Then, suddenly, as 1692 turned into 1693, the executions stopped, the accusers fell silent, the jails emptied. Nineteen people were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones in a failed attempt to extract a confession.) As many as 165 more, in two dozen villages and towns, had been publicly accused of sorcery they ranged from an American Indian slave to one of the richest merchants in the colony. (Contrary to popular memory, however, no one was burned alive. Twenty men and women, ages 20 to 80, had been executed under the imprimatur of the highest officials in Massachusetts. By autumn, it had all developed into very grown-up business. Soon, word spread through Salem: They had been bewitched. Nine-year-old Betty Parris, the parson’s daughter, and her 11-year-old cousin, Abigail Williams, had always been model children, “well Educated and of good Behaviour,” according to one chronicle. The primary sources adopt a tone of perplexity. The strangest thing-to any person who has spent more than 10 minutes on a grade-school playground-is that it was strange at all.īut standards of behavior for young girls were more exacting in 17th-century New England than they are today. In the village minister’s house, two little girls crawled under the furniture, made silly noises, spread their arms out like wings and tried to fly.
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