TAMUC History Professor Busts Myths About The Salem Witch Trials
Part 3 of the Spooky Stories Series
当我们想到1692年的塞勒姆女巫审判, we may conjure horrific mental images of women being burned at the stake or bound by ropes and thrown into the water. But our assumptions about what happened during that bizarre time in American history may be misguided, and our mental images may be nothing more than misconceptions.
Dr. 约翰·霍华德·史密斯是德克萨斯大学的历史教授&M University-Commerce, specializes in early American religious history during the 17th and 18th centuries. As an expert in Puritanism, he has studied and taught about the Salem Witch Trials. 为十月的幽灵故事系列做贡献, Smith sat down to bust some myths and share fascinating insight into this strange historic event.
First up…Myth Busting!
误解一:女巫被绑在火刑柱上烧死.
当我们想到女巫审判, we might imagine a poor woman tied to a stake with a pile of burning wood at her feet. 然而，这并不准确. Smith explained that witch burning was done mainly in Europe during the medieval ages. Accused witches in Salem were hanged, not burned, but the hangings were just as horrible.
“The hangings didn't go as you see in films either—with a platform and a trap door,” he said. “They turned victims off a ladder, so they slowly strangled to death. They didn't break their necks and have ‘lights out' like it happened in later hangings.”
There was, however, one exception: a man named Giles Corey was pressed to death with stones for refusing to enter a plea when charged with witchcraft.
Myth 2: Witch hunting was common during early American history.
Many people think that what happened in Salem was not all that unique and that Puritans were routinely holding witch hunts in towns and villages all over. This is inaccurate.
虽然非常严格和虔诚的宗教, the Puritans were not usually witch hunters like we might see portrayed in the media. Smith explained that although witchcraft was illegal and a person could be charged and tried, there was a proper and expected procedure that had to be followed. And a big part of that procedure was that legitimate physical proof had to be produced.
“In general, the courts were supposed to carefully examine the accusers and the accused separately, and so that it was easy to figure that an accuser was lying or motivated by an ongoing dispute.”
However, 当歇斯底里在塞勒姆爆发时, 塞勒姆市民抛弃了规则手册, 包括标准法庭功能. 而不是指挥秩序, organized court, officials in Salem allowed everyone to gather in the courtroom all at once and fling accusations, 然后又引发了混乱的歇斯底里.
“A couple of the men who were judges didn't even have legal training. 而且当时还没有辩护律师这种东西. 通常会有一个检察官, but they didn't even have prosecutors in the Court of Oyer and Terminer that tried the accused witches. They just had this tribunal of men who were hearing the supposed evidence and then rendering judgment,” Smith explained.
因为塞勒姆违反了规定和程序, the witch hunts that happened (contrary to popular belief) were an anomaly in common Puritan culture.
“Witch hunting is not a huge part of Puritan New England history,” Smith confirms. “Salem is an outlier. It's unusual.”
Myth 3: Float tests determined if someone was guilty or innocent.
关于塞勒姆女巫测试的故事广为流传, which include throwing a suspected witch into water while bound. If they floated, they were proven to be a witch; if they drowned, too bad, 但至少他们不是女巫.
However, according to Smith, this type of test was also a myth carried over from early European history, 就像在火刑柱上被烧死一样. 这不是17年发生的事th-century New England. However, two standard witch tests were still being performed. The first was to see if the accused witch could recite the Lord's Prayer; however, 人们对这个测试的准确性有些怀疑. The other, more widely believed test, was to look for physical signs on the witch's body.
“The people of Salem believed that if a person had a pact with the devil, 会有物理痕迹, 有人会找到他们的,” Smith said.
So, the witch tests in Salem consisted mainly of a physical examination for “the witche’s teat,” which the Puritans believed was a sort of third nipple from which a witch's familiar would suck blood.
“Woe be unto a woman with skin tags or a weird mole,” Smith said ruefully.
Myth 4: Rotten wheat, which produced mass hallucinations, caused the hysteria in Salem.
There is a common theory that suggests that what happened in Salem resulted from “convulsive ergotism,” a condition that occurs when someone eats bread made from rotten wheat. 症状包括抽搐, delusions, hallucinations, and even the feeling that something is crawling under one's skin. These were the symptoms that many of the “bewitched” accusers experienced, so some historians theorized that perhaps what happened in Salem was a mass delusion caused by the rye bread everyone consumed. 史密斯不同意这一理论.
“The Salem hysteria had nothing to do with convulsive ergotism!” Smith laughed, adding, “This theory came up, not surprisingly, during the 1960's. 他们当时以为所有人都在嗑药!”
Smith argued that while ergotism was an issue during the Middle Ages, by the 1690s, 马萨诸塞州就不会有这个问题. Farmers and millers would have known how to spot bad rye and how to avoid it.
On to the Fact Finding…
Smith has not only cleared up some myths about the Salem Witch Trials, 但他也揭示了许多有趣的事实. These little-known truths may even be more interesting than the fictional myths!
Fact 1: What really created hysteria in Salem was a mixture of war trauma, political instability, 还有巨大的家族恩怨.
“导致这种歇斯底里的原因很复杂，”史密斯解释说. 事实上，他称之为“完美风暴”.”
Traumatized children 是塞勒姆歇斯底里症中一个鲜为人知的因素吗. 一切都始于菲利普国王之战, which was a significant conflict between colonizers and Indigenous peoples in the 1670s. The violence of the wars drove many displaced settlers to seek refuge in Salem. Many of the refugees were small children who had witnessed extreme violence, and those traumatized children grew into teenagers who accused many people of witchcraft.
宗教和政治迫害 were another cause. In 1685, 国王詹姆斯二世成为统治者, and, as Smith phrased it, "他对清教徒恨之入骨,所以他瞄准了像塞勒姆这样的清教徒社区. 国王詹姆斯二世突然被废黜, and King William III and Queen Mary II were crowned in his place. There was hope that the new king and queen might restore the Puritan colonies to their original power, 但它从未实现.
“因此，令人讨厌的自治领政权消失了, but there was still a lot of political instability and uncertainty,” Smith said.
This left the Puritans nervous, unsure and in a suspicious state of mind.
第三个也是最重要的因素是 family feud in Salem. 塞勒姆被分为两个地区:塞勒姆村, a poorer, rural farming area, and Salem Town, a wealthier, more developed area near a large port used for importing and exporting. The village wanted to separate from the town and claim autonomy, which the town fought.
Each area had a prominent family: the Putnams from Salem Village and the Porters from Salem Town.
“The Putnams greatly supported separation from Salem Town, and the Porters fought it. 所以即使他们来自城里不同的地方, 对土地和政府席位的争夺非常激烈,” Smith said.
This led to a massive feud between the two families, which spread throughout Salem. 当女巫审判开始浮出水面时, the rivalry played a significant role in who was afflicted and who was accused.
“Approximately 60 or 65% of the accusations came from people living in the west end, and the vast majority of them were somehow connected to the Putnam family. And the bulk of those accused were from the East end of the village, and either belonged to or were connected to the Porter family,” Smith explained.
所以这三个因素，都会使孩子受到创伤, an unsteady government, and the feud between the Putnams and Porters—fed into each other and ultimately produced the hysteria that became the Salem Witch Trials.
事实2:这些试验主要针对女性.
We often see images of women as targets of the Salem Witch Trials. 史密斯说，这个观点在历史上是准确的.
这是男性神学家的默认假设, male ministers, even male scientists, was that women were likelier to be witches because of Eve [from the Bible].”
However, Smith quickly added that such a belief didn't entirely exclude men.
“他们没有排除男人是女巫的可能性, but they considered it less likely because men were supposedly more emotionally, spiritually, 智力成熟. So out of the nearly 300 people who were accused, the vast majority were women,” he said.
事实3:试验只持续了一年.
The trials began in the late summer of 1692 and ended in the early spring of 1693.
During that one year, 20人被当作女巫处决, which Smith suggested “indicates a certain degree of restraint, 考虑到近300人被指控.”
那么，是什么正式结束了长达一年的歇斯底里? 根据史密斯的说法，这是老式的裙带关系.
“这件事被马萨诸塞州州长叫停了, Governor William Phipps, as soon as his wife started getting mentioned as a possible witch,” Smith explained. “He told the court, ‘Clear what's on your docket, and then we're done.' And he started commuting the sentence every time they found someone guilty and sentenced to be hanged. 所以绞刑在1693年之前就停止了.”
Fact 4: The State of Massachusetts basically swept the trials under the rug for over 250 years.
尽管处决了20个无辜的人, neither the town of Salem nor the state of Massachusetts provided justice to the victims and their families. There were no repercussions for anyone involved in the Salem Witch Trials. There wasn't even an official acknowledgment of the wrongdoings for over two centuries. In the early 1700s, the colony of Massachusetts began quietly paying compensation to survivors and family members of the executed compensation, 但直到1957年才有公开道歉或回应.
“There was never a resolution or Massachusetts legislation saying, ‘Oh, this was wrong, 这种事早就不该发生了, much later. After the trials, 塞勒姆村很快从塞勒姆镇独立出来, renamed itself Danvers, 尽其所能地说“不”, nothing happened here, let's move on,'” Smith said.
然而，在今天的塞勒姆，情况却大不相同. Now, Salem, Massachusetts, 拥抱它的女巫传统, with metaphysical shops and festivals and even a giant statue of a broom-riding Elizabeth Montgomery, the actress who played the starring role in the 1960s sitcom “Bewitched.” Thousands of tourists flock to the city every October to get a feel for the “witchy” atmosphere.
史密斯对塞勒姆万圣节的滑稽行为有着复杂的感情. “A lot of it is tacky,” he said, “but simultaneously, it's a beautiful town! 有一些可爱的房子. 在某种程度上，我很想住在那里. But on another level, if I did, I would take a vacation every October.”
A Clearer Picture
Smith's expertise on the Salem Witch Trials help paint a clearer picture of a dark time in American history, 区分事实与虚构. 有些我们认为是真理的事情，现在我们知道是神话. 其他一些模糊的东西现在都清晰了. 想想看，我们甚至不需要水晶球!
如果您对这篇文章感兴趣，请查看 史密斯的特色课程, 尤其是他的专业课, “HIST 497: The Salem Witch Trials” that will be offered in the Spring 2024 semester!
Featured Photo: A painting titled “The Salem Martyr,” by Thomas Satterwhite, 1869
