Today in Salem: The forest floor is thick with pine needles, cushioning her steps and releasing their fragrance as she walks silently between the trees. Heel toe, heel toe she thinks, moving slowly to avoid any twigs or stones that could snap or slide and give her presence away. Abigail Hobbs likes the idea of being a ghost, gliding through the forest undetected, able to vanish like that.
Her brother has taught her this, how to weave through the woods as silently as an Indian, leaving no footsteps or tracks behind. During the day she practices, looking down at her feet and closing her eyes, memorizing the forest path she’s created. At night she re-traces her steps, walking deeper and deeper into the dark woods, sometimes for hours before returning home.
She began wandering the woods when she was much younger, when they lived in Maine and the woods were thick with Wabanaki Indians ready to attack. Now she’s 15 and living near Salem, but she’s even more brazen, sometimes spending the night in the woods and not coming home until late the next day.
Abigail’s parents have given up on taming her. When they try, she talks back boldly, and she’s earned a reputation of being rude and disrespectful. And when her friends ask why she isn’t afraid to be in the woods, especially at night, Abigail says she’s sold her body and soul to him. She isn’t afraid of anything, she says. She’s made a deal with the Devil.
Now it’s catching up to her. Today it’s the Sabbath, and the afflicted girls can’t stop squirming and scratching and whispering. It’s no surprise to anyone when, after the Meeting, the girls say Abigail’s specter is tormenting them. The only question is why it took so long
WHO was Abigail Hobbs?
Age 15. Abigail and her family were from Maine, where Indian attacks had decimated the English settlements. It was here that she began wandering the woods at night. When her family, neighbors, and friends asked why she wasn’t afraid of being attacked, she said she “sold her selfe boddy & Soull to the old boy” and has “seen the divell and . . . made a covenant or bargin with him.”
When life in Maine became too dangerous, the Hobbs family moved to Topsfield, Massachusetts, which is next to Salem. Abigail continued roaming the woods at night, and developed a reputation of being rude and disrespectful to her parents. She even sprinkled water in her stepmother’s face in a mock baptism, and openly defied her parents in public.
Even though she was a teenager, no one was surprised when Abigail was finally accused of witchcraft. But, like some of the other accused, she soon realized that the best way to avoid being hanged was to confess and accuse others of witchcraft. It was only a delay, though, and eventually her execution was scheduled. She got lucky again, though, when the governor paused the trials and signed a reprieve for her and others.
Later, when Abigail was 32, she married Andrew Senter and had at least two sons, Andrew and Thomas. We don’t know how long she lived after that. Case files: Abigail Hobbs
READ MORE: Who were the Wabanaki Indians?
The Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawn,” are the first people of the area known today as Northeastern New England and Maritime Canada, and have lived there for more than 12,000 years.
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, Maine was sandwiched between New France (Canada) to the north, and British America to the south. By then, the native Wabanaki people had become more dependent on European guns and ammunition for hunting. When the English made it illegal to sell ammunition to the Wabanaki, and France stepped in to give it to them anyway, an alliance was born, most of it centered in Maine, with English settlers being the common enemy of both. The attacks were constant and merciless, with the Wabanaki people suffering as much as the English.
The Wabanaki people have continued to struggle in Maine. Until the 1950s, Wabanaki children were often taken away from their communities and sent to boarding schools, where they were forced to assimiliate into White American culture. Others were separated from their families through adoption, foster care, and placement in orphanages. In fact, in the mid-1970s, Maine had the second highest rate of Indian foster care placement among states. As late as the 1990s, Indian children in Maine were still being placed with and adopted by non-Native families without notification to the tribe, as required by the law.
Since then, Maine has established a commission — the first in the U.S. territory — that collaborates with tribal nations to focus on Indian child welfare. But, with only 8,000 tribal members alive today, it may be too little too late.