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Tituba Research Paper

448 Words2 Pages

Young Elizabeth “Betty” Parris and Abigail Williams were cousins, but also best friends. The girls enjoyed playing together and listening to the stories of their slave, Tituba. Because of their connections with the church the girls had most likely grown up with Puritan beliefs and were strongly influenced by that culture. The girls knew all ten of the commandments and were familiar with what they were and weren't allowed to do by the ways of Lord. With this strong Christian influence, 9-year-old Betty and 12-year-old Abigail were the last people expected to get caught up in a witchcraft scandal. One day, the girls started messing around with a fortune telling device that required the user to put an egg white in water and see what shape it made. The girls knew they would get in trouble if they were caught because this was believed to be a demonic practice, so they probably felt guilty about what they had done. This guilt is what presumably drove the girls to start acting bewitched in …show more content…

Tituba was born in 1647 in the Arawak village of South America. While very young, Tituba was captured and taken to Barbados as a slave, where she was purchased by Reverend Samuel Parris along with John Indian. Parris took them to Salem Village when he became a minister in 1689. The next year, Tituba was married to John and they had a daughter named Violet. Because of her Arawak customs and beliefs, Tituba was a target for a lot of criticism. Most of the people in Salem were relatively the same, considering they all followed the same religion and did the same type of jobs. Tituba prayed, ate, and worked alongside the Parris’s for most of her life, but her clothing, personal religious beliefs, and customs were strange to other people. So, when strange things started to happen, it only made sense for the people of the community to blame the outlandish

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