Posted on 04/14/2024 12:33:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The middle of Oklahoma is a long way from Salem, Mass., and it had been more than 200 years since the witch trials.
But an elderly Seminole Indian woman was condemned to death as a sorceress in Wewoka in 1880 and came within two hours of facing a firing squad. She had been accused of causing a long-sick woman to choke to death -- by blowing on a piece of bread given to the ill victim, who tried to eat it.
The story of the Oklahoma witchcraft case was told in the 1923 memoirs of former mission teacher Antoinette C. Snow Constant, who saved the condemned woman from death. The story of the "witch" trial was published in the Tulsa World shortly after Constant wrote her memoirs and was recently recounted in the book "Alice and J.F.B." by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Vance Trimble of Wewoka.
The young white teacher watched every morning as the old Indian "witch" was led stumbling on foot to the Council House by a light horseman (an officer riding a pony) for her trial. Her long gray hair falling over her shoulders gave her a weird appearance, Constant recalled in her hand-written memoirs.
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Constant wrote that she appealed to everyone she could think of, including the Rev. William Ramsey, a Presbyterian missionary who founded the mission where she taught 50 students, and John Franklin Brown, a half-white man who was the most formally educated man in the tribe's leadership.
"We can do nothing," the missionary told her. "And besides you will lose your position if you interfere with the Indians' affairs."
Brown condemned the trial and sentence but said he could do nothing. "I fear her fate is settled beyond the reach of any aid I might be able to render."
Chief John Chupco, whom Constant had considered a friend, had visited in her home many times. Though he had asked her to "never leave my people," he refused to talk with her and didn't respond to a written plea for the woman's life. He had already signed the death warrant and had set the execution for 2 p.m. June 8, 1880.
"There is no such thing as a witch," the teacher had written to the chief, urging him to "stay the hand of the executioner." Chupco ignored the letter.
On the Sunday before the execution was scheduled, Ramsey announced from his pulpit, "For all who wish to watch the execution of the witch, I can tell you that it will take place on the Council House grounds on Tuesday at two in the afternoon."
People began to assemble early Tuesday awaiting the event, Trimble wrote in his book. The "witch" arrived at noon, calm and resigned to dying. She was in her family's wagon sitting on a rough pine coffin lined with muslin -- while awaiting her date with the firing squad.
Two young light horse privates had been selected for the firing squad and their rifles had been "purified" by a medicine man.
Meanwhile, the teacher had sent an appeal to Maj. A.W. Tate, the U.S. Indian agent headquartered in Muskogee, whose response arrived barely two hours before the execution was scheduled: a letter to the teacher and an order to Chief Chupco to stay the execution.
The "witch" was sent home and, as was predicted by the missionary, Constant was fired from her job as a teacher. In spite of Chief Chupco's earlier plea that the teacher "never leave my people," he now ordered the missionary to "get another teacher."
The old woman whose life was spared was grateful. When the girls in the mission school took her to meet Constant the next day, she threw her arms around the teacher and wept with joy. "I could only point heavenward and say to her (in Seminole) 'God has saved your life.' "
A few months later Constant returned to Kansas with her husband and children. She later moved to Edmond, where she lived until her death.
Never again was a "witch" put on trial in the Seminole nation.
“There is no such thing as a witch..”
What about Hillary’s suicide hot line ?
I lived near the Navajo Reservation years ago and there are many who still believe in witches and skinwalkers.
Same for the Cherokee area of Oklahoma. I knew a white woman who believed she was affected by Cherokee witchcraft 20 years ago.
“It is not easy to draw a clear distinction between magic and witchcraft. Both are concerned with the producing of effects beyond the natural powers of man by agencies other than the Divine (cf. OCCULT ART, OCCULTISM). But in witchcraft, as commonly understood, there is involved the idea of a diabolical pact or at least an appeal to the intervention of the spirits of evil. In such cases this supernatural aid is usually invoked either to compass the death of some obnoxious person, or to awaken the passion of love in those who are the objects of desire, or to call up the dead, or to bring calamity or impotence upon enemies, rivals, and fancied oppressors. This is not an exhaustive enumeration, but these represent some of the principal purposes that witchcraft has been made to serve at nearly all periods of the world’s history.”
Really, missionary lady? The Bible would beg to differ:
They use the OT verse where it states not to suffer a witch to live; it does not say kill them. If you don’t house, feed, cloth them that’s part of living. Those witch killing people never read further where it says to show them to the end of town and send them out (or words to that effect).
Haven’t read Bill O’Reilly’s book about witches yet.
Today things are different.
Witches go to Congress and join the Squad. Or live in Chappaqua with a net worth of an estimated $120 million. Enough to pay for Endurance, Ox or Car Shield for her brooms.
If she weighed the same as a duck then she would also weigh the same as wood; therefore she would have been a witch!
Sure there are witches, but they’re mostly into politics these days.
What a brave and godly woman. God bless her memory.
Only the ignorant believe in witches.
Did you know that if you drag an old leather boot that has been burned and is still smoking around the house three times it will keep all snakes away from your house for the summer? Right now, right here there is a big run on old boots around here.
Now this one is a fact. Hang up a stuffed brown paper bag and it will keep the wasps out and dirt dobbers away. They think it is the nest of their mortal enemy the hornet.
Paper bag stuffed with what ... anything in particular?
Good lord. LOL That’s great stuff.
Just something to make it look like a hornet’s nest.
PS, it does work in most areas depending on how much area you are trying to protect. I have one hung in a camper shell that is suspended from the barn ceiling and there is not a single dirt dobber or wasp nest in it. I convinced someone to put them up in the rafters of his airplane hanger, no wasps anywhere.
I don’t do the boot thing. There is a medicine man that lives in the NW part of the county that a lot of people around here go to.
Two of the best old books on the subject are THE GOLDEN BOUGH by Frasier and THE EVIL EYE by Elsworthy.
Then there is the horse hair rope to keep snakes away from your camp on the ground...
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