In this activity, you will learn more about three individuals who played an important role in the Salem witch trials—Cotton Mather, Sarah Good, and Anne Putnam. You will read a brief biography about each person and some primary source information related to each person. You will also answer a few questions to evaluate the credibility of the information in each source. Part A
Cotton Mather was a powerful Boston clergyman whose ideas about witchcraft influenced many of the judges at the trials. You can read this article to learn more about the life of Cotton Mather.

Primary resource: In 1689, Mather published Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, an account of a witchcraft case in Boston. Read an excerpt from the document to get an idea of what Mather thought about witchcraft.

Mather calls himself an eyewitness to the event. Do you think eyewitness accounts are always believable? Why or why not? Write your answer in 50 to 75 words.

Read the following passage from muir's "calypso borealis" and respond to the prompt. [2] the rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants i discovered on this first grand excursion was calypso borealis (the hider of the north). i had been fording streams more and more difficult to cross and wading bogs and swamps that seemed more and more extensive and more difficult to force one's way through. entering one of these great tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps one morning, holding a general though very crooked course by compass, struggling through tangled drooping branches and over and under broad heaps of fallen trees, i began to fear that i would not be able to reach dry ground before dark, and therefore would have to pass the night in the swamp and began, faint and hungry, to plan a nest of branches on one of the largest trees or windfalls like a monkey's nest, or eagle's, or indian's in the flooded forests of the orinoco described by humboldt. [3] but when the sun was getting low and everything seemed most bewildering and discouraging, i found beautiful calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung. the flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity like a snowflower. no other bloom was near it, for the bog a short distance below the surface was still frozen, and the water was ice cold. it seemed the most spiritual of all the flower people i had ever met. i sat down beside it and fairly cried for joy. how do authors communicate their tone in a piece of writing? identify the tone (or tones) of this passage. explain how the tone(s) is created, providing at least two examples from the passage and explaining how each contributes specifically to the tone(s) you identified. your response should be a paragraph of 5–7 sentences.