Salem Witch Trials Of 1692: Misunderstood Reasons For Behavior

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692: Misunderstood Reasons for Behavior

How can people tell what actually happened during the Salem Witch Trials? How and why did these trials begin in the first place? The Salem Witch Trials began in Salem Massachusetts in 1692, soon after Samuel Parris and his family moved to the town. Parris brought with him two slaves but one, Tibuta, was in charge of looking after the girls Betty Parris, age 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, age 11. Tibuta told the girls and their friends about voodoo and magic and even made them “witch cakes.” Interested with magic and voodoo, both the girls and their friends began playing magic. They began to try and read palms, make their own crystal balls, and things of that nature.

In Salem, Massachusetts the villagers were Puritans. The religion of the Puritans, Puritanism, derived from Protestantism. Puritans decided that the Protestant religion did not go far enough in the reforming doctrines and structure of the church and so the new religion was born. Puritans set out to seek the purity of worship. These people lived their life, according to their religious belief, very purely. One source mentions that, “[t]he Puritans believed that the Bible was God's true law, and that it provided a plan for living. The established church of the day described access to God as monastic and possible only within the confines of "church authority" and this turns out to be the reason why Puritans wanted to strip away traditional trappings and formalities of Christianity. Why if everyone was living in this way were these girls acting in this way? According to the people of Salem, the girls’ strange behaviors derived from the hand of the devil. Governor William Phips believed he witnessed witchcraft and wrote in a letter of what he had seen in Salem, but in this same letter he also said that he later believed the people being accused of the sin were