Salem Witch Trials

4 Pages 1022 Words

The seventeenth century Salem witch trials brought panic and hysteria throughout the people of Salem. Whether or not the lives of apparently innocent men and women were taken illegally with insufficient evidence is still a subject of continuing debate.
There are numerous factors and events that helped create and influence the trials. The main factors that started and fueled the trials were politics, religion, family feuds, economics, and the imaginations and fears of the people. Puritans believed in witches and their ability to harm others. They defined witchcraft as entering into a compact with the devil in exchange for certain powers to do evil. Thus, according to www.law.umkc.edu, “...witchcraft was considered a sin because it denied God’s superiority, and a crime because the witch could call up the Devil in his/her shape to perform cruel acts against others.
In 1692, nineteen villagers were put to death in Salem, Massachusetts. Alice Dickenson, author of The Salem Witchcraft Delusion, states, “Reasons for conviction were the torment of teenage girls by supernatural means: witchcraft”(Dickenson 68). According to Shirley Jackson, author of The Witchcraft of Salem Village,“...these teens experienced pricking and pinching sensations, and some were contorted into strange bodily positions”(Jackson 44).
The witchcraft outbreak originated in Salem Village with Betty Paris being the first afflicted girl. A woman by the name of Tituba was the first to be accused and the
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first to confess of wrongdoing. The Salem Witchcraft Papers state,
Tituba was asked to bake a witch cake in order to help the girls name their tormentors. A witch cake is composed of rye meal mixed with urine from the afflicted. It is then fed to a dog. The person(s) is/are considered bewitched if the dog displays similar symptoms as the afflicted. The girls were at first hesitant to speak, but Betty eventually spoke and named ...