Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery

Content warning: This section of the guide discusses torture and anti-Indigenous racism.

The events of Slewfoot take place in the village of Sutton, Connecticut in 1666. Though Sutton is fictional, the social and political life of the village mirrors that of some of the early Connecticut settlements like Windsor and Wethersfield. The Colony of Connecticut was established in 1636 as a Puritan settlement. The religious background of the colony’s first members factored heavily into the creation of the colony as its own political entity. The 1639 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut repeatedly cite Christianity as a driving force behind the order and organization of the colony. The close relationship between Christianity and the government features repeatedly in Slewfoot: Reverend Carter acts as the primary governing figure for Sutton until the magistrate from Hartford is called in. Adherence to the Puritan faith is obligatory in Sutton, and this drives much of Abitha’s internal conflict early in the novel; she found more outlets for exploring alternate faith-practices back in England, and the strictness of Sutton’s religious observance makes her an outsider. Connecticut would not grant its citizens religious freedom until the 18^th century.

Between 1636 and 1638, English colonists and the Indigenous people of the area, the Pequot people, engaged in a conflict that would come to be known as the Pequot War. The war was fought over control of land into which the Pequot and neighboring tribe the Mohegans had expanded as they vied for control of the fur trade. It eventually resulted in the Mystic Massacre, in which colonists allied with the Mohegan and Naragansett tribes set fire to a Pequot stronghold, killing the majority of the Pequot. After this massacre the Pequot conceded, resulting in the 1638 Treaty of Hartford. The Pequot as a tribe were disbanded; some were sent to live under other tribes while others were sold into West Indian slavery. These tensions between the colonists and the Pequot give context to the racist attitudes that many of the white characters in Slewfoot, like Captain Moore, have toward the Indigenous population. Moore immediately associates Abitha’s wrongdoing with the possibility that she has taken on a Pequot lover; this assumption speaks to Moore’s opinion of the Pequot as sexually licentious and affiliated with anti-Christian values. Through characters like Jesus Thunderbird, Slewfoot also depicts the Pequot as active in Connecticut at this time and working and living alongside the colonists.

Between 1647 and 1663, the colony underwent what would become known as the Hartford Witch Trials. These trials, predating the Salem Witch Trials by some three decades, saw executions of 11 women and a total of 37 trials. Just as depicted in Slewfoot, these trials were overseen by a magistrate who typically came in from Hartford. The magistrate would often try to secure a confession from the women through “battering interrogations.” Such interrogations are depicted in the novel through the torture of Sarah Carter, who is both cut open and crushed beneath rocks as Watson attempts to get her to confess to her affiliation with Abitha. The trials came to an end in 1663 due to stricter standards for determining whether or not a woman was a witch, including that there needed to be multiple witnesses corroborating a single act of witchcraft. In the novel, Wallace employs Ansel and Isaac to secure enough witnesses to meet this standard. Slewfoot ultimately imagines a fictional trial that takes place after the events of the Hartford Witch Trials, but the circumstances and proceedings of Abitha’s trial reflect the real events of these witch trials.