Tituba

Tituba's husband was John Indian, a Native American man whose origins are unknown, but he may have been from Central or South America. Tituba as well may have been originally from South America before Barbados.[3] There are arguments made that Tituba was African American, but this has been contradicted by historians, including Elaine Breslaw, who partially blames Charles Upham, who got false information from Samuel Drake, for the confusion.[4] Possibly she was born in Barbados but, regardless, she was a descendant of captives on the island.[5] Her husband went on to become one of the accusers in the Witch Trials.[6] They appear documented together in Samuel Parris's church record book.[3]

Tituba was the first person to be accused by Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams of witchcraft. It has been theorized that Tituba told the girls tales of voodoo and witchcraft prior to the accusations.[7] She was also the first to confess to witchcraft in Salem Village in March 1692. Initially denying her involvement in witchcraft, Tituba later confessed to making a "witchcake", due to being beaten by Samuel Parris with the intention of getting a confession. When questioned later, she added that she knew about occult techniques from her mistress in Barbados, who taught her how to ward herself from evil powers and how to reveal the cause of witchcraft. Since such knowledge was not meant for harm, Tituba again asserted to Parris she was not a witch, but admitted she had participated in an occult ritual when she made the witchcake in an attempt to help Elizabeth Parris.[8][9] Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were sent to jail in Boston to await trial and punishment on March 7, 1692.[8] Despite these confessions, there is no proof that she did the things to which she confessed.[10]

Other women and men from surrounding villages were accused of witchcraft and arrested at the Salem witchcraft trials. Not only did Tituba accuse others in her confession, but she talked about black dogs, hogs, a yellow bird, red and black rats, cats, a fox and a wolf. Tituba talked about riding sticks to different places. She confessed that Sarah Osborne possessed a creature with the head of a woman, two legs, and wings. Since it mixed various perspectives on witchcraft, Tituba's confession confused listeners, and its similarities to certain stock tropes of demonology caused some Salem Village residents to believe that Satan was among them.[8]

After the trials, Tituba remained in jail because Samuel Parris refused to pay her jail fees. In April of 1693, Tituba was sold to an unknown person for the price of her jail fees.[11] In an interview with Robert Calef for his collection of papers on the trials, titled Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches, Lately Executed in New-England, Tituba confirmed that Parris had beaten a confession out of her and then coached her in what to say and how to say when first questioned.[12]

Tituba, as portrayed in the 19th century by artist Alfred Fredericks in W.C. Bryant's A Popular History of the United States

The majority of fictional pieces that artistically or historically depict Tituba's life portray her as an "other" or an "outgroup" by Puritan society, due to her racial and socioeconomic status as a South American Native Indigenous and an indentured servant woman.[13] Although it is not explicitly discussed in all of the movies, plays and books, that account for Tituba's conviction, it is quite possible that the "fear of strangers" in combination with the Western European traditional belief and understanding of witchcraft, made Tituba a prime target for witchcraft conviction.[14] With reference to the historical understanding of Tituba and why she was convicted, it has been argued that the pre-existing ideas about "out groups" and stereotypical ideas of foreign cultures combined with fictional portrayals of witchcraft and sorcery works, has created a case where history and fiction shape each other.[15] Essentially, the fictional works have assisted in the idea of what the Salem Witch Trials were like and what events lead to the convictions, trials and confessions, but without factoring in racial, political, religious and economic influences of the time, the portrayals of Tituba in media remain, for the most part, fictional.[16]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his 1868 play entitled Giles Corey of the Salem Farms, describes Tituba as "the daughter of a man all black and fierce…He was an Obi man, and taught [her] magic." Obeah (also spelled Obi) is a specifically African and Afro-American system of magic."[17]

Tituba is featured prominently in the 1953 play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The image of Tituba as the instigator of witchcraft at Salem was reinforced by the opening scene of The Crucible, which owes much to Marion L. Starkey's historical work The Devil in Massachusetts (1949).[18]

In Miller's play, Tituba is said to have come from Barbados, where she was taught how to conjure up spirits, and had allegedly dabbled in sorcery, witchcraft, and Satanism. The play suggests that Abigail Williams and the other girls tried to use Tituba's knowledge when dancing in the woods before the trials began; it was, in fact, their being caught that led to those events. With the original intention of covering up their own sinful deeds, Tituba was the one to be accused by Abigail, who had in fact drunk from a magic cup Tituba made to kill John Proctor's wife, Elizabeth, and to bewitch him into loving her. She and the other girls claimed to have seen Tituba "with the Devil". It is ironic that the belief that Tituba led these girls astray has persisted in popular lore, fiction and non fiction alike. The charge, which is seen by some as having barely disguised racist undertones, is based on the imagination of authors like Starkey, who mirrors Salem's accusers when she asserts that "I have invented the scenes with Tituba .... but they are what I really believe happened."[18]

Tituba is also the main character in the 1956 book Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry. Written for children 10 and up, it portrays Tituba as a black West Indian woman who tells stories about life in Barbados to the village girls. These stories are mingled with existing superstitions and half-remembered pagan beliefs on the part of Puritans (for instance, it is a white neighbor who makes the witch cake, rather than Tituba herself), and the witchcraft hysteria is partly attributed to a sort of cabin fever during a particularly bitter winter.

Tituba is the subject of the award-winning novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1986) by Maryse Condé, a novel version of Tituba's life which creates a biography for her, beginning and ending in Barbados, and including supernatural elements.

Tituba appears in the novel Calligraphy of the Witch (2007) by Alicia Gaspar de Alba as an Arawak Native American Indigenous from Guyana fluent in several languages, and the only person in the Boston area who understands Spanish. She is a friend and English tutor to the indentured servant Concepción Benavidez who is accused of witchcraft in the Boston area because of her Mexican and Catholic culture.[19]

She is also featured as a main character played by Ashley Madekwe on WGN's television series Salem (2013). The show portrays her as being a powerful witch, along with other historical figures from the Salem Witch Trials who also are portrayed as having supernatural powers.

In American Horror Story: Coven (2013–2014), young African-American witch Queenie states that she is a descendant of Tituba.[20] Later in the series, Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and Supreme witch Fiona Goode have an in-depth discussion of Tituba's history and legacy. They suggest her magic came from her Arawak ancestry.[21]

Tituba appears in role in mobile game Fate/Grand Order's "Heretical Salem" storyline, though in the game she is the slave of a character named Randolph Carter rather than Samuel Parris. She is sentenced to death by the English witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins and executed by hanging. Later it is revealed that the Tituba encountered by the player is not the historical version, but the reincarnated spirit of the biblical Queen of Sheba, summoned and bound to the role in a form of magically-enabled reenactment of the Salem witch trials.

• List of slaves
• List of people of the Salem witch trials

• Breslaw, E.G. (1996). Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0814713076.

• Salem witchcraft video