“Extraordinary body postures, inexplicable pains, deafness, numbness, and blindness, meaning I was babbling, refusal to eat, destructive and self-destructive behavior…” Witchcraft was common in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts a slave named Tituba was the first “witch” accused. This accusation came about when two younger girls and Tituba, their fathers slave, attempted to see into the future through an egg white. When they looked in the egg white they supposedly saw a coffin and began displaying the symptoms of being possessed, or being overcome by the ‘devil’. When she was accused she confessed she was guilty and also confessed to there being other witches. There are many alleged causes to the Salem Witch Trials such as undiagnosed encephalitis, paranoia, and an unjust class structure because of heightened religious beliefs. Little did she know this would start a mass hysteria of witchcraft and cause excessive paranoia in Salem Massachusetts.…
The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…
Whom is this so called “infamous” Tituba? Tituba is a woman born into Arawak Indian heritage and was captured and enslaved as a young child and was accuse of being a witch as well as making treaties with the Devil. Tituba was innocently accused by a group of young white girls for being involved and engaged with witchcraft and wizardry. Tituba was pressured immensely and later was forced upon her will to confess of being a witch. Tituba’s confessions of being a witch lead to a mass investigation across Salem, Massachusetts. These investigations cause great havoc and pandemonium through out the Puritan society. However, Tituba’s confessions were all lies for she is angelic and as kind-hearted as one could be. In Elaine G. Breslaw’s Tituba: Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies, Tituba, described by Breslaw, has four compatible labels, however, the two labels that best inform us of the importance of Tituba as a historical figure is: American Indian and an outsider.…
Over the next several months the two girls began to show strange behavior. Betty’s father, the Reverend Samuel Parris, was puzzled by the girl’s peculiar behavior and found out about the sessions with Tituba and decided that the girls were under the Devil’s spell. Soon the strange behavior spread to other girls in town. On February 29, 1692, the girls identified two local white women and the slave Tituba as the witches who were causing them such pain. The three accused women were carted off to jail in Boston and only Tituba confessed to practicing witchcraft, in which her life was saved. Over the next few weeks, the odd behavior of the girls continued and accusations kept increasing. The Salem witch hunt was under way and people were determined to not stop until they’ve found every last witch in Salem. (The Crucible by: Arthur…
The examinations for the first three accused women began with the examination of Sarah Good. During her examination, she did not confess to witchcraft and persistently claimed her innocence; the same went on during Sarah Osborne’s examination; but Tituba’s examination went almost in an opposite direction of the others. When Tituba’s examination began, it started off as usual with her being asked what evils she had committed and if she was responsible for hurting the children. She denied the accusations, but, after a while, she admitted that the Devil had come to her and bid her to serve him. When asked if she had seen anyone with the Devil when he came to her, she said yes. She said there were some women who had sometimes hurt the children, and among the women were Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. Tituba went on to explain that the women and the Devil continued to urge her to serve him and hurt the children even though she refused the demands. She then said that the Devil had come to her with a book of people who served him and told her to sign it, and when asked if she saw any other names in the book, she said she saw nine but only remembering Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. Since Tituba’s claim that there were more witches in Salem, the witch hunt officially began and hysteria beset the…
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18), this was a passage that the Puritans lived by. The Salem Witch Trials took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692 and claimed the lives of many innocent people. It led to the hangings of almost twenty, leaving more than one hundred in prison. A group of young girls in Salem Village accused several local women of witchcraft while being claimed of being possessed by the devil. This is causing a wave of hysteria to spread throughout colonial Massachusetts.…
A legitimate cause for the accusations may result from a mental disorder. In the article The Witchcraft Trials in Salem: A Commentary, it is acknowledged that, “The cause of her symptoms may have been some combination of stress, asthma, guilt, boredom, child abuse, epilepsy, and delusional psychosis” (Linder). Many of the possible symptoms may have caused the outbreak, yet delusional psychosis is more sensible. The form of a mental disorder causing the symptoms is a probable cause. The people of Salem were completely oblivious to the additional causes of the accusations. Salem could have avoided several lives may have been saved if some form of common knowledge was used.…
In the novel The Crucible a woman named Abigail started a conspiracy about witches. She was doing most of this for attention. However it escalated a whole lot farther than what was expected. Many analyst believe that she did this because of her time frame she lived in. And that she should be pardoned because outside forces made her the way she was.…
Bryan F. Le Beau. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.…
Should witches be able to torment and anathematize English colonists without being punished? A Defense of the Salem Witch Trials provides reasons why eliminating witches out of the English colonists’ land was not only acceptable but also required to rid the area of the devil. On the other hand, An Attack on the Salem Witch Trials discussed the terrors in ridding the land of devilish spirits. The author of A Defense of the Salem Witch Trials, Cotton Mather, was a leading minister in Boston at the time of the trials (Dudley 26). Thomas Brattle, author of An Attack on the Salem Witch Trials, was an eye-catching merchant also from Boston (Dudley 29). By providing information from confessions as well as specific evidence from the trials themselves, Cotton Mather made a strong argument in supporting the Salem Witch Trials.…
When Tituba is accused of having dealt with the devil she is poorly treated, ‘‘Parris smashes the whip down on her repeatedly’’ (26). The judges easily believe the lies of the girls who accuse Tituba and they beat her several times until she confesses to have been in alliance with the devil. Although, not everyone accused, like Tituba, gets the opportunity to live. For example, John Proctor refuses to give a false confession and so Proctor is hanged. The punishments were cruel in the Puritan theocracy and people were condemned to death without full evidence ‘‘Witchcraft is an invisible crime: therefore who may witness it? The witch and, of course, the victim. Now we can’t expect the victim to accuse herself, can we? Therefore we may only rely upon her victims!-And the children certainly testify!’’ (66). Not only were the punishments severe but the judge's only proof came from a certain group of people, who were most likely not delivering the…
Main Point 1: The Puritans had a very strict religion and thats what brought them to America.…
Throughout history there have been endless occurrences that involved the suspicion of witches. Perhaps the most notorious occurrence happened back in 17th century colonial Massachusetts, where the village of Salem was torn apart by the accusations of witchcraft. Many innocent women and men were accused, tried, and executed during the Salem Witch Trials based on the false beliefs surrounding such tests as the touch test, pressing, devil’s marks and other absurd methods of examination.…
The Salem Witch Trials began in Salem, Massachusetts; the massacres could have been caused, historians believe, by many reasons such as the seclusion of the village, sickness, and overall boredom. The trials have many mysteries surrounding them. Historians still cannot come up with one specific cause that caused the ordeal to happen in the first place. They do have, however, the basics of it with some of the mysteries thrown in. Many accounts of the Salem Witch Trials all have something in common, the trials were instigated by eight girls. But then someone might wonder why would the girls start this ordeal in the first place? What drove them to do it? Why would the village believe them in the first place?…
During 1692, a town in Massachusetts held a series of trials regarding the conspiracy of witchcraft. Many fell victim in this case of religious extremism. How did this horrible event begin? What fueled the unfounded fear of witchcraft? What are specific cases of this affair? Is there earlier record of similar occurrences…