Let us now return to matters more immediately connected with the earlier part of the period which we are considering; and among them there is none of more interest, even though it be hardly enduring, than the story of the epidemic of witchcraft at Salem.
It must be remembered that the witchcraft outbreak at Salem, though it was there most exaggerated, was yet typical. It was the day of superstition; and that superstition was both received and fostered mostly by women. The outbreak at Salem was in a way salutary, for its very violence brought about the reaction which soon culminated in the establishment of a truer creed and a different influence for women; but at the time it was in the actual direction of primitive development in America.
It began with the troubles between the parish of Salem and the lately-called minister, one Samuel Parris, into the nature of which troubles it is not necessary to enter. In 1689, Mr. Parris had come to Salem from the West Indies, and he had brought with him two colored servants. These people, John Indian and Tituba, his wife, were experts in palmistry, second-sight, magic, and incantations, and they soon infected a circle of the village children with love for these matters. The daughter and the niece of Mr. Parris, aged respectively nine and eleven, were among the most prominent at first; but they had older companions who soon began to make earnest that which in its inception was only intended as a play. The girls learned to go into trances, to talk gibberish, to creep about on all-fours, and generally to give a good imitation of the pythonesses of old. The chief of these young people were Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, each aged seventeen; Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon, each aged eighteen; and Mary Warren and Sarah Churchill, each aged twenty. These, however, though the leaders in a way, did not long retain the supremacy; for it was found that Ann Putnam, aged twelve, and Mercy Lewis, aged seventeen, were preeminent for mischief and ingenuity. Another leader in the mischief was Mrs. Ann Putnam, about thirty years of age and probably of unsound mind, though she was apparently not suspected of anything beyond vindictiveness and eccentricity. She was a beautiful and well-educated woman, admirably fitted for the part she was destined to play in the coming orgy of murder.