The Main Causes Of The Puritans In The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of prosecutions of people who were accused of acts of witchcraft or of being a witch in Salem, Massachusetts through the time period of February 1692 through May 1693. This was a dark time in history as more than 200 prosecutions took place and at least 20 people were killed during this time of fear and hysteria. The accusations began as three girls Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft from other young girls in the community. During this time period, fear of the Devil was common as people in Salem were very devoted to their religion and religious practices. As one of the accused girls, Tituba, confessed to working for the Devil and admitting to being a witch, this caused panic and hysteria as a massive witch hunt took place to find more of these witches. This confession was the main reason behind months and months of fear and mass panic as it triggered more accusations.

Many people were accused of being witches in 1692 and hung or pressed to death for their crime, many others were thrown in prison for life. When the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 swept Salem Village and surrounding areas, it was not a happy time. Many of the people living in Salem at the time were Protestants seeking religious freedom. Protestants were very religious people and looked to the Bible for help as God’s words were all true. One of the subjects that the Bible addressed was the Devil and how he possessed people to make them witches. When two young girls asked a West Indian slave woman be the name of Tituba to show them their fortunes, they begun to get more curious about her abilities. Tituba showed them the “magic” she knew from her former tribe, but when the young girls started acting strangely, she was accused for being a witch along side two other local white women. Instead of pleading guilty, Tituba confessed that she was a witch and told the audience of her trial that there were 6 more witches amongst them. This lead to a hectic frenzy to find the remaining witches and it turned neighbors onto each other, husbands on wives and entire families were thrown into prison for their crime. The three main reasons for the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 were a group of young girls looking for attention, neighbor conflicts and gender/status/age.

The first women to be accused of witchcraft in Salem were seen as different and as social outcasts: Tituba, a slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, a sickly old woman who married her servant. These women were unpopular and it was easy to point fingers at them. Gossips and rumors were enough to accuse them. Tituba[3] was a dark skinned slave who lived in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris. She was familiar with the West Indian Voodoo and practicing magic.

Three centuries ago, the Puritan religion was the base of the Salem village and many townspeople strongly believed in the existence of witches and witchcraft. According to the common Puritan belief, witches were in alliance with the devil and were granted power to harm. People were blamed for illness, failed crops, to bad weather, and many other things that were evident centuries ago. Due to the belief in witchcraft villagers were, perhaps, inclined to the most improbable explanations. The Puritans held strict views, ways of living, perspectives fears, and fantasies. Many Puritan ministers used the the fear of witchcraft to scare the believers into following the church. Historians believe these strict Puritan ways of life may have brought upon the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. At the time, witches and witchcraft were a serious and viewed as a real threat; almost as real as

During the phase of witchcraft accusations, it was observed that generally women were both the accusers and the suspects of witchcraft. An Indian slave named Tituba was the first perpetrator of witchcraft, who used to work in Samuel Parris’ house (Ray, “Satan’s War against the Covenant” 82). She was severely tortured and interrogated during her capture. At one stage of interrogation, Samuel Parris brutally assaulted her, which resulted her to confess about her involvement in

In the winter of 1628-1629 Massachusetts was a dark and reveling place. Puritans colonized Salem in 1628. It was the beginning of Massachusetts Bay Colonies. Salem was being considered as the largest trial American history has seen (Hoffer), a place of devil worship and deception. Many English protestants, also known as Puritans were being accused of witchcraft and worshiping the devil. Witchcraft was known as giving the devil permission to go into that person’s body, take their shape and go around harming other people. As hysteria spread, more women were hearing of this matter, a witch-hunt began in the village of Salem.

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of trials in which twenty-four people were killed after being accused of practicing witchcraft. These trials were caused by different social climates of the area including the very strong lack of a governor, the split between Salem Village and Salem Town, and the strict puritan lifestyle during the time period. Tituba, the black slave, was a foreigner from Barbados. Her role in society was to take care of Mr. Parris’s family. Tituba’s situation contributed to her role in the witch trials because Mr. Parris promised her freedom if she confessed guilty. Tituba also realized that with her false confession of being a witch also helped keep her life, therefore she accused other people in the village

Elizabeth Parris and Abagail Williams, the pastor’s daughter and niece respectively, were two of the six young ladies that Tituba watch over. In the beginning, Tituba would perform witchcraft in an attempt to lure the girls into witchcraft but the girls rejected Tituba’s actions. Eventually, the girls would begin to act out and were proclaimed to have become bewitched. After Parris discovered that his girls’ actions were not of physical nor mental disease and of spiritual doings, an aunt of one of the afflicted girls used Tituba to experiment using a urine-cake (eventually this aunt would be scorned for practicing counter magic) to determine who bewitched the young girls. When the girls cried out that it was Tituba’s doing and made several accusations of her acts of witchcraft, Tituba rejected all allegations. In theory, Tituba made herself out as a witch. In the end of her trial, Tituba would confess to practicing witchcraft. She confessed that she had signed the Devil’s book along with eight other witches including Goody Osborne and Sarah Good, as well as seeing the Devil various times in the form of a tall man, a hog, cats, a great black dog, and wolves and birds. Sarah Good and Goody Osbourne worked in command of Tituba taking the Devil’s orders to terrorize the young women of the household by pinching, harming, and performing acts of levitation. Tituba being the first to

The Salem Witch Trials started in 1692 when two girls began to exhibit strange behaviors. Hysteria broke out and many believed they had been bewitched. Out of fear, many were accused of practicing witchcraft. One of the fist women to be accused along with Sarah Osburn and Sarah Good was Tituba, a slave to Reverend Samuel Parris. In the past there had been some loose accusations but Tituba’s confession made this time different. She was the first person to ever admit to being a witch. She went on to further explain that she was a witch for the devil and went into detail about her experiences practicing witchcraft. This caused a panic in Salem that led a full on witch-hunt. Around 200 people total were accused of being witches and 20 were killed during the Salem Witch Trials. (Foulds, D. E. p. 161, 168, 194)

The Salem Witch Trials were a prime part of American history during the early 17th century. During this time, religion was the prime focus and way of life within colonies. This was especially true for the Puritan way of life. Puritans first came to America in hopes of practicing Christianity their own way, to the purest form. The Puritans were fundamentalists who believed every word transcribed in the Bible by God was to be followed exactly for what it was. The idea of the devil controlling a woman and forming her into a Witch was originated from people’s lack of awareness on illness, disease or simple hysteria. The Colonists lack of expertise on the methodical approach through sciences, left them concluding to a spiritual phenomenon.

Tituba was a Caribbean slave owned by the Parris family. Sarah Good was a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. Tituba admitted, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” She described seeing red cats, yellow birds, black dogs, and a black man who asked her to sign his “book”. She confessed to signing the book. All three women were put in jail. Soon, more children had started to experience similar episodes. People were tried and found guilty of witchcraft.

In the year (1692) witch trials held the Salem area hostage people were terrified. People of

The decisions that Tituba made throughout her trial, contributed in a substantial magnitude to the American history that’s known nowadays. If it wasn 't for the confession of the actions that Tituba made, the unfolding of the witch trials might have had a different angle. Braslow discuses, “Tituba is perceived during the trials as a woman, as a slave, as an American Indian, and as an outsider in a Puritan society”. Being an outsider in a world where if you make one mistake, must have been terrifying for Tituba, and perhaps she felt that by confessing, she would have more opportunities to survive. She initiated an era of terror among the European society, an era of witchcraft and hostility towards women, like Tituba, that were only mostly peasant and ignorant women, without any knowledge and influence over people. Church communities, manifested hatred towards women that were merely part of an injustice act. These women did not understand what was happening, and even some were convinced of

After the doctor’s analysis, the townspeople then gathered up all of the girls with the symptoms. The collected girls accused three women: Sarah Good, an odd homeless woman who lived the streets of Salem Village, Sarah Osborne, who had married her servant and rarely attended the church meetings, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados who was in service of Reverend Samuel Parris. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne denied the accusations, while Tituba confessed, and claimed there were multiple other witches working by her side in Salem.

doctors unable to give a proper diagnosis, declared the girls were bewitched. The girls would accuse three women of bewitching them, but their accusations targeted a slave from the Carribean’s Tituba. Tituba under examination would eventually confess to the acts of witchcraft. Her confession was followed by the accusations that more witches existed in the community. The accusation by Tituba would give birth to a massive witch hunt. The witch hunt would claim twenty lives, and imprison countless more. Tituba indicated that Sarah Good often had a yellow bird suckling between her fingers . The accusations began with a slave such as Tituba, and homeless women. Eventually the threat would begin reaching stand up members of the community such as