Salem Witchcraft ( Grade:98)

10 Pages 2508 Words

“There is more to be said then hath been for the clearing up of difficulties about the matter of witchcraft” (Sutler 23). The Salem witchcraft trials were one of the last outbreaks of witchcraft hysteria, certainly the largest in the new world, occurred from 1692-1693. 141 people were arrested as suspects and 20 were hung or pressed to death. This was a morbid fact about the founding of the first colonies and the beginning of America. But it happened and the damage was done, thus we cannot try to ignore it and we cannot try to glamorize the subject. We can only present facts and draw our own conclusions. One often states that if he or she was alive at the time then things would have been handled differently, but these are the ones that speak out of order and are the same ones that are oblivious to the facts and the harsh reality of the events that occurred. When a community looks only for evidence of guilt and ignores or suppresses all contradictory evidence, the results are a witch-hunt. And a witch-hunt was developing in Salem as the community felt itself so beset by evil that it was no longer capable of perceiving the good. Although numerous witch craft accusations had occurred in New England prior to 1692 several factors made this outbreak so profound; as Indian attacked the colonists feared for their life, there were deadly cold winters, and there was a small pox epidemic that had been circulating for over a decade. So many of the colonists were wary and growing superstitious about their god abandoning them.
“In some ways Reverend Parris began the witch craft hysteria. Before becoming a minister Parris vacationed to Barbados and returned home with two slaves named John and Tituba Indian” (Guily 293).
Tituba cared for Parris’s eleven and nine year old girls. When there was bad weather Tituba would enthrall the girls with tales of voodoo from her homeland. The young girls soon became fascinated with these stories of trick...