Witchcraft

Reports of witchcraft are difficult to interpret because language obscures the component parts. Take the Salem witch trials that took place in the newly organized crown colony of New England between February of 1692 and May of 1693, just as Diego de Vargas was preparing for the Reconquest at El Paso del Norte.

The daughter of one of my immigrant ancestors, Sarah Wilde, was hung. Testimony of some witnesses included recitals of grievances of the kind that fester in small communities. In her case, two men were angry because she had refused to lend them scythes when they had broken theirs. Members of their family were affronted when one of her stepsons, Ephraim Wilde, began courting a cousin.

Sarah was denounced by Deliverance Hobbs, who had been arrested by Ephraim. He was the constable. Wilde’s first wife’s family resented his remarriage and accused them both of killing their chickens. In the past, others had accused her of adultery and dressing too gaudily

Witchcraft accusations often mask resentments or fears of envy that have no culturally accepted modes of expression. Scapegoats become their public face.

Another thread in the Salem trials was the feeling of impotence directed against a healer when loved one dies. Joseph Neal accused Ann Pudeator of speeding the death of his wife. The woman had smallpox, and Ann used a mortar to compound something. When questioned, Ann said she only used neatsfoot oil.

Then, healing women were targets of abuse. Today, malpractice suits abound.

The Massachusetts trials began when nine-year-old Betty Parris and her eleven-year-old cousin Abigail Williams began experimenting with spells they heard described by Betty’s family slave. When confronted, Tituba said she knew about the occult from Barbados, but that everything she knew was protective, not offensive.

The mother of the men who asked for the scythe reprimanded Sarah Wilde. She reported Sarah did "look back upon me and immediately I did fall into such a trembling condition that I was as if all my joints did knock together so that I could hardly go along."

The next time the mother saw Sarah Wilde she said, "I was immediately taken with such a pain in my back that I was not able to bear it and fell down in the seat and did not know where I was and some people took me up and carried me out of the meeting house."

The use of spells to influence human behavior filtered into the Americas with African slaves. They often were used by a woman who wanted to win the affections of a man, or harm him or a perceived rival. The most important sources for spells and herbal medicines in La Cañada before the Revolt had been two Mexican natives, Beatriz de los Ángeles and Pascuala Bernal. In the early years after the Reconquest, a woman from Mexico City, Ines de Aspeitia, used hidden bones against her husband.

Why the women in New England had the same physical symptoms as Leonor Domínguez is an interesting question. Does anyone have any information on the effects of fear on the body? Leave a comment or send me an email at nasonmcormic@cybermesa.com.

Notes: When I write about witchcraft, I try to distinguish between spells, failures of herbal medicine, communal jealousies, and witchcraft as defined by early modern European writers.

Essex County, Massachusetts. Records of the Salem trials are available on a University of Virginia website; spelling modernized for readability.