m the rift in Delphos on the Apollonian
oracles, their manifestations of insanity or frenzy passing for deific or
infernal possession. When John Gibb, a Scotchman, who had gone mad
through religious excitement, was shipped to this country by his tired
fellow-countrymen, the Indians hailed him as a more powerful wizard than
any of their number, and he died in 1720, admired and feared by them
because of the familiarity with spirits out of Hobbomocko (hell) that his
ravings and antics were supposed to indicate. Two Indian servants of the
Reverend Mr. Purvis, of Salem, having tried by a spell to discover a
witch, were executed as witches themselves. The savages, who took Salem
witchcraft at its worth, were astonished at its deadly effect, and the
English may have lost some influence over the natives in consequence of
this madness. "The Great Spirit sends no witches to the French," they
said. Barrow Hill, near Amesbury, was said to be the meeting-place for
Indian powwows and witches, and at late hours of the night the light of
fires gleamed from its top, while shadowy forms glanced athwart it. Old
men say that the lights are still there in winter, though modern doubters
declare that they were the aurora borealis.

But the belief in witches did not die even when the Salem people came to
their senses. In the Merrimac valley the devil found converts for many
years after: Goody Mose, of Rocks village, who tumbled down-stairs when a
big beetle was killed at an evening party, some miles away, after it had
been bumping into the faces of the company; Goody Whitcher, of Ameshury,
whose loom kept banging day and night after she was dead; Goody Sloper,
of West Newbury, who went home lame directly that a man had struck his
axe into the beam of a house that she had bewitched, but who recovered
her strength and established an improved reputation when, in 1794, she
swam out to a capsized boat and rescued two of the people who were in
peril; Goodman Nichols, of Rocks village, who "spelled" a neighbor's son,
compelling him to run up one end of the house, along the ridge, and down
the other end, "troubling the family extremely by his strange
proceedings;" Susie Martin, also of Rocks, who was hanged in spite of her
devotions in jail, though the rope danced so that it could not be tied,
but a crow overhead called for a withe and the law was executed with
that; and Goody Morse, of Market and High Streets, Newburyport, whose
baskets and pots dance