Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Open Questions

Where was Tituba born, how did she reach Massachusetts, and what became of her after her release in 1693?

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The 1692 court papers record her enslaved status and her testimony and nothing about her birth, her passage or her later life. Elaine Breslaw's reconstruction of an Arawak origin by way of Barbados works from indirect records and is explicitly circumstantial; other readings of the same material remain open, and the later life is a blank rather than a dispute.

What would resolve this Documentary evidence tying her to a named vessel, cargo manifest, inventory, parish register or estate record, in Barbados, Massachusetts or elsewhere. A subsequent record of her under any name after 1693 would answer the second half.
OpenColonial American and Caribbean archival history; the history of slavery and of Atlantic shipping recordsElaine G. Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies
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Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies
Elaine G. Breslaw, New York University Press, 1996Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of SalemView the Source
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