Part 22
By failing to present the above points, which, though lacking in the account that he copied and followed, yet came under his eye, Upham clearly failed to use some very important historic facts which are essential to a fair presentation of both the time at which, and the agents through whom, Salem witchcraft had its origin, and consequently to a fair presentation of its nature. But those facts strenuously conflict with his theory that embodied girls and women were the designers and perpetrators of that great and terrific manifestation of destructive forces. How strong the chains of a pet theory! How blinding the cataracts of long-cherished conclusions!
If there exists in the world's annals more distinct testimony that a
## particular individual was the deliberate and intentional producer of acts
which generated suffering, than Tituba gave that the "thing like a man," which came to her once "when she was about going to sleep," once "in the lean-to chamber," once "when she was washing the room," and who, on Friday night, appointed a place for meeting the next Wednesday night, and, with assistants, kept his appointment, and then and there, as he had previously announced his purpose to do, severely "hurt the children"--if there ever was recorded testimony which more distinctly designated a
## particular being as the principal in planning and enacting any scheme than
is this from Tituba, by which she designates over and over again "a tall man with white hair," wearing "black clothes sometimes, and sometimes serge coat of other color," as the chief executor of the strange and momentous development of illnesses in the family of Mr. Parris, I know not where that clearer testimony is recorded. He who ignored several very significant parts of what Tituba said, rejected corner-stones which are essential to the foundation of a genuinely philosophical disclosure of the source and consequent nature of the mysteries he attempted to explain. Tituba has been described by Upham as "indicating, in most respects, a mind at the lowest level of general intelligence," so that any one must be more rash than prudent who will impute to her ability to fabricate a series of facts, all of which seem to be natural and probable in the province of psychology.
Mr. Parris informs us that the strange sicknesses existed in his family during several weeks before he or others had any suspicion that they might be of diabolical origin. Tituba dates their commencement on the evening of January 20, just six weeks before her examination. Therefore Mr. Parris's "several weeks" may have been five at least, during which he and his wife and their physician and friends probably studied symptoms, administered and watched the action of medicines, and cared for the children in every way, with as much freedom from delusion or bewildering excitement, as they could have done in any other equal portion of their lives. Such medical skill as then existed there, obviously had and used a very considerable period of time, not less than four or five weeks, in which to do its best, and yet was baffled. Its best was unavailing. We to-day perceive sufficient cause of its failure. It was contending against a special spirit infliction, the authors of which could either counteract, intensify, or nullify at their pleasure, the normal action of any common medicines or nursings. Parents, physician, and nurses no doubt witnessed from day to day such anomalous and changeful manifestations, sequent upon the administration of "physic," as confounded their judgments, and made them at last suspect "an evil hand." Tituba knew the cause of the illnesses, but probably lacked power to see and appreciate the continuous connection of that cause with the long series of its effects. Had she divulged her knowledge, what heed would have been given to the word of the ignorant slave? What beatings might she not well fear if she confessed to any dealings with invisible beings? No wonder that she kept her knowledge to herself, till fear of her master's cane influenced her to disclose the facts to the magistrates.
Small as Tituba's mental capacities were, she had some unusual susceptibilities, which permitted, or rather obliged, her to possess more knowledge of the origin and progress, and also of the nature and of the
## active producer, of the distressing ailments and "amazing feats" in her
master's family, than did master, mistress, physician, and magistrates combined. They saw--if it can be said that they saw at all--they saw only through thick, coarse, and blurred glasses, very dimly; while she, at times, clearly saw living actors face to face. From her we get the testimony of a witness who learned directly through her own senses what she stated; her testimony gives forth the ring of unflawed truth, and lifts a vail off from long-hidden mysteries.
Hutchinson, Upham, and Drake each sought to make it apparent that mundane roguishness, trickery, and malice, operating amid public credulity and infatuation, prompted and enabled frail girls and women to produce the "amazing feats," marvelous convulsions, and all the many other woeful outworkings of witchcraft. Having been either unobservant of, or having ignored, the plain historic fact seen over and over again in Tituba's testimony, that certain other intelligences than girls, that minds which were freed more or less fully and permanently from the hamperings of flesh, actually started the first display of witchcraft pinchings, fits, and convulsions at Salem Village, those historians wrongfully charged girls and women, whose bodies were then the subjects and tools of other intelligences, with being the feigners of maladies and the producers of acts which an eye-witness and reluctant participator distinctly declares were manifested in obedience to a will or wills not their own. Such oversight, or such discarding of facts, whichever it may have been, caused those writers to so restrict their stores of intelligent agents having more or less access to and power over man, as to put outside of their own reach and vision the actual producers of witchcraft phenomena. This self-imposed or self-retained restriction forced upon them necessity for efforts to show that mere children possessed gigantic physical and mental powers and brains which concocted and executed schemes that shook to their very foundations the strong fabrics of church and state--yes, forced them to ascribe mighty public agitations to insignificant operators.
Tituba, on the other hand, by a simple statement of what her own interior self saw, heard, felt, and did,--by a statement of what she actually _knew_,--designated the genuine and the obviously competent authors of witchcraft marvels, and explained their advent rationally. She, therefore, by far--very far--outranks each and all of those historians as a competent and authoritative expounder of the authorship, origin, and nature of Salem Witchcraft. Her "something like a man"--her _tall white-haired man in serge coat_--was its author. That man was a spirit, and his works were Spiritualism of some quality. Opposition revealed his possession of mighty force. And, whatever his motive, the result of his scheme was the death of witchcraft throughout Christendom, and consequent wide emancipation from mental slavery.
Some statements made and published by Robert Calef not long subsequent to 1692, wear on their surface the semblance of impeachments, or at least of questionings of the value of Tituba's testimony. He says, "The first complained of was the said Indian woman named Tituba; she confessed _the devil_ urged her to sign a book, which he presented to her, and also to work mischief to the children," &c. We fail to find in Corwin's report anything like a _confession_ of any such things; she there states distinctly that _The Devil tells her nothing_, and also that the book was offered to her, and that the urgings to hurt the children were made to her by "something like a man"--by "_the man_." She had no idea that the devil was her visitant, and never confessed that he tempted her.
Calef goes on and says, "She was afterward 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 called) her sister witches; and that whatsoever she said by way of confessing, or accusing others, was the effect of such usage." This is credible, and is probably true. Such proceedings on the part of Mr. Parris are not inconsistent with the character which he bears. Tituba's other master, the white-haired man, had charged her "to say nothing;" she perhaps, therefore, was in fact induced to utter "whatsoever she said by way of confessing or accusing others," by beatings she received from her visible master. But what did she say by way of confessing or accusing? Nothing, really. She merely stated facts known to her; and such statement should not be misnamed either confession or accusation.
Corwin's record of that slave's testimony excites an apprehension--yes, generates belief--that Calef unconsciously made misleading statement when he wrote that "she _confessed_ the _devil_ urged her to sign a book." We have met with no indication that she ever made what should be called _confession_. We repeat, that she quite fully narrated that she had seen, held conversation with, and been forced to obey, a white-haired _man_, and also that the women Good and Osburn were at times her companion operators when the Man was present. That frank statement of facts constituted her only confession, so far as we perceive. Had this been made by an intelligent witness who comprehended how the public mind would interpret it, there might be plausible reason for saying that she or he "_confessed_." But with Tituba it was a simple statement of the truth.
We suspect that Calef, under the prevalent habit of his day, unwittingly wrote _devil_ where Tituba, according to Corwin, said "the man." If he followed Cheever's report of the trial, he seemed to have authority for doing so. That Tituba regarded the devil and "the tall man" as two distinct individuals is very obvious. When questioned, she admitted that the devil _might_ hurt the children for aught she knew, but she had never seen _him_, nor had _he_ ever told her anything. She had no acquaintance with that personage. While the questions related to _his_ doings she could give no information; but as soon as opportunity was given her to introduce her "tall man" she was ready to speak of him freely and instructively. The people around her, not interiorly illumined, applied the name _devil_ to any disembodied intelligence that acted upon, or whose power became manifest to, their external senses; not so did either Tituba or any of her clairvoyant sister sufferers or sister _accusers_ either. Throughout the whole of her two days' rigid examination she persistently called her strange visitant "the man." And it is a significant fact that all the mediumistic ones then, both accusers and accused, escaped ever falling into the prevalent habit of accusing THE DEVIL. Other agents met their vision.
Fear of Mr. Parris may have forced Tituba to tell her true tale, which but for him she might have withheld. But is there probability either that he dictated any part of her testimony, or that she fabricated anything? We see none. The fair and just presumption is, that though forced to speak, she simply described what she had seen, and narrated what she had experienced. The apparent promptness, directness, and general consistency of her answers, strongly favor that presumption. In her judgment, as in ours, what she said was no confession of familiarity with the devil, for she disclaimed any knowledge of him; and therefore she made no confession of witchcraft as then defined, and no accusation of it against the other women.
Calef imputes to her a subsequent position which may be so construed as to indicate that she declined to stand by her previous statements. He says, "her master refused to pay her" jail "fees," and thus liberate her from prison, "unless she would stand to what she had said." In that quotation is involved all that we find in the older records which wears even a semblance of impeaching her testimony, or suggests any reason why we should distrust its intentional accuracy in any particular. The master did not pay the fees. She "lay in jail thirteen months, and was then sold to pay her prison charges." (Drake. Annals, 190.) But what did her master require her to "stand to"? Calef says he beat her "to make her confess, and accuse [such as he called] her sister witches; and that whatsoever she did by way of _confessing_ or _accusing_ others, was the effect of such usage." What she may have confessed to having done, or what she may have accused others of doing, at other times than when she was under examination, we do not know. Her statements then, as she then meant, and as we now understand them, fell far short of confessing familiarity with the devil, or of laying that crime to any others; therefore she neither made herself nor her companions _witches_. Still her master, no doubt, as did the recorder Ezekiel Cheever and the court, understood her as meaning _devil_ when she said "the man," though she herself did not so mean. Even Corwin, apparently, as judge, put the prevalent construction upon her words, though his fidelity as a recorder caused him to write "the man" when she said "the man." This general habit of understanding _devil_, when some other personage was both named and meant, enables us to see that there may have been subsequent dispute between her and her master as to her real meaning, and that he made it a condition for her liberation that she should put his construction upon what she had said, rather than her own. It is an open question whether she ever refused to stand by her own meaning, or the true meaning of her own words. Perhaps she did refuse to stand by construction which the faith and habit of the day led most minds to put upon her words unjustifiably; but we doubt whether she refused to stand by the literal and intended meaning of what she had said.
Poor Tituba! Because of your forced connection with a scheme and works which entirely baffled your comprehension, because of your forced disclosure of things you had witnessed and experienced behind the vail of flesh, your own body was imprisoned thirteen months, and two innocent women were doomed to death. Guileless and innocent, so far as connected with witchcraft, you was borne on by mighty forces to seem to act voluntarily, though in fact unwillingly and perforce, a prominent part in one of the most fearful scenes in human history. Man's ignorance of spiritual agents and forces in your day, together with the prevalent hallucination devil-ward, made you a humble and pitiable martyr to simple truth-telling. Some seeds in your simple story now gathered from out the chaff that has covered them for nine-score years, may soon be scattered over New England soil, from which, we trust, you above, and men below, may gather wholesome fruits of justice and truth.
SARAH GOOD.
Tituba's sister witch, as that slave's master called Sarah Good, may not have been regarded in her generation as possessor of any large amount of such qualities as her name is commonly used to designate. Still her neighbors doomed her to lasting fame by selecting her as the first person to be put under examination on suspicion of being a producer of Salem witchcraft. As a facile tool in supernal hands she may have been, and probably was, good in quality as well as name.
Indications that her spirit-form was susceptible of either easy elimination or wide radiations from its material counterpart, are contained in the facts that on January 20, 1692, the inner eye of Tituba saw this Sarah; on February 25, Ann Putnam, and on the 28th, Elizabeth Hubbard saw her apparition, or her spirit-form.
Man's "natural" or physical optics do not discern a spirit. Spirit, when not materialized, is discernible only by our inner or spirit-eyes; spirit is "spiritually discerned." The spirit forms, however, of embodied, living men and women, are not all equally discernible by clairvoyants. Generally, only such among flesh-clad spirits are readily seen by inner optics as are able to slip, or are liable to be drawn, or to radiate out, from one's ordinary integuments of flesh, or, at least, those only whose integuments are transparent of spirit-light. Only few, relatively, can either see or be seen readily and frequently by spiritual eyes. Eagles exist as well as owls and bats. And clear perception of objects by the former amid light that blinds the latter, is no proof either that the vision of eagles is perverted, or that the objects they behold are but creatures of fancy.
Mediumistic Sarah Good, because she was highly mediumistic, would naturally be a brilliant and attractive object in the field of vision which the inner eyes of other mediumistic ones might be able and attracted to survey. Distance is of little or no account in connection with vision by the inner eye. Persons and objects, scores and hundreds of miles away, are practically near to the inner optics. Spirit-forms are, perhaps, thought-forms, and, like thought, can traverse oceans and continents in the twinkling of an eye.
It is not our purpose to multiply pages by largely quoting minute accounts of what transpired at the examinations and trials of those who were suspected of witchcraft; and yet it may be well to present rather fully one sample of the proceedings of the courts. This first case which the civil authorities gave attention to may serve that purpose as well as any other.
The arrest of Sarah Good was made February 29, and on the next day, Tuesday, March 1, 1692, her examination was commenced, and was continued, in connection with that of Sarah Osburn and Tituba, through the remainder of that week. On Monday, the 7th, these three were sent to jail in Boston. On the 30th of June Mrs. Good was put upon trial, which resulted in her conviction, and on the 19th of July she, together with others, was executed.
We copy first Ezekiel Cheever's account of her examination. Cheever was temporary clerk or scribe employed by the examining magistrates to take minutes of the testimony.
"'Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?' _Ans._ 'None.' 'Have you made no contract with the devil?' Good answered, 'No.' 'Why do you hurt these children?' _Ans._ 'I do not hurt them. I scorn it.' 'Who do you employ, then, to do it?' _Ans._ 'I employ nobody.'"
This question was doubtless based on belief then held, that one who was in covenant with the devil had, by the terms of the covenant, received power to command the devil and his imps to execute any desired mischief.
"'What _creature_ do you employ, then?' _Ans._ 'No creature, but I am falsely accused.'"
Her statement that she employed _nobody_, seems not to have covered all classes of possible servants in such business. Therefore she was asked what _creature_ she employed. This question suggests the probable supposition by the magistrate that such dogs, cats, birds, and hairy nondescripts as Tituba saw, might be subservient to the commands of a witch.
"'Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Parris's house?' _Ans._ 'I did not mutter; but I thanked him for what he gave my child.' 'Have you made no contract with the devil?' _Ans._ 'No.'"
The magistrate then "desired the children, all of them, to look upon her and see if this were the person that had hurt them; and so they all did look upon her, and said that this was one of the persons that did torment them. Presently they were all tormented."
"'Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you thus torment these poor children?' _Ans._ 'I do not torment them.' 'Who do you employ, then?' _Ans._ 'I employ nobody. I scorn it.' 'How came they thus tormented?' _Ans._ 'What do I know? You bring others here, and now you charge me with it.' 'Why, who was it?' _Ans._ 'I do not know but it was some you brought into the meeting-house with you.' _Response._ 'We brought you into the meeting-house.' _Reply._ 'But you brought in two more.' 'Who was it, then, that tormented the children?' _Ans._ 'It was Osburn.' 'What is it you say when you go muttering away from persons' houses?' _Ans._ 'If I must tell, I will tell.' 'Do tell us then.' _Reply._ 'If I must tell, I will tell. It is the commandments. I may say my commandments, I hope.' 'What commandment is it?' _Ans._ 'If I must tell, I will. It is a psalm.' 'What psalm?' _Statement by reporter._ 'After a long time she muttered over some part of a psalm.' 'Who do you serve?' _Ans._ 'I serve God.' 'What God do you serve?' _Ans._ 'The God that made heaven and earth.'"
_Comments by the reporter._ "She was not willing to mention the word God. Her answers were in a very wicked, spiteful manner, reflecting and retorting against the authority with base and abusing words, and many lies she was taken in. It was here said that her husband had said that he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly. The worshipful Mr. Hathorne asked him his reason why he said so of her; whether he had seen anything _by_ her. He answered, no, _not in this nature_; but it was her bad carriage to him; and indeed, said he, I may say with tears that she is an enemy to all good."
Reason for asking the children to look upon the accused, Cheever says, was, that they might "see if this was the person that hurt them." That statement fails to cover the whole ground. According to Cotton Mather, belief then prevailed that "when the party suspected looks on the parties supposed to be bewitched, and they are thereupon struck down into a fit ... it is a proof that the accused is a witch in covenant with the devil."