Salem Witch Trials
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00:49 For the Puritans of Colonial New England, a certain degree of paranoia could be commonplace, part of life. But for the residents of Salem Village, it all got much worse when they found themselves in the midst of a nine-month witch-hunt that would leave 20 people dead. I'm joined for this conversation today by Dr. Mickey Brock, professor of history at Washington and Lee University, and author of Satan and the Scots. A specialist in witchcraft and religious belief in the early modern world will discuss with her how and why fear of witchcraft plunged Salem into panic in 1692. Hello, Mickey. How are you? Nice to be with you. I'm great. Yeah, thank you for having me. This all begins in January 1690. with fears and confusion over the fits of young women.
01:49 And when I say young, I mean girls. Elizabeth Paris was nine years old. Abigail Williams, 11. Take us through the beginnings of this process and how this whole thing starts off. Yeah, so I might start by giving you a bit of broader context about what the environment is like in Salem as this is kicking off. So a couple of things are happening in the background that are really crucial to understanding why the fits and experiences of Betty Paris and Abigail Williams get interpreted in the way that they do. So this is a moment, you know, we're in really the second into the third generation of Puritans in
02:27 New England. And there's a lot of spiritual anxiety. There's worry that the city upon a hill is under threat from a couple of different directions. There are relations with local indigenous groups that have deteriorated and turned into outright war. And there's this real fear about being, a city under attack. There is political unrest and anxiety due to the fact that Massachusetts had lost its charter and had gotten a new one. And the whole political situation is really in flux. There's a pretty new governor in place. So all of this is to say that when these fits started, people were already living in a world that was full of zeal, anxiety, and tension. So what really happens is that in the home of Salem Village Minister Samuel Paris,
03:17 not an especially nice guy, I have to say, a very controversial figure when he was hired. There were factions in Salem Village that didn't think too much of this guy. But in his home is where these fits begin. And these fits are dramatic, right? There's convulsions. The girls are hiding under tables and chairs. They're throwing sort of bits of things around the house. they're acting like they're insensible to pain or they can't speak. And these are very common,
03:45 recognizable at the time symptoms as bewitchment. So when this happens, Samuel Paris, he wants to know what's going on and he doesn't immediately say the girls are bewitched. He doesn't immediately think Satan is behind this. And I think that's important, right? We tend to assume that the Salem story was kind of a zero to she's a witch dynamic. But in fact, actually one of the first things he does is is call a local doctor to see if there's a natural cause at play that could explain what's happening with these girls. But pretty quickly, the doctor looks at their symptoms, rules out natural causes, and says they are under an evil hand. And it's from that moment on that Samuel Paris starts to ask them who's harming you, who's tormenting you. And that's how the
04:31 names come out. Just real world here. If I was this guy and I was a father of an 11 or 9-year-old girl, I would sit them down and say, what the heck's going on, girls? You know, like, let's talk. And I assume that that, I mean, these are human beings. They know that kids can be weird and stuff. So didn't that happen first? Yeah, this is such an important question, I think, because it reminds us that even though the past is a foreign country in so many ways, there are these, you know, shared
05:00 parental concerns, anxieties and so forth. But we have to bear in mind that two things are at play. This is a period in which children, especially girls, are very, meant to be seen and not hurt, right? There's really this sort of sense that children are not to be trusted necessarily, that they're vulnerable to the wilds of Satan, that they are, these sort of wild things that need to be controlled. And particularly because they're girls, they need to be sort of quiet and submissive. So there's no question that their behavior was really shocking. They're making all this noise, all this hullabaloo, which is a total deviation from how they
05:34 should be behaving. So I is certain that Samuel Paris basically said, what's going on with you, right? Kind of shaking them and trying to sort of ask that, that question. But thinking about the possibility of a supernatural cause is not a foreign thing. You have to remember these folks have inherited this very long history of belief in witches and the supernatural and the devil and specters and all of these other things. So that's within the sort of realm of possibilities for this father to look at his girls and sort of ask what's going on. Understood. And it's important to keep in mind the backdrop of Europe has been going through this for a hundred years, right? This has been a big story over there.
06:15 Yeah, absolutely. So really actually longer than 100 years, ever since the late 1400s, sort of late 15th century, there have been witch trials in early modern Europe. The heyday of the witch trials, as I should say, if we're looking at Europe as a whole, is, you know, mid-16th to mid-17th century. So Salem's late. Salem's weird. By 1684, England has executed its last witch. So its colony is kind of doing its own thing. It's late on the time frame. But you're exactly right to say this has been going on. And in big numbers, right? Yes, you know, 19 people are hanged. One is pressed to death. A couple people die in jail in Salem. And that's a tragedy. But if we look at Europe as a whole, there are 100,000 people who are formally tried, we think,
06:58 for the crime of witchcraft. And about half of them are. executed. That's 50,000 people executed for what is fundamentally an imagined crime of demonic witchcraft. And about 80% of them are women, if we're thinking about the numbers here. And Salem is similar to that. So, yeah, it's part of a big story. So these two girls are not going to be the ones on trial. The next event that happens is that they are questioned about why they're being this way, I guess more officially. And the girls blame three women of the village for affecting them. What does that mean and who are these women? Yeah, so they basically point to the people who are purportedly tormenting them. That is to say, using their spectre, and this will become really important, this idea that
07:41 a witch with the aid of the devil could project her specter to go and do things and harm children, meaning like these women could be in their homes across town, but their specters could be harming the children. And we can get more into the debate about spectral evidence. But that's what they say is happening, right? They say these women are pinching them and torturing them and causing them to have all these strange physical symptoms. Where was this supposedly happening in some sort of ceremony or some in the woods? Just in their homes, right? This is a very domestic scenario as it starts out, right? These girls say they are being afflicted in their homes and that eventually they will have these experiences of being bewitched in the courtroom scenes. So the three women that they name,
08:26 And I should say actually just if we're thinking about the where question, the allegations and accusations start in Salem Village. That's where most of these cases, the genesis of them comes. But there's also, of course, Salem Town. And you should think of Salem as sort of split into two, right? Salem Town and Salem Village. And Salem Town is the sort of thriving economic center of the broader Salem area. It was founded in 1626. It's actually the second oldest Puritan settlement. And that's the port, right? That's where modern Salem is. located. But Salem Village is in the country. It's kind of a rural outpost from that. People there are poorer. They have less resources in some cases. And there are lots of sort of tensions about the
09:06 governance of Salem Village. So the accusations start there, but the trials are actually held in Salem Town. So that's just something to point out. Modern-day Danvers is about where Salem Village was. We did an episode on the Puritan governance, you know, the more official authorities of it. And it was fascinating to learn of how centrally managed this whole colony really was. certainly in the beginning. And so all these hinterlands would have been waiting for authority figures like judges and people to come out. And there would have been a schedule of that, I suppose. Yes.
09:35 I mean, that's a perfect thing to point out because this is a moment where the governance of Salem writ large is really in flux, right? A new governor in Massachusetts. There's a new minister in Salem Village. There's a new charter governing the whole thing. So things are very tense. But to your question, who do they name? Right. The first three people that they name are Tichiba, Saragos.
09:56 and Sarah Osborne. Tichiba is an enslaved woman in the home of Samuel Paris. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne are other women with unsavory reputations in the area. And the thing about these first three women, I always say this to my students, they're kind of straight out of central casting, right? In that they are vulnerable. They're easy to scapegoat. Some of them, particularly Osborne and good, have questionable reputations. They're not the model Christian woman that women were expected it to be. Now, this will change as the hunts progress, but initially, right, yeah, these are, these are women who are exceptionally vulnerable to being labeled a witch. And they were randomly chosen by these girls? I mean, how did that happen? Yeah, so this is one of those questions that
10:39 historians sort of have to ask, because other women are also being named. I mean, pretty early on, high-profile women like Rebecca Nurse are being named. But those are not the allegations that are initially taken seriously by the minister and by the other people around him, the other authority figures. But Chichiba is in their home, right? I mean, I think that she's an easy person to name. Scholars for a long time sort of thought that potentially she had been talking about magical practices from the West Indies that potentially the girls misinterpreted. But I think, really, they're having these experiences and just pointing to the most obvious figures, right? Women that they would have known would be easy to name or had reputations that could
11:20 lend themselves to accusations of witchcraft. We've all seen law and order. Were they pressured to do such things in a back room somewhere? Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question that to some extent these girls were probably fed some names. I don't think we have to see that as cynical. I think Samuel Paris and the men around him, they want to find out who the witches are. They are worried about the devil's activity in the world. They all believe in witches. They think witches. are very real and dangerous and deadly. So when they're asking the girls, who torments you? And the girls might be sort of flailing about saying they don't know,
11:53 they may have suggested, right, these folks who are obvious targets, which is, I think, a reflection of this idea that witches were to be feared, right, were to be eradicated. And that was certainly one of the goals. No coincidence, but there were women. The gender factor in this is a huge part of the story and how men were managing women in those days and continued to do so to this day. because of the mysteries involved in who they are and we can't give them power.
12:20 The interrogations begin on March 1st, 1692. These three accused women are interrogated for several days in the Salem Meeting House. Again, by these magistrates, right? Yeah, so there are lots of steps to the process of actually trying a witch, right? There are sort of pre-trial examinations where there's a determination of whether there's enough evidence to go forth and actually. pursue a serious trial that would take place in Salem Town in the municipal courtroom there. So yeah, so they begin asking questions and very, you know, I have to say we have thousands, like, you know, rich trial records from Salem. It's sort of a remarkable body of records.
13:01 And this includes very initial pretrial hearings, which is what we're sort of talking about here. This includes witness statements and depositions. This includes the actual records of the trial itself that would have taken place in Salem Town. These are such interesting, documents for a range of reasons, but when you look at them, like if you were to look at the pre-trial examinations or the actual trial hearings, your first thing that you would say is look at those leading questions. Because the questions are often, why have you helped the devil? Why have you hurt these children? How do you hurt them? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Leaving the witness, right? Like you can imagine, but there are no
13:35 lawyers. I mean, this is really crucial. This is not, you know, especially once the court of, or your interminer is created in May and the sort of serious major trials take place. It's not a kangaroo court. People are trying to follow processes, but people don't have lawyers. And these judges are not very experienced who are overseeing this. So lots of things that would shock anybody who's been to law school or just watched a lot of law and order were certainly going on. Yeah, but they were, I mean, careers were being made, too. I mean, this was a professional opportunity for these guys, I would imagine. Yeah, I mean, this panel of nine judges that sits on this court that the governor William Fitz creates that oversees the major trial portion, some of them are kind of failed merchants, some of them have lost a lot of money, some of them have been seen to be soft on crime in piracy cases, some of them thought they were going to become ministers and went to Harvard, I think about six of them did,
14:29 five or six went to Harvard, but ended up maybe not hacking it as a minister, so turned to the justiciary, but all of them see themselves as this bulwark against forces of the devil. So they're absolutely trying to make their careers. But I also think they are buying what they are selling. I think they want to stop these witches. Interesting. Tichiba, who I should mention, I assumed, you know, in my narrow mind that she was of African descent. She's actually more of a Caribbean indigenous person, right? Yeah, that's right. She's probably of mixed ethnic identity because of the very long history of both colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean. But yes, different sources describe her differently, some as a West Indian woman, but that doesn't necessarily sort of exempt
15:11 her from being of African descent. We're just not entirely sure, but scholars have written and thought about this. But the key point is she's enslaved, right? And it's such a reminder that Puritan New England was connected to slavery and the great enterprise of slavery, the horrific enterprise of slavery in ways that sometimes people forget. Absolutely. She confesses, but after a good beating and coercion by her master, I hate the word, but that's how it was done in those days, Samuel Paris. And how does she frame her confession? So she is, I mean, and this is really important. This is true from the very start. She is the star witness. And that's because she is able to provide kind of the demonological narrative that can underpin the trials as a whole. Meaning, She is able to talk about where she met the devil, how she got power through a pact with the devil, how she used this demonic magic to hurt these children.
16:08 I mean, I think her confession is really powerful because the magistrates and men in power, the judges, the ministers, they see this enslaved woman having all of these details about Satan and the way that he's working in the world. And they think this is clearly evidence that, you know, again, Salem is under an evil hand, and we have to act on this. Now, you have to ask, why is she saying these things? Where is she getting them? And I think there's no question that here is a savvy woman who has some sense of what these folks want to see. She's been in the house of this minister. She's heard him practicing his sermons. And he gave some hellfire and brimstone sort of sermons, right? So she had a lot of this information and she was asked leading questions. And fascinatingly about Tichaba, she's not executed throughout the whole thing.
16:57 And in most places in Europe, if you confess, you're executed. That happens almost everywhere. You know, confession is the gold standard of evidence to proceed with execution, but not in Salem. And I think it's because Salem's so late. People are skeptical already by the 1690s. So for those who really believe in the project of hunting witches, it's good to have witnesses who are saying, yes, the devil's here. Yes, we're doing this with him. Yes, this is how we're bringing about the downfall of Christian society. When she confesses, Rinky, what are those details? I mean, I have mentions of black dogs, red cats, yellow birds, a tall man with white hair. We now look at this, like, no way she was having these unless she was hallucinating.
17:39 Is she painting a picture and a movie scene that these people are looking for? So I have the records right here of Tichba's examination, and they are fascinating. They asked her, you know, how does the devil appear before you? How did you know it was him? What does he tell you to do? And, you know, she ends up describing in various terms this man who came to her who was clearly Satan. And he basically, you know, appeared in the form of a man, but also the form of a black dog. And he says, you know, if you're my servant, I will give you power and you can do all these things. She sees other creatures. She sees a yellow little bird. And I'll say about these animals, the Salem witch trials feature these kind of demonic figures
18:23 and familiars, which are a mainstay of a lot of English witchcraft trial records and examinations. They're not common in continental Europe. They're very much an anglophone thing. But it's these idea that these are little demons in the form of animals and they are suckling on the witch's teat, right, drinking her blood and doing the demonic bidding of the witch. But it goes further. I mean, they end up asking her, did you go to the witch's Sabbath? How did you get there?
18:51 And Tichippa says, you know, I rode on a. stick or I rode on a pole and and I saw these other women, right? Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne. So what she is doing there is giving them the building blocks of this demonological story of how she became a witch with the demonic pact, which is really important, that she attends a witch's Sabbath. And of course, the Sabbath is important because you see other women there, right? There's a reason Arthur Miller chose the Salem Witch Trials as the sort of vehicle through which he could parody the Red Scare, right? Have you been to a meeting with communist? Who did you see there? Very similar stuff going on. And Tichippa's just giving them what they want. But importantly, those magistrates
19:34 did not know that she had been beaten. That would come out in a real trial and it doesn't in this case, right? Yeah. I mean, I have to say, I'm not sure it would have mattered, though. There was such a fear in this moment, such an anxiety about getting the devil out. out of Salem. And people were permitted quite a lot of access to physical violence over the people in their households, right? Certainly enslaved folks, but also servants. I mean, one of the things that's interesting is as more and more of these young girls are
20:05 afflicted, a lot of them are domestic servants in the house of certain men. And some of them describe, you know, abuse by their masters as part of their descriptions of bewitchment. So I don't know that it would have mattered in this particular. particular early moment if they knew there was a level of coercion at play. Let's take a break and, ooh, get our feet on the ground. Get off our witch sticks here and calm down. And when we come back, we'll talk about a little bit more about the world around this
20:33 happening. Welcome back. I'm with Mickey Brock of Washington and Lee University and author of Satan and the Scots. Mickey, you mentioned this as sort of two different places this is happening. I think we want to reinforce this for the audience, that there's a Salem town and and then there's Salem Village. Salem Village today is known as Danvers, Massachusetts. These places still exist. How much did that affect the notoriety of this trial? I'm wondering how many people heard about it. Yeah, that is such a great question. So, and your point about Salem being spread out
21:18 into two communities is kind of the beginning of that story of people learning about it, but it's not the end of it. So the accusations, allegations, the bewitchments, they begin in Salem Village, immediately Salem Town knows about this because, of course, everyone in Salem Village is going to do their shopping and their fishing and their other activities related to economic life, whatever, civic life in Salem Town. But then after that, word spreads within days genuinely to Boston, to other places in Essex County, to Andover. And there are, you know, witchcraft allegations that within the course of a couple of months are emerging in, you know, almost two dozen other towns. and villages. And I think that shows you the power of really two things. One, the fact that people
22:05 are corresponding about this, particularly the ministers. Ministers in Boston are getting led us from minister in Salem and from Samuel Paris. They're writing to their friends. And they're doing this because they're like, what do we do about this scourge of witches upon the land? How do we deal with this problem? It also shows us, I think, just that we are in a world and a moment where the skepticism that you and I immediately have about witchcraft is not there. And in fact, you know, ministers certainly are worried about the demonic conspiracy of witches, but ordinary people too, they are worried about harmful magic, the idea that neighbors could become a witch and kill their cow or make their husband impotent or cause their child to shrivel and die,
22:48 whatever it is. But people really feel and indeed experience living in a world suffuse with supernatural powers. So when they hear about this, man, they want to tell their neighbors. And not just out of purient gossip, but as a warning, right? Like, you know, watch your children. So often this is cast in light of hysteria and chaos when in fact, this was much more of a political situation, wasn't it? And methodical. Yes, there's no question about this. And I think, you know, the political instability of the moment of the insecurity around the charter and the new governor and all of those things, anxiety about the preservation of the city upon a hill when this is a moment in which there are some Anglicans running around, there are even scarier to people, some Quakers. This sort of Puritan project
23:35 seems quite threatened. There is sort of legal instability because there really is no obvious way to proceed in terms of the court, which is why Phipps comes in in May and sets up the court of Orier and Terminator to actually do the main trials. All of this helps us understand how Salem became a perfect storm. And in my view, it's too easy to explain it away as hysteria or they're all just tripping on some poisoned rye or whatever, right, which is a very bogus explanation. But those things feel easier for us to understand. That people were just high, people were just having hysterics. But if we actually ask what are the beliefs and foundations that allow something like this to happen, the picture is a lot more complex. And it doesn't seem
24:22 like a straightforward miscarriage of justice, although, of course, in some ways it was, it also seems like a very human tragedy rooted in our tendency to scapegoat and blame and be led by zeal and fear as opposed to sort of hard evidence. Well, words like xenophobic extremism, all kinds of labels apply in the situation. But I think what you've already mentioned is so important. The idea of the city upon the hill, which was such a big deal for the Puritans, that they were really there to plant this ideal in the world, this utopic idea, that we could cleanse ourselves of the sin and create society that would do that on a regular, you know, daily basis. It's almost
25:04 like you're proving we're better than you, you know, as this community. And they're going to jump to it to try to do that cleansing, which is essentially what this is. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that city upon a hill idea comes from Winthrop's, you know, 1630 model of Christian charity sermon. And it's been such a powerful idea. I mean, I actually think there's so much you can explain about American history in general by understanding the way that idea was embraced and then used as a way to define who gets to count as part of the community and who doesn't get to count. So that's absolutely at play here. And then, you know, vector in the whole idea of indigenous communities around this. Talk about a pressure. A hundred percent. I mean, Salem Town itself is founded.
25:51 on indigenous land, right? A land that local indigenous groups had used for a long time for fishing and other activities. And they're displaced. They're displaced by all of these sort of settlements across New England. And that causes tons of warfare. I mean, it really sort of bloody and brutal wars between British settlers, between the French and their indigenous allies, between other Indian groups who are fighting with the English. And I think this really is fodder for Puritans who feel like their city upon a hill is under assault because they see and genuinely do talk about some of these Native Americans as being sort of servants of Satan.
26:32 So witches are yet more evidence that the devil is active in the world and is trying to go after them, right? And I think there's something really important about the Puritan mentality, which is that they come to New England, they found this colony because they are escaping religious and real religious oppression. in the 1620s and 1630s. But they hold on to this idea that they are oppressed, that they're under assault constantly from enemies. And when you think that you are a nail, everything looks like a hammer. And I think that is really at play here.
27:04 How much do they think of the indigenous people as an object of Satan? Do they imagine that or not? No, I think they certainly did imagine that. I mean, obviously there's nuance. Obviously, there are so-called praying Indians who have converted, who collaborate with the colonists. But especially in the context of these wars that are going on and that have been going on for decades, there is a sense that Native Americans are demonic forces.
27:27 And you see that, for example, if you read earlier on Mary Rawlinson's captivity narrative and that sort of thing. So, yeah, I mean, they think they're beset with demonic enemies and among them are Native Americans and witches. Also important to think of, and I always go to this place for better or worse, the broader history, including England at this point, has been through a century of terrible chaos, you know, civil war. wars, all the rest of this has been going on for decades. By the time we get to the 1689, or 1680s, you have new monarchs coming in, William and Mary come in. They start a war against France in the colonies. All of this, you know, is destabilizing, to say the least, as far as the colonies are concerned. There's King Williams War going on also at the same time. I mean, it's no coincidence that this sort of rises up at this particular time and place in the world, right?
28:17 Absolutely. You know, there are a couple things to sort of say about that. This is a perfect storm, right? And I think Emerson Baker has a book called Storm of Witchcraft. I think it's the best book on Salem in recent years. It's fantastic. But his argument is essentially that any monocausal explanation, right? It was just about religion, just about gender, just about complex Native Americans, just about political instability is insufficient for the moment. But it is this perfect storm of things. And that's true of the early modern European, which hence in general. Listen, people have believed in witches across time and space, but it's only in the early modern period, primarily in the 16th and 17th centuries, that witches are hunted in a judicial process, right? That there are laws on the books against witchcraft and that there's a real attempt to eradicate the crime. And part of the urgency of doing so is the sheer chaos of the era, the religious wars that are that are wrought by the Reformation. The 17th century, as you say, is a hot mess. And not just in Britain, but also think of the 30 years war, right? 1618 to 1648 in continental Europe.
29:25 So it does seem like a time where maybe the end of days are nigh, right? Like maybe the end of the world is coming. And you've got to clean your own house. You can't have witches running about. That's going to make God's wrath even worse. It's going to make what's going to unfold from the Book of Revelations even worse. The hardcore Christian, especially at this time, is always thinking. that the end of days is here.
29:47 So when there are weird things happening in the broader sense, politically, that's something that they're dealing with and processing that way, but also, boy, when it hits your own hometown, you're going to take it to that place for sure. And that is the fire within. That's really what energizes this whole into a much bigger situation. And just to say very briefly about that, this causes them to look at the world and see everything as part of the theater of God's justice, meaning, everything is providential. Everything has meaning. And you're trying to read, is God angry with you or not? Are you fulfilling the mandates of your covenant or not? Are you elect or not? I mean, God, that's talk about anxiety for the Puritans. If you believe in double predestination, my God. Right? So that's, and you only know that a few of y'all are saved and the rest are damned, probably statistically, you know, your God's terms of people, but you're anxious about it. And you can never have real assurance.
30:42 Or you're euphoric about it. I mean, there could be opportunity here. Oh, my guess it's finally here. We're happy about this. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I definitely, I definitely think that's the case. We're going to step away again and come back with much more detail about the trials. And when we do, I want to talk more about Samuel Paris and where he falls into all of this. So, Mickey, three women have been legally accused. One has confessed, Tituba. We haven't talked enough about Samuel Paris. Reverend Samuel Paris, first ordained minister of Salem Village, 1689. Two years before, very important.
31:27 You know, he's still cutting his teeth on this job, I'm sure. A very rigid man, which is no surprise for the Puritan world, but greedy as well, right? He's known to be opportunistic. Yes, and covetous. He has lots of battles when he's being hired about the amount of his payment and, you know, how many, you know, bits of meal and other things that he will be getting as part of his ministerial stipend. And he's, you know, had some poor business ventures and other parts. parts of his life, right? He dabbled in being a merchant in the West Indies. So he's an interesting character. And as I say, he was a controversial hire. Salem had gone through, you know, multiple
32:04 other ministers, Salem Village had gone through multiple other ministers before they eventually landed on him. And he's also, I mean, he's a man who is really anxious about the devil in the world. Because I think he sees some of his misfortune, some of the things that have gone wrong in his life as being about Satan's attack on him as God's servant. And, you know, he in some ways inflames this whole situation by early on in March of 1692 preaching this sermon about how the devil is in our house. And, you know, he talks about how every church has its devils. And there are devils here in this very room. Imagine hearing this. It's frigid. It's March. You're huddling. together, gender segregated in the pews of the Salem Village Meeting House. And your minister,
32:57 after you've heard about these witchcraft allegations, you know this is going on, you're afraid, is looking out at the audience and saying, Christ knows who the devils are. And there are devils among us. I mean, it's powerful stuff. And I mean, Salem reminds us that people could have made different choices. History is contingent. It's not preordained. And I think if Samuel Paris had made different choices. I think if some of the judges had made different choices and potentially if Cotton Mather had made different choices, things would have looked differently. Interesting. Were they tried separately or together? They were almost always tried separately. Yeah, so that they could be thoroughly questioned.
33:35 Okay. So one by one, each of these people give their account of what happened and then they're going to do that comparison of all this. And they're not really, they're not really given an opportunity to actually just say they're big. They're not called and ask, why do you think you're here? What's happen, tell me about your relationship with God. They're not asked that. They are called and said, when did you meet the devil? Why do you torment these girls? Why do you hurt them? Were you at the Sabbath? And, you know, I think what is fascinating to me is when you read the trial records, so many of these women. I think of people like Rebecca Nurse, who was beloved by the community, really upstanding citizen, you know, is asked this. And she says, I am not a witch. I'm a godly woman. I didn't hurt them.
34:17 And that's what actually a lot of these women in particular say when they're questioned because it's an affront to their identity as a good Puritan to be, for even to be insinuated that they're a witch. Yeah. I want to understand, Mickey, the time frame here, they are accused in March of 1692. It's three months later that these trials begin, May of 1692. And that happens in the other Salem, right? The main town. Yes, that's right. So things are starting to get official at this.
34:47 this point. Yes, and accusations are spreading. I mean, more and more names are being offered, more and more people are being afflicted purportedly. And one by one, these trials take place. Are they being sort of in different spaces, or is it really taking one at a time? Yes, it's really taking one at a time. And so this is pretty all-consuming. I realize that, you know, even though the Salem-Witch trials as a whole take place over a year, the bulk of the action, right, is happening from January, February, and all this kicks off to the, you know, The trial is really beginning late May in the summer of 1692. Most of the executions are early to mid-fall of 1692.
35:26 And that's when the governor kind of steps and pumps the brakes on it. But it doesn't actually end until early the next year. So it is actually, I think it felt to the people during the time quite compressed, quite intense, because this is constantly ongoing. But yes, people are being called individually. This is why it generates so much by way of records. Now, there were people with some objectivity here. There were those who were questioning the validity of this trial and the accusations and so forth.
35:51 There were even evidence of people you can see on the records writing on the back of things, like the word ignoramus was written on the back of her charges by one of these judges, I guess, or overseers. I mean, that's an important aspect of this. How much was that out in the public? Yeah. I mean, when someone like Rebecca Nurse gets accused, you know, in summer of 1692, when she and other upstanding citizens start to be accused, there are petitions on their behalf, right,
36:20 that say, listen, you've accused Rebecca Nurse, but she is a good and godly woman. And here are all these neighbors who can attest to the fact that she's going to church, she's harming no one, all of those things. So, you know, it's certainly the case that there is resistance to this and there is skepticism about it,
36:37 not by people who think that witches don't exist, but by people who think this person who's being accused is not right. And part of this is just because, I mean, I think I mentioned this before, unlike most places in Europe, this is where Salem is weird. Even though the initial people who are accused of witchcraft are, as I say, straight out of central casting, easy peasy scapegoats. As time progresses, you have these good and godly women, Rebecca Nurse and others who are accused. And then from there, you have high profile people who start to be accused in the fall of 1692, including Lady Mary Phipps, the white, of the governor. So it goes up the chain very quickly as it becomes a chain reaction hunt. And that's when
37:20 people start to ask, wait a second, I could believe that Tichiba and Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne and Bridget Bishop or whomever were witches. For Rebecca Nurse, but the wife of the governor, but these ministers who are being named, I don't know about that. It's going to go on a very typical trajectory, you know, how these extremist hunts happen in every, you know, venue of American life. And eventually, you know, the adults in the room start saying something else. But I want to track down also the stories of these other two women. So remember, it's always about these three women, Tichiba, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good. Sarah Good is convicted of Wishcraft, hanged.
37:57 She's hanged on July 19, 1692 in Salem. Meanwhile, her infant child had died in prison or shortly after the birth. I mean, these are tragic stories. Her four-year-old daughter, Dorothy Good, was also accused of witchcraft, imprisoned for seven months. Oh my goodness, it gets messy. Yeah. No. And I mean, Sarah Good is an easy, you know, one of the easy first victims in some ways because she has a bad reputation, right? She's cantankerous. She's angry. She's bitter. She's appalled to be asked these things. And she doesn't hold back on those feelings. If you read her trial record, she clapped back at these judges,
38:33 which as a woman, right, who already had a bad reputation, that's a bold thing to do. So she certainly doesn't help herself. She also, I should say, was not known for being especially pious. You know, during the course of her trial, she questioned the nature of God, or she seemed to question the nature of God's will. So for women, in this period, you have two models really as a Puritan woman. You can either be a good and godly mother and wife, or you can be a lewd woman, you know, someone who is not trustworthy, someone who has a bad reputation, someone who might be a witch. There's not a lot of space in between those. And if you don't meet the bar of being a good and godly woman, you're shunted into the other camp.
39:15 And Sarah Good was very much in that camp. All right. Sarah Osborne grew weak from a longstanding illness, poor prison conditions. She dies in custody May 10th of 1692, so they don't even have to decide on her fate. But then begins the bigger story. More accusations follow. 200 people are eventually accused of practicing witchcraft. This doesn't stop for all.
39:37 long time. 20 of those people get executed. Yeah, I mean, I think actually we think that probably more people were accused. Certainly more people were cried out upon, meaning that they were named as witches, but not formally tried. It's probable that some of the records were actually destroyed because of the embarrassment of the way that this trial was conducted. There are some elements when you read the records and you've studied the story that seem reminiscent of a government cover-up. In fact, actually, At one point, Governor Phipps says nobody else can publish anything about this. No more discourses can be written about what's happened at Salem. He basically rubber stamps Cotton Mather's account that will come out in 1693,
40:17 but says no one else can say anything about this. So I just say that to say archives themselves are constructions. We may not have every piece of a puzzle. But you're right. Yeah, I mean, 19 people are hanged. The 20th is not actually executed. This is famously Giles Corey, who's a sort of secondary target of the witch hunts after his wife. Martha is accused, but he refused to plea to kick off a trial. If you were accused of witchcraft,
40:42 you had to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. And Giles Corey said, this is bogus. I'm not participating in any of this. I'm not going to give you an answer. So in order to force him to give a plea, they applied this pain process that had long been kind of something that could be pulled out in the context of English law, which was to essentially apply weight to him, to pressure him to give a plea. So that's what they did, right? They placed a door over him, a board over him, I should say, and loaded rocks onto it, hoping that he would give a plea, and he just wouldn't do it, until eventually he was pressed to death. So this was not actually an execution, but it was certainly a murder by the state when they were trying to get him to enter his plea. He purportedly
41:26 said more weight as his final words, but that could also be an apocryphal Arthur Miller edition. And what I'm understanding is that you had all this happening in Salem, but of course other communities start catching up, right? This spreads like wildfire over the next weeks and months. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of anxiety that Word is going to get back to England, right, to King William about the chaos in one of his colonies and that the Massachusetts charter had been revoked in 1684 by Charles II. Could it happen again, which would cause massive upheaval to the political and economic situation? So, yeah, I mean, people who are in positions of power become very anxious about controlling the narrative. So even before they become interested in ending what's happening, they are concerned about controlling the narrative and making it seem like things are not getting too out of hand. There's an interesting little story here. Bridget Bishop is an older woman.
42:21 She was known for her gossipy habits, her promiscuity. Yes. When asked if she committed witchcraft, she responded, I am as innocent as a child unborn. nonetheless, found guilty, June 10th, became the first person hanged on what was called Gallo's Hill. That begins the big serious stuff about executions, and it gets very dark throughout the summer of 1692, which lands us in the fall when the powers that be, at least the governor William Phipps begins to turn around from that. Why these punishments? You're talking about people being pressed under rocks, being hanged. What was the point of these executions?
42:58 One of the first things to say is often you'll hear people when they talk about the witch hunts, they'll talk about being burned at the stake. And that was the punishment, the main punishment for witchcraft in continental Europe. In Scotland, you were strangled and then burned. In England, you're hanged. And that's because of English common law, right? That that's the way that capital crimes are punished. Because capital crimes, even though in New England, they see witchcraft as fundamentally a heresy. It's also a treason, right? Because witches are actors against the state. Indeed, actors against the king by virtue of being enemies of the church. So they're hanged for that reason. I think the question of why they have to be executed, though, is another important one. Why couldn't they be banished? Right? Why not do some other sort of humiliation ritual? And the answer is that there was a biblical mandate for it.
43:46 Exodus 2218 says, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Now, scholars can debate whether or not they actually meant witch or whether the original text means sorcerer or or something else or poison or whatever it might be, but it was interpreted at the time as being thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And for the Puritans who take the Bible, I mean, not just as gospel, which obviously they think it is, but as law, as divine law, that's a mandate. You have to do that. So, I mean, that's why there are not other punishments on offer for people they believe are truly witches. Interesting. What does bring the trials to an end? It's a couple of things. Certainly the involvement of William Phipps, and also I should say Cotton Mather with him,
44:29 Cotton Mather being this sort of brilliant, promising young minister. They see what's happening and they think we have to put a lid on this. Prominent people are being accused. Ministers are being accused. This is spreading like wildfire. We're going to attract unwanted attention of the crown. So there's a real desire to sort of end those processes. There also is increasing skepticism about the use of spectral evidence, which was the evidence by which, a lot of these women and some men were convicted of witchcraft. And the idea of spectral evidence was a theologically sketchy idea, right? I mean, let's think about it this way. Let's say you're a person in 1692 in July. And your wife is told that she is tormenting these children and is going
45:18 out at night and she's pinching them and she's trying to get them to join the devil's coven and do all of these horrific things. And your husband, you're like, she was beside me all night. Like, what are you talking about? She definitely didn't leave. And the way that people answered this was that, you know, the devil could allow or mimic the specter of that witch to go and do these harmful things. And it would basically be her spirit, right? Or like almost like her ghost going out and doing that work. And people who thought this was bogus would say, you know, the devil can't take the shape of an innocent woman. So how is this possible? If this is an innocent person, how would this happen? And there was a real argument against this. Some people thought the devil was such a deceiver. He could pretend to be a good and
46:02 godly woman. Other people said, no, that's not possible. The devil can't do that. If you're a true Christian, he can't imitate your shape. But this debate over whether or not spectral evidence was admissible comes to a head. And people basically say, we can't use this anymore. This is going to lead to innocent people being convicted. Even increased Mather, Cotton Mather's father, writes to that end and says, you know, we can't allow this anymore. You know, this evidence seems ridiculous to us, but at the time, people are really working out what is legally viable and what is theologically viable. And critically, if you think witchcraft is an exceptional crime, which people at the time did, they were willing sometimes to throw the normal processes and ideas out the window in order to get the bad guy. And the
46:48 analog here that we should think about is how sometimes modern governments approach terrorism. They think the crime is so awful that they will throw out traditional rights of habeas corpus and other things that are owed to people under the law in order to get the bad guys. There was something very similar happening with the witchcraft trials in Salem and in Europe, and it helps us understand why people are doing what they do. So October 29th, Governor Phipps dissolves the court, replacing it with a superior court of Judiciary, which allowed special evidence and condemned just three out of the 56 defendants. So the government, the greater government, is taking control of the situation.
47:25 I suppose that's what we should see here. They're moving in. By May of 1693, Phipps has pardoned all of those imprisoned on the witchcraft charge. It's over a year later, right? So, yes, it's over and it's not over, right? Because, I mean, the people who, some of whom are asked to pay for, for their imprisonment and the costs that we're associated with keeping them in jail for so long are struggling from economic hardship.
47:54 You know, Tichiba is almost certainly sold to someone else to pay off the cost of her imprisonment. But others, you know, who have been named as witches over the course of all of this, they have to go back into their communities and live their lives under that suspicion. And we lose track of them in the records because we only know about a lot of these people because of the court records. So I always have to think, you know, the trials end, but the reputational damage and the, you know, the trauma of having been accused of witchcraft, man, that persists, I think, for a lifetime.
48:27 Well, that the colonial authorities pardoned, some of the accused, and some are compensated. It's a kind of reparations thing happens. Yeah, but that takes time. Yeah, that's 1711-ish. Yeah, it is 1711. Yeah. Are there any further episodes of this?
48:41 Does it creep up again and again throughout the coming hundred, years? Yeah, the great question. So, I mean, this is the last major witch hunt in general. And indeed, actually, by 1697, like, you know, this is four years after. There's real regret about what had happened. I mean, even, you know, one of the major adult accusers, Ann Putnam senior says, you know, I was deceived by the devil into saying this. One of the judges, Samuel Sewell says that I got this wrong. Like, I got this terribly wrong. This was a mistake. So people are already repenting and recanting within, you know, four years of the witch trials, which, again, doesn't happen really anywhere else in Europe. And I think that's because this is so late because it's, you know, the trials
49:20 have ended in many other places. But people continue to believe in witches. I mean, that doesn't die down. But the judicial processes that enabled the trials to take place and indeed the sort of zeal and almost sort of mania that people felt, that does dissipate. I want to know that Samuel Paris got his comeuppance. Well, he loses his job. There you go. He's forced out in 1697. So, you know, but he doesn't do any statement of regret like some of these folks. I mean, I think actually he remained a true believer that what he did was right to the end. I do, I do think that. We haven't mentioned, I mean, one of the ugliest parts of this is I think Titchieba was probably spared because she was property. You know, a white man owned her, therefore he's like,
50:04 wait, no, it's my money here we're talking about. Yeah, I think it's that. And I think she was telling them what they needed to hear to keep the witch hunt going. Wow, fascinating. Amazing period of time. Mickey, you have made a study of this historically. What's your takeaway on the importance of these witch trials? Yeah, I mean, I think there's so much to say about this. I think the witch trials in some ways show us evidence of the worst impulses of human nature, to scapegoat others, to respond to fear by demonizing.
50:38 people, and in this case literally demonizing them, associating them with the devil, and being led by a sense of being under threat as opposed to a sense of generosity and compassion. You know, it's interesting. The Salem Witch Trials were so damaging to the psyche of people of Salem that it took them 300 years to actually have a memorial to the victims. The memorial for the Salem Witch Trial was not unveiled until 1992. And that's because for years, years people had been proposing one, but residents of what, you know, Salem now said it's still to, we don't want to dredge up these old sort of wounds from history. So it's such a sensitive thing because no one wants to be implicated or to see their faith community implicated or whatever
51:23 in something this horrific. But I think remembering the witch hunts is profoundly important because it is, it is a cautionary tale. You know, we, we look at the things that they did and said and believed in how they treated one another and we think how is this possible how could they have done that and i always say this to my students but 200 years 300 years from now people will look at choices that we are making things that we are enabling things that are technically legal but are horrific potentially and and ask some of the same questions that we ask about salem so salem it's not an exceptional moment in american history even though they tried to paint it as something that was a moment gone wrong Instead, it is about gendered anxieties. It is about colonialism. It is about treatment of an enslaved woman, all of those things, which are actually core to the American story. And so I think when we look at Salem, we should also take a hard look at ourselves. Of course. And so did Arthur Miller. I mean, that's the brilliance of that play and the idea of taking this and projecting it onto the 1950s hysteria over communism. And the city on the hill is such a big part of American identity. But once you put your
52:34 yourself on that hill, you were inviting trouble. Yes. To live up to that kind of idea, it takes a lot of work and a lot of machinations, and you see it play out in many different ways throughout our history. It's so interesting to come back to it. My thanks to Dr. Bickey Brock, Professor of History
52:50 at Washington and Lee University, a specialist in the history of witchcraft, demonology, and religious belief. Her books are many, but we're mentioning one today, just to keep it simple. Satan and the Scots, and also another one, Plagues of the Heart. Where can we find this news of you and your career, Mickey?
53:08 I'm on Blue Sky at Mickey Brock, M-I-K-I. I'm on my faculty web page. Basically, Google me is the answer. I'm around. Thank you very much for being with. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to American History Hit.
53:26 You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. From mysterious missing colonies to power. political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much.
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