Basic Info:
Born- 1674 in Barbados
Children- Violet
Husband- John Indian

Early Life:
Tituba arrived in Boston in 1680. She was purchased as a slave by Samuel Parris, a rich business owner.

Her exact origins are unclear. Some historians believe she was from the Arawak tribe of Venezuela.

Parris married a woman and became minister of Salem village in 1689.

Tituba was in charge of caring for Parris' nine year old daughter, Betty, and his niece, eleven year old Abigail Williams.

The Trials Begin:
In 1692, people in the village of Salem began acting strangely. They had convulsions and fits. The first of these victims was Betty Parris. Abigail Williams soon followed.

These symptoms began to spread throughout the village. People reported feeling odd pinching or biting sensations when nothing was there. Friends of the Parris girls said they had hallucinations. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong with any of these people.

The supernatural seemed to be the only logical cause, and so the witch hunt began.

Being the person that spent most of the time around Betty Parris, Tituba was the first to be accused.

She allegedly had fed 'Witch cakes' to the Parris girl to make her sick.

Two other women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, were also accused. They often had arguments with the Parris family, making them possible witches.

Tituba and the other women appeared in court on March 1, 1692. The charge was witchcraft. Osborne and Good both denied the charges, pleading not guilty, but Tituba did the opposite. She told the court that "the devil came to me and bid me serve him."

The gave a very thorough description of her encounter with Satan himself, leaving the citizens horrified. She explained how she was told to hurt these children, otherwise she would die. She described how the devil had terrible animal minions with him, and even included the two Sarah's in her story.

The people of Salem demanded to know if there were other witches in their town. Justice Hawthorne asked if Tituba had seen the devil's book, but she told him no. She stated that Satan had told her she wasn't allowed to see the book yet, but could later on. She also stated hat she didn't know of any other witches, but she did know that there were more in Boston.

While she was incredibly detailed in some parts of her story, she was incredibly vague in others.

The Trials Continue:
By fall of 1692, one hundred eight five witches had been accused. Alleged witches were hanged, pressed (crushed by stones), tortured, or drowned. Salem was in a mass hysteria.

In the end, nineteen people were executed and one hundred fifty were imprisoned.

Tituba was never executed, only imprisoned because they believed she was valuable. At one point during the trials, Tituba took back her confession and started telling people that Parris had forced her to say those things.

After the trials ended, Tituba remained in jail because Samuel Parris refused to pay the fees to free her. In April of 1693, she was sold to an unknown person.

Books, Movies, and More:
The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a good (although not entirely factual) play that Tituba appears in. It's also a movie.
She's also in an episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved.
There's several different books about her.

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Cool Facts:
• a lot of historians believe that Tituba was tortured by Parris into making her confess that she'd been a witch
• modern historians now agree hat the reason the original girls started having hallucinations was because of contaminated rye flour
• unlike in the Crucible and most writings or movies, Tituba was not from Africa. She was from South America
• no one knows what happened to her after she (and possibly her husband) were sold to this unknown person