Bridget Marshall: I teach a course on the New England witchcraft trials, and students always come in with varying degrees of knowledge about what happened in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.
Nineteen people accused of witchcraft were executed by hanging, another was murdered, and at least 150 were held in conditions that resulted in the death of at least five more innocent people.
Every semester, several students ask me about stories they have heard about dogs.
In 17th-century Salem, dogs were part of everyday life: people kept dogs to protect themselves, their homes and livestock, to assist in hunting, and to provide companionship.
However, various folklore traditions also associate dogs with the devil – beliefs that originated long before the events in Salem. Perhaps the most notable example of this belief is the case of a poodle named Boy who belonged to Prince Rupert, an Anglo-German cavalry commander on the Royalist side during the English Civil War.
In 1643–1644, stories spread across Europe that Boy the poodle had supernatural powers, including shape-shifting and prophecy, which he used to aid his master on the battlefield.
There is no mention in the official records of the Salem trials of any dogs being tried or killed for witchcraft. However, dogs appear several times in testimony, usually because it was believed that the accused witch had a dog as a “familiar” that did her bidding, or because the devil appeared in the form of a dog.
Numerous testimonies in the Salem trial records indicate that the dogs were in league with the devil, adding to the community's paranoia, which was spiraling out of control.
Association of the devil with a dog
On May 16, 1692, a 45-year-old man named John Kimball in Amesbury, Massachusetts, testified against Susanna Martin, a 71-year-old widow, saying, among other things, that she caused a “black puppy” to appear before him while he was alone in the woods. Kimball testified that he was terrified of the dog, which he believed would tear out his throat. The dog disappeared when he started praying.
This, among other testimonies, contributed to Martin's conviction for witchcraft in June 1692; she was hanged on July 19, 1692.
In several cases recorded by the courts, accused witches testified that the devil appeared to them in the form of a dog. In September 1692, 19-year-old Mercy Wardwell testified that she had spoken to the devil and that he had appeared to her in the form of a dog. Her confession landed her in prison, although she was later released when the hysteria died down.
During the same proceedings in September, 14-year-old William Barker Jr. he testified that the “shape of a black dog” appeared to him and caused him anxiety; soon after, the devil appeared. It is arduous to tell whether he was implying that the dog was the devil himself or his companion.
Barker confessed that he “signed the devil's book”, meaning he made a covenant with the devil and was a witch. Barker was sentenced to prison, although he was later acquitted.
Tituba, a woman of color enslaved in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, also testified in the dog case. When she was questioned by judges on March 1, 1692, Tituba told how the devil had appeared to her at least four times, “like a great dog” and “a black dog.” She also said she saw cats, pigs and birds, a whole menagerie of animals working for the devil.
The testimony of Kimball, Wardwell, Barker, and Tituba certainly may have contributed to the ongoing concern that the people of Salem were being deceived by the devil, who may have appeared to them in the form of a dog.
Sketchy evidence
Some popular accounts of the trials also suggest that at least two dogs were killed during the trials, but there is no evidence of this in official legal testimony at the time. There is certainly some local legend to support this claim, and many accounts from Salem include the death of two dogs as part of the story.
According to local historical researcher Marilynne K. Roach's 2002 book “The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege,” some affected girls claimed that a man named John Bradstreet had bewitched the dog. Although the dog was the victim, it was killed. Roach's story also records that another dog was shot when a girl claimed she was touched by the specter of the dog.
At the time, belief in witchcraft held that witches could send their “ghosts”, or spirits, to do their bidding.
While these are fascinating stories, none of these events can be verified in any existing official trial documents. The source Roach cites regarding Bradstreet is Robert Calef's book More Wonders of the Invisible World, published in 1700.
Calef, who was a merchant from Boston, objected to the way the trials were conducted. However, he was not present at the hearings and it is unclear what the source of his stories about dogs was. Such stories – and Calef's untold story – do not carry the same force as the legal documents in the case.
The earliest mention of a dog being shot for being a witch appears in a commentary on the Salem Trials, “Cases of Conscience Relating to Evil Spirits”, published in 1693, in which the clergyman Increase Mather claims that “I am told by reliable persons” that a dog was shot for bewitching a man. .
Importantly, however, Mather did not provide the name of the human victim or the person who told him the story. Surprisingly, Mather actually came to the dog's defense, claiming that the fact that he managed to kill it meant that “that dog wasn't the devil.”
Nearly every Salem story describes how, when Samuel Parris's daughters had terrible fits that made people believe they were bewitched, Tituba, an enslaved woman who lived in the house, baked a “witch cake” from the diseased girls' urine and fed it to her. it's the family dog.
This was somehow supposed to trick the dog into revealing the witch's identity. Indeed, Reverend Parris condemned this ritual, which itself seemed to be a kind of witchcraft.
Fear and distrust
It seems the Salem witch trials were bad for dogs. Although there is no official legal evidence that dogs were killed for being witches, it is clear that there was a sturdy connection between dogs and the devil and that dogs were sometimes mistreated due to superstition.
The Salem trials are a horrifying example of what happens when people operate terrible logic and reach indefensible conclusions based on shoddy evidence. In an atmosphere of fear and distrust, even man's best friend can be suspected of collaborating with the devil.
Bridget Marshall, professor of English, UMass Lowell
This article has been republished from Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read it original article.
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