Tituba

Tituba was a native of Barbados and a self-professed witch. She was an older woman who wore baggy clothes, and looked like she could have been a witch. She was the Reverend Parris' slave woman who supposedly taught Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams about "voodoo" in the kitchen. She played fortune-telling games and told them stories of magic and spirits from the Caribbean. Such activities were strictly forbidden by Puritan code. But word secretly spread among the neighborhood girls, and soon a small group of girls—known as the “circle girls”—were joining Tituba around the fire.

During the trials, she admitted to practicing witchcraft as well as name others in the community as practicing witches and even suggested that the Devil walked amongst the citizens of Salem. However, there is some evidence she was compelled to confess, exaggerate, and/or fabricate accounts by brutal beatings and torture.