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Tituba was the first woman accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692 that took place in Salem Village, Massachusetts.
In the late seventeenth century Tituba lived on the island of Barbados as a slave[1]. While Tituba lived on the island she was bought by a man named Samuel Parris to care for his home. Sometime during the 1680’s Samuel Parris moved his family and his slave Tituba to Boston, Massachusetts. In 1689 Samuel Parris became Minister of Salem Village and began to preach in the Village.
Salem witch trials[edit]
Tituba was the first person accused of being a witch in Salem Village which eventually led to several others (men and women) in Salem and the surrounding areas to be accused of witchcraft[2].
Tituba was first accused by 9-year-old Betty Parris, minister Samuel Parris’s daughter, and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams, who also lived in the Parris home. The two girls claimed to be bitten and pinched while they slept. The girls also began having fits, seizures, and comatose trances, which were eventually blamed on Tituba after Dr. Griggs diagnosed an "evil hand" upon the girls. The girls' claims included accusations that they felt Tituba in their dreams pinching and biting them, then whispering in their ears to cause their fits[3].
There are undocumented folk beliefs recorded in Charles Upham's Salem Witchcraft that Tituba was believed to practice folk magic, and indeed led a group of village girls in specific divinatory practices from time to time. It is known that the Parris’s neighbour Mary Sibley asked Tituba to bake a witch cake, a corn cake made from cornmeal and the urine of the afflicted girls, which they fed to a dog. When the dog fell into fits as well, the girls grew dramatically worse.
Tituba was formally accused of bewitching the two girls on March 1, 1692, and brought forth in a hearing with two other women of the village, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne.
Tituba at first denied that she cast a spell on any of the afflicted girls, now numbering at least a half-dozen, but when pushed confessed to witchcraft and implicated the other two women accused, as well as mentioning that there were other witches in the village as well. The ensuing search for witches led to more than 170, and perhaps as many as 300, people being arrested for witchcraft, with twenty executed for the crime.
Tituba remained in custody for the duration of the Salem witch trials. Parris refused to pay her jail fees after she was cleared; instead, an unknown person from Virginia paid her fees in the amount of seven pounds. Tituba's ultimate fate is unknown.
Historical importance[edit]
Tituba was the first person accused of witchcraft in Salem Village. The effects of the Tituba accusation and her confession allowed the Salem witchcraft trials to take place. If Tituba had not confessed to being a witch and afflicting the Parris girls, then there may never have been a witchcraft trial in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. With Tituba’s confession (to save her own life) she allowed Salem Village to play out all of the anger, fustration, and hysteria that it held pent up within its society.
Historical debate[edit]
The physical description of Tituba from the first time she was studied by a historian to the present study of her life has had controversy surrounding it. The argument of Tituba’s ancestry has gained more and more attention day by day. In the beginning of the scholarly study of Tituba it was considered to be an assumed fact that Tituba was of Indian descent[4]. But over time the origins of Tituba have begun to be re-evaulueated and old theories have been contested. One scholar who disagrees with the old theory that Tituba was Indian is Maryse Conde[5]. Condé tells the story of Tituba from a narrative and fictional point of view. Conde describes Tituba as being a African slave whose mother was raped on her passage over from Africa and then had Tituba after she arrives in Barbados. This account of Tituba’s origins does not claim to rely on facts for all of its evidence, but since there is no way to conclude, with certainty, where Tituba was from today's evidence Conde feels that she could be correct in her assumptions. In Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem Elaine G.Breslaw, writes
according to local legend, Tituba and her husband, John, “were spoken of as having come from New Spain…that is, the Spanish West Indies, and the adjacent mainland,” is borne out by the record of known slave-capturing activities in South America.
Breslaw believes that Tituba was an Arawak Indian from Guiana who was either kidnapped or then brought to Barbados or her tribe had migrated there though South America. While Breslaw relies more on factual evidence then Conde her argument can not be considered any more reliable due to no clear evidence that disputes either theory. The debate over whether Tituba was of Indian ethnicity or of African ancestry can not be resolved today with the evidence availably today. One scholar who tries to explain why the debate cannot be resolved is Veta Smith Ticker[6]. Smith writes
17th-century Puritans blended the categories Indian, African, and slave…In seventeenth century Massachusetts, such discriminations among unregenerate peoples of color were considered unnecessary, especially for slaves. By 1692 Columbus misnamein had yielded a catchall term…applied to the Guanahani, the Caribbe, the Aztecs, and West Indies Arficans…
This passage from the Ticker article sets the background on how the debate over the ethnicity of Tituba’s origins can still be going today. Since there was no clear distinction by the Puritans on the racial differences between Indians, Africans, and slaves it remains hard to truly identify Tituba’s origin. This how ever is not the only reason for the scholarly debate over the identity of Tituba. Another reason is covered by Chadwick Hansen. In Hansen's article the issue of the racial identity of witches during Puritan times is addressed. Hansen states [7]
Over the years the magic Tituba practiced has been changed by historians and dramatists from English, to India, to African. More startlingly, her own race has been changed from Indian, to half-Indian and half-Negro, to Negro…There is no evidence to support these changes, but there is an instructive lesson in American historiography to be read in them.
Hansen explains that due to further research into Tituba’s origins that American historians feel more comfortably with labeling Tituba a practicer of Indian, or African magic as long as it is not connected to any form of European magic. These sources show why the historical debate over Tituba’s beginning are just as relevant as the part that Tituba played in the Salem witch trials.
Fiction[edit]
Tituba is the protagonist of the novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1982) by Maryse Condé*, she also featured prominently in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The image of Tituba as the instigator of witchcraft at Salem fed into the popular mindset by the opening scene of The Crucible, which owes much to Marion Starkey’s work "The Devil in Massachusetts" (1949).
In the play, Tituba was brought to Salem from Barbados, was told to know how to conjure up spirits, and had allegedly dabbled in sorcery, witchcraft, and Satanism. These fictional accounts hold that Abigail Williams and the other girls tried to use her knowledge when dancing in the woods before the trials began; it was, in fact, their being caught that preceded 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 drank 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 racial undertones, is based on the imagination of authors like Starkey, who eerily mirrors Salem’s accusers when she asserts that "I have invented the scenes with Tituba .... but they are what I really believe happened."
Tituba is also the main character in the book "Tituba of Salem Village" by Ann Petry.
- Though it should be noted that according to I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem, Tituba was born in Barbados as the result of an English sailor raping her mother, Abena (who had "jet black skin", which is evidence that Abena and Tituba were of African descent, rather than Indian). The book also says that Abena (as well as two male slaves bought with her) were Ashantis. In the book, Tituba is never associated by blood with any Indian people.
References[edit]
- ^ Ann Petry, "Tituba of Salem Village." (New York: Ftzhenry and Whiteside imited, 1964)
- ^ Mary Beth Norton, "In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft crisis of 1692." (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2002)
- ^ Lori Lee Wilson, "The Salem witch trials:How History is invented." (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1997)
- ^ Elaine G. Breslaw, "Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies." (New York: New York University Press, 1996)
- ^ Maryse Conde, "I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem 1992." (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994)
- ^ Veta Smith Ticker,"Purloined Identity: The Racial metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village." Journal of Black Studies (March 2000) 624-634.
- ^ Chadwick Hansen, " The Metamorphosis of Tituba, or Whey American Intellectuals Can’t Tell an Indian Witch from a Negro." The New England Quarterly 47 (March 1974) 3-12.