so we can hardly talk about colonial America without talking about witchcraft um so let's go over the the sort of overview of that topic and the context of it from the colonies and Europe so what was going on in England which was the home country of many of the colonies right you had laws against witchcraft going back into the very earliest of the early modern period coming out of the Middle Ages um and so this tells us that there was a strong belief in Witchcraft and that there was strong social condemnation of this idea right so there is the death penalty for certain accusations of Witchcraft um this is England was somewhat of in contrast to the continent of Europe so France Spain Etc the continent had the Catholic Inquisition going on much earlier um with pretty spectacular Witch Trials as a result this became a procedural model for England although typically England didn't it wasn't quite as spectacular um one of the exceptions to that was Matthew Hopkins so he was um uh what he called a witch finder in Essex England in a period of about two years in the mid 1600s um he was responsible for ultimately the hanging of 36 people um so in one short period relatively um you had this he kind of inspired this use of torture right um and there is this feeling at this point that there is witches are in relation specifically to Satan um even having sex with the devil right this is a little more common on the continent than in England but you just have this kind of in England at least this somewhat ramping up of um uh accusations of Witchcraft during the 1600s period that is coinciding with this colonization in North America so what are the accusations of witches so you have this idea of familiars right that witches have animals that are sometimes fed with blood that are helping her with her uh magical acts right um so you have the this is a an engraving from 1579 right showing allegedly a witch feeding her familiars um again Matthew Hopkins right this is the frontus piece this beautiful illustration from his famous book the discovery of witches from 1648 and there he is in the center um with his uh staff right and there are these two witches who are calling out the names of their familiars or demons right um so Pi wacket um Grizzle greedy gut vinegar Tom right so some of them look like cats some look like dogs right so they could be household animals and so this is kind of this book is kind of promoting this idea of witches um not only in the domestic context but having familiars you have this idea of witches um participating in a black mass right this is an inversion of the Catholic mass this picture or this engraving um you know it's almost like the last supper right um this is more common in Continental Europe than in England but it's one of these ideas that is coming going around European culture at this time and then you have this idea of witches riding on brooms right um this is mentioned in uh the testimony by Tituba in Salem which we'll talk about later um so we know that this is a common concept even in the colonies right um there was accusations that women would these witches would kill children um and use an ointment made from those children's bodies as a spell to make their brooms fly so it's um again an inversion of the proper role of a woman as a mother and a nurturer um that she is killing children um you have this idea of witches making a pact with the devil right so they are signing their name in The Devil's book they are um so this is an inversion of um Christian religious Oaths and um inverting the Bible of this of Satan having a Bible of his own so these are all these General ideas about witchcraft we can look at us some specific examples early examples in the colonies so you have this Goodwin family in Boston in 1688. um it involves a um suspected witch right Ann Glover um who is [Music] um uh a long dress right and she is um interacting with this Goodwin family and the children are allegedly having fits right so seizures they're having deafness and blindness and the reason one of the reasons we know about this family is um the preacher Cotton Mather who was very famous in the colonies right extremely well known for his um writings in particular went to observe these children right and he prayed over them and allegedly the youngest one is cured by this um and Glover is ultimately tried for witchcraft um she claimed that the children would not be cured right they found allegedly um puppets which are the little dolls that witches would supposedly make to um create sympathetic magic so it's similar to this concept of a voodoo doll right where something happens to the doll it happens to the person that the doll represents and So based on all of this um Glover is executed but the symptoms continue so this alleged Witch is no longer alive but the children are still having these symptoms so Mather brings Martha the oldest child to his own home to observe her and pray over her and she is allegedly cured and so he writes this up we see this image of this book late memorable providences relating to Witchcraft and possessions in which he wrote about these children and his um interactions with them and so this became well known throughout all the colonies so we have that kind of source that ultimately led to what happened in Salem we also have other documentary evidence of Witchcraft accusations right so um we recall that puritan society valued literacy very highly even among women right um following procedures so they have this sort of structure of their lives and the rule of law so these are all Hallmarks of Puritan society um girls and boys are both being taught to read to be literate so that they could primarily read the Bible and so we have these rich archives of court documents in particular from Salem because of this emphasis on literacy um here we have a handwritten example of an indictment by Mercy Lewis against Martha Corey in 1692. um accusing her of certain detestable Arts called witchcrafts and sorceries um and that she is torturing and afflicting uh and tormenting other people right um so we have this physical evidence of um these beliefs in witchcraft generally speaking this is in the context of puritan society right so Puritan views of marriage women and sex um we know that women had few specific rights under English law we've talked about this idea of coverture um uh but we know that Puritans also preached love and respect for marriage right um women were seen as spiritual equals um but also that they were more prone to sin right and we know that sexuality was restricted in puritan colonial law right so we've talked about this before about lots of laws about various sexual behaviors and sexual acts um trying to control this Behavior according to religious beliefs right and so why did this what what does this have to do with these rather wild accusations of witchcraft so in this context of views of sex and marriage right so marriage is the goal increase and multiply as this woodcut says you know that that sex is a a part of the sacrament of marriage right but that there are uh um calamities and events right that are going on in society so you might have misfortunes your cow might die there might be a drought a child might get sick and so one interpretation of the beliefs and magic and Witchcraft is that people were trying to make sense of these calamities um uh historian Alan Taylor says no Puritan wish to believe that Misfortune was purely random and without spiritual or Supernatural meaning and for that would confirm before that would confirm their helplessness and isolation in a world without God so this is one interpretation that you have these structures marriage women's roles Society in general being very structured but then something unforeseen happens and how do we explain this um other interpretations are economic and social that there were these conflicts um within the Puritan society and we've talked about this with Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer and Quakers and other dissenters there was obviously also conflict with Native people going on at this time um and so the interpretation is that these are stresses on puritan society that sought an outlet and the outlet was witchcraft accusations a third interpretation is that this is consolidating power and preserving Community identity by identifying and excluding people who deviate from social norms right so if a woman is quarrelsome if she is outspoken if she is trying to be independent um this is not the Puritan view of women in their role in marriage and in society right so there are lots of different interpretations about why witchcraft became such a prominent idea um based on the context of Puritan life so in some there are anxieties in Europe and in the colonies that are focused on women and various aspects of society may have inspired these anxieties including religious and economic issues um but that's the context of Witchcraft in particularly the New England colonies