Tituba ( my kind of witch)
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Tituba was one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 . Tituba was a Carib Indian from Barbados , a slave owned by Reverend Samuel Parris in the town of Salem, Massachusetts <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem%2C_Massachusetts> . As she had been known in the town to tell tales of omens <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omens> , voodoo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo> , and witchcraft <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft> from her native folklore, she became the first to be accused along with Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn .
As a dark skinned outsider Tituba was a 'usual suspect' for witchcraft. Once unjustly accused, she confirmed the worst fears of her accusers in an attempt to save her own life, fulfilling Puritan fears of a devilish conspiracy. Tituba confessed to being a witch <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch> and that she and four other witches, including Good and Osborn had flown through the air on their poles. Tituba's confession succeeded in transforming her from a scapegoat to a key figure in the expanding prosecutions. Her confession also served to silence most skeptics of the trial, and Parris, along with other ministers began witch hunting with zeal. She was jailed rather than being hanged.
She was married to John Indian and is, therefore, referred to as Tituba Indian. After the Witch Trials ended, she was released and relocated. She was then exiled.
Tituba is the protagonist of the novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1982) by Maryse Condé <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryse_Cond%C3%A9> , she also featured prominently in the play The Crucible <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible> by Arthur Miller <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller> . The image of Tituba as the instigator of witchcraft at Salem, fed in the popular mindset by the opening scene in Arthur Miller’s "Crucible," owes much to Marion Starkey’s works, "The Devil in Massachusetts" (1949), and "The Visionary Girls" (1973). 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 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery> , witchcraft, and Satanism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanism> .These fictional accounts hold that Abigail Williams <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin> 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 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 has barely disguised racial undertones and 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.”