61 pages • 2 hours read
Mary Beth NortonIn the Devil's Snare
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Gospel Women: March 12, 1691/2-April 19, 1692”
While the first five individuals accused of witchcraft matched the profiles of those previously accused elsewhere, the next group of the accused did not. Martha Corey and Rebecca Towne Nurse, for example, were respectable matrons. However, before her marriage, Corey had a biracial son out of wedlock, and he lived in her household. Norton speculates that Corey was thus the subject of gossip in the town. Nurse, who was 70 years old, had relatives with a “long-standing dispute with various Putnams over the boundaries of their respective lands” (47), so Norton assumes she was most likely a topic of conversation in the Putnam household. When Corey visited the Putnam household, as the magistrates requested, Ann, Jr., had fits and claimed that there was a yellow bird sucking on Corey’s fingers. This linked her to Good, who supposedly had the same animal familiar. Additionally, Ann, Jr., described an apparition of Corey as a spectral spit, which recalled tales of the Wabanakis roasting English settlers over slow fires.
Mercy Lewis, one of the accusers, had a history that was deeply affected by the wars in Maine. Her parents had fled to Salem Town in 1676, when Lewis was a toddler, following an attack by Indigenous forces. She returned to Casco Bay, Maine, at the age of 10, but was back in Salem Village after more attacks on her family. Lewis dated the start of her bewitchment to Corey’s visit at the Putnam home. Abigail Williams and Betty Hubbard also claimed that Corey was tormenting them. Ann Putnam, Sr., became afflicted as well and described the devil’s book in a vision, a fact that perhaps convinced the men to take additional legal action.
Norton comments on the disruption this crisis brought to household routines. Typically, young women performed essential tasks quietly and faded to the background when important matters were discussed. Now, for the first time in their lives, they were the center of attention, and their accusations were taken seriously by men. Norton says that men in authoritative positions—such as heads of households, magistrates, judges, and jurors—enabled this crisis by giving credibility to the claims.
On March 21, Corey was interrogated before a packed meetinghouse. While she professed her innocence, Abigail Williams claimed that a “black man” was whispering in Corey’s ear. The Puritans associated Indigenous peoples and other people of color with the devil. Thus, Williams’s claim led the community to see an alliance between Satan and the Wabanakis and therefore to connect the witch crisis to the Wabanaki wars. The afflicted went on to claim that “two dozen armed witches” were outside the courthouse (61), placing Salem Village “in the front lines of a battle to the death against the forces of evil in both the visible and invisible worlds” (61).
After Deacon Edward Putnam and his cousin filed a legal complaint against Rebecca Nurse and the young Dorcas Good, a large crowd gathered on March 24 for Nurse’s interrogation. Nurse declared her innocence, but Ann, Jr., had a fit when asked about her. The afflicted claimed that Nurse was surrounded by spectral birds and that the “black man” was whispering in her ear, too. Nurse was sent to jail. Dorcas, who was four or five years old, admitted to witchcraft and was also sent to jail. At this point, residents were afraid and trusted no one. The accusations expanded beyond Salem Village to nearby Ipswich.
On March 24, Deodat Lawson, the former pastor, gave a sermon telling worshippers that God had given liberty to Satan, who was using people to attack others. He cautioned that no one should doubt the “devil’s handiwork” (66). Making a metaphorical reference to Wabanaki arrows, he instructed his listeners to “Resist the Fiery Darts of the Wicked” (68). Parris followed with a sermon in which he noted that it was unlikely that God would allow the devil to display deceptive apparitions to the afflicted; this claim bolstered the credibility of the accusers. Both pastors agreed that the devil was in Salem Village, that church members were among the witches, that the afflicted were innocent, and that God governed all events.
Elizabeth Proctor, whose grandmother was suspected of being a witch, was accused next. Her husband, John Proctor, expressed skepticism when his maid, Mary Warren, claimed to be afflicted, so he, too, came under suspicion. Norton notes that Warren’s case did not receive legal status because the male head of household refused to bring the case forward. On April 4, Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyce, a relative of Mercy Lewis’s by marriage, were interrogated publicly in Salem Town. This was the first time that the public meeting took place there. John Indian, another accuser, said that both women’s specters choked him and asked him to sign their books. However, Elizabeth and Cloyce claimed to be innocent. When Cloyce asked for a drink of water, several of the afflicted had fits. In the midst of the chaos, John Proctor was also accused of witchcraft. The council ordered all three, along with Nurse, Corey, and Dorcas, to be sent to prison in Boston the next day. While jailing witches in past episodes had eased the afflictions of sufferers, it did not do so in this case.
By the middle of April, the afflicted stated that the witches were no longer operating alone but in groups of two or more. The region erupted with afflictions and claims of spectral visions. However, in Stamford, Connecticut, a lone accuser claimed witchcraft, but no one followed their lead. Norton notes that Stamford was untouched by the Wabanaki wars, so its context was different from that of Salem.
Until April 17, this outbreak of witchcraft had historical precedents. However, on that day, the crisis entered a new phase. Abigail Hobbs, a 14-year-old, confessed to witchcraft. She claimed to have made a pact with the devil, whom she met in the woods four years earlier on the Maine frontier. No one had fits during her testimony, lending it credence. This testimony directly linked Satan and the Wabanakis. In its aftermath, “witchcraft complaints exploded, expanding both geographically and numerically” (81), with 54 people accused in the next seven weeks.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Pannick at the Eastward: September 1675-January 1691/2”
On June 27, 1689, the Wabanakis attacked Cocheco (present day Dover, New Hampshire), killing 23, capturing 29, and torturing and killing Major Richard Waldron. During King Philip’s War, Waldron had twice betrayed the Wabanakis and was known to cheat them in trade as well. In September 1676, in violation of a July treaty, Waldron, at the behest of orders from Boston, captured all the Wabanakis at his trading post and sent them to Boston, where seven or eight of them were executed and approximately 200 were sold into slavery. The Wabanakis were thus motivated to seek revenge against Waldron.
King Philip’s War began in June 1675 and continued until the spring of 1678. The northern region, with approximately 3,600 English settlers, flourished in the 1670s, enhancing the Massachusetts economy with its exports of fish and timber. The Wabanakis, whose peoples were identified by names of river valleys, such as the Penobscots, were reliant upon items obtained from the Europeans for furs. Yet the fur trade was a constant source of friction, with each side assuming the other was cheating. The northern war began with an incident in which the wife of an Indigenous leader was abused and her child was drowned. The English asked the Wabanakis to surrender their weapons, though they were dependent on their weapons to hunt and provide food in the winter. Initially, the Wabanakis raided settlements, killing families in gruesome ways. On August 11, 1675, they attacked Falmouth, killing or capturing 34 people, including relatives of Mercy Lewis. Following other raids, settlers all along the coast fled. The Wabanakis also targeted fishing boats, some of which were based in Salem. Later, the Wabanakis initiated the peace process, resulting finally in the Treaty of Casco in April 1678.
However, 10 years later, hostilities resumed. In the meantime, former residents had returned to Maine, and new ones settled there as well. These residents ignored requirements of the Casco treaty, such as paying a yearly tribute of corn to the Wabanakis. Two events in 1688—the Wabanakis firing on settlers’ cattle in Maine and the killing of English families in western Massachusetts—caused a panic on the frontier. Norton notes that a “tragedy of errors” led to the second war (95), which lasted until 1699 and devastated both communities. At the beginning of the war, the Bay Colony was part of New England and under the leadership of the former governor of New York, Edmund Andros. In efforts to show good will to the Wabanakis and work toward peace, Andros released Wabanaki prisoners and provided them with guns and gunpowder for the purpose of hunting. Many colonists were outraged because of this, and conspiracy theories whirled around Andros. A group of prominent Bostonians removed Andros from power, and Simon Bradstreet became governor. However, the militia deserted their duties on the northern frontier when Andros left office—a development that was disastrous for Maine residents.
In the face of renewed attacks, settlers again began leaving Maine. In one instance, Falmouth was successfully defended, and the Reverend George Burroughs survived an attack on Falmouth for the second time. The Massachusetts government then ordered the army to be disbanded, leaving only a small number of soldiers to defend the northern frontier. Instead of focusing on defending settlements, leaders made the settlers responsible for defense. Falmouth was again attacked in May, and this time, most men were killed and the settlement destroyed. The death of approximately 200 people “stunned New Englanders” and led to the “immediate abandonment of small settlements southwest of Casco Bay” (105). Refugees poured into Portsmouth. The resources for northern New England were at a “breaking point” (106). A temporary peace and exchange of captives was negotiated in late November and lasted until the following May.
On June 13, the Wabanakis attacked Wells but were repelled. They then began small raids on farmers and livestock, which became a constant in the summer of 1691. While the raids ceased in late October, the Wabanakis destroyed York in a surprise attack on January 25, 1691/2. This occurred right after the afflictions in Salem Village started. When interpreting the outcome of these battles, political leaders stressed God’s anger rather than their own incompetence.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
The northeastern frontier was geographically close to Essex County. When Wabanaki attacks drove survivors from the frontier to flee, many settled in Essex County. They brought with them their stories of violence and trauma from the frontier. They had witnessed the gruesome murders of family and friends; some of them had been taken prisoner and forced to watch the torture and execution of members of their community while fearing for their own lives. Undoubtedly, these refugees from the war lived in constant fear of the Wabanaki and carried trauma from these attacks. Norton includes the underlying causes of the Wabanakis’ hostility toward the colonists. For example, they had been betrayed on more than one occasion, including some of them being captured and executed in violation of a treaty. There was also tension about the fairness with which they were treated in trading, and there were important tenets of the treaty from the first war that were ignored by colonists to the detriment of Wabanakis. However, Norton focuses more on how the Puritans experienced these wars and violence since she intends to demonstrate The Connection Between the Wabanaki Attacks and the Witch Crisis. She gives details that highlight the settlers’ terror of the nature of the Wabanaki attacks to trace a link between their fear of this sort of violence and the images and apparitions the accusers claimed to see during the witch crisis.
Importantly, many of the accusers during the Salem witch crisis had ties to Maine. Mercy Lewis, for example, had family members killed in Falmouth in Wabanaki attacks. Prior to that, her family had fled King Philip’s War and then returned to Maine, only to flee once again from the renewed violence. These experiences must have left emotional scars on Lewis. They also lowered her standing in society since she was delegated to the role of a servant in the Putnam household—many of her family members were killed in the violence, and she was a refugee not once, but twice. As a young woman and servant, Lewis had no voice or power; however, this changed after she claimed to be afflicted. Similarly, another accuser, Mary Warren, was also a servant in the household of John Proctor. Though, as the head of the household, Proctor refused to believe her and did not file a legal complaint on her behalf, this turned out badly for him when he and his wife were accused of witchcraft; his skepticism of Warren’s affliction was the reason he was suspected. This shows the disruption in Gender and Power Dynamics During the Witch Crisis.
Multiple accusers described the devil as a “black man” whispering in the ear of the accused. At the time, Indigenous peoples were described in this manner, further strengthening Norton’s argument that the Wabanaki wars had a huge impact on this crisis. Ann, Jr., alluded to a spectral spit, conjuring up memories of settlers being burned by the Wabanakis. Even the accusers’ claims that the witches were operating in groups resembled the bands of Wabanakis raiding farms. When Abigail Hobbs confessed to meeting the devil four years earlier in the woods of Maine, the witchcraft crisis greatly expanded; the link between the Wabanakis and the witches who were supposedly bedeviling Essex County became explicit. This context also enabled the disruption in gender dynamics since these young women’s claims were taken seriously; the male authorities linked their claims with the violence the settlers were experiencing at the border at the hands of the Wabanakis.
The leaders of the Bay Colony had failed miserably in their defense of the frontier. Instead of concentrating resources to protect the settlements in Maine, they concocted grandiose plans to attack the French and Wabanakis on their home turf, with a failed naval expedition to Quebec. The settlers were left to themselves to protect their families and property. The authorities made this decision despite the considerable wealth that Maine’s settlers contributed to the Massachusetts economy. Norton speculates that it was easier for the elite to blame the devil for their own failures to defend the frontier—thus, they had a vested interest in believing the accusations of witchcraft. In this way, The Centrality of Puritans’ Beliefs to the Witch Crisis comes to the fore since the authorities exploited their beliefs in witchcraft and the devil to deflect blame from their own incompetence.
