, though measurably correct in itself, was rendered most
woefully disastrous in its application, because of its concomitant
erroneous belief that such afflicting forces could go forth from none but
such as were in covenant with witchcraft's awful devil. The fact of one's
being a channel through which occult wonder-working forces could flow,
was, in those days, proof positive that he or she had tendered allegiance
to and made a compact with the Evil One. That was the specially great and
disastrous error which engendered witchcraft. Susceptibilities which were
in fact only nature's boons, were looked upon as acquisitions obtained
through a diabolical compact. Some laws of psychology partially revealed
and comprehended now, were then not dreamed of; and deductions from false
premises or from an erroneous belief, being then applied by clear-headed
and good men for noble ends, yes, for God's glory and man's protection,
caused out-workings of unspeakable woes.
The persons most _afflicted_ at Salem Village were Elizabeth, daughter of
Mr. Parris, nine years old; Abigail Williams, his niece, eleven; Ann
Putnam, twelve; Mercy Lewis, seventeen; Mary Walcut, seventeen; Elizabeth
Hubbard, seventeen; Elizabeth Booth, eighteen; Sarah Churchill, twenty;
Mary Warren, twenty: to these girls may be added Mrs. Ann Putnam, mother
of the girl of the same name; also a Mrs. Pope and a Mrs. Bibber. Nearly
all of these occupied very good social positions, and many of them were
surrounded and cared for by as intelligent, moral, and religious people as
that or any other parish in the neighborhood contained. Yes, from amidst
the very breath of prayer, the light of intelligence, the sway of strong
authority, and the restraining influences of religion, these reputable,
and no doubt generally amiable, conscientious, and kind-hearted girls and
women during all their previous years, suddenly became utterers of what
were then regarded most damning accusations against their neighbors and
acquaintances first, and subsequently against strangers living remote from
them; against the low and the high, the vicious and the virtuous, the
feeble-minded and the strong in intellect alike. And in their strange and
desolating work these people, of exemplary deportment previously, moved on
harmoniously, encouraging and strengthening each other, and without
manifesting the slightest regret. A marked and startling specimen this of
what mortal tongues may be used to accomplish! And yet those tongues
generally may have only described what senses perceived.
History has said--no, not history--but invalid supposition has said that
sportiveness, malice, love of notoriety, and the like, inherent in the
minds and hearts of those young girls and women, were the chief incentives
to and producers of the woeful, the murderous accusations and statements
which came forth from their youthful lips. It was not so. One may as well
call a pencil or a pen a malicious accuser when it is made to record
malicious accusations, as to call those girls the contrivers and enactors
of many scenes which were presented by use of their bodies.
We quote as follows from church records, penned by the Rev. Mr. Parris
himself, in whose house the great and awful commotion originated:--
"It is altogether undeniable that our Great and Blessed God, for wise and
holy ends, hath suffered many persons in several families of this little
Village to be grievously vexed and tortured in body, and to be deeply
tempted to the endangering of the destruction of their souls, and all
these amazing feats (well known to many of us) to be done by witchcraft
and diabolical operations.
"It is well known that when these calamities first began, which was in my
own family, the affliction was" (had existed) "_several weeks_, before
such hellish operations as witchcraft was suspected; Nay, it never broke
forth to any considerable light, until diabolical means was used, by the
making of a cake by my Indian _man_, who had his directions from our
sister Mary Sibly. Since which time apparitions have been plenty, and
exceeding much mischief hath followed. But by this means (it seems) the
devil hath been raised amongst us, and his rage is vehement and terrible,
and when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows."
The statements just presented have come down from one whose position and
whose mental powers qualified him to be as important a witness as any
other person whatsoever could be; they come from one of keen intellect
and ready perceptions, who saw the scenes of _Salem_ witchcraft in their
first externally observable stages of development, and also throughout
most of their subsequent unfoldments and disastrous workings. These
statements were semi-private; were made in the _church_ and not the parish
records; were made to be read by those who should come after him, rather
than by those of his own times. And in such records he states that
"amazing feats" were performed "_by witchcraft and diabolical
operations_." What were those feats? It has been said generally concerning
the whole Salem circle of proficients in "necromancy, magic, and
Spiritualism," that "they would creep into holes, and under benches and
chairs, put themselves into odd and unnatural postures, make wild and
antic gestures, and utter incoherent and unintelligible sounds. They would
be seized with spasms, drop insensible to the floor, or writhe in agony,
suffering dreadful tortures, and uttering loud and fearful
cries."--_History of Witchcraft and Salem Village_, vol. ii. p. 6.
An acute observer, who was also a definite and methodical describer of a
portion of the actions referred to, says the sufferers were "in vain"
treated medicinally; that "they were oftentimes very stupid in their fits,
and could neither hear nor understand, in the apprehension of the
standers-by;" that "when they were discoursed with about God or Christ ...
they were presently afflicted at a dreadful rate;" that "they sometimes
told at a considerable distance, yea, several miles off, that such and
such persons were afflicted, which hath been found to be done according to
the time and manner they related it; and they said the specters of the
suspected persons told them of it;" that "they affirmed that they saw the
ghosts of several departed persons;" that "one, in time of examination of
a suspected person, had a pin run through both her lower and her upper lip
when she was called to speak, yet no apparent festering followed thereupon
after it was taken out;" that "some of the afflicted ... in open court ...
had their wrists bound fast together with a real cord by invisible means;"
that "some afflicted ones have been drawn under tables and beds by
undiscerned force;" that "when they were most grievously afflicted, if
they were brought to the accused, and the suspected person's hand laid
upon them, they were immediately relieved out of their tortures;" that
"sometimes, in their fits, they have had their tongues drawn out of their
mouths to a fearful length, ... and had their arms and legs ... wrested as
if they were quite dislocated, and the blood hath gushed plentifully out
of their mouths for a considerable time together; I saw several violently
strained and bleeding, ... certainly all considerate persons who beheld
those things must needs be convinced that their motions in their fits were
preternatural and involuntary, ... they were much beyond the ordinary
force of the same persons when they were in their right minds;" that
"their eyes were, for the most part, fast closed in their trance-fits, and
when they were asked a question, they could give no answer; and I do
verily believe they did not hear at that time; yet did they discourse with
the specters as with real persons."--_Deodat Lawson._
They affirmed that "_they saw the ghosts of several departed persons_,"
and they did "_discourse with the specters as with real persons_." This
looks like Spiritualism.
The above extracts describe a part only of the amazing feats.
Mr. Parris apprehended that this extensive diabolism was inaugurated
through the making of a peculiar cake by his Indian man John. Either a
sneer or a smile will probably drape the reader's face when he perceives
that a clergyman in a former age deemed it probable that a compound
offensive to refined taste (a cake made of meal mixed with urine from the
suffering children) was so appetizing to the devil that it drew him from
his wonted distance into close affinity with mortal forms, and increased
his power to afflict them. Perhaps that clergyman had read what the reader
may peruse by turning to the concluding portion of chap. iv. of Ezekiel,
where preparation of food was prescribed for that prophet's use while he
was in process of being trained for pliancy under manipulations by some
unseen intelligence--such preparation of food as was not less offensive
than such a cake as John Indian furnished.
We do not find a great producing cause of the _amazing feats_ where Mr.
Parris did, and are not prepared to regard Mary Sibley's prescription as
having been very efficacious. Still we might admit the possibility that
the real author of the feats was present when John kneaded that cake,
leavened it with supermundane yeast, and made use of it as an
instrumentality for coming into closer contact than before with the human
bodies from which part of the ingredients of the cake had been derived.
Both spirits and unfolded mediums often either prescribe or apply--as
Jesus did when he treated a blind patient by application of a plaster
composed of his own spittle and street dust--things which mankind at large
would regard as either offensive or inert. Human mediums may be, and the
observations of thousands now living indicate that they often are, made to
prepare strange compounds, and prescribe them for the sick, the suffering,
and for unpliant mediums.
Who was "my Indian man"? Yes; who that baker whose cake raised the devil,
and caused apparitions to become exceeding plenty? Mr. Parris, prior to
being a minister of the gospel, had been a merchant in Barbadoes, and at
the commencement of the strange feats alluded to, had in his family some
servants, whom he called Indians; but they probably were natives either of
some one of the West India islands or of the neighboring coast of South
America, whom he had brought thence, and who were, doubtless, by nature
less firm and self-reliant than our northern Indians usually are. Two of
these servants, or slaves, viz., John Indian, the cake-baker, and his
wife, Tituba, were among the first, if they were not the very first,
persons there to succumb, and yield subjection to the peculiar influences
which developed the terrible events we are considering. Those two humble,
ignorant, weak-minded slaves may have been, and we regard them as having
been, though unintentionally and unconscious of it, very efficient aids in
the outward manifestation of what their master properly termed "amazing
feats."
John seems, so far as records depict him, to have been only about as much
of a medium as King Saul was; that is, one that could be made to tumble
down and roll about in unseemly ways. There may, and there may not, have
been properties in his composition which were very helpful to spirits in
gaining control over other persons. However that may have been, he was not
perceptibly much of a medium, and had but little connection with the
events which so harassed his master and neighbors, as far as can now be
shown. But his wife, Tituba, deserves extended notice and careful study.
Before the observable works were commenced, she was clairvoyant and
clairaudient, and her aid in the amazing feats which transpired was
solicited in advance by a nocturnal visitant needing no opened door for
entrance. She entered behind the scene,--behind the vail of flesh,--and
her spirit eyes saw the chief manager. She is the great eye-witness in the
case. She was a medium easy of control, and, Agassiz-like, retained her
consciousness and her memory of experiences while her form was subjected
to control by another's will. Obviously, also, she was an uncommonly good
developing medium, or, in other words, her constitutional properties were
such as greatly aided spirits to develop the mediumistic susceptibilities
of other persons.
This humble, illiterate slave, besides being apparently the chief focus or
reservoir of supermundane forces that evolved the Salem wonders, was one
among the first three persons who were arrested and brought before the
civil tribunals under charges of practicing witchcraft. Her statements at
her examination were recorded very fully by one of the two magistrates who
conducted the proceedings. And the transmitted words of this simple-minded
creature, whose intellect was incompetent to foresee the consequences of
her answers and statements, throw more light upon the origin and growth,
and upon the nature and true character, of Salem witchcraft, than does all
that came from other lips, or any pens of her cotemporaries, or than has
come from subsequent historians. Her mediumistic susceptibilities gave her
admittance where she was an actual observer of the real author of and
actors in that memorable drama. Her knowledge was derived directly through
one set of her own senses, and therefore she was able to speak of, and
apparently did speak simply and truthfully of, persons and scenes which
her inner organs of sense had cognized. She _knew_ more than did all her
prosecutors and judges combined concerning the matters under investigation
at her trial; and could those who then presided have been nobly humble
enough to learn from such a witness, and single-eyed enough to admit into
their own minds the literal import of her simple statements, the horrors
which were subsequently experienced would never have transpired. But the
faith of those times forbade such elevation.
Tituba's general, if not uniform frankness, and the extreme simplicity of
her answers, tend strongly to beget confidence in the intentional and
substantial truthfulness of her statements. We deem it unjust to doubt her
truthfulness. And the general accuracy of her testimony is now rendered
credible by its harmony with a mass of facts pertaining to Spiritualism.
If the truth and accuracy of her words be conceded,--and they ought to
be,--we learn distinctly that during the "several weeks" through which Mr.
Parris's afflicted daughter and niece were treated by their physician and
cared for by the family and friends without suspicion of witchcraft,
Tituba was positively _knowing_ that something like a man, invisible to
outward sense, visited herself, and sought and sometimes forced her
co-operation in pinching the two little girls and in producing their
seeming sicknesses. Her experience proved to her that the sufferings of
the children were purposely inflicted by an intelligent being something
like a man. Her statements prove the same to us.
Such testimony as hers, by such a lowly person as she was, when given
before a tribunal whose members were firm believers in such a devil and in
such a creed as have been described in our Appendix, even if fairly
comprehended by them, would cause her judges to believe that she was
virtually confessing that she had made a covenant with the Evil One. From
their premises they could not logically draw any other conclusion.
Perhaps, unfortunately for her, but not for us at this day, her intellect
was too feeble to perceive the inferences which would be drawn from her
words. Fearing not consequences, she could frankly tell her experiences
and observations; she let out the exact facts of the case, and furnished
for us a sound historic basis for the assertion that the strange maladies
which came upon the little girls in Mr. Parris's house were designedly and
deliberately imposed by a disembodied spirit or a band of spirits.
The mouths of not only babes and sucklings, but of adults of feeble
intellect, present facts, sometimes, better than those whose intellects
are swayed by fears of dreaded consequences which might ensue from frank
and full avowal of their knowledge. From Tituba came statements of facts
to which we must give prolonged attention. A perusal of the fullest
minutes of her testimony may be wearisome, but her account of what she
saw, heard, and was made to do, is so instructive that we shall present it
without abridgment, because it was first printed in full only a few years
ago, was probably never seen or known to exist by Hutchinson, was not
availed of by Upham, and not very carefully analyzed by Drake. Only a very
limited portion of the reading public has ever had opportunity to learn
more than a small fraction of the disclosures made by this important
witness.
Upham, though he had perused the minutes of testimony to which we allude,
elected to use a briefer report of Tituba's statements, which was made by
Ezekiel Cheever. The more extended one he noticed thus: "Another report of
Tituba's examination has been preserved in the second volume" (we find it
in vol. iii., appendix, p. 185) "of the collection edited by Samuel G.
Drake, entitled the 'Witchcraft Delusion in New England.' It is in the
handwriting of Jonathan Corwin, very full and minute." It is "full,
minute," and abounding in facts which the faithful historian should adduce
and comment upon. It was written out by one of the magistrates before whom
Tituba was examined, and therefore its authority is good. It surprises us
that the historian who noticed it as above failed to use much important
matter contained in it which was lacking in the report that he preferred
to this.
Drake, under whose supervision this ampler report was first printed, says,
in Woodward's "Historical Series," No. I. Vol. III. Appendix p. 186, that
"it is valuable on several accounts, the chief of which is the light it
throws on the commencement of the delusion.... This examination, more,
perhaps, than any of the rest, exhibits the atrocious method employed by
the examinant of causing the poor ignorant accused to own and acknowledge
things put into their mouths by a manner of questioning as much to be
condemned as perjury itself, inasmuch as it was sure to produce that
crime. In this case the examined was taken from jail and placed upon the
stand, and was soon so confused that she could scarcely know what to say.
While it is evident that all her answers were at first true, because
direct, straightforward, and reasonable. The strangeness of the questions
and the long persistence of the questioners could lead to no other result
but confounding what little understanding the accused was at best
possessed of.... The examination was before Messrs. Hathorne and Corwin.
The former took down the result, which is all in his peculiar
chirography." Upham, it will be noticed, says the report was written by
Corwin, while Drake here ascribes it to Hathorne. But since those two men
were both present as joint holders of the examining court, the authority
of either gives great value to the document; we regard the record as
having been made by Corwin.
While Drake says this record of "the examination is valuable" for "the
light it throws on the commencement of the delusion," he also calls it a
"record of incoherent nonsense." The public very narrowly escaped loss of
opportunity to get at the important and luminous facts contained in this
document. Drake, in 1866, says, "The original (now for the first time
printed) came into the editor's hands some five and twenty years since,"
at which time, "on a first and cursory perusal of the examination of the
Indian woman belonging to Mr. Parris's family, it was concluded not to
print it, and only refer to it; that is, only refer to the _extract_ from
it contained in the HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF BOSTON. But when editorial
labors upon these volumes were nearly completed, a re-perusal of that
examination was made, and the result determined the editor to give it a
place in this Appendix." We are constrained to doubt whether this editor
attained to anything like either fair comprehension of the value of this
document even upon its re-perusal, or that he perceived one half the
import which facts fairly give to the following words from his pen: "The
record of this examination _throws light on the commencement of the
delusion_." Yes, light upon the time, place, source, and nature of that
commencement, and which also discloses who was the originating, and
probably the guiding agent of all that witchcraft's subsequent process up
to its culmination--light which, to great extent, exculpates both the
fathers and their children--light which reveals the true actors and
exonerates their _unconscious_ instruments. That document, read, as it now
can be, with help from modern revealments, proves that some spirit, or a
band of spirits, was witchcraft's generator and enactor at Salem, and
indicates that simple Tituba comprehended the genuine source of the
disturbance more clearly than did any other known person of that
generation. She furnished for transmission a key that now unlocks the door
of the chamber of mystery, in which she and her associates were made to
enact thrilling and bloody scenes one hundred and eighty years ago.
That such as desire to do so may be enabled to peruse the whole of her
testimony, which probably can now be found printed only in Woodward's very
valuable Series of original documents pertaining to witchcraft,--a work
too voluminous and costly to obtain general circulation,--we shall do what
we can to further public accessibility to Tituba's statement, ungarbled
and unabridged. Still, to both relieve and enlighten the reader, we shall
break up its continuity by interjecting comments upon many parts as we go
on, but do this in such form, that, if the reader chooses to peruse the
whole unbiased by comment, he can; for this will require only an
observance of our quotation marks. By skipping our comments he can read in
their original collocations all parts of what Drake calls "incoherent
nonsense," but which to us, notwithstanding some perplexing incoherence of
both questions and answers, is rich in instructive _facts_.
Prior to March 1, the malady seems to have spread out beyond the parsonage
and seized upon other persons, for on that day several afflicted ones were
convened as witnesses, or accusers, or both, at the place where the
magistrates then appeared for attending to the cases of three women who
had been accused of witchcraft, arrested, and held for examination. Here
was the commencement of reputed folly and barbarity so exercised as soon
to redden that region with the blood of the innocent, the manly, the
virtuous, and the devout.
Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba were brought into the meeting-house
as suspected witches and as producers of the sufferings of the several
afflicted ones, to be examined in the presence of their accusers and the
public. What course the magistrates either elected or were constrained to
pursue in order to educe such facts as would sustain a charge for
witchcraft, will reveal itself as we proceed, through the questions which
they put to the accused, and the kinds of evidence which they admitted.