Tituba, the Witch of Salem

Perhaps the most enigmatic witch during the Salem trials is Tituba. A woman who was credited with making the first pact with the devil on the continent said so: “I told him that he was God and I should believe him and serve him for six years and he would give me many good things,” even later. He confessed that that man gave him a paper to sign in blood. Along with her, Sarah Good, Dorothy Good (her five-year-old daughter), and Sarah Osborn were prosecuted for practicing witchcraft. According to Stacy Schiff in The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in Salem 1692. That year, between 144 and 185 people who practiced witchcraft were prosecuted, the majority were women. Unfortunately, Tituba’s story is almost a mystery, because she was a slave we have few records. Based on her testimony during the Salem trials, Maryse Condé, through literature, tries to complete her story in her book I, Tituba, the Black Witch of Salem.

Society at that time was thirsty for entertainment, neighborhood gossip no longer satisfied them. “Witchcraft was ominous, a favorite of the Puritans…On the scale of ministerial humiliations, a diabolical invasion was at least more exciting than the bastard birth of a grandson,” Stacy Schiff tells us. To entertain themselves, people began to report that their aunt, cousin, sister, any relative or neighbor with whom they had a problem practiced witchcraft. What was considered witchcraft could include almost anything. Whether it was having moles on certain parts of the body, being followed by black animals, having balms or a spinning wheel (something very common during colonial times), and even being in a bad mood with one’s husband.

In addition to boredom, the precarious conditions in which children and women lived caused them to become physically and mentally ill. During the Colony, a child had the obligation to work in the field, even the smallest ones had to plant as soon as they learned to walk. The girls’ obligation was to learn how to produce flax and sew most of the time. Both boys and girls had to be instructed in the Christian religion. And when they did not fulfill any duty, parents and teachers had the right to beat them so that they learned to be humble. This is documented by Alice Morse Earle in Child life in Colonial Days. Women, for their part, in addition to always being productive at home, suffered domestic violence from their husbands. At that time, women were seen as an object that served for the satisfaction of men. And the children they had, for the most part, were the product of rape.

This world is the one in which Tituba lived. Her story begins with the rape of her mother, later she is raised by Man Yaya, a witch who teaches her to heal with plants and talk to the dead. Since she meets her, Tituba realizes the bad reputation that her adoptive mother has among the villagers. However, as happens with the stories of witches, the people turn to them because their remedies, in addition to curing them, are cheaper; and when they want to talk to one of their dead to ask for advice, she is the only one who can do it. When she becomes the Parris slave, Tituba uses her knowledge of plants to cure her masters.

Later, in Condé’s book, we see the interrogation that was carried out on Tituba during her trial. Which we know was so shocking that those who witnessed it never shook their heads.

Later, in Condé’s book, we see the interrogation that was carried out on Tituba
during his trial. Which we know was so shocking that those who witnessed it
They never nodded.

—Have you ever seen the devil?
—The demon came to see me and ordered me to serve him…
—Who did you see?
—A man came and gave me the order to serve him.
-How?
—Torturing the girls and, on the last night, an apparition asked me to kill the girls.
little girls and that if I didn’t obey they would hurt me even more.
—What was this apparition like?
—Sometimes it was a calf and sometimes a big dog.
—What was he telling you?
—The black dog told me that I should serve him and I responded that I was afraid, and then
He added that if I didn’t obey him he would hurt me even more.
—What did you answer?
—That I wouldn’t be of any more use to him and then he told me that he would hurt me and he seemed like a man and
He threatened to hurt me. And that man had a yellow bird with him and told me
that if I obeyed him he would give me many more nice things.

Later it would be discovered that the man was actually Samuel Parris, his master, who
At one point he threatened Tituba with beheading her if she did not testify as ordered.
Although Tituba was not convicted, only imprisoned in an unhealthy prison, other
Women were hanged for the simple entertainment of the people.

We owe Tituba’s recovery to the academic Maryse Condé, who died this
year a couple of months after turning 90 years old.