The Salem Witch Trials of 1692
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 took place when Massachusetts was still an English colony. With colonization came wars against the Crown and the Indians, as the Puritan settlers tried to establish homes and a nation of their own. Since one reason for leaving England was religious freedom, the Puritans relied on God as the answer to everything. Combining church and state, there was no agreement on how this new religion should be presented, followed, or led.
Puritan Life
Everyday living was quite rough for the colonists. Farming was the main source of income and subsistence for one and all. Crop failures, blights, droughts, and floods were all seen as acts of God. Good crops signaled God’s favor but natural disasters were thought to be evidence of His wrath of human sin.
As the Puritan colonists prospered, each generation increased the population, making land all the more valuable. More land produced more food to feed constantly growing extended families but it also meant more hard work clearing suitable farmland and territorial battles against the Indians.
From a social perspective, women were subservient to men in all things. Children had even fewer freedoms. Girl children especially faced the harshest lives of servitude but women of all ages were considered lustful creatures that required taming.
When a landowner of the time died, his or, occasionally, her property ownership was returned to its previous owner. When no previous owner could be identified, the church acquired title to the land. This law is thought to be one very compelling factor behind the Salem witch trials since many of the women accused and executed as witches were unmarried or widowed women whose land would presumably go to the church upon their death.
Leading Up to the Witch Hunt
The problem started small, involving just a couple of girls, aged 9 and 11, in the new minister’s family. Not all the townspeople of Salem Village were enthusiastic about the appointment of their new minister, Reverend Samuel Parris.
One story of the trials says Parris’ daughter and her cousin were playing a childhood game, using a make-shift crystal ball to look into the future to determine the professions of the husbands they hoped to have some day. Some say Tituba, a house servant, was present and taught the girls the voodoo she’d learned in her native land, although there is still much speculation as to the true story of Tituba’s race, origin, and involvement.
The girls became spooked when one of them supposedly saw a coffin in the crystal ball, a vision that led to screaming, shouting, and flailing about. This behavior was taken as Satanic possession, indicating the girls had been bewitched.
Another possibility for the girls’ behavior is that the night before this mysterious affliction came on them, the two cousins and several of their friends had been dancing naked in the woods. Rev. Parris is said to have seen them and disapproved mightily. The girls’ odd behavior could have been a way they collectively exhibited their deep fear of sure punishment.
The girls’ hysteria became the source of local speculation and conjecture, especially once medical exams proved the girls otherwise healthy. A search for the person who’d bewitched them led to accusations of dozens of men and women alike. As the accusations spread, generalized hysteria grew rampant.
One theory for these odd behaviors on such a mass scale is ergotism, poisoning from a fungus that infests rye, a grain grown and consumed by all the Puritans. The hallucinogenic drug, LSD, is made from this fungus, Claviceps purpurea. The symptoms of ergot poisoning resemble the effects of taking LSD and many accused Salem witches were exhibiting these same symptoms.
The Trials
Witchcraft was a crime against the church and therefore against the state, too. Formal charges were filed, trials held, and people were imprisoned and executed based on the word of others. Spectral evidence, by which a witness is visited by an apparition that names the witch that led to the specter’s demise, was heavily employed as a means of prosecution. Also used were touch tests and the witch cake, a form of white magic involving a cake made from rye and the accused witch’s urine. When fed to a dog, the evil spirit was said to be expelled from the bewitched and returned to the witch, who could be easily identified at that point.
Some courtroom proceedings included the local Court of Oyer and Terminer, a French term that means to hear and determine. Although, the trials reached the highest level of colonial justice: the Superior Court of Judicature, where appeals were heard.
Rev. Parris’ daughter, Betty, named the witches who’d bewitched her but she was never accused of being a witch herself. Instead, she was sent to live with the magistrate’s family in another town. Her symptoms disappeared once safely out of Salem Village.
Betty’s orphaned cousin, Abigail Williams, wasn’t accused of being a witch either but she did name names. There is speculation she died before turning 17 but the details of her life after the trials are only speculative.
As many as 185 men and women were eventually accused or tried for witchcraft. Defendants confessing their guilt were not executed but their lives were forever miserable. Nineteen convicted witches were executed in various ways. One of them, 80-year-old Giles Corey, is the only American ever executed by peine forte et dure, or being pressed to death by large stones. This practice was outlawed by England twenty years before Corey’s execution, a torture that lasted two days before succeeding. Two dogs were convicted and hanged for witchcraft, too.
The Aftermath
By 1695, word of the witch trials had spread throughout the colonies, where it was not always well received. Of particular concern was the local magistrates’ reliance on spectral evidence. Several books were written that denounced the moral and legal aspects of the trials. Various petitions to the court were filed, beginning in 1700, leading to reversals and exonerations of the charges.
Descendants of the witch trial victims petitioned the state for restitution, which was granted in 1711 by Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley. He awarded 578 pounds, 12 shillings, to be distributed among the confessed witches and the surviving relatives of those executed or who died in prison awaiting trial.
Not all of the accused were included in that petition, however, and the descendants of these individuals continued to seek exoneration and restitution for centuries. On Halloween, 2001, Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift signed a proclamation that finally declared all accused witches as legally innocent.
To this day, many people are still fascinated by the Salem witch trials. Modern-day Halloween enthusiasts seem to love the witch, using this mythical figure almost as a mascot of the holiday. Every Halloween thousands of children and adults alike dress up in witch costumes.
For Further Reading
Life in Salem Village before the witch trials
Salem Witch Trials - a verbatim record of court proceedings
Resources for students
Visit the home of Judge Johathan Corwin , a member of the Court of Oyer and Terminer
Giles Corey , Man of Iron
Witches were mostly women
Death Warrant and list of accused Salem witches
Ergot/LSD link to Salem with trial
Governor Jane Swift and the Witch Trial Acquittals
Article written by Janice D. McDonald