The Salem Witch Trials

Almost 100 years into the foundation of the first English settlement in the thirteen colonies, the colonists grew anxious, stressed and scared, not knowing what was beyond the borders of their colonies. With the freedom of religion, many had the choice to practice what they wanted to as long as the colonies allowed the faith, but in the spring of 1692, a group of young girls from Massachusetts claimed to be possessed by the devil, whilst also accusing various local women of witchcraft. Paranoia among the colonies grew tense, a trial was needed in order to control the situation. The first trial to be made was to hear the voices of those convicted to be doing witchcraft, among the first victims was Bridget Bishop, the first to be hanged on June 1691. In the following months and years to come, an approximate 150 men and women would come to be accused of witchcraft, the colonies had become paranoid.

By the end of the century, the colonies were vulnerable to various things, attacks by savages or the introduction of small epidemics, such as smallpox outbreaks which would ravage towns as it had with the town of Danvers, Massachusetts in 1689. Neighbors went against neighbors and the colonists became paranoid of one another. It wasn't until June in 1692 when the daughter of Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem, begin to have witch like symptoms, she would twitch, begin to have fits and scream out of control. Similar cases were reported across the colony which would lead to the arrest of Samuel Parris' slave, Tituba, whom was accused of putting curses on many of the people who shared delusional and psychotic symptoms as the ones the daughter of Parris had.

Tituba, the first to be accused of witchcraft, confessed out of anxiety that she, indeed, was causing the curses across the colony, though the other two women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, had denied such events. As Tituba, slave to the Parris family, confessed to authorities, more women were brought into trial, leaving a total of 19 executions of people believed to be committing crimes against the community. As more and more people became accused, many more would begin to confess and pass the blame onto others, spreading the idea that more witches were among the people of Salem.