Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies

Elaine G. Breslaw is a historian, and this New York University Press book is her academic study of Tituba, the enslaved woman at the center of the Salem witchcraft accusations, focusing specifically on the long disputed question of her actual ethnic and geographic origin. Its strength is archival correction, Breslaw traces how Tituba's origin was persistently misrepresented in later popular and even some scholarly retellings, and builds a documented case for a different origin than the one most commonly repeated, treating the question as a real historical puzzle rather than settled trivia. Its limit is that Breslaw's specific conclusion about Tituba's origin, while the standard scholarly treatment, rests on inference from indirect colonial era records rather than a document that states her origin outright, so it should be presented as the best supported reading rather than an unchallengeable certainty.