During the late 1600s and early 1700s, the Salem Witch Trials took place. The slave from Arawak, a village in South America was taken to Barbados. Tituba, as was her name, started to gather with young adolescent girls in her master's kitchen to tell them stories and Barbados legends. She was very superstitious, and made people think that the girls were being haunted be witches. The girls started the Salem Witch Trials. Soon everyone in Salem, Massachusetts, thought that witches inhabited their town. Soon women and men who were simply different were being unfairly prosecuted and sometimes hanged. There were many reasons to accuse people of witches for the inhabitants of Salem, Massachusetts. Some were:

You might say that these aren't very good reasons to kill people, but many Puritans were so strict they actually believed these things! Some angry families tried to get others put on trial in their town just because their child was sick or their cows were being stubborn, or if their coat didn't fit, or their harvest wasn't right. Poof! Whatever it was, they blamed it on people that are different!

There were several ways of punishing the accused. Sometimes a "confessed witch" would get let go, but a witch who claimed they were innocent mostly got killed! There was the dunking, when witches were strapped to a chair and then dunked in a pond to see if they could float. If they could, they passed the test and got killed some other way. Both types of witches (guilty and innocent) died in this punishment because the ones, who didn't sink initially, were thought to be surely guilty!