The Salem Witch Trials.....1692
1692 saw the era of life for the Puritan peoples of Salem, Massachusetts take a serious fall. Harsh weather and disease were constant threats, their living conditions were cramped and very poor at best. Taxes were high and there a few reported attacks supposedly by renegade indians. There was little if any entertainment, and to add insult to injury, Salem had at best, a zealot for a minister. His name was Samuel Parris and he was only educated to say the least. He took notice rather quickly of a group of young girls whose behavior was he at first blamed on their diverse backrounds. The girls were teens and had been meeting quite regularly to escape the boredom of the happenings by discussing what was going on and making idle conversation. They mostly talked about religion, but somehow took a turn towards black magic, charms and even witchcraft. They had gathered information from a slave woman in the Caribbean and she worked for the Reverend Parris. Due to the extreme stress Salem was already under, the Puritan's were ready to believe almost anything, everything in including lies and tall tales of witchcraft and other fantasies and myth. Parris announced that Salem was under attack by a band of ruthless witches who were determined to destroy the entire town and all of it's inhabitants. Hysteria broke out almost immediately, and before long, anyone thought to be or who might be associated with witchcraft or a witch was taken into custody. Anyone who even suggested that this was all a possible hoax about witchcraft and real witches was carted off to jail to await punishment for their crimes. This madness swept over Salem like a plague, consuming thousands of lives with it. The first trials began under a man named Judge William Stoughton, hundreds of men and women were burned at the stake, the only way to kill a witch apparently back then. It wasn't until a man named Cotton Mather, another leading Puritan Minister spoke out and said that without real concreter evidence of a person being able to conjour up demons and cast spells on others to hurt them or their families, then there truly was no true evidence, that common sense and some wisdom began to prevail and the "witch hunts" stopped.
It was in 1714 that the Massachusetts legislature officially exonerated all who had been executed during the witch trials. |
