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Who were the Puritans? The Puritans are people who came to the New World from England in the early 1600s for religious purposes. They are Protestants of the Catholic Church and do not believe in the Pope and the Vatican. The Puritans preferred simple hymns to more complex Catholic ones. The Puritans are very solemn and dedicated people. They sought to “Purify” the Catholic Church. They were forced out of Anglican England and in the New World, lived mostly in New England. As Arthur Miller puts it in “The Crucible”, “They believed, in short, that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world.” The Puritans truly believed that their teachings were truth, however they disputed any who disagreed with their teachings. Arthur Miller also points out that, “(The Puritans) did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate even more upon prayer” (The Crucible). The Puritans are very serious about their religion and nothing comes before it. Prayer is the most essential part of their lives, and the lack of solemnness and dedication would eventually lead to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

The Salem witch trials were brought about partly as a result of providences also known as remarkable providences which were visible signs of God’s will that affected daily life. Puritans believed that God rewards or protects His people and punishes His enemies. Increase Maher made a list of providences including many pages on the significance of thunder and lightning. His son, Cotton Maher, wrote about the scientific causes of lightning, but said that God instigated the actions that lead to thunder and lightning. The Puritans were especially fascinated by the providences dealing with the punishment of God’s enemies. Punishments include the annihilation of the Narragansett Native Americans who did not follow the Ten Commandments and scoffed at the Gospel. Puritans saw God’s hand when the Narragansett tribe was devastated by the white settlers. Many other people were struck by lightning and killed which Puritans saw as fitting, because the dead were adulterers or fought with the town’s ministers. There were many more providences such as ghosts, tempests, ghost ships, and the belief that corpses will bleed from the touch of it murderer. The belief of providences heavily influenced the witch hunts by scaring those who thought that demons were possessing people.

The Salem witch trials began in January 1692 when Betty Parris and Abigail Williams began to show signs of unusual behavior. The girls have episodes where they would convulse and talk incomprehensibly. Soon after, many other girls began experiencing similar behavior which eventually culminated in them indicting several members of their town as witches. There has yet to be a single, fully-accepted theory as to why the girls experienced such behavior. One theory is that the girls consumed ergot-infected rye which could be possible due to the growing conditions and farming methods of the time period. Another theory is that the girls were involved in the factionalism that resulted because of Revered Parris’s wealth. However, the single most popular theory is that the girls began accusing others as a result of fear and guilt, because they were involved in the voodoo practices lead by the Barbados slave Tituba. People postulate that as the girls’ lies began to accumulate, they began to panic at the idea of being caught for dealing with voodoo rituals. Or, a few girls believed that they truly were bewitched. But, most people believe that the girls were first influenced by their own gullibility and then became outright liars. Thereafter, news of the witch executions were began to spread across the rest of New England. People were horrified to learn that Giles Corey, ‘A sturdy, uncowed farmer,” was pressed to death slowly with stones for refusing to stand trial for witchcraft. Many people felt sympathy for him. But, that sympathy disappeared when Thomas Putnam reported that his daughter Anne saw the ghost of a man who claimed that Giles Corey pressed him to death and that Giles escaped punishment by making a deal with the devil. The court used Thomas’s report to rationalize Giles’s cruel execution. By the autumn of the same year, the girls began indicting prominent people in the community including the wife of the governor. The girls began to lose their creditability, and the populace began to criticize the executions of the witches. The governor disbanded the witch court and gave amnesty to the accused. Anne Putnam, twelve years after the events that transpired, read her apology to the Salem Village Church. The year after, Mather wrote that the entire Salem witch trial was a providence. He said that the trials were a result of, ‘little sorceries,’ done by the children and the more conspicuous witchcrafts of the others. Even though people today see Maher’s works as the ranting and raving of a zealot, his writings and actions have influenced current society.