Political and External Pressures

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was facing external pressures in 1692, including conflicts with Native American tribes (King William’s War) and political instability after the revocation of its original charter by the English crown in 1684. A new royal governor, Sir William Phips, arrived in 1692, bringing changes that unsettled the Puritan leadership.

The immediate catalyst for the Salem witch trials was a group of young girls in Salem Village who began exhibiting strange behavior in early 1692.

The Girls and Their Symptoms

In January 1692, Betty Parris, age nine, and her cousin Abigail Williams, age eleven, both daughters of Reverend Samuel Parris, started having fits of convulsions, screaming, and exhibiting other disturbing symptoms such as biting and scratching themselves. Soon, other girls in the village, including Ann Putnam Jr., Elizabeth Hubbard, and Mary Walcott, showed similar behaviors.

Doctors at the time could not explain the symptoms and suggested they might be the result of "bewitchment." The girls claimed they were being tormented by invisible witches.

The First Accusations

Under pressure to explain their behavior, the girls began accusing several local women of witchcraft. The first three women accused were:

• Tituba: Reverend Parris’s Caribbean slave, who confessed under duress to practicing witchcraft and implicated others.

• Sarah Good: A poor, mentally ill woman known for begging.

• Sarah Osborne: An elderly woman who had failed to attend church regularly.

These accusations rapidly escalated and spread throughout Salem and neighboring towns. shutdown123