1692 Salem Was Ripe For Witch Trials
From a story in The Saginaw News
It's a good thing the sky was sunny Tuesday morning and that the temperature was encouraging with its hint of spring. Inside Horizons Conference Center, however, things were mighty grim.
Horizons Town Talk speaker Rose Earhart -- yes, she's related to aviator Amelia Earhart -- was painting an all-too-vivid picture of Salem, Mass., and its road to the famed witch trials of 1692.
"Living conditions were abominable in Salem," said Earhart, who has penned an acclaimed historical novel on the subject and who lives in an allegedly haunted house in Salem. "It was cold eight to nine months of the year. Damp with rain or snow a lot of the time. Foggy or misty. Dark. And the homes were hutlike -- one or two rooms at most, with no windows because windows were only for rich people. "It was smoky and smelly inside, with one entire wall devoted for heating and cooking. And 14 people often lived in one hut."
Amid groans from the audience, Earhart raised the angst a notch when she started to address the claustrophobic religious atmosphere of the Puritans.
"The biggest fear of a Puritan was that someone, somewhere, might be happy. If you were happy, you'd go to hell. And they believed that before you were born, either God or the Devil had claimed your soul." Oppression, she said, was condoned and encouraged against women, children, the poor, the old, the infirm. Her description of a spiked head cage used routinely to torture wives brought more murmurs from the audience.
Puritans were sure the woods were filled with ghosts, goblins, witches and American Indians, she continued, and they were so afraid of their own livestock, "they hung chickens for witchcraft.
So, just how bad was it?
"Stories tell that three-quarters of the Puritans captured by Indians decided to stay with the Indians when given a chance for their freedom." That comment generated one of the few moments of laughter in her speech about "The Salem Witch Trials."
Conditions were ripe, she said, "for a disaster."
When a half-black, half-Indian, Caribbean-born slave named Tituba amused a group of girls she was caring for with tales of voodoo magic, some of them began having nightmares -- and the mass hysteria began, says Earhart.
Swept into it as prosecutors were doctors and ministers and judges, among them the founder of Harvard and names that would become literary giants in years to come (Hawthorn and Putnam). Two of them, Earhart says, were pedophiles who kept records on what they did with girls in the name of research.
Before it was over, 19 people were hanged, and an 80-year-old man was pressed to death under the weight of stones piled onto the wooden door laid on his chest. He willingly had traded places with his accused granddaughter so she could live.
Earhart showed video clips of some of the places where these events took place, places unchanged by time. She showed video of the graveyard where accusers and a few of the condemned now share a common ground -- although most of the executed never were buried, their bodies instead left on a hill for scavengers to ravage. She told of a few heroes and heroines in the battle.
"So what it is we can learn here?" Earhart asked. "That history repeats itself."
Salem was followed by America putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World World II because of hysteria over Pearl Harbor. And that was followed by the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s which destroyed careers because of the fear of Communists.
"And I do not want to get political here, I really don't," Earhart concluded, "but I wonder how history will view some of our choices being made now against terrorism.
"Only time will tell."
It's a good thing the sky was sunny Tuesday morning and that the temperature was encouraging with its hint of spring. Inside Horizons Conference Center, however, things were mighty grim.
Horizons Town Talk speaker Rose Earhart -- yes, she's related to aviator Amelia Earhart -- was painting an all-too-vivid picture of Salem, Mass., and its road to the famed witch trials of 1692.
"Living conditions were abominable in Salem," said Earhart, who has penned an acclaimed historical novel on the subject and who lives in an allegedly haunted house in Salem. "It was cold eight to nine months of the year. Damp with rain or snow a lot of the time. Foggy or misty. Dark. And the homes were hutlike -- one or two rooms at most, with no windows because windows were only for rich people. "It was smoky and smelly inside, with one entire wall devoted for heating and cooking. And 14 people often lived in one hut."
Amid groans from the audience, Earhart raised the angst a notch when she started to address the claustrophobic religious atmosphere of the Puritans.
"The biggest fear of a Puritan was that someone, somewhere, might be happy. If you were happy, you'd go to hell. And they believed that before you were born, either God or the Devil had claimed your soul." Oppression, she said, was condoned and encouraged against women, children, the poor, the old, the infirm. Her description of a spiked head cage used routinely to torture wives brought more murmurs from the audience.
Puritans were sure the woods were filled with ghosts, goblins, witches and American Indians, she continued, and they were so afraid of their own livestock, "they hung chickens for witchcraft.
So, just how bad was it?
"Stories tell that three-quarters of the Puritans captured by Indians decided to stay with the Indians when given a chance for their freedom." That comment generated one of the few moments of laughter in her speech about "The Salem Witch Trials."
Conditions were ripe, she said, "for a disaster."
When a half-black, half-Indian, Caribbean-born slave named Tituba amused a group of girls she was caring for with tales of voodoo magic, some of them began having nightmares -- and the mass hysteria began, says Earhart.
Swept into it as prosecutors were doctors and ministers and judges, among them the founder of Harvard and names that would become literary giants in years to come (Hawthorn and Putnam). Two of them, Earhart says, were pedophiles who kept records on what they did with girls in the name of research.
Before it was over, 19 people were hanged, and an 80-year-old man was pressed to death under the weight of stones piled onto the wooden door laid on his chest. He willingly had traded places with his accused granddaughter so she could live.
Earhart showed video clips of some of the places where these events took place, places unchanged by time. She showed video of the graveyard where accusers and a few of the condemned now share a common ground -- although most of the executed never were buried, their bodies instead left on a hill for scavengers to ravage. She told of a few heroes and heroines in the battle.
"So what it is we can learn here?" Earhart asked. "That history repeats itself."
Salem was followed by America putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World World II because of hysteria over Pearl Harbor. And that was followed by the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s which destroyed careers because of the fear of Communists.
"And I do not want to get political here, I really don't," Earhart concluded, "but I wonder how history will view some of our choices being made now against terrorism.
"Only time will tell."
posted by Jeff at 9:27 AM
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