Hesperidina

I have shown the motives and the means by which a core group of accusers in Salem may have carried out a witchcraft outbreak. What remains to be discussed is their opportunity to do so. Obviously, living in the same household with people one intends to poison provides the occasion to do so. Men like Samuel Parris, Thomas Putnam, Jr., his brother-in-law, Jonathan Walcott, who lived next door to Parris on one side, Walcott’s uncle, Nathaniel Ingersoll, who ran a tavern next to Parris on the other side, and Dr. William Griggs—each had ample opportunity to administer such a delirium-producing agent to one or more of their charges and guide their experiences. Did they take

advantage of their opportunity? Defining “opportunity” in a narrower sense, what

opportunities do suspects appear to have seized in their quest to instigate and manipulate the outcome of something as volatile as a witchcraft outbreak and make it go their way? What is the evidence that a plant like datura stramonium was involved in their

manipulation? Conversely, what opportunities for stopping the outbreak did they ignore or refuse to take? First, we need to look at the court cases to see who was really making the accusations.

A quick glance at Marilynne K. Roach’s “Appendix E” or “Persons Known to Have Entered Complaints Against Witch Suspects,” in The Salem Witchcraft Trials (619- 621) shows that the person who entered the most complaints by far was Thomas Putnam. Of the 158 people complained against, Thomas Putnam was responsible for 36 or 23% of them. If we add all of the Putnams’ complaints together, we find they add up to 50 complaints or 32 % of the total number. Since Thomas Putnam, Jr. was the oldest of the

male heirs of Thomas Putnam, Sr., he stood to receive the lion’s share of the inheritance from his father—had it not been for Thomas, Sr., choosing to leave the inheritance to Thomas, Jr.’s half brother, Joseph, that is. Thomas, Jr., therefore, had the greatest reason to feel cheated and the most motivation to instigate a witchcraft outbreak to try to recover what he felt he should have inherited. Thomas Putnam, Jr., was followed in number of complaints by Jonathan Walcott (17), John Putnam, Sr., (15), and Nathaniel Ingersoll (13). Of these, Walcott’s daughter Mary lived with Thomas Putnam, Jr. Nathaniel Ingersoll and Jonathan Walcott, Mary Walcott’s father, lived next door to Samuel Parris. Among the males who made the most legal complaints, we find they were either Putnams or lived next to Samuel Parris.

Turning to “Appendix III” in Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare, we find a chart with the number of “Afflicted Accusers of Salem Village and Andover.” Of 434 total legal complaints, we see that the number of complaints of the women and girls living at the house of Thomas Putnam, Jr., including Ann Putnam, Sr. (5), Ann Putnam, Jr. ( 53), Mercy Lewis (54), and Mary Walcott (69), together numbered 181 or 42% of the total complaints in the Salem records. Added to these the complaints of Betty Parris (3), and Abigail Williams (41), (both living with Rev. Parris), and Elizabeth Hubbard (40), living with Dr. William Griggs, we find that these core accusers together were responsible for 61% of the total legal complaints at the Salem trials. Clearly, Thomas Putnam, Jr. was the greatest accuser, who, including his wife and female charges were responsible for 181 or 42% of the total complaints. The household of Samuel Parris generated, understandably, fewer complaints (44), so as to give the entire operation its

religious legitimacy. The name of Parris himself did not appear on any of the complaints, since he was the minister. Formal legal complaints by Parris would have exposed him to hard feelings of the accused’s relatives in his church; after all, Parris’s goal was to preserve his standing. The female accusers who made the most complaints were the very first accusers: Betty Parris, mid-January 1691/2; Abigail Williams, mid-January 1691/2; Ann Putnam, Jr., Feb. 25, 1691/2; Elizabeth Hubbard, Feb. 27, 1691/2; Mercy Lewis, March 14, 1692; Ann Putnam, Sr., March 18, 1692; and Mary Walcott, March 19, 1692. All of these had lived in the homes of Thomas Putnam, Jr., Rev. Samuel Parris, Dr. William Griggs, or Jonathan Walcott. These facts together suggest both an initiatory element and virulence. What was motivating these individuals? The answer to this question very much depends on the gender of the accused and accusers.

Another issue is one of character. Is there anything in Samuel Parris’s past that might indicate he was capable of using violent means to achieve his ends? What else besides possibly making veiled threats in his sermons did the Reverend Parris do that would indicate he was capable of performing so horrific an act as deliberately to initiate a witchcraft outbreak? Parris’s violence inflicted on Tituba to extort a confession (perhaps to cover up his own involvement in the girls’ afflictions) would be one such indication. If Parris needed a scapegoat, he found the perfect candidate in Tituba. As an Indian

(possibly an Arawak)90 married to another Indian, called John Indian, she would have been suspected of practicing witchcraft, both due to the associations of Indians with the devil and because of her marital connection with her husband. For decades, writers— beginning with Charles W. Upham—have blamed Tituba for teaching the girls

witchcraft, but there is no real evidence that she had anything to do with witchcraft other than (perhaps) bake a witch cake to try to expose a witch. Tituba was suspected primarily because of her ethnicity and social position. But why would Parris want or need to beat Tituba into confessing? We have already seen that she was probably not responsible for the girls’ symptoms. Since a free and voluntary confession exceeded in validity all other forms of evidence for witchcraft,91 a confession from Tituba would have created a shield for Parris or for any of his cohorts. No one would thus be able to charge Parris with anything amounting to responsibility for the outbreak. Since the Puritan troops were fighting the Indians less than fifty miles from Salem at the time of the outbreak, and since both Indians and women were traditionally associated with witchcraft, Tituba initially made the ideal scapegoat. Parris needed a target he could manipulate. He carefully saw to it that Abigail and Betty named Tituba as the first “witch” (see Hale Modest Inquiry in Burr Narratives 413). He apparently also forced her to name two more women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, both likely candidates because they were women of low social position whose reputations were already tainted. Tituba was the person most under Parris’s control, for as a slave she was by definition forced to take orders. The evidence that Parris beat Tituba into confessing comes from one source only, but a credible one: Robert Calef informs us in More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700) that after Tituba confessed,

She was . . . Committed to Prison, and lay there till Sold for her Fees. The account she since gives of it is, that her Master did beat her and otherwise abuse her, to make her confess and accuse (such as he call’d) her Sister-

Witches, and that whatsoever she said by way of confessing or accusing others, was the effect of such usage; her Master refused to pay her fees, unless she would stand to what she had said. (qtd. In Burr, Narratives 343) Parris eventually sold Tituba for her jail and court costs. It was Tituba, along with Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, who accused the next two women of witchcraft, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn. Could Parris also have duped Tituba by drugging her to manipulate events and to give her “spectral sight”? Most of Tituba’s confession shows that she was familiar with the common folklore of witchcraft: riding on poles to witch meetings, seeing the devil in some strange shape demanding that she serve him, pinching,

tormenting, and the like. If Tituba really thought she experienced even a little of what she describes, then she must have been hallucinating. Judge John Hathorne conducts the examination. Notice the leading questions:

Q. att first begining w’th them, w’t then appeared to you w’t was itt like that Got you to doe itt A. one like a man Just as I was goeing to sleep Came to me this was when the Children was first hurt he sayd he would kill the Children & she would never be well, and he Sayd if I would nott Serve him he would do soe to mee Q. is that the Same man that appeared before to you that appeared the last night & tould you this? A. yes. Q. w’t Other likenesses besides a man hath appeared to you? A. Sometimes like a hogge Sometimes like a great black dogge, foure tymes. (SWP III: 750) Since Tituba, like most in New England, would have known that witches or their familiars could assume the form of animals, it is uncertain whether her description

involved actual hallucinations or was based on other incidents she imagined, heard about, or was coached into repeating. Since her encounter began as she was going to sleep, something of what she describes could have been based upon hypnagogic hallucinations occurring in the period of drowsiness preceding sleep, with the experience influenced by the effects of certain alkaloids. These hallucinations could have been brought on either by an incubus nightmare or by drugs.92 Since datura stramonium is known to induce vivid dreams, Tituba’s description could have been based on a dream intensified by Jamestown weed. In a modern case study from 2001, a “Mr. Underhill” describes his experience with datura stramonium.

Eventually the time came to go to sleep, and I decided then to eat 5 seeds before I fell asleep to experience the dream alterations of the plant. That night was amazing. When I was fall[i]ng asleep, I experienced vivid, abstract mental imagery with my eyes closed, (although it was nothing like a hallucination). When asleep, I had unbelievable long and vivid dreams. The dream also was one continuing story, even though I frequently wove in and out of REM sleep and non REM sleep. (“Dream Plant Spirit”) In the testimony of the two first male accusers at Salem, William Allen and John Hughes, hallucinogenic imagery, attributable either to drugs or an incubus nightmare, is also evident. Both Allen and Hughes relate that while in bed (on the evening of March 2), they saw apparitions accompanied by strange lights (see SWP II: 372). William Allen lived about a mile to the south from Thomas Putnam and a mile to the west from the Rev. Parris. The location of John Hughes’s homestead of is not known. Both Allen’s and

Hughes’s account sound like nightmares (see Chapter 2) and both (since they occurred on the same date, though in separate places) could have been at least partially drug-induced:

William Allen . . . saith that on the 2’d day of march the s’d Sarah Good vissabley appeared to him in his chamber s’d allen beeing in bed and brought an unuseuall light in w’th her the s’d Sarah came and sate upon his foot the s’d allen went to kick att her upon which shee vanished and the light with her.

Hughe’s account is very similar:

John Hughes beeing in Bed in a clossd Roome and the dore being fast so that no catt nor dogg could come in the said John saw a Great light

appeare in the s’d Chamber and Risseing up in his bed he saw a large Grey Catt att his beds foot[.] (SWP 2: 372)

That Elizabeth Parris’s condition improved quickly and dramatically after she was sent to live with Stephen Sewall in Salem Town seems rather revealing. We might

therefore wonder why some of the other afflicted women were not isolated and placed in other residences. Cotton Mather had made a model of such a practice in 1688 by taking thirteen-year-old Margaret Goodwin into his home, eventually curing her of the effects of bewitchment. He had written about it in Memorable Providences (1689), which Samuel Parris must have read as it was famous all over New England. Why was Abigail Williams not also sent away, perhaps to the home of a minister like Cotton Mather, to see if her condition would improve as her cousin’s had after leaving the Parris household?

or so” of the afflicted into his home temporarily to try to cure them with fasting and prayer. The offer was rejected (Mather Diary I: 151-152). Had Mather’s offer been honored, the entire outbreak could have been prevented. The instigators did not seem to be interested in pouring water on the smouldering embers. Mather’s opportunity to intervene occurred in the case of Mercy Short, a girl of Boston, who came down with seizures while attending his church service. He took her into his home near the end of the Salem episode, in November, 1692, and eventually cured her of her bewitchment. By attending to Mercy Short, Mather intentionally protected not only her but the people whom she falsely or mistakenly might have named as responsible for her afflictions. Cotton Mather also says (Diary 1) that he kept the names of the accused to himself. He wrote about this episode in a journal he kept of the episode entitled A Brand Pluck’d Out of the Burning.93 He noted later in an unpublished account of another energumen,94 Margaret Rule, that he kept the names of the accused to himself (Another Brand Pluck’d Out of the Burning in Burr Narratives 321).

Why didn’t anyone in Salem take advantage of Mather’s offer? Boston was only a fifty mile journey. If the people in charge of these girls had really wanted their symptoms and accusations to end, why would they not have taken advantage of the opportunity to separate the afflicted girls and have at least one or two more live elsewhere to see if their conditions would change? Why would Parris or Putnam not have allowed Mather to assist? All knew that Mather had successfully cured others. Removing Betty Parris from the Parris home initially had worked. Sending the girls away would have thwarted the witchcraft accusations and endangered the reputation and perhaps the lives of the men

who hosted the accusers (especially if they had something to hide). It would have separated the girls from those who used them as instruments for their own agenda.

As we recall, the parsonage of Reverend Parris was not the only home to be invaded by specters on the day the witch cake was baked. Ann Putnam, living with her father, Thomas Putnam and her mother, Ann Putnam, Sr., was also afflicted by Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbone, on the 25th of February. Ann testifies that on the 25th Sarah Good “tortured” her most “grievously,” but she didn’t learn the identity of Good’s specter until 27 of February when Good “told” Ann her name. Why does Ann even mention that she didn’t know the identity of the specter, and why did she not discover her identity until two days later though Sarah Good must have been previously known to Ann as she was to her friend Abigail Williams? It sounds as if someone identified Good’s specter for Ann (see SWP 2: 373).

Sarah Good’s shape was not the only apparition Ann Putnam could not identify until sometime later. The identity of Rebecca Nurse’s specter also appears to have eluded Ann for a couple of days after it began troubling her. A deposition by John Tarbell, Rebecca Nurse’s son-in-law, reveals not only that the girls were being told whom to “cry out of” but also exposes a possible method used by the Putnams and perhaps others to convince the girls about whose specter had been attacking them.

John Tarbell, being at the house of Thomas Putnam’s upon the 28 day of this instant March, being the year 1692, upon discourse of many things, I asked them some questions, and among other[s] I asked this question: whether the girl that was afflicted did first speak of Goody Nurs before

others mentioned her to her. They said she told them she saw the

apparition of a pale-faced woman that sat in her grandmother’s seat, but did not know her name. Then I replied and said: but who was it that told her that it was Goody Nurs. Mercy Lewes said it was Goody Putnam that said it was Goody Nurs. Goody Putnam said it was Mercy Lewes that told her. Thus they turned it upon one another, saying it was you and it was you that told her. This was before any was afflicted at Thomas Putnam’s beside his daughter, that they told his daughter it was Goody Nurs. (SVW 33)

Ann Putnam, Sr. and Mercy Lewis stood in front of Rebecca Nurse’s relative, each accusing the other of putting into Ann Putnam, Jr.’s head the idea that Rebecca Nurse had afflicted her. Why had Ann been unable to identify the specter of Rebecca Nurse herself? Why did it take her two days to identify her? Was she unable to identify Rebecca Nurse for two days because she had to get over the effects of a drug-induced “fit” before she was in her right mind enough to “identify” anyone? Rebecca Nurse, though a member of the Salem Town church, almost always attended services at the Village where Ann’s father was a deacon, and Ann should have known her. If Ann had seen a specter, how could anybody have possibly identified whose specter it was for certain unless Ann did it herself? Ann’s description of a “pale-faced” woman’s specter is not much of an

identifying feature. If it had been decided beforehand that Ann was to cry out upon Goody Nurse, why would Ann have needed to see an unidentified specter in her grandmother’s seat? If Ann’s visions were a hoax, and she understood that they were,

why not just name the specter of Rebecca Nurse, and have done with it, unless she did not know Rebecca Nurse and others knew she did not know her?