266 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentParris family to Salem Village in July 1689. Th e accusations
of witchcraft aimed at Tituba began in February 1692. Betty
Parris and Abigail Williams began complaining that they
had been bitten during their sleep and began to suff er from
a series of strange seizures and trances. Th e Parris’s neigh-
bor, Mary Sibley, asked Tituba and John Indian to help her
make a witch cake, a practice that would supposedly pro-
tect the girls and reveal the names of their affl icters. Tituba
did so; however, the girls’ symptoms became worse aft er the
use of the witch cake. Aft er the village doctor, Dr. Griggs,
could fi nd no apparent medical cause for these physical af-
fl ictions, witchcraft was declared to be responsible, and the
girls named Tituba and their neighbors Sarah Good and
Sarah Osbourne as the perpetrators. All three women were
cross-examined in the Salem town court by Judge John
Hathorne in March 1692.
A number of interpretations have been put forward to
suggest why the girls began to demonstrate such strange
behavior. Popular legend held that the girls had made fre-
quent trips with Tituba to the Salem woods, where she
had demonstrated to them, and they had participated in,
various kinds of voodoo magic, and that their accusations
toward her resulted from the guilt they felt at participat-
ing in such “heathen” activities. However, many histo-
rians, including Mary Beth Norton and Elaine Breslaw,
have since proved this story to be a fabrication of 19th-
century stories about the trials. A complex mix of per-
sonal grudges, social unease, political instability in the
area, and a culture of fear generated from the threat of
American Indian attacks is the most likely explanation for
what became an outbreak of accusations. Th e fact that Ti-
tuba was of a diff erent ethnicity that was, whether Indian
or African, associated in the Puritans’ mind with unfa-
miliar pagan and voodoo practices most likely made her
an appropriate and believable target or scapegoat for the
girls’ initial accusation.
At fi rst, Tituba denied having any involvement in
witchcraft. During her trial, however, which lasted for
several days, she eventually not only confessed, declaring
herself to be under the infl uence of the devil and confi rm-
ing the community’s fears, but also accused other people
from inside and outside Salem village as being witches
and of tormenting her, including Good and Osbourne.
Her testimony and the language that she used to describe
the supernatural occurrences she had witnessed played on
the deepest fears of Salem’s Puritan population and thusWright, Donald R. African Americans in the Colonial Era: From
African Origins through the American Revolution. Arlington
Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1990.
Tituba
Tituba (birth and death unknown), also known as Ti-
tuba Indian, was the slave of Samuel Parris, the minister
of Salem Village, Massachusetts, from 1689 to 1697. Her
birth date and her age during her time of residence in
Salem are unknown. She was one of the fi rst three people
to be accused of witchcraft by Minister Parris’s 9-year-old
daughter, Betty, and Betty’s 11-year-old cousin, Abigail
Williams, during the Salem Witch Trials (1692–1693).
Despite the key role she played during the trials, Tituba’s
involvement is oft en overlooked in offi cial histories of the
period. Her story has long been characterized by debate
and speculation, and she has acquired an almost mythical
status.
Tituba’s origins and racial identity are largely un-
known and continue to be heavily debated among critics
and historians. In historical documentation, Tituba is de-
scribed interchangeably as Indian or African. In 1868, the
poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the verse-drama
Giles Corey of the Salem Farms, in which he identifi es Tituba
as half-Indian and half-African. Other literary and critical
interpretations have sought to specifi cally pinpoint Tituba’s
origins to one of these racial groups. In both Arthur Miller’s
play Th e Crucible (1953) and Ann Petry’s novel Tituba of
Salem Village (1964), Tituba is portrayed as African. Nov-
elist Maryse Condé believes Tituba to have been born in
Barbados, the daughter of an African slave who was raped
by an Englishman during her crossing from Africa to the
Caribbean. However, Elaine Breslaw, author of Tituba,
Reluctant Witch of Salem (1996), posits that she is an Ar-
awak Indian from Guiana. She argues that Tituba traveled
from Guiana to Barbados, either as the victim of kidnap or
through the migration of her community.
Samuel Parris was born in Barbados but immigrated
to America to take up a place at Harvard University. He
returned to the island in 1673 to claim his inheritance. Al-
though no direct historical evidence exists, it is thought
that he bought Tituba and her husband, John Indian, as do-
mestic slaves on this trip. Tituba and John moved with the