Wednesday, December 17, 2014

The Salem Witch Trials




In a Massachusetts village, 200 innocent people were accused of witchcraft--twenty of which were executed and thirteen who died in jail.  The village was Salem, and the year was 1692.  Imagine a nine-year-old girl in bed shaking, muttering words no one understands, and throwing up.  Then her eleven-year-old cousin begins having the same symptoms.  A reverend named Parris watched his daughter and niece, and several other girls suffer.  When they accused old women in the village of casting evil spells against them and the doctor diagnosed witchcraft, the trials began.  The Salem Witch Trials were the result of community tensions and superstitions.


In the Qur’an, Allah told Adam and Eve that the tree was forbidden to them, and they could enjoy fruit from every tree and bush except for that one.  Then, they both reached for the fruit after being convinced by the Shaytan and they were both directly and individually punished for their sins.  In the Bible, however, Eve convinced Adam to obey Satan by getting fruit from the tree, even though God told them it was forbidden for them.  Puritans used this as confirmation that women were more likely to practice witchcraft than men.


A Native American slave of the reverend, Tituba, was one of the first to be accused by the girls.  When the girls started having such afflictions, Tituba and her husband helped their neighbor bake a cake made of rye meal and the girls’ urine, which was fed to the dog as a magical way of finding out who had hurt them.  When Parris, who may have been in a relationship with his slave, found out about the witch-cake, he was very angry.  Tituba confessed that she had made a deal with the devil, as well as several other people in the community after she was beaten for an accusation, and spent a year in prison.  


The next woman to be accused was Sarah Good, a homeless beggar who was considered a nuisance to the town.  Unlike Tituba, Good denied the accusations.  Instead, she in turn accused Sarah Osborne of witchcraft.  Her six-year-old daughter, Dorcas Good, was accused of witchcraft as well and she experienced psychological distress at an early age as a result of her time in prison.  Sarah Good was hung after losing another child in prison.


After Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne was tried for bewitching the girls.  She had married a wealthy man who entrusted her to pass down the estate to their young sons when they came of age. However, when Sarah married an Irish indentured servant, they tried to take the estate for themselves against the will of her dead husband's family. Despite her denial of the accusations, she was thrown into prison and died at the age of 49 without a trial.

These are just a few stories from the people who were wrongly jailed.  The Trials did not end until Mary Spencer Hull, the wealthy and prominent governor’s wife, was accused.  That was when they said things were getting too far.  No arrest warrant was issued for Hull.


While the “witches” were being tried, the girls had tremors and trances in their presence.  Some say they were acting; others say they were the victims of a disease caught from a strange fungus; others say they were the victims of witchcraft.  Still others say that the community pressured them into naming witches as vengeance against these people.  Or maybe the Puritans were just being hysterical like something out of Sula.  Perhaps we will never know.

For more information about Salem Witch Trial Conspiracies, watch videos from National Geographic.

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