More for the Salem Dungeon

The Devil and a Little Yellow Bird

Oct 31, 2006 Mary Trotter Kion

Tituba swears that Osborne and Good bewitched the girls and wanted her to cut off Ann Putnam's head.

John Hathorne's further questioning of Sarah Osborne managed to bring out that she had not been to church for over a year. This information had been given by various church members as well as Osborne's husband. Interestingly, it had been Sarah Good's own husband who had stated that he though that his wife would surely soon be a witch. Divorce may not have been possible in the 1600's Puritan life but evidently attempting to show that a spouse was a witch as a means of getting rid of them was acceptable.

Osborne to the Dungeon

Telling evidence came when the afflicted girls gazed upon the accused Sarah Osborne and went into their bewitchedantics.

Sarah Osborne, like Sarah Good, was led away to the witch's dungeon with out having confessed to witchcraft. The next interrogation would alter the pattern thus far set.

Tituba Reveals All

When Tituba, the Indian slave belonging to Samuel Parris, was brought in for questioning the bewitched girls instantly went into their act of fits. These girls later swore that Tituba had, from the moment she entered the meetinghouse, began pinching and pricking them. In questioning the slave woman, Hathorne kept to a similar line of questioning as he had done with Good and Osborne. This time Hathorne's constant badgering had better results.

Hathorne's luck changed when he inquired of the slave what form the devil took when he hurt the bewitched girls? Perhaps Tituba could take no more for she answered that the devil was "Like a man." She then went on to say that the man, or devil, had told her to serve him. She had refused. At the questioning she then said that Osborne and Good had hurt the children and that there had in total been four people, two of which she did not know, that wanted her to also hurt the children. But there was more.

The Salem Inquisition Begins: continues with: Tituba's Amazing Evidence: Hairy Creatures and Threatened Decapitations.

Sources:

Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 15. Crowell-Collier Educational Corporation, 1968.

Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials. De Capo Press, 1995.

The copyright of the article More for the Salem Dungeon in American History is owned by Mary Trotter Kion. Permission to republish More for the Salem Dungeon in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.