History Caught in the Devil’s Snare

The Boyer & Nissenbaum book Salem Possessed was published in 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, and it is of no surprise that it focuses on factional conflict. Factional conflict was a big theme of the 1960s, where times were turbulent, and many of the rights movements (black, women’s, gay, etc.) had splintered, along with the national Democratic Party in 1968 and national Republican Party in 1964. Continuing with the theme of Watergate and its fallout was Richard Weisman’s book Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts, written in 1984. Weisman’s basic premise was that the magistrates of the court of Oyer and Terminer were feeding the children names of townspeople they wanted to single out, and add fuel to the fire of the witch hunts. Furthermore, Wiseman asserts that there was an attempted cover-up. A government conspiracy and cover-up obviously sounds like the mindset coming from the backlash that came out of the loss of faith in government officials as part of the Watergate scandal.

Anne Barstow’s book Witchcraze was published in 1994, meaning it was written in the 1980s, when women’s rights was on the rise, and there was much talk of an Equal Rights Amendment (or ERA). It should come to no surprise that Barstow’s book concerned the topic of why women were primarily chosen as witches during the witch hunts. Meanwhile, in Mary Beth Norton’s book, In the Devil’s Snare, the idea is proposed that it was fear and loathing of frontier violence, including fear from the Wabanaki Indian tribe, that led to an overzealous urge to take out frustrations on witches. This could, perhaps, have stemmed out of the fear and loathing of Cold War tensions of the 1980s. However, this idea is somewhat far-fetched, and it seems that the times had little impact on Norton’s assessment of the trials (or at least less impact than the books which preceded it).

The question must first be asked, “What the hell was going on in Essex County?” To answer simply, “That’s right.” Anything and everything was going poorly in Essex County. Norton opens up by tying the reason for having the witch trials (and by extension, the ferocity) to the warring with Indians on the frontier–specifically, Maine. Norton believes that the losses in the French-Indian War, in which the colonists were caught in the crossfire, led in large part to the witchcraze of 1692 . Mercy Lewis, one of the prime accusers, lost a lot of her family in a battle in the war, in Maine, on August 11th, 1676, against the Wabanaki tribe . Having lost much of her family, a natural hostility would endure toward those in charge, believed to be responsible for the war losses–especially if they are alive. It just so happens that George Burroughs fits that description to a T. Mercy and some relatives made it to Salem by 1691, and were ready for their chance to get even. And, on January 25th, 1692, they got their chance, as a group of Wabanakis destroyed New York City–several days after Samuel Parris’ daughter and niece began to have fits –the same Samuel Parris to who Mercy Lewis had just become a maidservant.

But, the question remains, “if witchcraft implies a connection with Satan, and the Wabanakis were to be the evil people at the center of the trials, how would the Wabanakis be connected with Satan?” On April 21st, “Benjamin Hutchinson…later attested that in his presence Parris’s niece ‘said that there. was a lettell black menester that Lived at Casko bay…’” This was hastened by Abigail Hobbs and Ann Putnam Jr. when they asserted that the people of Essex county were hesitant to complain but were linking the fighting of a physical enemy with the fighting of a spectral enemy, and the black forces of Satan and bewitchment. With the connection of the frontier to witchcraft, Mercy Lewis was primed to run a hatchet job (or rather, a noose job) on George Burroughs. Could anything be submitted to propagate this? Absolutely, in a description of Burroughs, given as testimony, the man was pegged as “lettell” and “black” “the latter a term that suggests both a swarthy complexion and a tie to the “black” Wabanakis.”

A question remains as to why it was Mercy Lewis. If many people (Mercy Included) made it out of Casco Bay, and many people (again, Mercy included) lost many family members, then why would Mercy take the initiative? “Wartime losses had accordingly transformed the granddaughter of one of the wealthiest and most distinguished men in Maine into an unmarried maidservant in a backwater village. She had good reason to resent her fate and to blame both the Wabanakis and inept colonial leaders for her unenviable existence.” By having a battle turn her life from riches to rags, while the leader of the army comes out unscathed, it is almost a wonder she did not attempt to murder Burroughs. She would just have to do it via proxy. Eventually, George Burroughs would be tried, convicted, and hanged for witchcraft.

So, what is to be made of this connection between the war and the trials? It cannot be said that war directly caused the trials and craze, but war caused situations that would have been conducive to the perpetuation and high rate of escalation of the trials. However, the girls’ fits were the lit match to the powder keg of a war-torn society that had become Essex County. The dominoes had been set into motion, and the horrifying events of the witch trials ran its course. It is unlikely that had the war not happened, the trials would not have happened, because factors were still there that would led to them (besides, people were always being accused of witchcraft in those times). It may be safely said, however, that had the war not occurred, the results would have been less dramatic, and it would not have gotten as out of control as it did.

Works Cited:

Norton, Mary Beth, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Random House, Inc., 2002.

Vice President Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama