Learning from the Story of Tituba
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Beth Henricks
October 25, 2026
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning at the Meetinghouse we are celebrating “Advocate for Witches Sunday” in honor of Quaker Thomas Maule from the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. The scripture I have chosen to support my message is from Matthew 23:23 from the New Revised Standard Version.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
If we look back at the history of our faith, we find beautiful moments where the Light shone brightly in dark places. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must also confront the moments where darkness actually wore the robes of righteousness.
Today, as we celebrate “Advocate for Witches Sunday” in honor of Quaker Thomas Maule, I want us to again reflect on one of the most painful chapters in American religious history: the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. This morning, I would like for us to look past the familiar names and focus more closely on the story of an enslaved woman named Tituba.
This past summer, while visiting the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, I noticed that Tituba is the very first person visitors are introduced to in their well-curated section on the Trials.
It is a striking choice, because for centuries, popular culture—from school textbooks to Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” has painted a very specific, but often wildly distorted picture of Tituba.
We are often told she was a Black or West African woman who practiced voodoo, casting spells and telling dark folklore to young girls by the fireside. But if we return to the actual court documents of 1692, which Sue, Sam and I were introduced to at the Peabody Essex Museum over the summer, a different, deeply human story emerges.
Tituba was not African; she was an Indigenous Central or South American woman, likely from an Arawak village, a culture of Venezuela. Captured as a child, she was taken to Barbados as a slave. There, as a teenager, she was purchased by a merchant named Reverend Samuel Parris, who later brought her to Massachusetts.
In Salem Village, she found herself entirely isolated in a rigid, hostile culture. Yet, she was not completely alone. She lived alongside her husband, an enslaved Indigenous man known as John Indian, and together they shared a daughter named Violet.
Tituba was a wife and a mother, quietly trying to build a life of dignity under the heavy yoke of servitude, another form of slavery of the day.
Please note, the madness in Salem did not begin because Tituba was teaching children witchcraft.
It began in the bitter winter of 1692, when Reverend Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and eleven-year-old niece, Abigail, fell mysteriously ill with spontaneous fits.
Desperate and terrified, a well-meaning white neighbor named Mary Sibley approached Tituba with a recipe from English folklore very common at this time. She instructed Tituba to bake a traditional "witch cake"—using rye meal and the urine of the afflicted girls—and feed it to the family dog to reveal the identity of the children's tormentor.
English folklore, old wives’ tales, tall tales, or urban legends like these have been passed down in most of our families. My grandmother (and probably yours) warned me of opening umbrellas indoors or swallowing gum that would stay in one’s stomach forever. These are comparisons to making a “witch cake” in 1692.
Tituba was simply trying to help the family she served. Yet, when Reverend Parris discovered what she had done, he was furious. In the Puritan worldview, her use of counter-magic (as he named it) was a grave sin. Under the heavy pressure of the minister’s anger, the frightened girls pointed their fingers outward, and Tituba became the very first person accused of witchcraft in Salem.
Historical records show that Tituba initially denied the charges. She maintained her innocence until Reverend Parris beat her severely, demanding a confession.
Realizing she had no legal rights and no one to defend her, Tituba chose a brilliant strategy of survival. She gave her captors exactly what their terrified imaginations demanded. She confessed, weaving a vivid, theatrical narrative of the devil, black dogs, red rats, and flying on sticks.
Ironically, because Puritan law spared those who confessed so they could testify against others, her coerced confession saved her life. Those who righteously maintained their innocence were sent to the gallows.
When the hysteria finally subsided in 1693, the grand jury declined to indict Tituba. She immediately recanted her false testimony, admitting she had lied only to save her life.
But the cruelty of her reality did not end there. Enraged by her recantation, Reverend Parris refused to pay her seven-pound jail fee, leaving her to languish in a cold, overcrowded prison for thirteen months.
Eventually, an anonymous settler (some even think it was a local Quaker) paid the debt and purchased her, and Tituba vanished from the pages of history forever.
So, what does this true history teach us about OUR journey of faith, today?
First, I believe it warns us of the danger of a faith rooted in fear rather than love.
The Puritans of Salem were deeply pious people, yet their theology became weaponized by their anxieties. When you and I allow fear to dictate how we view the world, we stop looking for that of God in our neighbors.
Instead, we begin looking for scapegoats. (Just like Beth was talking about last Sunday).
The Salem Witch Trials is what happens when fear casts out love.
Take a moment to ponder this within the context of our current reality – sadly not much has changed. We are too often seeking scapegoats and thus missing that of God in our neighbors.
Second, Tituba’s story forces us to examine how we treat the vulnerable among us. Tituba was entirely powerless - a woman with no legal rights, no social standing, and no voice of her own.
Remember, it is always easiest for a community or government to blame those who cannot fight back.
Yet, Christ’s ministry was entirely dedicated to the margins: lifting up the oppressed, defending the vulnerable, and exposing the hypocrisy of systems that exploit the weak.
We heard in our scripture for this morning Jesus addressing the leaders of his day on this issue with some strong language:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
When a society, government, or especially a church begins to scapegoat the outsider to protect its own comfort, it has wandered far from following the example of Jesus.
Friends, the Salem Witch Trials did not happen because the devil invaded Massachusetts.
They happened because a community let their fears overrun their charity.
They chose suspicion over grace, and judgment over mercy.
And this too is what we are choosing to do again in our communities and world, today. Sadly, we still have not learned the lessons of history.
I found it almost ironic that in the Peabody Essex Museum, the first person mentioned is Tituba and the last is Quaker Thomas Maule who wrote the first condemnation of the trials.
On this Advocate for Witches Sunday, as we remember Quaker Thomas Maule’s courage to seek answers, to offer grace, and to speak truth to power, his witness reminds us that standing up for truth often means confronting the comforting illusions of our own communities and government.
In an era consumed by fear and conformity, Thomas Maule refused to let the prevailing hysteria silence his conscience. He demonstrated that true justice requires us to question inherited certainties and defend the defenseless.
His legacy inspires us to remain fiercely independent thinkers, to challenge institutional injustices even at great personal cost, and to remember that the voice of a single, resolute Friend (maybe you or me) can dismantle a wall of collective delusion.
So, let us leave here today with a commitment to cultivate a more authentic Quaker Faith in our communities and world.
When we encounter times of uncertainty, let us not build walls of suspicion or point fingers of blame.
Let us instead open our hearts to the stranger, stand as a shield for the vulnerable, and remember that our primary calling is to love as Christ loved us.
Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, let us ponder the following queries in our hearts:
When fear or uncertainty enters my life, do I tend to close inward with suspicion, or do I lean outward with compassion?
Who are the vulnerable or misunderstood "outsiders" in my own community today, and how am I actively standing as a shield for them?
In what ways might I be compromising my deepest values of love and truth just to find comfort or safety in the crowd?