• The Salem Witch Hunts Commonlit Answers
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In the late 1600s the Salem Village community in the (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was fairly small and undergoing a period of turmoil with little political guidance. There was a social divide between the leading families as well as a split between factions that were for and against the village’s new pastor, Samuel Parris. After some young girls of the village (two of them relatives of Parris) started demonstrating strange behaviours and fits, they were urged to identify the person who had bewitched them.

Their initial accusations gave way to trials, hysteria, and a frenzy that resulted in further accusations, often between the differing factions. After weeks of informal hearings, Sir William Phips, governor of the, interceded to add some formality to the proceedings. Over the following year many trials were held and many people imprisoned. As the trials continued, accusations extended beyond Salem Village to surrounding communities. After Governor Phips’s wife was accused, he again interceded and ordered that a new court be established that would not allow so-called spectral evidence.

By May 1693 everyone in custody under conviction or suspicion of witchcraft had been pardoned by Phips. The events in Salem in 1692 were but one chapter in a long story of witch hunts that began in Europe between 1300 and 1330 and ended in the late 18th century (with the last known for witchcraft taking place in in 1782). The Salem trials occurred late in the sequence, after the abatement of the European witch-hunt fervour, which peaked from the 1580s and ’90s to the 1630s and ’40s. Some three-fourths of those European witch hunts took place in western, the, northern, and Switzerland.

The number of trials and executions varied according to time and place, but it is generally believed that some 110,000 persons in total were tried for and between 40,000 to 60,000 were executed.The “hunts” were efforts to identify witches rather than pursuits of individuals who were already thought to be witches. Witches were considered to be followers of who had traded their souls for his assistance. It was believed that they employed demons to accomplish magical deeds, that they changed from human to animal form or from one human form to another, that animals acted as their “familiar spirits,” and that they rode through the air at night to secret meetings and orgies. There is little doubt that some individuals did worship the devil and attempt to practice sorcery with harmful intent.

However, no one ever embodied the concept of a “witch” as previously described. Get unlimited access to all of Britannica’s trusted content.Setting the sceneThere were two Salems in the late 17th century: a bustling commerce-oriented port on Massachusetts Bay known as Salem Town, which would evolve into modern, and, roughly 10 miles (16 km) inland from it, a smaller, poorer farming community of some 500 persons known as Salem Village. The village itself had a noticeable social divide that was by a rivalry between its two leading families—the well-heeled Porters, who had strong connections with Salem Town’s wealthy merchants, and the, who sought greater for the village and were the standard-bearers for the less-prosperous farm families. Squabbles over property were commonplace, and litigiousness was rampant. In 1689, through the influence of the Putnams, a merchant from Boston by way of, became the pastor of the village’s church. Parris, whose largely theological studies at Harvard College (now ) had been interrupted before he could graduate, was in the process of changing careers from business to the ministry.

The Salem Witch Hunts Commonlit Answers

He brought to Salem Village his wife, their three children, a niece, and two slaves who were originally from Barbados—John Indian, a man, and, a woman. (There is uncertainty regarding the relationship between the slaves and their ethnic origins. Some scholars believe that they were of African heritage, while others think that they may have been of Caribbean Native American heritage.)had shrewdly negotiated his contract with the congregation, but relatively early in his he sought greater compensation, including ownership of the parsonage, which did not sit well with many members of the congregation.

Parris’s orthodox theology and preaching also divided the congregation, a split that became demonstrably visible when he routinely insisted that nonmembers of the congregation leave before communion was celebrated. In the process Salem divided into pro- and anti-Parris factions. Fits and contortionsProbably stimulated by voodoo tales told to them by, Parris’s daughter Betty (age 9), his niece Abigail Williams (age 11), and their friend (about age 12), began indulging in fortune-telling.

In January 1692 Betty’s and Abigail’s increasingly strange behaviour (described by at least one historian as juvenile deliquency) came to include fits. They screamed, made odd sounds, threw things, contorted their bodies, and complained of biting and pinching sensations.Looking back with the perspective provided by modern science, some scholars have speculated that the strange behaviour may have resulted from some combination of, delusional psychosis, or convulsive ergotism—the last a disease caused by eating bread or cereal made of rye that has been infected with the fungus, which can elicit vomiting, choking, fits, hallucinations, and the sense of something crawling on one’s skin. (The is a derivative of ergot.) Given the subsequent spread of the strange behaviour to other girls and young women in the community and the timing of its display, however, those physiological and psychological explanations are not very convincing. The of odd behaviour also mirrored that of the children of a family who in 1688 were believed to have been bewitched, a description of which had been provided by Congregational minister in his book Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689) and which may have been known by the girls in Salem Village. In February, unable to account for their behaviour medically, the local doctor, William Griggs, put the blame on the supernatural.

Salem Witch Trials History Project

At the suggestion of a neighbour, a “witch cake” (made with the urine of the victims) was baked by Tituba to try to ferret out the supernatural perpetrator of the girls’ illness. Although it provided no answers, its baking outraged Parris, who saw it as a blasphemous act. Three witchesPressured by to identify their tormentor, Betty and Abigail claimed to have been bewitched by and two other members of the community, neither of whom attended church regularly:, an beggar, and Sarah Osborn (also spelled Osborne), an elderly bed-ridden woman who was scorned for her involvement with an indentured servant.

On March 1 two magistrates from Salem Town, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, went to the village to conduct a public inquiry. Both Good and Osborn protested their own innocence, though Good accused Osborn. Initially, Tituba also claimed to be blameless, but after being repeatedly badgered (and undoubtedly fearful owing to her status as a slave), she told the magistrates what they apparently wanted to hear—that she had been visited by the devil and made a deal with him.

In three days of vivid testimony, she described encounters with Satan’s animal familiars and with a tall, dark man from Boston who had called upon her to sign the devil’s book, in which she saw the names of and Osborn along with those of seven others that she could not read.The magistrates then had not only a confession but also what they accepted as evidence of the presence of more witches in the community, and mounted. Other girls and young women began experiencing fits, among them; her mother; her cousin, Mary Walcott; and the Putnams’s servant, Mercy Lewis. Significantly, those that they began identifying as other witches were no longer just outsiders and outcasts but rather upstanding members of the community, beginning with, a mature woman of some prominence. As the weeks passed, many of the accused proved to be enemies of the, and Putnam family members and in-laws would end up being the accusers in dozens of cases.

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The Salem Witch Trials Movie

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