Tituba, reluctant witch of Salem : devilish Indians and Puritan fantasies
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-237) and index.

With this important book, Elaine G. Breslaw has "found" Tituba, the elusive, mysterious, and often mythologized Indian woman accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and immortalized in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Reconstructing the life of the slave woman at the center of the notorious Salem witch trials, the book traces Tituba from her likely origins in South America to Barbados, forcefully dispelling the commonly held belief that Tituba was African. The uniquely multicultural nature of life on a seventeenth-century Barbadan sugar plantation - defined by a mixture of English, American Indian, and African ways and folklore - indelibly shaped the young Tituba's world and the mental images she brought with her to Massachusetts.