Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

In 1620, the Mayflower prepared for a journey across the Atlantic Ocean, with 102 passengers and 30 crew. Some traveled for religious freedom: Puritans, or “Dissenters” from the Church of England, had already unsuccessfully tried to found a settlement in Holland. Similarly unwelcome in England, the Crown decided to send the Puritans to the colony in Jamestown, Virginia, joined by several unrelated merchants. John Alden was a barrel maker, responsible for managing the beer supply—the preferred beverage since water was unreliable. After the Mayflower set sail, it met nasty weather in the Atlantic, and the tight packing of passengers was challenging. Shortly after a crew member died, a storm caused a crack in the main beam, and John Alden used his carpentry skills to fix it. They were unsure of their location and running low on supplies. As they journeyed, a child was born while others died, but after 66 days at sea, they finally made land. After a brief attempt to find Virginia, they settled on the tip of Cape Cod, calling it Provincetown. They then moved to mainland Massachusetts, landing on December 11 and calling the town New Plymouth. The Puritans had an enormous impact on history, but they suffered greatly.

Puritan leader Myles Standish assembled a band to arrest Thomas Morton, the leader of another non-Puritan settlement. This occurred eight years after the landing at Plymouth, which subjected the Puritan settlers to disease, hunger, and hostile indigenous tribes. Within months of landing, nearly half of the Mayflower passengers died. Desperate for God’s intervention, they encountered a peaceful, English-speaking Indigenous man. The man, Squanto, reported that his entire Patuxet tribe was killed by disease, leaving only Squanto, who had lived in England and became an interpreter for English merchants. Squanto helped the settlers adjust to the conditions of the area: “He instructs the settlers how to hunt and trap game, where the fish and eels are feeding, and the best fields to plant […] When settlers explore the lands beyond Plymouth, he is their guide. When they negotiate trading agreements with other tribes, he is their interpreter” (24).

Despite these developments, there were fierce rivalries among the community leaders—Standish, Alden, and Governor William Bradford—and conditions were fiercely hostile. The first harvest was a success, leading to a feast between the settlers and the indigenous people, which was later commemorated as the first Thanksgiving. As winter set in, a ship arrived, the Fortune, with a new batch of mostly male settlers. Men considerably outnumbered women. The settlement grew, but many of the new arrivals chafed at the harsh Puritan laws. Soon, clashes over whether to work on the sabbath and the Puritans’ attempt to ban all gaming and entertainment opened a rupture between the religious establishment and the “strangers” who rejected their ways.

Governor Bradford learned that John Lyford, a minister who decamped Plymouth to another colony, tried to subvert Bradford’s authority. After finding letters by Lyford filled with false accusations, Bradford confronted him at a town meeting, revealed his treachery, and expelled him. Though the threat was removed, Bradford ruled Plymouth more harshly, prompting some dissenters to found their own settlements. Roger Conant established a settlement in what would become Salem. In 1630, the Crown dispatched attorney John Winthrop to found another colony in Massachusetts, and while his motives were primarily economic, he shared the Bradford’s religious zeal. In Plymouth, Bradford’s harsh rule prompted dissent within the Puritan community, prompting men like Roger Williams to leave and found Providence Plantation in current Rhode Island: “Providence is everything Salem is not. It is run by majority vote and is the first place in the New World where there is separation of church and state” (36). Many of the settlers were intrigued by Indigenous traditions concerning witches and ghosts, but as disease ravaged the Indigenous population, they considered it a sign from God. As commercial prosperity led to the founding of new settlements, all but Providence imposed harsh theocratic rule, and so “towns like Salem evolve into hotbeds of rabid religiosity. There is no dissent. The townspeople do what they are told. Ironically, superstition—which is the opposite of faith-is deeply ingrained in the population” (38).

Bridget Bishop was an independent-minded widow who remarried an older, abusive man named Thomas Oliver. She tried to fight back against the abuse, and she tended to flout social conventions, including wearing colorful clothes, all of which led to rumors that she was a witch. By 1692 the people of Salem saw children “bitten and pinched by invisible agents; their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way, and returned back again, so as it is impossible for them to do it themselves […] Someone must take the blame” (44).

By 1692, relations with the Indigenous tribes broke down, and harvests were poor. Settlements grew into towns, and the rule of the church remained absolute, especially in Salem. John Alden Jr., son of the Mayflower’s barrel maker, stopped in Salem and found a town convulsed in fear and paranoia. Puritan leaders were increasingly vocal about witches. The prominent preacher Cotton Mather visited a woman in prison and reported that she was sexually involved with the Devil. He wrote that the young woman was unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer. The woman was hanged, and as raids from Indigenous tribes intensified and food supplies dwindled, Mathers sought to purge the community of any remaining witches.

A slave named Tituba told stories of witches and demons to Reverend Samuel Parris’s young children. Originally from Barbados, she practiced a folk religion called “vodun” closely related to Haitian “voodoo” (53). One night, young Betty Parris went into a fit and was soon joined by her cousin Abigail Williams. Someone asked Tituba to bake a cake to help uncover the source of the danger, but when that failed, suspicion fell on Tituba herself. Other girls had fits and blamed Tituba, as well as two other women. Under questioning, the other women themselves succumbed to fits, and Tituba announced, to the shock of all present, “The Devil […] came to me and bid me serve him” (57). She told lurid stories about her possession by the Devil and knew nine others in communion with him. Tituba continued her testimony, and Reverend Parris was terrified that the apparent outbreak of witchcraft originated in his home. Meanwhile, tavern-owner John Proctor dismissed the accusations as silly and chastised his employee, Mary Warren, when she acted with the same fits as the other girls. His skepticism created conflict with Parris, who insisted that demonic possession was real. When Mary Warren was supposed to confess to faking her fits, she went into them all over again.

After 13 months of prison, Tituba was released and vanished, along with her husband, from the historical record.

Cotton Mather selected the experienced lawyer Thomas Newton to prosecute suspected witches. Mary Warren, Abigail Hobbs, and Giles Corey confessed. After she was arrested, Bridget Bishop pleaded innocence. She looked up to heaven to plead her case, and in response, her alleged victims cried out, as though a witch looking to God caused them agony. The court decided to hold a trial, and Bridget was sent to jail. When her trial began, her accusers went into hysterics at the sight of her. The court, presided by Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, pronounced her guilty, and she became the 14th person executed for witchcraft in the New World since 1647. Among the Puritan leadership, there was some debate over whether “spectral evidence” should be permitted, with Increase Mather, Cotton’s father, arguing that “to take away the life of any one, merely because of a Spectre or Devil, if a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them, will bring a Guilt of Innocent Blood on the Land” (71), but Cotton defied him and pushed for more trials and executions.