Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/77

 but he was not an African slave; he was supposed to be from one of the Spanish West India Islands, or the adjacent main-*lands of Central or South America; he and his wife Tituba having been brought to the colony by Mr. Parris, who had been engaged in commercial traffic in Barbadoes before he entered the ministry and became pastor of the village church.

The early church records show that Mr. Parris was not a universally popular incumbent of the office which he held; the mercenary and haggling bargain he had driven with the church committee, in regard to the terms of his salary, represents him to us as having more of the spirit of the sharp and overreaching trader than the urbane gentleman or zealous Christian; but at present we have little to do with the character of the master—it is with the movements of the slave that we are now concerned.

We have already stated that John and Tituba were not Africans, and the difference which marked them from the few African slaves then in the colony was much to the disadvantage of the Spaniards. The real