Define the important legacies of the Pilgrims and Puritans and evaluate the explanations for the Salem Witch Trials.
In many ways the Puritans have also given us a more influential legacy than the Pilgrims, because the Puritans were a much larger group. They were also politically more powerful. The Puritans have given us a legacy of a strong work ethic, solid education, and the idea that America should be an example to other nations. Unfortunately, through history it has been their religious intolerance, their stern punishments, and one brief moment of hysteria that has largely been remembered.
The Puritan work ethic is famous. Though they were not perfect, the Puritans were able to tame a wilderness through sheer force of will (with help from the American Indians). They sacrificed a great deal to establish and maintain their communities. They literally cleared the forests and built up cities from the wilderness. The Puritans were known for the idea that “God helps those that help themselves” and went about proving that they were meant to forge this nation. They came here for religious reasons and it was their religious convictions that kept them going.
Along with a strong work ethic, the Puritans also established schools of higher learning. Though many of Puritan children were educated at home or in small community schoolhouses, the Puritans valued education so much that they established universities that are still honored to this day, Harvard being the best example of this.
The Puritans also put themselves as leaders of a new bold experiment. John Winthrop, an early leader in Massachusetts, made a famous speech in 1632 where he called the city of Boston a “city upon a hill.” Countless politicians have used this speech to emphasize America’s unique role as a world leader. Back in 1632 the Puritans considered themselves an example of a society based on religious values, education, and hard work. They also viewed their communities as examples of what other cities would want to become.
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Though all of these Puritan legacies influence us today, they are largely remembered in current history books for their religious intolerance, stern punishments, and the Salem Witch Trials.
One of the ironies of American history is that we have a habit of being prejudiced against new people coming here, yet once this group becomes accepted they (the new immigrants) become intolerant of the most recent immigrants. In many ways this irony can be seen from our very beginnings with the Puritans. The Puritans came to America because they were persecuted for their religious beliefs back in England. Once they came to New England they became the majority. Yet, when new religious groups started to come, the Puritans did not allow them to worship freely. The Puritans persecuted the Quakers and other religious dissenters. Religious dissenters are people, like the Puritans in England, that vocally disagreed with the majority religion. The most famous American religious dissenters are Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson who outwardly disagreed with what the Puritans were doing. For this reason both Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were forced to leave Massachusetts. The Puritans also persecuted Quakers, such as Mary Dyer. When Mary Dyer refused to stay out of Massachusetts because she wanted to continue to preach her beliefs, she was hanged. Other Quakers were branded and physically punished. Again, it is one of the great ironies of history that people that came to America for religious freedom would not grant it to others.
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The Puritans have also been remembered for the stern punishments they administered to colony members. The Puritans believed in public punishment and humiliation. They believed that a person would learn the error of their ways if everyone knew about it. So thieves were branded, people that swore were made to wear a clothespin type device around their tongues and people that took the Lord’s name in vain had to wear a letter “B” around them to let everyone know that they had blasphemed. Sometimes people were flogged, whipped in public, or were forced to be in the stocks and pillory. A common punishment for women was the dunking stool, where they were forced to sit on a stool that was tied to the end of a long pole. Then they were dunked in water in public. Though this may sound fun to people today, I assure you that women were very ashamed to be “dunked” in public back then.
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The Salem Witch Trials are very famous. They are usually used to teach people about the need to assume someone is innocent until proven guilty. They also teach us about the need to treat people fairly and not judge them based solely on someone’s testimony. They also teach about the need for concrete facts to prove people are guilty. Unfortunately, the importance of these issues was not understood by the people of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. As a result, nineteen women were hanged for being witches and one man was pressed to death (stones were put on top of him until he died). Hundreds of others were jailed. The term witch-hunting is used today to describe people that are being persecuted without facts.
In this lesson the Salem Witch Trials also give us an opportunity to once again revisit the lenses of history. There are many explanations given for what happened in Salem in 1692. The following activity views five of them and asks you to try and piece the information together. All of it contains facts, but again, try and see the larger picture.
Directions: Below you will find 5 different explanations for the Salem Witch Hysteria of 1692. Based on the five different explanations try and come up with a reason that the Witch Trials occurred.
There were witch trials in Salem in 1692 because witchcraft was actually being practiced. People in the village confessed to it. Tituba, the slave who started the girls’ accusations, confessed that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a tall man dressed in black with white hair. He had shown her a book, and she had made a mark in it, a mark that was “red like blood.” She said that the man brought women from the village and from Boston with him, and that these women were all witches. They had forced her to go along and inflict the girls.
Bridget Bishop was an actual witch that lived in Salem. Two men who searched her house found puppets made of rags and hog bristles with pins in them. These puppets were common among those who practiced witchcraft. Bridget Bishop could not explain her possession of witch’s puppets in court.
At least six people witnessed that Margaret Rule, an afflicted woman, was lifted out of her bed “by an invisible force so that no part of her body rested on any type of support.”
This evidence shows that there are unexplained forces in the world, and that many were at work in Salem Village. These forces were intended to harm others, and whether or not we label these forces witchcraft, they existed, and they preyed upon innocent young girls and other citizens of Salem Village.
The girls of Salem Village had been raised in strict Puritan homes. They were expected to always be serious, solemn, and well behaved. They had to suppress every impulse to have fun, and were probably tired of doing that. The slave, Tituba, told them very exciting stories that helped them escape their dull lives, and the thrill of hearing about forbidden things such as fortune-telling gave them something to do. The girls were afraid of being caught so they came up with the idea of pretending to be bewitched in case they were caught.
The girls also could get a lot of attention by pretending to be bewitched. They could scream, dance, and do all sorts of wild things, and all the time they pretended they could not help it. Each girl would add her own version of being bewitched, and the girls encouraged each other to get more and more wild. Eventually the bewitching got out of control, and the girls had to keep up the lies. They had to continue pretending to avoid being condemned for lying.
Salem Village in 1692 was split almost perfectly into two opposing sides. One side consisted of struggling Puritan farmers, and the other side consisted of more wealthy, business-minded people. Almost all of the farmers lived on the west side of town, while the business people lived on the east. The farmers supported the hiring of Reverend Samuel Parris as the village’s new minister, while the wealthier families opposed him.
Ann Putnam and most of the girls who accused people of witchcraft lived on the west side of town. They were part of the farming group, which had traditionally controlled the town. Sarah Cloyce, Rebecca Nurse, and many of the others accused of witchcraft lived on the east side of town. This new group of wealthy landowners, merchants, and tradespeople were threatening the power that the farmers had held. Ann Putnam saw witchcraft accusations as a way to destroy her wealthy enemies and used the girls as a weapon in this. Therefore, the witchcraft trials came out of a political struggle between the two groups in town.
The girls of Salem Village who started acting strangely and accusing people of the village of being witches did so because they were poisoned by the bread they ate. The rye bread was infected with a fungus that caused ergot poisoning. The symptoms of ergot poisoning are the same as those claimed by the girls: choking, painful itchy skin, visions of hallucinations, and so forth. The land on which the rye grew was perfect for ergot growth. Several of the girls ate bread from the Putnam farm, which was reported in village records to be in swampy lowlands. The weather in 1691 was also ideally suited to the growth of the ergot-producing fungus. Several diaries from the village reported that the weather that year was warm and rainy. Also, women and children have been more susceptible to ergot poisoning in some epidemics, and it was female teenagers who were afflicted by the symptoms. Ergot poisoning is similar to what is experienced by those who have taken the drug LSD, and villagers at that time could easily have mistaken the girls’ behavior as proof that they had been possessed or were victims of witchcraft.
The girls in Salem Village were raised Puritan all their lives, and they believed in evil spirits, the devil, and the horrors of Hell. They probably believed that if they experimented with voodoo or palm-reading they would invite evil into their lives. After the girls had talked to Tituba about these things, they would have been very afraid of what they had done.
A deep fear such as this would have been enough to cause hysteria, which is a type of mental illness. This illness can cause physical symptoms. These include:
People suffering from hysteria can often convince others through the power of suggestion. This condition can spread and become what is known as Mass Hysteria. The girls in Salem Village were close friends, and if one was frightened enough to develop hysteria, the others would have spent enough time with her to also develop those symptoms. Mass Hysteria is most likely the cause of their actions, and adults would have seen the girls’ symptoms as proof of witchcraft in the village.
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1. A city that is a model for other cities. It is a model because it is literally above the others and figuratively in terms of attitude and beliefs.
2. These three people are great examples of following one’s conscience. Our history has many people that preferred to suffer persecution than to not do what they felt that God (and/or their conscience) would have them do. It takes a very brave person to choose to do what he or she thinks is right when this person knows he or she will suffer negative consequences.
3. I think they hoped it would force them into changing and repenting because everyone would know the error of their ways. Believe it or not the Puritans really did want people to be righteous, so they hoped that this would force them to make better choices in the future and to stop others from making poor ones by looking at negative examples of consequences.
4. It is possible that any of the five explanations is true. However, historically, the political tension explanation seems to make the most sense. I believe that it probably started with political tension and soon got out of control. It would have been difficult for the girls to all of a sudden say they had been lying, so they went along with it until they actually started believing it for themselves. However, that is just my opinion. It makes sense to me. I believe the other ones also contributed with the exception of ergot poisoning. That seems a little bit too far out but it is still possible. Remember, history is not an exact science.
5. There are many versions of what happened and as a result, we should do everything we can to have fair trials. That is why we believe that people are innocent until proven guilty rather than the other way around. If we start believing that people were guilty until proven innocent we would also be guilty of “witch-hunting” because it would be tempting to blame people without giving them the benefit of innocence. This happened in our history during the 1950s when people were accused of being communists and had to prove that they were not. Many people’s reputations were ruined because of accusations that they were communists much like many people’s lives were ruined during the 1600s because they were accused of witchcraft.