Response: Emerson W. Baker, The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England

I just finished Emerson Baker's The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England. (The funny backstory to this is that I didn't come across it through dissertation research; rather Ellie [9 years old] figured out how to do keyword searches using our public library's catalog and, wanting to find a book to check out for me, searched for "seventeenth century New England"!)

It's an enjoyable deep-dive look into life in the community of Great Island, NH during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and centers on an incident of "lithobolia" (supernatural flying stones and other inanimate objects, usually centering on an individual or place, and attributed to witchcraft) which happened over the course of several months in 1682.

Tavern owner George Walton is caught in a horizontal hail of rocks with no apparent source one summer evening outside his tavern. He flees inside and the rocks continue to pelt the tavern; then objects within the tavern begin flying around, injuring occupants and breaking windows from the inside. The incident was reported by George and his family and guests, and recorded--and published--by a minister who observed the event while staying in the tavern as a guest. The strange occurrence continued intermittently for months, centered on George himself, and happening to him miles up river in some cases. George eventually accused his widowed neighbor of witchcraft, but she was not ultimately charged.

Baker writes well, and tells a story well. Despite the fact that his sources are primarily court records of lawsuits between early inhabitants and archaic land deeds the story he tells is quite engaging. He also uncovers the surprising interconnectedness of the subjects of the story. What starts out as a seemingly open and shut case of a supernatural happening (wait a minute...) turns out to have all sorts of family and neighborly land feuds and legal maneuvering, far-reaching political schemes, religious arguments and economic ties going on beneath the surface.

It turns out that the widowed neighbor had been involved in a land dispute with George that had raged through numerous lawsuits for years. Not only that George was embroiled in constant lawsuits with his neighbors over land disputes and was constantly in court. In many of these conflicts it was clear that George was willing to become involved in some rather underhanded dealings. Also he was a Quaker in an increasingly Puritan colony where one could be convicted of holding deviant religious beliefs. In fact, he was hosting a gathering of leading Quaker "subversives" from across the North American colonies in his tavern on the evening the lithobolia started. And he was a supporter of an highly placed Anglican noble who had been fighting to make money off his claims to the colony of New Hampshire by inserting his own governors and judges to force colonists to pay him for their land claims. There was good reason for George Walton to be the target of his neighbors' dislike--and perhaps even violent attacks--on a number of levels.

My concerns with Baker's tale are twofold. First, despite setting up the lithobolia episodes as a strange, potentially supernatural phenomenon from multiple period (and first person) sources, his investigation never loops back to explain these sources in light of all the conflict going on beneath the surface. George's neighbors and servants may have had many reasons to throw rocks at him. The problem is that none of the original sources suggest that his neighbors were throwing rocks at him! Baker makes a very convincing case that the Waltons were difficult neighbors who could well have garnered the enmity of their community and were likely to be the recipients of violent attacks. But the sources present what happened at the Walton's tavern as inexplicable by natural causes. The distance of the tavern from cover where attackers could have hidden is specifically noted as too great for rocks to be thrown. The movement of objects inside the tavern is not explained away by noting that the Walton's had dubious relationships with their indentured servants. If what was really happening was that George's neighbors and servants were teaming up to throw rocks at him, why do multiple eyewitnesses (guests at the inn, servants, family members, neighbors, George himself) present the incidents as inexplicable? Why wouldn't George, who was clearly willing to take legal and even physical action against his neighbors when he couldn't get along with them, just bring accusations of stone-throwing to the magistrates, or start throwing stones himself, rather than accusing his neighbor of witchcraft? If neighbors were standing in the yard pelting the inn and disgruntled servants were throwing fire irons around inside, why did guest and family accounts say that stones and objects moved on their own? To prove that many people have many legitimate grievances against the Waltons does not prove that those people entered into a conspiracy to pull of a community-wide hoax, that would seem to even need to include George playing along and ignoring his human tormentors to claim supernatural attacks. Particularly when pinning the supernatural attacks on one neighbor would not fix all George's legal problems, nor avenge him against the multiple neighbors he had grievances with. Accusing those neighbors of actual physical assaults would have gotten George much further legally. Most of the assaults were witnessed by parties that would have either been disinterested--or even supporters of the Waltons. To assume the attacks are easily explicable incidents of neighbors throwing rocks requires that we assume the Waltons and their witnesses were willing to participate in the hoax and claim supernatural causes. It seems unlikely that royal officials and Quaker visitors would willingly put their names to far-fetched claims, particularly when the legal advantage of doing so was less than the legal advantage of just accusing the rock-throwers. Barker assumes the impossibility of a para-normal explanation, and his investigation falls into unscientific assumptions as a result.

Let me be clear: I have no predisposition to assuming there must be a supernatural answer to the lithobolia incident at Great Island. In most instances of paranormal events I find that a careful enough examination of the situation reveals a hoax, or a natural phenomenon that has been perceived as supernatural. But to investigate with the
It doesn't offer sufficient explanation unless you assume to start with that a paranormal explanation is not possible.

This unscientific rejection of a phenomenon just because it is outside our own experience gets at my second objection, which is a historical context problem. Baker assumes--and trumps up the whole incident to--the backwardness of pre-modernist New England. It's like he's saying 'these are a bunch of easily fooled, superstitious bumpkins; the self-serving or superstitious explanations were readily accepted because of the superstition and darkness of the cultural context.'

If this is an accurate picture, why were there so few witch executions in New England, as compared to certain Swiss villages left bereft of women by the witch hunts, or sixty thousand executions in Europe between 1450-1750 (which Baker actually notes)
? Out of 344 accusations of witchcraft in New England between 1620-1725, 185 occurred in relation to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93 which resulted in 20 executions (pp. 86-87). While that is 20 executions too many, in a world that was still very actively pursuing and executing witches, the 'backward,' 'superstitious' New Englanders managed to get away with only 344 accusations, far fewer convictions, and only a score of executions. Rather than bemoan the backwardness of the seventeenth-century New Englanders we might rather celebrate that their system seemed to be outstripping the mother continent's when it came to protecting the innocent from spurious charges.

While Baker marshals an impressive amount of backstory and paints a very vivid picture of life in seventeenth-century New England--a picture which shows a remarkable degree of sophistication and complexity--I do not believe he has solved the mystery of Great Island as thoroughly as his conclusion seems to indicate. While I do not believe there need be a supernatural explanation, I also think it need not be dismissed out of hand. Nor to I think the evidence of community strife--which would certainly provide a motive for the attacks--is sufficient in itself to overcome the realities of the attack which must necessarily be addressed to consider the mystery "solved."