Mather-Cheever Account of the Salem Witch Trials by Cotton, Cheever, Ezekiel, and Sewall, Samuel Mather | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Mather-Cheever Account of the Salem Witch Trials by Cotton, Cheever, Ezekiel, and Sewall, Samuel Mather

Mather-Cheever Account of the Salem Witch Trials

Reprinted in Eyewitness to America

Published in 1997

Samuel Sewall

Diary Entries of Samuel Sewall

Reprinted in Early American Writing

Published in 1994

"It was noted that in her, as in others like her, that if the afflicted went to approach her, they were flung down to the ground."

During the colonial period most people had little understanding of their natural environment, so they looked to supernatural forces (spirits) for solutions to their problems. To Native Americans, Africans, and some Europeans, magic and religion were inseparable. They believed that people with special powers (called priests, shamans, and witches by various groups) could control good and evil spirits with prayer and rituals. Shamans, priests, and witches used special objects called charms—bags of herbs, magical stones, crucifixes—to ward off evil spirits. One of their rituals was fortune-telling, which involved predicting future events by "reading" a pattern of tea leaves, the shape of a raw egg dropped into a bowl, or the arrangement of special pebbles thrown onto the ground.

Shamans, priests, and witches also used their powers to ward off diseases.

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