Few events in American history have compelled the imagination of historians more than the witchcraft hysteria that wracked one small New England village early in the 1690s. It is true that colonial America witnessed nothing like the recurring mass panics over witchcraft that swept through early modern Europe for centuries and resulted in the executions of thousands of men and women. The outbreak of accusations that led to the deaths of 20 accused Salem Village "witches" was, as one eminent American historian observed, "a small episode in the history of a great superstition." Even so, many scholars have been lured into closely investigating the Salem tragedy in the hope that it may shed light on that lost world of the past in which it took place and lead to a richer understanding of early New England society and culture.

In recent years, many historians studying the Salem Village tragedy—and, indeed, witchcraft in general—have focused on the preponderance of women accused of that crime. For those scholars, what witchcraft panics illustrate is the deep and widespread hostility to women in all early modern cultures. But other scholars think that women were targeted as witches only because they were the most vulnerable members of these societies and thus fell prey to being scapegoated during periods of uncertainty and instability. In the case of Salem Village, some historians argue that witchcraft hysteria arose in response to communal divisions over commercial development—that subsistence farmers who both resented and coveted the new wealth of their more profit-minded neighbors vented their frustrations in charges of witchcraft. Other historians believe that political upheavals in New England during the early 1690s so disrupted the local judicial system that Salem Villagers seeking redress for their grievances fell back on charging their adversaries with witchcraft, charges that were handled by specially appointed courts. Still other historians see the late seventeenth century as a period during which New England Puritans felt deeply threatened by the growth of rival groups like the Quakers and Anglicans, noting that a high percentage of those accused of witchcraft came from families related by blood or marriage to those religious "outsiders." All these interpretations of what happened in Salem Village enrich our understanding of the role of witchcraft beliefs in early New England and the changing character of that society.

1			Read the introduction to and then the text of "A Brief and True Narrative" by Deodat Lawson, the former minister of Salem who returned to the town during the witchcraft alarm. What were Lawson's motivations for returning to Salem at this time? How do those motivations influence the reliability of his description of the events? Does he provide any explanation for these events? If so, what is it? In your opinion, does this narrative support any of the explanations for the witchcraft hysteria provided by the counterpoint essay? If so, which one(s) and why? http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=Bur1Nar.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1 http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=Bur1Nar.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=3&division=div2