I just discovered a little known historical fact about Illinois that I thought I’d pass along. The last execution in the United States (or territories) on a charge of witchcraft took place in what is now Illinois in 1779. In Kaskaskia, a fort town on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, then a county of Virginia, south of St. Louis, a Negro slave named Manuel was tried and burned alive on the charge of voodoo.
Was he using Skittles in his demonic practices?
Polish historians claim to have found a ‘vampire’ burial ground (est. 16th century):
“The grisly discovery, made in Gliwice – a town near the Czech Republic border, includes four decapitated skeletons with their heads placed on their legs. Archaeologists say this bizarre anatomical rearrangement is indicative of ancient execution rituals designed to ensure the dead do not return to life.”
I can only guess that this was a problem they actually believed they had.
As I presume you’re aware, PD, Chicago is the largest Polish city other than Warsaw. I can’t help but wonder if these two facts are in some way related to the observed phenomenon here in Chicago of long-dead voters showing up at polling places. It could happen.
There is also the story about how Kaskaskia was also destroyed by the undead. The short version: The daughter of a French fur trader fell in love and later eloped with an Indian working for the trader. The Indian was captured by the townspeople and thrown into the Mississippi River with weights to drown. Before drowning he cursed the trader to die within the year, promised that he would be joined with his love after death and the dead would rise and destroy the city. The trader died in a duel within the year, the daughter refused to eat and died not long after, and the City of Kaskaskia over a hundred years later the shifting river destroyed the city and in the process raised the coffins from the cemetery to float downstream.
This source states that the witchcraft claim originated from an historian’s interpretation of colonial records (and repeated by Teddy Roosevelt with a bit of anti-Catholic touch in one of his books), but the actual minutes of the court proceedings were later discovered and reveal that the black slave was burned for poisoning his master.
http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/1/v01i01p003-025.pdf
That’s a pretty interesting reference, PD. Mostly a historiographical work, pleading for more active preservation of old documents.
Poisoning yes, but apparently he also weighed the same as a duck.
Steve