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Fact check in context (look at the text!) – Ask yourself: Is this a reference to history or is this fiction?

Summarize the true information

Give your sources and explain why they are trusthworthy

1This is true/real/fiction – many Europeans DID emigrate to America – as proven by the website …, which is a trustworthy / reliable / credible source because…

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"general hysteria and bloodlust"

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"the crimes for which they had been arrested"

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"a number of the dead were indeed witches"

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"famous Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93"

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"their religious beliefs made them deeply intolerant of any trace of magic"

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"conflict developed between the immigrants and the Native American population"

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"the New World was to be a harsher environment"

to a country with little comfort

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"most were running away"

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"Some were driven by a sense of adventure"

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"As No-Maj Europeans began to emigrate to the New World

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Read what your classmates have been doing and give them likes. Then do one of the following activities :

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Suggest words to add in quizlet in your column (in English and french)

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Read more about magic in North America by J.K. Rowling

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Read more about magic in North America by J.K. Rowling

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History of Magic in North America - Pottermore

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The wizarding world you thought you knew is bigger than you imagined...

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Start studying Witch hunt. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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This is accurate, the trial started during the spring of 1692 and ended in early 1693 when May Phips (the governor) had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges.

However the trial took another look in the early 17’ when the court declared the trials unlawful.

Also this event is still recognized with a bill restoring the rights and good names of those accused and a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials.

We can affirm theses with the help of history.com updated in August 28, 2018 on the article "Salem Witch Trials" and smithsonianmag.com which is an online journal.

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Table of Contents

1. What Caused the Salem Witch Trials?: Context & Origins

2. Salem Witch Trial Victims: How the Hysteria Spread

3. Salem Witch Trials: Conclusion and Legacy

The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem's Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months.

By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.

What Caused the Salem Witch Trials?: Context & Origins

Belief in the supernatural-and specifically in the devil's practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty-had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) at the time included the after-effects of a British war with France in the American colonies in 1689, a recent smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighboring Native American tribes and a longstanding rivalry with the more affluent community of Salem Town (present-day Salem).

Amid these simmering tensions, the Salem witch trials would be fueled by residents' suspicions of and resentment toward their neighbors, as well as their fear of outsiders.

Did you know? In an effort to explain by scientific means the strange afflictions suffered by those "bewitched" Salem residents in 1692, a study published in Science magazine in 1976 cited the fungus ergot (found in rye, wheat and other cereals), which toxicologists say can cause symptoms such as delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms.

In January 1692, 9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams (the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village) began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. After a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed bewitchment, other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren.

In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the Parris' Caribbean slave, Tituba, along with two other women-the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the poor, elderly Sarah Osborn-whom the girls accused of bewitching them.

Salem Witch Trial Victims: How the Hysteria Spread

The three accused witches were brought before the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne and questioned, even as their accusers appeared in the courtroom in a grand display of spasms, contortions, screaming and writhing. Though Good and Osborn denied their guilt, Tituba confessed. Likely seeking to save herself from certain conviction by acting as an informer, she claimed there were other witches acting alongside her in service of the devil against the Puritans.

As hysteria spread through the community and beyond into the rest of Massachusetts, a number of others were accused, including Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse-both regarded as upstanding members of church and community-and the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good.

Like Tituba, several accused "witches" confessed and named still others, and the trials soon began to overwhelm the local justice system. In May 1692, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, ordered the establishment of a special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) on witchcraft cases for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties.

Presided over by judges including Hathorne, Samuel Sewall and William Stoughton, the court handed down its first conviction, against Bridget Bishop, on June 2; she was hanged eight days later on what would become known as Gallows Hill in Salem Town. Five more people were hanged that July; five in August and eight more in September. In addition, seven other accused witches died in jail, while the elderly Giles Corey (Martha's husband) was pressed to death by stones after he refused to enter a plea at his arraignment.

Salem Witch Trials: Conclusion and Legacy

Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence (or testimony about dreams and visions), his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials. Increase Mather, president of Harvard College (and Cotton's father) later joined his son in urging that the standards of evidence for witchcraft must be equal to those for any other crime, concluding that "It would better that ten suspected witches may escape than one innocent person be condemned."

Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence. Trials continued with dwindling intensity until early 1693, and by that May Phips had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges.

In January 1697, the Massachusetts General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role in the process. The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711.

Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play "The Crucible" (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti-Communist "witch hunts" led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. A memorial to the victims of the Salem witch trials was dedicated on August 5, 1992 by author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

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Salem Witch Trials - Events, Facts & Victims | HISTORY

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The infamous Salem witch trials were a series of prosecutions for witchcraft starting in 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. Learn about what led to the allegations and the hundreds of people who were were accused.

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This is true because on one side missionaries that were emigrating to the USA were very violent, known to beat native Americans and using different kind of punishments for civil offenses.
On the other side native Americans were very hostile to immigrants due to technological and cultural differences.
There were mutual feelings of superiority and nationalistic rivalries.

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The thoughts and perspectives of indigenous individuals, especially those who lived during the 15th through 19th centuries, have survived in written form less often than is optimal for the historian. Because such documents are extremely rare, those interested in the Native American past also draw information from traditional arts, folk literature, folklore, archaeology, and other sources.

Powhatan village of Secoton© North Wind Picture Archives

Native American history is made additionally complex by the diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds of the peoples involved. As one would expect, indigenous American farmers living in stratified societies, such as the Natchez, engaged with Europeans differently than did those who relied on hunting and gathering, such as the Apache. Likewise, Spanish conquistadors were engaged in a fundamentally different kind of colonial enterprise than were their counterparts from France or England.

The sections below consider broad trends in Native American history from the late 15th century to the late 20th century. More-recent events are considered in the final part of this article, Developments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

North America and Europe circa 1492

The population of Native America

Scholarly estimates of the pre-Columbian population of Northern America have differed by millions of individuals: the lowest credible approximations propose that some 900,000 people lived north of the Rio Grande in 1492, and the highest posit some 18,000,000. In 1910 anthropologist James Mooney undertook the first thorough investigation of the problem. He estimated the precontact population density of each culture area based on historical accounts and carrying capacity, an estimate of the number of people who could be supported by a given form of subsistence. Mooney concluded that approximately 1,115,000 individuals lived in Northern America at the time of Columbian landfall. In 1934 A.L. Kroeber reanalyzed Mooney's work and estimated 900,000 individuals for the same region and period. In 1966 ethnohistorian Henry Dobyns estimated that there were between 9,800,000 and 12,200,000 people north of the Rio Grande before contact; in 1983 he revised that number upward to 18,000,000 people.

Dobyns was among the first scholars to seriously consider the effects of epidemic diseases on indigenous demographic change. He noted that, during the reliably recorded epidemics of the 19th century, introduced diseases such as smallpox had combined with various secondary effects (i.e., pneumonia and famine) to create mortality rates as high as 95 percent, and he suggested that earlier epidemics were similarly devastating. He then used this and other information to calculate from early census data backward to probable founding populations.

Dobyns's figures are among the highest proposed in the scholarly literature. Some of his critics fault Dobyns for the disjunctions between physical evidence and his results, as when the number of houses archaeologists find at a site suggests a smaller population than do his models of demographic recovery. Others, including the historian David Henige, criticize some of the assumptions Dobyns made in his analyses. For instance, many early fur traders noted the approximate number of warriors fielded by a tribe but neglected to mention the size of the general population. In such cases small changes in one's initial presumptions-in this example, the number of women, children, and elders represented by each warrior-can, when multiplied over several generations or centuries, create enormous differences in estimates of population.

A third group suggests that Dobyns's estimates may be too low because they do not account for pre-Columbian contact between Native Americans and Europeans. This group notes that severe epidemics of European diseases may have begun in North America in the late 10th or early 11th century, when the Norse briefly settled a region they called Vinland. The L'Anse aux Meadows site (on the island of Newfoundland), the archaeological remains of a small settlement, confirms the Norse presence in North America about 1000 ce. Given that sagas attest to an epidemic that struck Erik the Red's colony in Greenland at about the same time, the possibility that native peoples suffered from introduced diseases well before Columbian landfall must be considered.

Yet another group of demographers protest that an emphasis on population loss obscures the resilience shown by indigenous peoples in the face of conquest. Most common, however, is a middle position that acknowledges that demographic models of 15th-century Native America must be treated with caution, while also accepting that the direct and indirect effects of the European conquest included extraordinary levels of indigenous mortality not only from introduced diseases but also from battles, slave raids, and-for those displaced by these events-starvation and exposure. This perspective acknowledges both the resiliency of Native American peoples and cultures and the suffering they bore.

Native American ethnic and political diversity

Determining the number of ethnic and political groups in pre-Columbian Northern America is also problematic, not least because definitions of what constitutes an ethnic group or a polity vary with the questions one seeks to answer. Ethnicity is most frequently equated with some aspect of language, while social or political organization can occur on a number of scales simultaneously. Thus, a given set of people might be defined as an ethnic group through their use of a common dialect or language even as they are recognized as members of nested polities such as a clan, a village, and a confederation. Other factors, including geographic boundaries, a subsistence base that emphasized either foraging or farming, the presence or absence of a social or religious hierarchy, and the inclinations of colonial bureaucrats, among others, also affected ethnic and political classification; see Sidebar: The Difference Between a Tribe and a Band.

The cross-cutting relationships between ethnicity and political organization are complex today and were equally so in the past. Just as a contemporary speaker of a Germanic language-perhaps German or English-might self-identify as German, Austrian, English, Scottish, Irish, Australian, Canadian, American, South African, Jamaican, Indian, or any of a number of other nationalities, so might a pre-Columbian Iroquoian speaker have been a member of the Cayuga, Cherokee, Huron, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, or Tuscarora nation. And both the hypothetical Germanic speaker and the hypothetical Iroquoian speaker live or lived in nested polities or quasi-polities: families, neighbourhoods, towns, regions, and so forth, each of which has or had some level of autonomy in its dealings with the outside world. Recognizing that it is difficult to determine precisely how many ethnic or political groups or polities were present in 15th-century Northern America, most researchers favour relative rather than specific quantification of these entities.

The outstanding characteristic of North American Indian languages is their diversity-at contact Northern America was home to more than 50 language families comprising between 300 and 500 languages. At the same moment in history, western Europe had only 2 language families ( Indo-European and Uralic) and between 40 and 70 languages. In other words, if one follows scholarly conventions and defines ethnicity through language, Native America was vastly more diverse than Europe.

Politically, most indigenous American groups used consensus-based forms of organization. In such systems, leaders rose in response to a particular need rather than gaining some fixed degree of power. The Southeast Indians and the Northwest Coast Indians were exceptions to this general rule, as they most frequently lived in hierarchical societies with a clear chiefly class. Regardless of the form of organization, however, indigenous American polities were quite independent when compared with European communities of similar size.

European populations and polities

Just as Native American experiences during the early colonial period must be framed by an understanding of indigenous demography, ethnic diversity, and political organization, so must they be contextualized by the social, economic, political, and religious changes that were taking place in Europe at the time. These changes drove European expansionism and are often discussed as part of the centuries-long transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism ( see Western colonialism).

Many scholars hold that the events of the early colonial period are inextricably linked to the epidemics of the Black Death, or bubonic plague, that struck Europe between 1347 and 1400. Perhaps 25 million people, about one-third of the population, died during this epidemic. The population did not return to preplague levels until the early 1500s. The intervening period was a time of severe labour shortages that enabled commoners to demand wages for their work. Standards of living increased dramatically for a few generations, and some peasants were even able to buy small farms. These were radical changes from the previous era, during which most people had been tied to the land and a lord through serfdom.

Even as the general standard of living was improving, a series of military conflicts raged, including the Hundred Years' War, between France and England (1337-1453); the Wars of the Roses, between two English dynasties (1455-85); and the Reconquista, in which Roman Catholics fought to remove Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula (c. 718-1492). These conflicts created intense local and regional hardship, as the roving brigands that constituted the military typically commandeered whatever they wanted from the civilian population. In the theatres of war, troops were more or less free to take over private homes and to impress people into labour; famine, rape, and murder were all too prevalent in these areas. Further, tax revenues could not easily be levied on devastated regions, even though continued military expenditures had begun to drain the treasuries of western Europe.

As treasuries were depleted, overseas trade beckoned. The Ottoman Empire controlled the overland routes from Europe to South Asia, with its markets of spices and other commercially lucrative goods. Seeking to establish a sea route to the region, the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator sponsored expeditions down the Atlantic coast of Africa. Later expeditions attempted to reach the Indian Ocean, but they were severely tested by the rough seas at the Cape of Good Hope. Christopher Columbus had been a member of several such voyages and proposed an alternative, transatlantic route; in 1484 he requested the sponsorship of John II, the king of Portugal, who refused to support an exploratory journey.

Iberia was a hotbed of activity at the time. Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille had begun to unify their kingdoms through their 1469 marriage, but they were soon forced to resolve bitter challenges to their individual ascensions. Eventually quelling civil war, the devout Roman Catholic sovereigns initiated the final phase of the Reconquista, pitting their forces against the last Moorish stronghold, Grenada. The city fell in January 1492, an event Columbus reportedly witnessed.

The seemingly endless military and police actions to which Ferdinand and Isabella had been party had severely depleted their financial reserves. This situation was exacerbated by the chief inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, Tomás de Torquemada, who persuaded the monarchs to expel any Jews who refused to be baptized. Under his authority some 160,000-and by some accounts as many as 200,000-Jews were ultimately expelled or executed for heresy, including many of Spain's leading entrepreneurs, businessmen, and scientists. Having lost so many of its best minds, Spain faced a very slow economic recovery, if it was to recover at all. Seeking new sources of income, the royal treasurer, Luis de Santángel, urged the monarchs to accept Columbus's proposal to explore a western route to the East. Although Columbus did not find a route with which to sidestep Ottoman trade hegemony, his journey nonetheless opened the way to overseas wealth. Spain used American resources to restore its imperiled economy, a strategy that was soon adopted by the other maritime nations of Europe as well.

Spanish Inquisition Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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Native American - Native American history

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Native American - Native American - Native American history: The thoughts and perspectives of indigenous individuals, especially those who lived during the 15th through 19th centuries, have survived in written form less often than is optimal for the historian.

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This is true. According to the Bible, witchcraft was seen to be a big offense for religion. Wizards were kings of Babylon. They were also associated with idolatry. Christians religion blame any pratices of satanic and magic.

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This is true, many people were driven by sense of adventure- as proven by the Telegraph.
In the 17th-century many people had to leave their country and some of them were called by the sense of adventure. A lot of people went to United State for a new life. In the article we see the adventures of famous travel people.

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Tim Smith-Laing reviews Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World by James Evans
With all the political focus on immigration to these shores, it is easy to forget that anyone ever leaves Britain. But they do. Last year the Office for National Statistics recorded the emigration of 128,000 British citizens. Of course, that needs to be seen in context: out of a total population of 65 million, 128,000 is not even a fifth of a per cent. Which goes some way to showing how much of a decision it is to leave one's country and live elsewhere; even in the 21st century it tends to take a certain kind of person and a certain kind of impetus to do so.

The International Passenger Survey records reasons for leaving the UK under the four bland categories of "work-related" (50 per cent), "accompanying others" (just under 10 per cent), "formal study" (just under 5 per cent), and "other/not stated" (everyone else). A more imaginative officialdom might rename the same categories as "money", "love", "knowledge" and "mystery". That would hardly fly as a set of boarding-card labels, but - having been in the first and third categories, and as a beneficiary of the second category - I think it gets closer to the truth of things. We are talking about human motives, after all.

It is worth bearing in mind what it takes to emigrate nowadays when reading Emigrants, James Evans's engaging account of English emigration to America in the 17th century. If so few people are willing to leave Britain when most of the world is a few hours' flight away, what possessed them to risk it when a transatlantic voyage could take anything from five weeks up to eternity?

They did leave, though, and in droves. As Evans points out, figures are harder to come by for the 17th century, as no one was keeping track, especially not of those who counted among "the offals of our people", as one writer put it. But historians estimate that across the century an average of 38,000 people left England for America each year, from a population of around five and a half million.

That is a smaller percentage than today's figures, but it is, Evans notes, "a colossal number" in a European context. The so-called "swarming of the English" was twice as large as contemporary emigration from Spain, and 40 times that from France. In an era when England had no significant means of competing on the imperial front with France or Spain, we became instead "the pioneer of mass migration" - a move that cemented the "Anglo-Saxon" character of North America.

Evans is vivid on the risks of going to a land that, for a good portion of the century, had little to recommend it. The embryonic early colonies held only the most tenuous footholds there, and were always at risk from harsh winters, disease, justifiably antipathetic indigenous populations, or simply running out of food. Early America was far from a land of plenty. In Jamestown - eventually one of the most successful colonies - an original contingent of 500 settlers was "scythed down to only 60" in the winter of 1609-10 after falling out with the tribes they had depended upon for food; when ships brought more colonists and supplies, they also brought rats, "which competed for anything edible that might remain".

And yet, for many, America still seemed a better bet than England. For much of the 17th century, England was in a state of persistent crisis. Between religious ructions, civil war, plague and the recurrent crop failures that accompanied the so-called Little Ice Age, the mid-1600s must count in English history as one of the most difficult periods in which to survive.

And with each successive regime, Catholics, Puritans, and Quakers alike took turns to suffer the disdain of the authorities. Even if the would-be settlers were misled by hopeful rumour, optimistic prospectuses or outright deception about America, Evans suggests that few were actually desperate to make new lives there. "Most, in truth, were simply anxious to leave England."

With this in mind, Emigrants' approach to the motives of English settlers in the new world focuses on the "push" as much as the "pull" behind their leaving. The different driving factors, political and economic, are reconstructed in a series of thumbnail sketches of emigrants and their reasons for striking out to the new world.

There are some familiar figures, like the poet Anne Bradstreet, or John Rolfe (eventual husband to Pocahontas), and there are others of the kind history tends to forget, like the indentured servants Edward and Anne Furnifull. It is an ideal mode for this kind of history, especially given Evans's way with a character portrait. As I said, we are talking about human motives. Times have changed, but I couldn't help wishing that the International Passenger Survey had space for the categories of emigrant outlined by Evans' chapters: "Fish", "Gold and Smoke". "Equality before God", "King", "Fur", "Liberty", "Despair".

As readers of Evans's Merchant Adventurers (2013) will expect, the result is brisk, informative, and (though it does not necessarily break much fresh ground for those familiar with the period) eye-opening, too. Though there are inevitable quibbles over emphasis - Evans is, for my money, a little coy about the utter destructiveness of native-settler relations - Emigrants is a fascinating book that gives real insight into the age that birthed the modern West.

Emigrants by James Evans
336pp, W&N, £20, ebook £9.99

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What made 17th-century England so unbearable that thousands risked the voyage to America?

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Our sources are trustworthy because the first one comes from a great and known universitary encyclopedia edited since the 18th century.
The other one comes from an international American TV channel.

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This is true, many europeans emigrated to America in the 17th century, as proven by an article in The Telegraph, a reliable source as it is a reknown British newspaper.

However, No-Majs aren’t “real”.

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Tim Smith-Laing reviews Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World by James Evans
With all the political focus on immigration to these shores, it is easy to forget that anyone ever leaves Britain. But they do. Last year the Office for National Statistics recorded the emigration of 128,000 British citizens. Of course, that needs to be seen in context: out of a total population of 65 million, 128,000 is not even a fifth of a per cent. Which goes some way to showing how much of a decision it is to leave one's country and live elsewhere; even in the 21st century it tends to take a certain kind of person and a certain kind of impetus to do so.

The International Passenger Survey records reasons for leaving the UK under the four bland categories of "work-related" (50 per cent), "accompanying others" (just under 10 per cent), "formal study" (just under 5 per cent), and "other/not stated" (everyone else). A more imaginative officialdom might rename the same categories as "money", "love", "knowledge" and "mystery". That would hardly fly as a set of boarding-card labels, but - having been in the first and third categories, and as a beneficiary of the second category - I think it gets closer to the truth of things. We are talking about human motives, after all.

It is worth bearing in mind what it takes to emigrate nowadays when reading Emigrants, James Evans's engaging account of English emigration to America in the 17th century. If so few people are willing to leave Britain when most of the world is a few hours' flight away, what possessed them to risk it when a transatlantic voyage could take anything from five weeks up to eternity?

They did leave, though, and in droves. As Evans points out, figures are harder to come by for the 17th century, as no one was keeping track, especially not of those who counted among "the offals of our people", as one writer put it. But historians estimate that across the century an average of 38,000 people left England for America each year, from a population of around five and a half million.

That is a smaller percentage than today's figures, but it is, Evans notes, "a colossal number" in a European context. The so-called "swarming of the English" was twice as large as contemporary emigration from Spain, and 40 times that from France. In an era when England had no significant means of competing on the imperial front with France or Spain, we became instead "the pioneer of mass migration" - a move that cemented the "Anglo-Saxon" character of North America.

Evans is vivid on the risks of going to a land that, for a good portion of the century, had little to recommend it. The embryonic early colonies held only the most tenuous footholds there, and were always at risk from harsh winters, disease, justifiably antipathetic indigenous populations, or simply running out of food. Early America was far from a land of plenty. In Jamestown - eventually one of the most successful colonies - an original contingent of 500 settlers was "scythed down to only 60" in the winter of 1609-10 after falling out with the tribes they had depended upon for food; when ships brought more colonists and supplies, they also brought rats, "which competed for anything edible that might remain".

And yet, for many, America still seemed a better bet than England. For much of the 17th century, England was in a state of persistent crisis. Between religious ructions, civil war, plague and the recurrent crop failures that accompanied the so-called Little Ice Age, the mid-1600s must count in English history as one of the most difficult periods in which to survive.

And with each successive regime, Catholics, Puritans, and Quakers alike took turns to suffer the disdain of the authorities. Even if the would-be settlers were misled by hopeful rumour, optimistic prospectuses or outright deception about America, Evans suggests that few were actually desperate to make new lives there. "Most, in truth, were simply anxious to leave England."

With this in mind, Emigrants' approach to the motives of English settlers in the new world focuses on the "push" as much as the "pull" behind their leaving. The different driving factors, political and economic, are reconstructed in a series of thumbnail sketches of emigrants and their reasons for striking out to the new world.

There are some familiar figures, like the poet Anne Bradstreet, or John Rolfe (eventual husband to Pocahontas), and there are others of the kind history tends to forget, like the indentured servants Edward and Anne Furnifull. It is an ideal mode for this kind of history, especially given Evans's way with a character portrait. As I said, we are talking about human motives. Times have changed, but I couldn't help wishing that the International Passenger Survey had space for the categories of emigrant outlined by Evans' chapters: "Fish", "Gold and Smoke". "Equality before God", "King", "Fur", "Liberty", "Despair".

As readers of Evans's Merchant Adventurers (2013) will expect, the result is brisk, informative, and (though it does not necessarily break much fresh ground for those familiar with the period) eye-opening, too. Though there are inevitable quibbles over emphasis - Evans is, for my money, a little coy about the utter destructiveness of native-settler relations - Emigrants is a fascinating book that gives real insight into the age that birthed the modern West.

Emigrants by James Evans
336pp, W&N, £20, ebook £9.99

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What made 17th-century England so unbearable that thousands risked the voyage to America?

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everybody

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A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials

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One town’s strange journey from paranoia to pardon

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Jessica, Geoffrey

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It’s partly true because we all know that witches don’t exist but on the other side people were thinking that they were, so it’s possible that there were some fear for people considered to be using witchcraft, as proven by an article in the Daily Beast , an American website created by the journalist Tina Brown (former journalist of New Yorker )

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Rep. Peter King's congressional hearings this week on extremism among U.S. Muslims are being condemned by some as a political witch hunt-but how do they stack up against American history's most notorious? See the most infamous, from McCarthyism to the Lavender Scare.

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Brian with a y, Devan, Yan

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Throughout much of Jewish history, witchcraft has been viewed as a vice that virtually every woman will indulge in.

In most cultures across the world, a witch or wizard is generally regarded to be a nefarious practitioner of magic. In Jewish culture, in contrast to both modern culture, which has reversed most images of evil creatures (vampires are now romantic figures, for example, instead of bloodlusting killers) and Christian culture, which sees them as virtually demonic, the Jewish attitude toward witches has varied considerably over time and geography.

The German Pietists, for example, did regard them as quasi-demons. In the 17th century, Manasseh ben Israel of Holland expressed a view of witchcraft virtually indistinguishable from contemporary Christian demonologists (Nishmat Hayyim 232). The talmudic rabbis, on the other hand, while not approving of witches, blithely assume most of their own wives engage in at least some witchcraft practices (Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4, 7:11). These differences may well reflect the attitudes of the surrounding cultures in which Jews lived. Mediterranean societies were generally more tolerant of witches than northern European societies.

In the Bible

The formal biblical attitude toward wizards and witches is severe, witchcraft being a capital offense (Exodus 22:17; Leviticus 20:27; Sanhedrin 45b). This seems to spring from its association with idolatry. Both men and women are portrayed as engaging in witchcraft, and contrary to the modern distinction made in academic circles between socially empowered sorcerers and socially marginal witches, witches in the Bible are often shown in positions of power, notably the wizards in the employ of the kings of Babylon and Egypt and the witches in the employ of King Manasseh. Queen Jezebel herself is a witch (Exodus 7: 11; Daniel 2:2; II Kings 9:22, 21:2).

Little is known about biblical witchcraft. There is an oblique reference to "voodoo-like" practices (Ezekiel 13:19), but the Bible almost universally opts to remain silent on the particular practices of the witch. The Woman of Endor, often identified as a witch in Jewish post-biblical literature, is not designated so in the Bible itself so it is not clear whether necromancy was considered a discipline of witchcraft, or a wholly separate offense (Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Isaiah 8:19-22, 19:3).

Women's Work?

Jewish sources offer several accounts of the origins of witchcraft. According to I Enoch, witchcraft was first taught by the fallen angels to their mortal wives. This presumably explains the special association between women and witchcraft that marks subsequent Jewish literature. In the medieval text Alef-Bet ben Sira, the first woman, Lilith, transforms herself into a demon/witch by the power of using the Tetragrammaton.

While Jews were generally regarded to be exceptional magicians and even some rabbis use incantations, potions, and healing rituals, in rabbinic literature witchcraft is most associated with women. Though there is an explicit statement that both men and women can engage in witchcraft, the fact that Exodus 22:17 prohibits mahashefah (the feminine form of the noun) is taken as a prooftext that witchcraft is a particularly feminine activity (Sanhedrin 67a).

And this is despite the existence of magical manuals such as The Sword of Moses (a medieval Hebrew manual of theurgy), which is clearly written with the assumption that the adept using it will be a man. Perhaps a distinction between learned sorcery (practiced mostly by men), and folk magic (practiced mostly by women) starts to emerge here.

Several passages of Talmud make a point of linking witchcraft with women (Avot 2:7; Eruvin 64b; Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 1:9). In one citation, none other than Simon bar Yohai, a sage who is reported to have once used the evil eye to slay a man, makes this linkage. The practice of witchcraft was considered so pervasive among women that even the children of great sages could be involved (Gittin 45a).

In general, witches in biblical and rabbinic literature are thought to be engaged mostly in malevolent activities, from interfering with fertility and healthy births ( Otzar ha-Geonim, Sotah 11) to cursing rivals and killing the unsuspecting. This stands in contrast with beneficent sorcery, such as healing rituals and amulet making, which Jewish tradition tolerates.

While there are examples recorded of "witchcraft" that serves purely utilitarian purposes (the ability to stir a boiling pot with one's bare hand, for example), in general it is assumed witchcraft is used mostly for nefarious ends. The motivation for such behavior is rarely explicitly stated in the texts, but can be inferred. Witches seem to be a source of the evil eye, indicating they are motivated by envy and jealousy. Others use their powers for personal profit.

Punishment & Hostility

Witches are sometimes portrayed as having idiosyncratic powers: one may be able to materialize bread, another drink, etc. The Talmud recounts that Rabbi Simeon ben Shetah defeated a coven of eighty witches. First, he tricked them into demonstrating their powers, then he gained the upper hand by appealing to their lusts. He brought eighty men before them, each of whom lifted a witch from the ground, thereby robbing each of her power (a piquant detail linking ancient witchcraft with earth or, perhaps, underworld power). Enforcing the biblical penalty, ben Shetah eventually had all of them hung.

While dramatic in scale, this incident is actually the only such capital punishment of witches mentioned in the entire vast rabbinic corpus, and given its particularly legendary features, many scholars have held the historicity of the story suspect.

Aside from this one story, witches in rabbinic literature are rarely portrayed as demonic creatures, though it is not clear exactly what they are. In a virtually indecipherable tale found in the Jerusalem Talmud, Rabbi Hananiah pulls the head of a witch from flax (Sanhedrin 7:13a). In general, though, witchcraft is seen more as a vice that virtually every woman will indulge in. With few exceptions, it is regarded rather just as something inappropriate that women do.

In medieval Jewish literature of northern Europe, by contrast, the image of the witch as a purely malevolent entity comes to the forefront, perhaps reflecting the greater hostility toward witches found in Christian culture at that time ( Nishmat Hayyim 232). In Sefer Hasidim, witches share attributes with werewolves and vampires: they shape-shift, fly, have bloodlust, and can become the undead (456, 465).

Yet despite this more alarming view of witches, there is no record of any large-scale witch hunts among the Jews of Europe to mirror the witch-hunting mania that seized gentile society. Perhaps the popular Christian notion of the Jew as a satanic agent made Jewish authorities leery of giving fuel to such talk with the spectacle of Jews trying other Jews on such charges.

Among the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, witches were viewed with more acceptance. Even an established kabbalist like Hayyim Vital would seek the expertise of such wise women ( Sefer ha-Hezyonot 4,120).

If You're Worried...

The threat of a witch may be deterred by reciting the following curse (Pesahim 110a): "May boiling excrement in a sieve be forced into your mouth, (you) witches! May your head go bald and carry off your crumbs; your spices be scattered, and the wind carry off the new saffron in your hands, witches!"

Seven loops of knots (tied to the left side of the body) are also a good defense against illness caused by witchcraft (Shabbat 66b).

Reprinted with permission from The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism (Llewellyn Worldwide).

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Witches & Witchcraft | My Jewish Learning

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Throughout much of Jewish history, witchcraft has been viewed as a vice that virtually every woman will indulge in. In most cultures across the world, a witch or wizard is generally regarded to be a nefarious practitioner of magic.

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It's true, some people were pressed to death  because he refused to answer an indictment like Giles Corey.
Puritanism was the heart of the subject.

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I n the summer of 1692, Giles Corey was pressed to death because he refused to answer an indictment. Furthermore, some nineteen more souls perished because of the refusal to admit to alleged crimes they committed. Even two dogs were sentenced to death in the middle of the hysteria that broke out in Salem, Massachusetts.

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Clara, Alexandre & Clara-Lucia

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This website is trustworthy because there is at the bottom a means to contact the author and a link to learn more about the website and his author (Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis is a rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in Flower Mound, TX. He is also speaker in Kabbalah and rabbinic literature at the University of North Texas.)

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In reality , skin walkers are only part of Navajo lore, not any of the other hundreds of tribes. Rowling lumped a complex tapestry of beliefs into a single story, and used "medicine man"  stereotypes by writing things like "The Native American wizarding community
was particularly gifted in animal and plant magic."

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This is true,  in 1692/1693 there was the Salem witch trials which took place in Salem in the province of Massachusetts. There were witch hunts where between 140 and 150 people (men and women) were arrested for witchcraft and particulary of mob mentality, mass hysteria and scapegoating.
Arrested for witchcraft:
Arthur Abbott, Mary Barker and William Barker, family Bishop...

We can affirm these with the help of this website:
http://historyofmassachusetts.org/the-salem-witch-trials/
Which was update in August, 19 in 2015 by Rebecca Beatrice Brooks, who is a writer and publisher of this blog.

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Thomas, Samir & Hugo

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It's true , in 1692-93 in the Salem Trials many people where accused without any hint and that was spread troughout the population who at end just wanted to kill the witches.

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this source is clean because it's from a web newspaper

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A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials

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One town’s strange journey from paranoia to pardon

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It's true, a number of the dead were indeed witches, as proven by the site  "From April 1661-Autumn 1662, 600 witches were found - 100 were executed[...]
Although witch persecutions were not really in effect until 1563, the use of witchcraft had been deemed as heresy by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484. From then until about 1750, roughly 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt, and hung across Western Europe. "

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Happy Halloween, Tudor Enthusiasts! I was contemplating a Halloween-themed blog post for today... I already did the "haunted Tudors" post last year - which I hope you'll read if you get the chance! When I considered the topic of witchcraft (which is interesting all on its own) I thought it would be perfect for a spooky post today. I hope you find it as fascinating as I do! Because witches were not as prevalent during the 16th century, I've extended this post to encompass the 17th century as well - because that is when witch hunting really got going. Let's take a look at witches of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties....

Folklore said that the 'Devil's Mark' would appear on the new witch's skin like a brand, to signify that the evil pact had been made. Witchcraft in a Nutshell
Witchcraft persecutions began during Elizabeth I's reign - around 1563, which was actually much later than other areas of Europe... Witch hunts in southern France and Switzerland began as early as the 14th century.
In early modern tradition, witches were stereotypically women. The common belief was that these women would make a diabolical pact with evil spirits and appeal to their intervention. They would reject Jesus and the holy sacraments, and take part in "the Witch's Sabbath" - a parody of the mass and sacraments. By paying honor to the 'Prince of Darkness,' they would in turn receive preternatural powers - thereby becoming evil.

It was said during Elizabeth I's reign that the devil's mark had been spotted on Anne Boleyn - though this has been popularly seen as a cruel and unwarranted slam against her. Interestingly, the reasons for a woman to make a pact with the devil were varied - people believed that women, in their frustrations and struggles, would appeal to the devil in order to gain powers to deal with infertility, fear for her children's well-being, or revenge against a lover.
Although witch persecutions were not really in effect until 1563, the use of witchcraft had been deemed as heresy by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484. From then until about 1750, roughly 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt, and hung across Western Europe.

What was a Witch like?
Witches were frequently characterized as being ugly and old women. (Though in Anne Boleyn's case, people were apparently willing to overlook those characteristics when they called her a witch). They were typically described as "crone-like," with snaggle teeth, sunken cheeks, and hairy lips. Not a pretty picture, and certainly similar to how we picture witches today! Also, if they were the owner of a cat, they were all the more likely to be considered a witch - that's right, even in the early modern period, cats were considered a sign of witchcraft. For that reason, most cats during the Tudor period in England were burnt or otherwise destroyed because of the fear that they would attract evil. As sad as that is, I find it interesting - we hear frequently about how kings and queens kept pets such as dogs and monkeys...but never cats! Now we know why!

Witch Persecutions
Witch persecutions were not a pretty thing. Similar to your average 16th century execution methods, the witches were handled cruelly and harshly, and were typically put under some kind of awful torture to gain a confession of their craft and other witches in the village. 'Thumb screws' and 'leg irons' seem to be the most common forms of torture used on the witches, and they usually resulted in a confession - This, of course, would have been taken as proof that witchcraft really did exist in England, because a woman being tortured would confess it! Whether it was said out of pain and agony or not, it certainly gave witch-hunters cause to continue looking and persecuting... and it only increased the fear of evil and the devil!
1645-1646 marks a short period of time when 'witch fever' gripped England hard. A man named Matthew Hopkins, a renowned witch finder, had 68 people put to death in Bury St. Edmunds and 19 people hung in Chelmsford in a single day. He was given exorbitant amounts of money for touring England and ridding towns and villages of evil witches. The grateful townsfolk would do anything and pay any price to rid their homes of the devil's influence! Because of this, many people lost their lives.
Hopkins' main 'tool' to discover witches during this period was by using a needle and poking/prodding a wart, mole, or insect bite to see if the woman felt any pain. If she didn't, it was 'solid proof' that the mark was indeed the devil's mark! There could be no question that she was a witch and would have to be executed! However, his 'needle' was no needle at all. It was a 3 inch spike that retracted into the spring-loaded handle so the women would not feel a thing.

Witch Testing
Other witch tests included the swimming test. Mary Sutton of Bedford was tossed into a river with her thumbs tied to her opposite big toes. If she floated, she was guilty; if she sank, she was innocent. Either way she would die! Poor Mary Sutton floated, and was therefore burnt.
In August 1612, King James I (who was famously terrified of witchcraft), ordered that the Pendle Witches (three generations of a family), should be marched through the streets of Lancaster all together and hanged.
In fact, King James I was so fearful of witchcraft and the threat of evil, that he advocated a book called Daemonologia - published in Edinburgh in 1567. This was a guide telling his subjects how to detect witchcraft and how to protect themselves from it. His writings included descriptions of the devil's mark, the swimming test, and the fact that a witch cannot shed tears!

From April 1661-Autumn 1662, 600 witches were found - 100 were executed.

Mother Samuel, from Huntingdonshire, was tortured into confessing to the death of Lady Cromwell in 1590. She, her daughter, and her husband were all hanged and their naked bodies were left there for onlookers to see.

In 1616, nine witches were hanged at Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, England, for causing epilepsy in a boy.

Major Thomas Weir was strangled and burnt for witchcraft in 1670 [at age 70] for incest and bestiality. His sister, Jean, was hanged for similar crimes.

Margaret Aikens, a 16th century Scottish woman was known as "The Great Witch of Balver." She said she could detect other witches, and under supervision, she was taken around the world for that purpose.

Jane Wenham was the last person in England to be convicted of witchcraft. This was in 1712.

Witchcraft Statistics & Facts

Witchcraft continued...
During James I's reign, the 'new world' of America was discovered - and unsurprisingly, witch hunting continued there. The Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts in 1692 stemmed from King James' fear of witches - and that fear continued through his son Charles I, and all the way throughout the Stuart dynasty. Witches were no longer the subject of folklore and medieval myths - they were a real, tangible representation of the devil. They could inflict diseases on people, spoil crops, bring about bad weather, and perform other unspeakable and detestable acts of devil's work. Witches and witchcraft were a scary reality of the 16th and 17th centuries in England. Even to this day the history of witches remains something of a mystery. Was there really some kind of mythical power that certain women held? Did people truly (successfully) practice the dark arts? Or were the thousands of executions and horrible tortures for nothing? Although certainly a sad and somewhat creepy history - it is an interesting history of a type of people and a major fear of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties.

I hope you enjoyed my Halloween-themed post today! If you're dressing up as an historical figure for Halloween, please send pictures to the Tudor Enthusiast's Facebook page! Be safe, have fun, and enjoy a spooktacular Halloween!

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Witchcraft in 16th & 17th Century England

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Happy Halloween, Tudor Enthusiasts! I was contemplating a Halloween-themed blog post for today... I already did the "haunted Tudors" post last year - which I hope you'll read if you get the chance! When I considered the topic of witchcraft (which is interesting all on its own) I thought it would be perfect for a spooky post today.

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Tristan, Asma & Paula

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Sarah, Divine

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Anne, Houda, Manar

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Benjamin, Matthieu