![]() ![]() Many wondered if Satan’s forces had infiltrated their new land. To many it seemed the Puritan ideal of a “City on a Hill” was slipping away, decades of work suddenly pulled from their grasp. In the second half of the seventeenth-century, these fears were made worse by a growing factional conflict in Salem Village, rising inflation, and the removal of the Massachusetts Bay Charter in 1684. ![]() These factors alone created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. A strong belief in the devil, the recent smallpox epidemic, the ever-present threat of attack by Indigenous tribes and their French allies, boundary and border disputes between neighbors. There were the ordinary stresses of seventeenth-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. To understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to examine the times in which these events occurred. This was the largest series of witchcraft trials to ever take place in North America, and would be the last large-scale witch panic to take place in the English colonies. Ultimately, 14 women and 5 men were hanged, one man was tortured to death, and at least five people perished in prison. Over the course of the year 1692, between 150-200 people were jailed for witchcraft. Gossip and stories from decades prior were dredged up as fear continued to spread. Neighbors, acquaintances, and total strangers were named in the statements and examinations that followed. ![]() Soon names were cried out as the afflicted began to identify these specters. The afflicted complained disembodied spirits were stabbing them, choking them, and jabbing them with pins. As word of the illness spread throughout Salem Village, and eventually Essex County, others began to fall ill with the same alarming symptoms. When neither prayer nor medicine succeeded in alleviating the girls’ agony, the worried parents turned to the only other explanation the children were suffering from the effects of witchcraft. Making strange, foreign sounds, huddling under furniture, and clutching their heads, the girls’ symptoms were alarming and astounding to their parents and neighbors. In January of 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece of Salem Village minister Reverend Samuel Parris, suddenly feel ill. ![]()
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