Tituba Of Salem: Paranoia, Race, And The Genesis Of An American Myth

Witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts. Lithograph by George H. Walker. Undated

Belief in Folk Magic did not disappear so easily.

Despite this fear, some vestige of folk magic remained. The people believed in curses and witchcraft. Some might even play with seemingly harmless divination, seeking out their true love’s face or their ultimate fate. It might have seemed comforting in the face of uncertainty in their hostile new world.

Supposedly, that is what happened to Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. The two cousins needed some distraction. Eleven-year-old Abigail Williams was living with her uncle Samuel Parris after her parents had been killed in a raid led by Native Americans. Betty, as the daughter of the local minister, might have lived an especially strict life, always on view as a paragon of virtue. For a nine-year-old girl, that must have been stultifying.

Betty, Abigail, and other girls apparently toyed with fortune telling in an attempt to discover their future husbands. A Puritan girl, after all, could only be as successful and as respected as her husband. It was natural for her to think at length about her prospects. They used a technique in which an egg white, placed in a glass, would take the shape of their husband’s face. One girl reportedly saw the shape of a coffin instead and panicked.

Some time after this divination attempt, the girls started to display strange behavior. They refused to listen to their elders. They screamed, claiming that unseen people were attacking them. They contorted their bodies into strange, seemingly impossible positions. Some attempted to climb up their household chimneys, fleeing the frightened, confused adults around them.

Suspicions quickly focused on witchcraft. What else could turn these innocent Christian girls to such strange behavior? In response, Mary Sibley, a neighbor, asked Tituba to make a “witch cake”. Baked with rye and the victim’s urine, the witch cake was fed to a dog. Careful observation of the dog’s behavior was said to reveal the presence of witchcraft. If the dog acted strangely, then a witch was amongst them.

The girls soon began to name their tormentors. They first targeted the women and outsiders of their community. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were both accused, along with Tituba.

Neither Good nor Osborne confessed. Sarah Good, described as filthy, irritable, and isolated, was suspected of cursing her neighbors. Her husband, William, claimed that she might be a witch because of “her bad carriage to him”. Sarah Osborne, though more respected, was still under suspicion. She had not attended church in nearly three years, due to a long illness.

“You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink.”

Good was executed in 1692. When Minister Nicholas Noyes tried to get her to confess on the scaffold, she told him “You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink”. More than 25 years later, Noyes died of an internal hemorrhage. Osborne died in prison the same year of Good’s hanging.

Tituba did confess, however. It likely saved her life. Her admission must have sent a thrill through the people assembled at her questioning. She spoke of flying through the air, of yellow birds, red and black rats, a fox, a wolf, hallucinatory beasts, and a book filled with bloody signatures.

Confessions of witchcraft were rare enough, but this was something else entirely. Few others would speak of such bizarre sights, not to mention a wide-ranging network of witches throughout the region.

Tituba’s confession confirmed fears that there was indeed an insidious, persistent plot to destroy Salem.

“Tituba and the Children” – Alfred Fredericks, Designer; Winham, Engraver (Image from “A Popular History of the United States”, Vol. 2, by William Cullen Bryant, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1878, p. 457)

Writers and historians have debated the particulars of Tituba’s origins, though her early life remains obscure. Her ethnicity, in particular, has been the subject of such anxious debate since nearly after the end of the trials.

Popular depictions of her (such as the 1996 film version of The Crucible) depict her as a black woman. Puritan records refer to her as “Indian”, in contrast to other slaves in Salem who were specifically described as “black” (two, Mary Black and Candy, were also accused of witchcraft during the panic). Modern scholars have argued that she was African, Native American, Arawak, Carib, or South American. Though Puritans distinguished between black people and other people of color (such as Native Americans), they did not distinguish her ethnicity beyond occasionally calling her “Indian”.

Here is what we know to a reasonable level of certainty: Tituba arrived from Barbados, a tropical island that was home to both African descendants, native peoples, and whites. She traveled to Massachusetts with Samuel Parris,who had presumably purchased her in the Caribbean. They were accompanied by two other Barbadian slaves: John Indian and an unnamed boy who died before the trials.

Some sources claim that she married John Indian, though it is difficult to confirm this. No one bothered with marriage records for slaves. A few writers even claim that she had a daughter, Violet, though that is likewise difficult to substantiate. She was likely close to the young Parris children, however. She probably did much of the family’s childcare as they were born and grew up. She did not teach Betty or Abigail witchcraft, as later works would claim. The girls apparently worked their own form of magic and, after guilt or enchantment overtook them, blamed Tituba.

When Tituba first claimed innocence, Samuel Parris beat her to elicit a confession. After the beatings, she confessed to making the witch cake under the direction of Mary Sibley but claimed she had no evil intent.

“[Sarah Osborne] had a thing with a head like a woman with two legs and wings. Abigail Williams… said that she did see this same creature and it turned into the shape of Goody Osborne.” Osborne also had “an other thing hairy. It goes upright like a man. It hath only two legs.”

Further questioning revealed a tale of forced witchcraft. She claimed to have been compelled to do evil by a mysterious man who urged her to harm the children of Salem. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne supposedly appeared to her along with this strange figure and flew with Tituba to a meeting of witches.

Tituba claimed that Osborne was sometimes accompanied by a bizarre creature: “[Sarah Osborne] had a thing with a head like a woman with two legs and wings. Abigail Williams… said that she did see this same creature and it turned into the shape of Goody Osborne.” Osborne also had “an other thing hairy. It goes upright like a man. It hath only two legs”.

As for Sarah Good, Tituba said “I did see her set a wolf upon [Elizabeth Hubbard] to afflict her. The persons with this maid did say that she did complain of a wolf. She further said that she saw a cat with Good at another time.”

She also said she had met a man “with white hair, I think” dressed in fine clothing who might have been the devil himself. However, the Puritan Satan was typically described as ”black” or “tawny”. This description of a possibly white Satan or agent of the devil must have alarmed Tituba’s interrogators. It would have been easier to place the evil outside of their community, somewhere with the “savage” natives and African slaves.

Later descriptions of Satan by the accused placed him back into old racial categories. He again became a short, “tawny” man, perhaps from faraway Maine. Potentially uncomfortable elements of Tituba’s story were filed down and made more familiar, if not exactly comforting.

Towards the end of her testimony, Tituba found that she could not continue. “I am blind now. I cannot see!” she cried. The devil, apparently angry at her collaboration with the townsfolk, had struck back at Tituba.