evil and is allegedly a favorite home for "The Man in Black"--the devil. Secondly, they girls dance which is also not allowed; this is why Rev. Parris has such a strong reaction to the mention of dancing. Some of the girls also remove their clothing in the forest, which at the least doesn't coincide with the Puritans' strict standards of modesty, and at the worst their nakedness represents a form of paganism to the Puritans.  Finally, the girls engage in activities, such as putting curses on others, casting spells, throwing creatures into a pot on the fire, which are associated with witchcraft--the Puritans want so semblance of the devil or his followers in their midst. 

At the beginning of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, we learn that several of the teenage girls of Salem were caught dancing in the forest. Betty Parris and her uncle's slave, Tituba, were among their number, and now Betty has fallen into some kind of trance. The people of town believe her to be under some kind of spell, raising suspicions about what the girls were up to. Very quickly, Betty, Abigail, and the other girls who were caught begin accusing people in town of being witches. Without considering the context of Puritan society, the girls' actions might cause people to question why the girls want to redirect attention away from themselves so badly.

Regardless of whether they actually attempted any witchery, the girls violated a number of Puritan social mores by meeting in the forest. For one, they were meeting in a relatively large group without the approval or supervision of the Church. Puritans held that meeting in groups paved the way for temptation to sin, so the only group meetings that were really permissible were town gatherings or Church services. What's worse, this was a gathering of only women! Puritans believed women were inherently weaker when it came to morality, and thus required shepherding by men.

Second, the girls were caught dancing! Dancing was considered sinful by the Puritans because it was an act of pleasuring the body and was not done in honor of God. In some versions of the story, including Miller's play, the girls are caught dancing naked. Puritans believed the body was a sinful thing tied to the Earth, but the soul was immortal and transcended physicality. To dance with bare skin was to revel in the earthly sinfulness of the body.

Tituba represents a sort of corrupting force in this event. Ruth, one of the girls caught dancing, was sent by her mother to ask Tituba to commune with the spirits of Ruth's lost siblings. The fact that Tituba is known to practice folk divination marks her as dangerous in this religiously structured society. Even though Tituba professes to love Christ and be a faithful Christian, her having been brought from Barbados and being a woman of color makes others very suspicious of her. Reverend Parris, Tituba's master, accuses her of bewitching the girls and persuading them to join in some rite in the forest, risking their souls. The other girls hope that because Ruth sought Tituba's spells, the possible accusation of witchcraft—and most of the blame—will be on those two. 

The girls are very embarrassed to have been caught enjoying the privacy and fun their society forbids, so they try their best to direct the blame elsewhere through accusing others of witchcraft. Tituba is terrified that she will be punished or killed because, as a foreigner and woman of color, everyone in town believes she is more susceptible to or even an agent of the Devil.