A Historical Overview of the Salem “Witch” Trials As Background for The Crucible By Arthur Miller

This PowerPoint presentation was adapted directly from the National Geographic site “Salem Witchcraft Hysteria” for use in the classroom. While I have edited some of the text and images and added music and effects, the content is essentially identical to the original web site and all rights are reserved by the original copyright owner.

A small girl fell sick in 1692 A small girl fell sick in 1692. Her “fitts”—convulsions, contortions, and outbursts of gibberish—baffled everyone. Other girls soon manifested the same symptoms. Their doctor could suggest but one cause… Witchcraft. That grim diagnosis launched a Puritan inquisition that took 25 lives, filled prisons with innocent people, and frayed the soul of a Massachusetts community called Salem.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, walketh about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”           1 Peter 5:8 Zealously obedient to this admonishment from the apostle Peter, the Puritans of New England scoured their souls—and those of their neighbors—for even the faintest stains. These stern, godly folk were ready to stare down that roaring lion till Judgment Day saw him vanquished.

But while the good people of Salem had their eyes on eternity, the lion walked softly among them during the 1670s and 1680s. Salem was divided into a prosperous town and a farming village. The two bickered again and again. In addition, the villagers were split into separate factions that fiercely debated whether or not to seek religious and political independence from the town.

In 1689 the villagers won the right to establish their own church and chose the Reverend Samuel Parris, a former merchant, as their minister. His rigid ways and seemingly boundless demands for compensation—including a personal title to the village parsonage—increased the friction among the factions in the village. Many villagers vowed to drive Parris out, and they stopped contributing to his salary in October 1691.

Seeking release from the tension choking their family, Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and her cousin Abigail Williams delighted in the mesmerizing tales spun by Tituba, a slave from Barbados. The girls invited several friends to share this delicious, forbidden diversion. Tituba’s audience listened intently as she talked of telling the future.

The “lion roared” in February 1692 The “lion roared” in February 1692. Betty Parris began having “fitts” that defied all explanation. So did Abigail Williams and the girls’ friend Ann Putnam. Doctors and ministers watched in horror as the girls contorted themselves, cowered under chairs, and shouted nonsense. The girls’ agonies “could not possibly be Dissembled,” (pretended) declared the Reverend Cotton Mather, one of the leading ministers in the Massachusetts colony.

Lacking a natural explanation, the Puritans turned to the supernatural—the girls were “bewitched.” Prodded by Parris and others, they named their tormentors: a disheveled beggar named Sarah Good, the elderly Sarah Osburn, and Tituba herself. Each woman was something of a misfit. Osburn claimed innocence. Good did likewise but fingered Osburn. Tituba (her memory refreshed by Parris’s whip), confessed---and then some…

“The devil came to me and bid me serve him,” she reported in March 1692. Villagers sat spellbound as Tituba spoke of black dogs, red cats, yellow birds, and a white-haired man who bade her sign the devil’s book. There were several undiscovered witches, she said, and they yearned to destroy the Puritans. Finding witches became a crusade—not only for Salem but all Massachusetts. Before long the crusade turned into a convulsion, and the witch-hunters ultimately proved far more deadly than their prey.

“A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.”    Ecclesiastes 3:3 Salem’s “time to kill”—all the more tragic for its theological roots—claimed 25 lives. Nineteen “witches” were hanged at Gallows Hill in 1692, and one defendant, Giles Cory, was tortured to death for refusing to enter a plea at his trial. Five others, including an infant, died in prison.

Bridget Bishop, Hung June 10, 1692 George Burroughs, Hung August 19, 1692 Martha Carrier, Hung August 19, 1692 Giles Corey, Pressed to death September 19, 1692 Lydia Dastin, Died in Jail March 10, 1693

Mary Easty, Hung September 22, 1692 Ann Foster, Died in Jail December 3, 1692 Sarah Good, Hung July 19, 1692 Unnamed infant of Sarah Good, Died in Jail July 19, 1692 Elizabeth How, Hung July 19, 1692

George Jacobs, Hung July 19, 1692 Susannah Martin, Hung July 19, 1692 Rebecca Nurse, Hung July 19, 1692 Sarah Osborne, Died in Jail May 10, 1692 Mary Parker, Hung September 22, 1692

Alice Parker, Hung September 22, 1692 John Proctor, Hung August 19, 1692 Ann Pudeator, Hung September 22, 1692 Wilmont Redd, Hung September 22, 1692 Margaret Scott, Hung September 22, 1692

Roger Toothaker, Died in Jail June 16, 1692 Samuel Wardwell, Hung September 22, 1692 John Willard, Hung July 19, 1692 Sarah Wilds, Hung July 19, 1692

Each of the four rounds of executions deepened the dismay of many of the New Englanders who watched the witchcraft hysteria run its course. On October 3, 1692, the Reverend Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, denounced the use of so-called spectral evidence. “It were better,” Mather admonished his fellow ministers (including his son Cotton), “that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.”

The time to heal fell under the gentle hand of the Reverend Joseph Green, who in 1697 succeeded Samuel Parris as minister in Salem Village. Green reshuffled his congregation’s traditional seating plan, placing foes beside one another. As he had hoped, proximity bred charity. At Green’s urging, Ann Putnam, one of the leading accusers, offered a public apology in 1706.

Massachusetts as a whole repented the Salem witch hunt in stages Massachusetts as a whole repented the Salem witch hunt in stages. The colony observed a day of atonement in 1697. It prompted one of the judges to seek public forgiveness for his role in the trials. In 1711 the legislature passed a bill restoring the rights and good names of some of the victims of “those dark and severe Prosecutions,” awarding restitution to their heirs. Massachusetts apologized again in 1957, and the city of Salem and the town of Danvers (originally Salem Village) dedicated memorials to the slain “witches” in 1992

Images and text for this PowerPoint were used and adapted directly from the following sources: “Salem Witchcraft Hysteria” nationalgeographic.com. 1996-2005. National Geographic Society. 30 August 2008. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/salem/ “Salem Witch Trials” thinkquest.org. 1999. ThinkQuest. 30 Aug 2008. http://library.thinkquest.org/25958/