Tituba

Not much is actually known about Tituba and what little we know comes from the court testimony that she gave during the trials. What is certain is that Tituba was a woman of color, and likely an Indigenous Central American, who was an enslaved worker in the house of Reverend Samuel Parris.

Slavery in the colonies was on the rise and the West Indies was rapidly becoming Europe’s most important center for the slave trade. Tituba had been enslaved in Barbados since her early childhood and it’s here where the Reverend Samuel Parris purchased her. In 1680 the Reverend moved his family to Massachusetts where at its thought she married another enslaved man named John Indian, and had a daughter named Violet.

Tituba cared for the Reverend’s children at the time the girls had been playing a fortune-telling game. Although she had nothing to do with the girls’ attempts at fortune telling, she tried to help them when she baked a “witchcake” from rye meal and urine and fed it to the girls. The Reverend was praying and fasting in an attempt to cure the girls and became incensed when he heard Tituba had fed them the cake and beat her to get her to confess that witchcraft was the reason behind the girls’ odd behavior.

Tituba did confess but embellished her confession. She said that she was told to serve the devil, that she and the girls rode on sticks, and that a black dog told her to hurt the children. This was enough to formally accuse and arrest her and two other women of witchcraft.

Tituba’s testimony was disturbing to the towns people, she said that she had seen “two rats, a red rat and a black rat… They said serve me.” She also confessed to pinching the girls and told the court that she had signed a “devil’s book.” She was indicted as “a detestable Witch”, the Reverend refused to pay her bail, and she remained in jail for more than a year.

Tituba later recanted and told the magistrate that she had made up everything after her master beat her in an attempt to force a confession. By then, the trials had wound down and the governor of Massachusetts had ordered the arrests to stop. Eventually an anonymous person paid Tituba’s bail and she went free after 13 months in jail.

The state of Massachusetts eventually gave the accused people back their property and paid them restitution; however, Tituba was an enslaved woman with no property and no rights, and she was given nothing.

Tituba disappears from historical record from that point on.