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1. Deseray Helton
4/12/2015
A Historical Analysis of the Salem Witch Trials
In seventeenth century North America, the supernatural was part of everyday life. For
many people there was a strong belief that Satan existed and lived on earth. The transformation
of this paranoia was taken to the extreme in the town of Salem Village in Massachusetts. The
Salem Witch Trials occurred in the year 1692 and is one of the most well known and researched
cases of witchcraft in the world. The cause of this convergence of accusations of witchcraft in
this small town has been the focus for several historians throughout the years. This paper strives
to analyze not only the Salem Witch Trials but, the power of belief in witchcraft and the
overarching effects it had, on other cultures in the area including Native Americans.
The public was involved with every aspect of the trial. Details that could have been kept
secret and dealt with silently were brought to light for the masses. Almost as soon as the first
witch “cast its spell” on the children new accusations popped up. Therefore it is only logical that
debates have sprung up to try and glean any light as to what was the cause of this mass hysteria.
No one sole cause has been found to this day. Throughout the years, several different approaches
have been tried.
One such historian was John Demos whose article “John Godfrey and His
Neighbors: Witchcraft and the Social Web of Colonial Massachusetts,” took the opportunity to
write about one of the only male witches convicted at Salem, John Godfrey. The entire article is
devoted to the gentleman, his personal character, and involvement within Salem Village and how

2. his character had an effect on the town and its citizens. Demo focuses on several court cases that
John Godfrey was involved in that brought him at odds with other townspeople. Many of these
court cases involved mundane and personal affairs. Godfrey was a man of short temper. Demo
states that Godfrey’s quickness to quarrel is a strong reason as to why he was first accused of
being a witch in 1658. He was accused by Abraham Whitaker and brought to trial along with
several fellow scorned townspeople who acted as witnesses.
Throughout the article Demo makes references to the personal character of John Godfrey
that made him susceptible to dislike and accusation. Godfrey was stated to have been witnessed
by others as having disturbing conversations caused by his anger and a strange association with
cattle. This bad temper mixed with his strange association with cattle lead people to be
suspicious and led to repeated cycles of lawsuits against Godfrey. In the end, Demo concludes
that John Godfrey was a representation of a small piece of each Essex county settler. He
provided a scapegoat for settlers who feared that they themselves could be outsiders in the
community and capable of being accused of witchcraft.
Roughly over a decade, historian Frederick C. Drake took a more expansive look at
witchcraft in the American Colonies. Instead of focusing upon one individual, Drake focused on
three different controversies among historians that have been caused by the Salem Witch Trials
and the effect of these controversies. For many historians focused on witchcraft, Salem appears
to be the only significant point of reference in colonial witchcraft literature. Drake focuses upon
how witchcraft trials before Salem had little evidence and were sporadic but are necessary to
explore further to come to an explanation. Throughout the article are charts that display all of the
individuals accused of witch craft from 1645-1662. Drake uses these charts to help further the

3. focus of his article to find out what characteristics these individuals had in common and what
was characterized as satisfactory evidence for conviction of witchcraft.
Drake focuses on the legality of the witch trials, the evolution of what constituted a
witch, and just how to discover one. Evidence was gathered in three ways: by confession, by
searching for witch marks, and by the collection of testimonies and accusations of witchcraft.
The first two pieces of evidence alone were enough to prove guilt and execution. Drake also
looks at religious aspects of the trials. In particular focusing upon references in the Old
Testament that told people in order to be good Calvinists, of which many colonists were, they
had to eradicate the world of evil. Laws began to be passed in regards to these religious
convictions.
Along with religion providing stimuli for the law, Drake looked at outside influences, in
particular Europe and its witch trials of which there were many. With reference to the European
means of testing a witch in court, the colonists adopted in infamous water test and associating
witches with having/being able to turn into familiars. Familiars could be animals, the most
common being associated with the ability to go between two worlds (e.g. cats, ravens, coyotes).
Unrest and internal turmoil were culminating in accusations of witches throughout the colonies.
People were beginning to associate plagues and deaths of animals with bewitchment. Witches,
like John Godfrey, were becoming explanations to the unknown. Drake does a great job in this
article of showing that Salem needs to be studied as a part of the witchcraft in America and not
as an isolated event. The cases before Salem, Drake argues, followed a more normal pattern;
confession was followed by execution. The Pre-Salem period could be seen as the more orthodox
one in the colonies, argues Drake, and Salem was the aberration.
In 1982, Ann Kibbey in her essay ,“Mutation of the Supernatural: Witchcraft,

4. Remarkable Providences, and the Power of Puritan Men”, saw the Salem Witch trials as a
transformation from the practice of maleficia, a sort of supernatural power associated with the
Puritan deity, shift from being associated with males to females. Through being accused of
witchcraft, women were gaining power. This new power, commonly associated with maleficia,
was only capable of the Puritan deity. Therefore, the women were taking on a power not
normally associated with them but the men of the colony.
Kibbey focused upon the Puritan people’s devotion to religion and their deity’s ability to
perform great and also extremely detrimental acts. For a truly orthodox Puritan even bad things
were construed as acts of divine benevolence. The death of the child was seen as a reflection of
the sins of the father and meant to drive him towards repentance. Common powers associated
with the “all powerful” deity were beginning to be associated with mortal witches, a problem for
many Puritans. The colonists were experiencing an internal paradox- witches were bad while the
deity was good but both were capable of the same things? Kibbey focused upon the power
among males within Puritan society. In particular, Kibbey states that the relationship of fathers to
their family was similar to that of witch’s relationship to other members of the community. The
Puritan male was believed to have the indirect power to literally destroy the lives of people
around him, very similar to the definition of a witch. With growing influence within the
community, males were beginning to cause a shift in the power of maleficia from the deity to
themselves.
Kibbey showcases how extreme devotion can be manifested in different forms. When
these manifestations are culminated in witchcraft many things are going to be taken into
question. Women in the Salem Witch Trials were trying to engage in maleficia, a power that
Puritan culture had come to associate only with males and sexual identity. Therefore, the Salem

5. Witch Trials began to show a shift in power relations and quite possibly a move for a greater
importance and freedom for women within the colonies.
Europeans were not the sole focus of historians in regards to witchcraft. Historian
Amanda Porterfield in her essay, “Witchcraft and the Colonization of Algonquian and Iroquois
Cultures”, focused upon the Native American perspective. In retrospect, the article is “ethno -
historical” in the sense that it addresses the questions of how social processes provoked cultural
reconstructions within the Algonquian and Iroquoian. Porterfield also looked critically at the
evidence provided by written records in light of insights provided by anthropology.
Porterfield believes that colonization had a significant effect on the native population of
North America. According to Porterfield, the Algonquian and Iroquois people frequently took
recourse to belief in witchcraft to explain and cope with cultural disorientation, social stress, and
widespread suffering and death caused by colonization. This integration of beliefs between the
two worlds can be seen throughout the rest of the article in which colonization altered
Algonquian and Iroquois’s traditional beliefs.
Porterfield’s ultimate argument resides in the coexistence between modern and traditional
values due to interactions with European colonizers. Different types of witchcraft beliefs began
to arise as indirect expressions of aggression. Each type of witchcraft can be interpreted as a
means of explaining disease and as an agent of or reaction against modernizing influences of
colonization. The first type of witchcraft that arose as a means of reactionary devices was the
identification of the Christian God as the Devil and Christians as witches. This terror could be
seen in the reverse in European eyes. The second type of witchcraft can be seen in Natives who
identified themselves as witches to frighten away colonizers. Normally referred to as Shamans,

6. these native magic practitioners began to be associated with witchcraft through acceptance of
European ideas and modernization. In the third and fourth types of witchcraft, belief functioned
more adaptively with respect to Western culture. The third type represented Native American
abandonment of pre-colonial religious practices and acceptance of relatively modern conceptions
of personal obligation and identity while the forth type was most common among Natives who
resisted conversion to Christianity and desired cultural reform. This type involved allegations by
some Natives that other Natives were employing witchcraft to cause disease. These allegations
often involved the scapegoating of shamans and other religious conservatives by new leaders
who were attempting to control the changes occurring in Native cultures through new forms of
social order and authority.
Amanda Porterfield does an outstanding job of laying out details of each of these types
of witchcraft throughout the greater part of the article. Porterfield brings a new light to the study
of witchcraft by not heading directly toward the nucleus that is the Salem Witch Trials. Through
looking at colonization’s affects on Native Americans one gains insight into how the settlers of
the New World did not only incite hysteria and transformation within their own culture, they also
had an immense effect on the cultures around them. In response to the pressures of colonization,
Native American religion drew on its own resources of historical corrigibility to meet the
pressures of world and time. A common thread of religion can be seen throughout several of the
later writings surrounding witchcraft.
Religion and its effects on the colonists continue on in further writings pertaining to the
Salem Witch Trials. In “New England Witch-Hunting and the Politics of Reason in the Early
Republic”, Philip Gould focuses on how postwar political anxieties impinged on the historical
record of the seventeenth-century New England. Gould criticized early writings about the Salem

7. Witch Trials of being saturated with language of irrationality that reflected the political and
social anxieties rampant during the 1790s and 1830s. In the midst of an uneasy transition to
modern politics, writers were turned to Salem for proof of the dangers inherent in people’s
unbridled “passions” bringing religion back into the mix. Political strength resided in the
remembrance of the public good but when people give into their passions, factions arise. When
people are not governed properly they will inadvertently give into their passions and wreak
havoc.
Gould does a fantastic job of showcasing throughout his paper how the political hierarchy
was undermined by the passions of people in Salem. These passions can be showcased in the
personality of the ruling elite, whom strove with greed and took several people to court, as well
as in the passions of the masses of people who gave into the hastiness that was the witchcraft
accusations. Passions evolved into political anarchy. If enough people could be convinced that an
individual’s passion had some backing, they were unstoppable. The political faction of witchcraft
accusers swept the elite into a commingled, deluded sincerity and designing calculation. Factions
that can be seen throughout, history such as the Whigs and Democrats can be seen in Salem in
the factions of the elite and common villagers. The division between the elite and common
villagers is where the real tragedy of Salem rests. The political power of Salem Village during
the witch hysteria was temporarily wielded by the disenfranchised. Outsiders were allowed to
gain influence because the elite became too power hungry. New England witch hunting at its
core was a battle with passions and political power.
Whether it is a hermit who does not function well within society, a woman in Colonial
America who wants more freedom and power or a Native American in utter shock at the
appearance of white men, witches and their counterparts have always and continue to play a

8. large role in society. Searching for an explanation for the unknown or for someone to blame is
not an uncommon reaction in situations of uncertainty or cultural upheaval. The articles by
Demos, Drake, Kibbey and Porterfield provide a look into the various avenues in which people
sought to make sense of the cultural and societal shock that characterized this peculiar historical
period.

9. Works Cited
Craker, Wendall D. "Spectral Evidence, Non-Spectral Acts of Witchcraft, and Confession at Salem in
1692." The Historical Journal 40 (June 1997): 331-58.
Crane, Elaine F. Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores: Common Law and Common Folk in Early
America. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2011.
Demos, John. "John Godfry and His Neighbors: Witchcraft and the Social Web in Colonial
Massachusetts." The William and Mary Quarterly 33(Apr1976): 242-65.
Drake, Frederick C. "Witchcraft in the American Colonies, 1647-62." American Quarterly 20.4 (1968):
694-725.
Games, Alison. Witchcraft in Early North America. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.
Gould, Philip. "New England Witch-Hunt and the Politics of Reason in the Early Republic." The New
England Quarterly 68 (Mar 1995): 58-82.
Kibbey, Ann. "Mutations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Remarkable Providences, and the Power of
Puritan Men." American Quarterly 34.2 (1982): 125-48.
Latner, Richard. " ‘Here Are No Newters’: Witchcraft and Religious Discord in Salem Village and
Andover." The New England Quarterly 79 (Mar 2006): 92-122.
Porterfield, Amanda. "Witchcraft and the Colonization of Algonquian and Iroquois Cultures." Religion
and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 2.1 (1992): 103-24.
Ray, Benjamin C. "Satan's War Against the Covenant in Salem Village, 1692." The New England
Quarterly 80.1 (2007): 69-95.