Her dog could talk. She and the court obviously understood the dog to be the same being, essentially, as the “one like a man.” For,—
“Q. What did you say to him, then, after that? A. I answer I will serve you no longer. He told me he would do me hurt then.”
Can any one doubt that she conceived herself to be speaking to the same being, though in dog form, that she had yielded to before in form like a man? There is no indication that she had previously served a dog, and yet she says to this one, I will serve you no longer.
“Q. What other creatures have you seen? A. A bird. Q. What bird? A. A little yellow bird. Q. Where does it keep? A. With the man, who hath pretty things more besides. Q. What other pretty things? A. He hath not showed them unto me, but he said he would show them to me to-morrow, and told me if I would serve him, I should have the bird. Q. What other creatures did you see? A. I saw two cats, one red, another black, as big as a little dog. Q. What did these cats do? A. I don’t know. I have seen them two times. Q. What did they say? A. They say serve them. Q. When did you see them? A. I saw them last night. Q. Did they do any hurt to you or threaten you? A. They did scratch me. Q. When? A. After prayer; and scratched me because I would not serve her. And when they went away I could not see, but they stood by the fire. Q. What service do they expect from you? A. They say more hurt to the children. Q. How did you pinch them when you hurt them? A. The other pull me and haul me to pinch the child, and I am very sorry for it.”
The cats also as well as the dog spoke and commanded her obedience. She saw these the night before her examination. “When they went away,” she says, “I could not see.” Those words may admit of two distinct and different meanings. First, that the cats disappeared without her being able to notice their exit; or, second, that before they went she became spiritually blind—“could not longer see” clairvoyantly. In a subsequent statement she pleads a sudden obscuration of her internal vision. All clairvoyants are subject to sudden interruptions of their spiritual power to see.
She was pulled and hauled by “the other” with a view to force her to “pinch the child.” Here again her obvious conviction was that the “other” was essentially more than mere brute. She did not think a cat pulled and hauled her, but meant that when the cats visited her, the “something like a man”—“the other”—was also present, and urged her on to mischief.
“Q. What made you hold your arm when you were searched? What had you there? A. I had nothing. Q. Do not those cats suck you? A. No, never yet. I would not let them. But they had almost thrust me into the fire. Q. How do you hurt those that you pinch? Do you get those cats, or other things, to do it for you? Tell us how it is done. A. The man sends the cats to me, and bids me pinch them; and I think I went once to Mr. Griggs’s, and have pinched her this day in the morning. The man brought Mr. Griggs’s maid to me, and made me pinch her.”
By “the man” she obviously meant her frequent spirit visitor. He it was who brought the cats to her, and made her pinch them, and by so doing pinch the “maid,” who physically was miles distant. Such is her statement. An inference from it is, that properties from Elizabeth Hubbard,—the maid in question,—who was among the afflicted ones, and was a member of the circle, were drawn out from her by “the man,” and made component parts of apparitional cats formed by the man’s thought and will powers, which seeming cats, being pinched by Tituba’s spirit fingers, the Hubbard girl, some of whose properties were used for constructing those apparitional cats, felt the pinchings, first in her spirit, and thence in her flesh, though her body was two or three miles distant from the pincher. In that mode “the man” commanded the use of some properties in Tituba, by which he produced torture in a mediumistic physical organism then being far away. Another mode of spirit operation is indicated. Tituba confessed to a dim consciousness that once, by some process, her spirit-self had been got over to Dr. Griggs’s, and pinched the maid at her home. Again, she believed that the same maid had been brought to her (Tituba’s) abode and pinched there. Also it will be seen a little further on, that, Tituba being charged with having been over at the maid’s home on a specified day, denied having been there at that particular time, but admitted that her apparition might, unconsciously to herself, have been seen there then, for she says, “may be send something like me.”
We enter a distinct protest against stigmatizing such testimony as “incoherent nonsense.” In response to a command to tell how the mysterious inflictions were brought about, this untaught, ignorant woman, calmly and with much distinctness, indicated four or five modes by which psychologic forces were brought to bear upon mediumistic subjects. She had seen the processes, and, in her simple way, told what she had learned by personal observation and experience; and thus she helps us, at this day, to fathom and expound the mysteries of witchcraft more effectually than do all her cotemporaries. Notwithstanding her limited command of language, her statements were about as distinct and instructive as any one then could have made upon such a topic; but the devil-warped public mind of that day was unable to see the literal import of her testimony, or to turn her knowledge to good account.
Two other women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, names previously mentioned, were, on the same March 1, 1692, under examination as co-operators with Tituba in practicing witchcraft.