Salem Witch Trials Dbq Research Paper

Witches are known to be very dangerous, evil, and made deals with the devil. They were even killed, tortured and jailed, but nowadays we treat them completely differently. We invite them into our house, give them candy, and strike conversations with them, that is at least on halloween. In the late 1600s many older men and women were being caught as being “witches” in Salem, Massachusetts.These witch trials were being caused by young girls who were pretending just to get ergotism, attention, and eventually after one lie they got out control really quickly. Witch trials were mainly caused by young girls hallucinating that some people were witches and that they were being attacked by their specter. This hallucination was caused by ergotism which is a fungus that grows on
cereal grain. In document J it says that ergotism produces a halogen called LSD that produces hallucinations. This shows that after the girls had eaten anything wheat related, they might have had hallucinated the specters. They also might have been confused about who was a witch and who was not a witch. Lastly the girls might have thought there were witches but there might have never been any witches. Based on the background articles, the girls might have also been paranoid by the Indian raids. In 1692 Indians started raiding the colonies by killing colonists, taking resources, and capturing colonists as hostages. this might have caused a paranoia between the girls and the rest of the settlers. There were also other reasons for witch trials that were not so significant too like the girls getting out of control. Sometimes when people take things too far, like the girls in salem accusing people of witchery, they get out of control. In document A it shows the number of convicted witches that were hung. This shows that as more and more witches were “convicted”, the girls started to accuse more and more older men and women. Every month as more people got executed, their lies about seeing the witch’s specter grew and grew. Also in document C it shows the trial of Bridget Bishop in court as she was tried in front of the “afflicted” girls. As Bridget denied being a witch, the interrogator kept pressing her for information because he believed the girls more. In addition to that, whenever Bridget made any actions, the girls copied the actions as if they were being controlled and tortured. This shows how willing the girls were to keep their lie going, or maybe it was because they wanted fame? The girls might have also lied just to get famous for their acts of “humanity”.
In document D it tells us that the girls lied and got intoxicated on their success. This reveals that once the girls saw that their lies were getting realized, they started getting proud of their work and produced even more lies. This produced even more fame for them until one they they were caught when they accused the governor’s wife. Secondly in document B it shows the number of accusers and accused which proves that the young girls were targeting the older women. They might have been jealous of them, or they didn’t like them. The girls also targeted men because they had a higher class over women which they were jealous of. These witch trials were caused by many different aspects and jealousy might have been the main one Overall I think the salem witch trials were caused by ergotism, growing lies and fame/jealousy. Ergotism was causing many problems throughout the colonies which eventually caused innocent men and women to be hanged. Also once the girls started lying, they could not stop because their superstition kept growing. Lastly the girls might have wanted to get famous for their work and to get rid of
witches