A Witch Trial and A Slave's Testimony from 1679

A while ago I posted about how Tituba, the famous Arawak Indian slave from the Salem witch trials, came to be portrayed as black in fiction and drama.

That post got a lot of hits, but I think it's important to point out that while Tituba was not of African descent many other people involved with New England witchcraft were. Witchcraft was an equal opportunity belief system, and people of all races were accused of witchcraft. For example, a black slave named Candy was accused during the Salem trials, but happily was not found guilty, even after her accusers produced evidence in the form of a poppet she had allegedly made.

In Rhode Island, a black woman named Tuggie Bannock had a reputation as a powerful witch in the 1800s, well after the witchcraft trials had ended. And as historian William Pierson writes in his book Black Yankees (1988), many people of African descent across New England worked as diviners, fortune-tellers, and herbalists.

One of the earliest accounts from New England of a black person involved with witchcraft comes from 1679. In December of that year, a black slave named Wonn testified in the Salem court against a woman named Bridget Oliver. Oliver was an outspoken woman who had been married multiple times, and when her current husband Thomas Oliver beat her she would hit him back. Naturally, her neighbors in Salem suspected this independent woman of witchcraft.

Wonn testified to the court that one day the horses hauling his sled mysteriously and unaccountably ran into a swamp up to the their bellies. This doesn't seem like very significant evidence, but several witnesses said they had never seen horses behave so strangely before. And what unseen force had frightened them into the swamp anyway?

A week later Wonn saw Bridget Oliver's specter perched upon a beam in the barn, holding an egg in one hand. He swung at her with a rake but she disappeared. Finally, as Wonn ate dinner that evening two strange black cats appeared in the house. Upon seeing the cats Wonn tried to speak, but felt himself pinched by invisible hands.

Although Wonn (which is perhaps an older spelling of Juan) was of African descent his testimony contains many elements of classic New England witchcraft. The misbehaving livestock is a common trope, and bewitched draft animals often allegedly brought their wagons or carts into swamps or rivers. The black cats and invisible pinching are also classic witchery.

I'm not so sure about the egg, though, which I haven't seen in too many stories. Was Bridget Oliver stealing the egg? Was she brandishing it as a threat and planning to use it in a spell? It's not clear, but it's a very powerful image.

Bridget Oliver was initially found guilty based on Wonn's testimony, but the court later let her go free. She wasn't so lucky thirteen years later in 1692. Then married to her third husband and called Bridget Bishop, she was again found guilty of witchcraft again and hanged on June 10.

The history books don't tell us what happened afterwards to Wonn. Did he really think he was bewitched by Bridget Oliver? Did he have a personal grudge against her, or was he put up to it by his owner, John Ingersoll? Was Wonn still in Salem in 1692 for the witch trials? It's all a mystery.

*****

Special thanks go out to my friend Ed for suggesting this as a topic after he read New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (2016) by Wendy Warren. I also got information from William Pierson's Black Yankees (1988) and Marilynne Roach's The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of A Community Under Siege (2002).

Tuggie Bannock: African Magic in Rhode Island

Most of the witchcraft and magic I write about was practiced by people descended from English settlers. After the Indians were decimated by war and disease, the English became the dominant cultural force for many years in this region - hence the name New England.

However, there were also other ethnic groups present from the early years of colonization, among them the Irish (like the witch Goody Glover), and the French (like Philippe d'Anglois, aka Philip English, a merchant accused of sorcery in the Salem trials).

There were also many people of African descent, both slaves and freemen. It's estimated that by 1799 10% of Boston's population was African-American, and nearly 30% of South Kingston, Rhode Island's.

Although in many ways people of African descent assumed the culture of their English neighbors, they did maintain some traditional folkways, including magic. African magic was much more influential in the American south, where it still lives in traditions like hoodoo and rootwork, but there were many noted African American fortune-tellers, wise men and healers in New England. In fact, by the 19th century African-Americans were considered particularly powerful workers of magic and were sought out specifically by their neighbors of European descent.

Tuggie Bannock was one well-known African-American witch who lived in the early 1800s in the Narragansett area of Rhode Island. Like many women accused of being witches, Tuggie was slightly eccentric. She lived alone in the rear ell of an old ruined house, and her dwelling contained no chairs. According to legend she never even sat on a chair even when she visited a neighbor's home, preferring instead to perch on a table or a dresser.

Tuggie was a bondswoman of Rowland Robinson, a large-scale slave owner, and also worked for various neighbor women performing household and agricultural work. She also actively cultivated a reputation as a witch. Alice Morse Earle wrote the following about Tuggie in her 1898 book In Old Narragansett: Romances and Realities,

She conformed her mien and behavior to all that was expected of a witch; and she had been gifted by nature with one feature which, much to her satisfaction, enabled her to exhibit convincing proofs of her pretensions. She had two full rows of double teeth...

The magic Tuggie practiced for her neighbors and herself was strongly influenced by African traditions. For example when she decided one snowy day to put a curse on Sidet Bosum, a tinkerer who accidentally destroyed her teapot, she gathered an assortment of items and boiled them in a pot. Among the ingredients were a piece of the southernwood plant that grew in Bosum's yard, hair from his cow's tail, red flannel, a heart made from bread dough pierced with pins, dirt gathered from a graveyard, and a rabbit's foot.

As William D. Piersen, author of Black Yankees, points out, many of these items are derived from traditional African magic, including graveyard dirt and the rabbit's foot, as is the practice of boiling them. Someone practicing English style magic would have been more likely to create a poppet to curse their neighbor, not boil things in a big pot.

Tuggie's attempt to curse Sidet Bosum didn't work out. Before she started her spell she had turned her petticoats inside out and put a bag of eggshells around her neck to protect herself from evil spirits (another tradition from Africa). However, as she was boiling her spell a large dark object burst through the door of her house, knocking Tuggie face down on the floor and covering her in snow. Tuggie lay there in terror with her eyes shut, convinced that the Devil had come to take her away. She begged him to leave her be, and eventually she heard the creature leave her home. Tuggie took the pot off the stove and went to bed, carrying a Bible and a horseshoe as protection.

Was it really the Devil, or Moonack as Tuggie called it, that had come to take her away? Four local boys had been sledding that day, and later they claimed they had lost control of their sled. It had gone careening down the hill and right through the door of Tuggie's house, knocking her down. The Devil had never visited Tuggie at all.

I'm never a big fan of these Scooby Doo endings, where it turns out the supernatural is all just a big joke, but that's how Alice Morse Earle ends the story. I got the information for this post from Alice Morse Earle's book, and from William D. Piersen's "Black Arts and Black Magic: Yankee Accommodations to African Religion" in Wonders of the Invisible World: 1600 - 1900, which was published by the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife.