Before 1692, the supernatural was a part of people’s everyday normal life. This is so as people strongly believed that Satan was present and active on earth. Men and women in Salem Village believed that all the misfortunes that befell them were the work of the devil. For example, when things like infant death, crop failures or friction among the congregation occurred, people were quick to blame the supernatural. This concept first emerged in Europe around the fifteenth century and then spread to Colonial America. Formerly, peasants heavily relied on particular charms for farming and agriculture. But, over time, white magic transformed into dark magic and it became associated with evil. Even though the people of Salem believed that Satan walked among men on earth, colonial life was relatively calm. However there was a series of events that eventually led to the “hanging of nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men” ; these events are known as the Salem Witch Trials.
“The Salem Witch Trials happened between February of 1692 and May of 1693 in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties of colonial Massachusetts. They consisted of a series of hearings and trials that were brought before the local magistrate in order to prosecute people accused of witchcraft. More than 150 people were accused and arrested of practicing witchcraft and there were even more accused that were not actually pursued by the authorities.” However, some sources claim that during the Salem witch-hunt more than 200 people were arrested as witches , nineteen of them were hung and one man over eighty years of age was pressed to death for refusing to submit to a trial on charges of witchcraft.
The seeds of the hysteria that afflicted Salem Village, Massac...
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Pagewise, ‘Possible Causes of the Salem Witch Hunts’, 2002. Online at http://www.essortment.com/all/salemwitchhunt_rulb.htm
All references to Tituba's testimony in this article are taken from the transcripts reprinted in SWP, 2:36i-62, 3:745-57. The dearth of Indian women's voices in the written records makes her confession a unique document. On the difficulties of extracting evidence about American Indian women from literary sources see Clara Sue Kidwell, "Indian Women as Cultural Mediators,"Ethnohistory 39 (I992): 97-107.
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Tran- scripts, 3 vols. (New York, I977), 3: 755 (hereafter SWP).
Burns W, ‘Witch Hunts in Europe and America’, pp.303, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003.
Burns W, ‘Witch Hunts in Europe and America’, pp.303, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003.
John M. Murrin’s essay Coming to Terms with the Salem Witch Trials helps detail the events of these trials and explains why they might have occurred. The witch trials happened during a “particularly turbulent time in the history of colonial Massachusetts and the early modern atlantic world” (Murrin, 339). Salem came to be in 1629 and less than seventy years later found itself in a mess of witch craft.
Breslaw was a Professor of History from Morgan State University and is now an author and speaker. In her essay Tituba 's Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch-Hunt Elaine focuses on the cultural aspects of a certain individual named Tituba. Her confession, blending elements from English, African, and American Indian notions of the occult, was of key significance in the shaping of the bizarre events at Salem.8 During this time period people believed that magic and Satan coexisted. When Tituba was accused of being a witch rather than denying it, she accepted it and confessed. Tituba used her cultural background as a safe zone and made the Puritans believe in her being a regular slave trapped by forces out of the human realm.9 When this was happening there was not enough records to prove that the cultural background of a slave. By looking at the multicultural background of a single person shows that people did what they had to, to survive this chaos. Another author Isaac Ariail Reed writes Deep Culture in Action in order to further explain the sociological culture. Salem Witch Trials was considered moral panics which were built up out of resignification, a specific kind of public, communicative work that achieves its ends via Synecdoche and metanarrative.10 The Salem Witch Trials were a disproportionate response and by far the largest, the deadliest, and the most emotionally charged event.11 The trials occurred during a time of high anxiety
...in their family to become sick and possibly die. Many people were accused of witchcraft. More than twenty people died all together. One person was flattened to death because he was accused of witchcraft. When people were accused they had to go to jail, which the conditions were terrible. Then, they had to get a trial from the Court of Oyer and Terminer. After an accused witch had their trial, and went to jail, they would be carted off to Gallows Hill. This was the hill where all the witches were hanged. After a witch was hanged, later that night, their family would usually take the body down and give it a proper burial. The Salem Witchcraft Trials were one of the most terrible times in the history of America. As you can see the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
Witchcraft has been present in many other religions, not only the Puritan religion. Witchcraft was also found in Catholic and Protestant parts of Europe. The Salem Witch Trials were smaller in comparison to those in Scotland, France, or Germany (Hall 3). Though the trials in Salem were smaller, people recognize the Salem Witch Trials as one of the worst times in American history (“Witch Madness” 4). The Puritans believed that the Devil was alive in their community (“Witch Madness” 2). The accusations started in February 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts when young Puritan girls were found using magic. The Salem Witch Trials began when Betty Paris, Abigail Williams, and some of their friends began to act strange with odd fits (Hall 1). Because many mental and emotional disorders were not understood, the people of Salem believed it was the work of witchcraft. When sickness or even misfortune came, the most
In February 1692, the girls who were attacked by specters named three witches: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were rude and unpopular in the village, so it was easy to say that they are witches. Tituba was a maid from the Caribbean. Because there were rasistism then, she was considered a witch because of her race. When Sarah Good was on court, she claimed innocent, but no one believed her. The girls who were attacked by specters screamed in pain, ...
Carlson, Laurie M. A Fever in Salem A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1999. Print.
Witchcraft had been around long before the Salem witch trials. “Indeed by 1692 the “witch craze,” which had begun in Europe around 1500, was distinctly on the wane so that the trials in the Salem Village were among the last of the major outbreaks-if the execution of only twenty persons entitles this outbreak to be called “major” in the history of European witchcraft.” However, if this was one of the last instances of witches, why is it so famous? They are different in many ways. “Before the outbreak at Salem Village, trials for witchcraft had been fairly common events in colonial America, but they had not invariably resulted in executions or even in conviction.” The other reason the trials are so famous, is the highlight of this paper about proving that the trials were just an act put on by the children who started this outbreak. “Only in 1692 did the accusations multiply so quickly and develop an entire community.”
The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were the largest outbreak of witch hunting in colonial New England up to that time. Although it was the largest outbreak, it was not something that was new. Witch-hunting had been a part of colonial New England since the formation of the colonies. Between the years 1648 to 1663, approximately 15 witches were executed. During the winter of 1692 to February of 1693, approximately 150 citizens were accused of being witches and about 25 of those died, either by hanging or while in custody. There is no one clear-cut answer to explain why this plague of accusations happened but rather several that must be examined and tied together. First, at the same time the trials took place, King William's War was raging in present day Maine between the colonists and the Wabanaki Indians with the help of the French. Within this war, many brutal massacres took place on both sides, leaving orphaned children due to the war that had endured very traumatic experiences. Second, many of the witch accusations were based on spectral evidence, most of which were encounters of the accused appearing before the victim and "hurting" them. There were rampant "visions" among the colonies' citizens, which can only be explained as hallucinations due to psychological or medical conditions by virtue of disease, or poisoning.
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft is a concise, 231 page informational text by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum. Published in 1974, it explores the economic and social conditions present in the Salem village during the 1600s that led to the hysteria surrounding witchcraft. Multiple graphs and illustrations are present, as well as an average sized font, an abundance of footnotes typically on the left page, and a prominent voice from the authors. The book was written to serve as a more comprehensive informational piece on the Salem witch trials due to the authors finding other pieces written about the same topic to be inaccurate. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum wanted to create something that utilized
The notorious witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts occurred from June through September. It is a brief, but turbulent period in history and the causes of the trials have long been a source of discussion among historians. Many try to explain or rationalize the bizarre happenings of the witch hunts and the causes that contributed to them. To understand the trials and how they came to be, we must first examine the ideals and views of the people surrounding the events. Although religious beliefs were the most influential factor, socioeconomic tensions, and ergot poisoning are also strongly supported theories. A combination of motives seems the most rational explanation of the frenzy that followed the illness of the two girls. This paper looks closely at the some of the possible causes of one of the most notable occurrences in history.
The Salem Trials took place between the 10th of June and the 22nd of 1692 and in this time nineteen people. In addition to this one man was pressed to death and over 150 people where sent to jail where four adult and one infant died. Although when compared to other witch-hunts in the Western world, it was ‘a small incident in the history of a great superstition,’ but has never lost its grip on our imagination’ . It’s because of this that over the last three centuries many historians have analysed the remaining records of the trials in order to work out what the causes and events were that led to them.
The witch trials of the late 1600's were full of controversy and uncertainty. The Puritan town of Salem was home to most of these trials, and became the center of much attention in 1692. More than a hundred innocent people were found guilty of practicing witchcraft during these times, and our American government forced over a dozen to pay with their lives. The main reasons why the witch trials occurred were conflicts dealing with politics, religion, family, economics, and fears of the citizens.
In the early years of America, people were mostly unaware of certain things. Sickness, for instance, was an important issue for people didn't know how to manage or cure such complex illnesses. The Puritans, during the colonial times, didn't have much information about certain things. They came to believe that certain unexplainable events were done by a powerful source of evil thus brought about superstitions. The infamous Witch Trials done at Salem, Massachusetts, which spread across the continent, was an example of people's injustice acts in response to superstitions. One of the major cause of the Salem Witchcraft trials was superstition, an "irrational belief or practice resulting from ignorance or fear of the unknown" (www.encyclopedia.com). A lack of scientific knowledge led many people to be convinced that, witches were responsible to the death of an animal or a livestock: John Rogger "testified that upon the threatening words " of Martha Carrier " his cattle would be strangely bewitched."(Mather, p55) John Roger believed on superstitions; thus he proposed that Martha was a witch who was killing his cows. It is easy to see how the people of Salem were so vulnerable to the notion of witches taking over their town. Furthermore Tituba, Reverend Parris's slave, practiced ritual dance and "black magic" in her early years in Africa. She influenced most of the girls in town through her stories. The girls believed on superstitions which overall started the Salem Witch Trials and made it possible for the witch trials to occur for a long duration.
In 1692, the occurrence of “witchcraft” began after the Massachusetts Bay Charter revolution and the outbreak of small pox. The rebellion caused hysteria and a sad injustice. Friends were pinned against friends; upstanding citizens were forced to flee for their lives and men and women were put to death (Jurist Legal News and Research Services 2008).The fear of the devil influenced the cruelty that took place. Most of the settlers that established their homes in the colony were puritans, a member of a group of English Protestants who revolted against the Church of England. The belief that God punished sinful behavior with misfortune did not help circumstances. The puritans targeted outcasts, people who never really fit it in; they wanted to rid the towns of these suspected sinners.
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the summer and into the fall of the year 1692, and during this dark time of American history, over 200 people had been accused of witchcraft and put in jail. Twenty of these accused were executed; nineteen of them were found guilty and were put to death by hanging. One refused to plead guilty, so the villagers tortured him by pressing him with large stones until he died. The Salem Witch Trials was an infamous, scary time period in American history that exhibited the amount of fear people had of the devil and the supernatural; the people of this time period accused, arrested, and executed many innocent people because of this fear, and there are several theories as to why the trials happened (Brooks).