Teio

Teio
Born
Tahiti
Died(1829-03-14)14 March 1829
Pitcairn Island
Other namesTe'o, Mary, Sore Mummy
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1825; died 1829)​
Partners
Children4
  • Sully/Sarah
    (b. circa 1789, with Tahitian partner)
  • Daniel
    (b. circa 1792, with William)
  • Kate
    (b. circa 1799, with William)
  • George Adams
    (b. circa 1804, with John, her partner and later husband)

Teio, also known as Te'o, Mary, and Sore Mummy, (died March 14, 1829) was a Tahitian woman who settled on Pitcairn Island with the Bounty mutineers. Alongside Mauatua and Teraura, she is one of the island's six original matriarchs.[1][2]

The Tahitian-born Teio's first connection to the Bounty crew was as the consort of Thomas McIntosh, who brought her to Tubuai.[3][4] McIntosh was a loyalist and did not join the mutineers, remaining in Tahiti.[3] However, Teio sailed with the mutineers to Pitcairn in 1789, although it is unknown whether she went willingly or was brought by force.[3] She brought her daughter with a previous Tahitian partner, a 10-month-old known as Sully, Sarah, or Susannah by the mutineers, to the island, becoming the only woman in the party to arrive with a child.[3][4][5][6]

On Pitcairn, Teio partnered with William McCoy, with whom she had two children: Daniel, born in 1792, and Kate or Catherine, born in 1799.[3][7] McCoy died by suicide in 1798, shortly before their daughter's birth.[3][4] Teio remained on the island, and a little over a decade later she began a relationship with John Adams, whose consort Vahineatua had died.[3][4][7][8] Teio and Adams, who were formally married by the visiting Frederick William Beechey in 1825, had one son, George Adams, in 1804.[3][4][9]

Teio grew blind later in life, and she died in 1829, less than two weeks after her husband.[3][10][11] Hers is one of very few marked graves on the island from this period.[12]

Teio's descendants contributed significantly to the population of Pitcairn: Sarah had eight children with Charles Christian, including Charles Christian II and Fletcher Christian II; Daniel had nine children with Sarah Quintal, including Matthew McCoy; Catherine had nine children with Arthur Quintal I, including Arthur Quintal II; and George had three children with Polly Young.[4]

  1. ^ Albert, Donald Patrick (May 2021). "Teehuteatuaonoa aka 'Jenny', the most traveled woman on the Bounty: Chronicling female agency and island movements with Google Earth" (PDF). Island Studies Journal. 16 (1): 190–208. doi:10.24043/isj.153. ISSN 1715-2593. S2CID 234260181.
  2. ^ Mesenhöller, Peter; Stauffer, Annemarie (2016-11-14). Made in Oceania: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Social and Cultural Meanings and Presentation of Oceanic Tapa. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-8772-4.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Pitcairn Island Encyclopedia: TEIO ("Te'o," "Mary")". Pacific Union College Pitcairn Islands Study Center. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "Who Are the Pitcairners?". Pacific Union College Pitcairn Islands Study Center. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
  5. ^ Langdon, Robert (2000). "'Dusky Damsels': Pitcairn Island's Neglected Matriarchs of the "Bounty" Saga". The Journal of Pacific History. 35 (1): 29–47. doi:10.1080/713682826. ISSN 0022-3344. JSTOR 25169464. PMID 18286752. S2CID 38078038.
  6. ^ Laycock, Donald C. (2012-06-25), "The Status of Pitcairn-Norfolk: Creole, Dialect, or Cant?", Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, De Gruyter, pp. 608–629, doi:10.1515/9783110860252.608, ISBN 978-3-11-086025-2, retrieved 2023-02-28
  7. ^ a b Mühlhäusler, Peter (2020-10-12). Pitkern-Norf'k: The Language of Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-1-5015-0143-2.
  8. ^ Gough, Barry M. (2017-05-15). To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of HMS Blossom, 1825–1828. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-01002-9.
  9. ^ Nicolson, Robert B.; Davies, Brian F. (1997). The Pitcairners. University of Hawaiʹi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1921-7.
  10. ^ "History of Pitcairn Island". Pacific Union College Pitcairn Islands Study Center. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
  11. ^ Ross, Alan Strode Campbell (1964). The Pitcairnese Language. Oxford University Press.
  12. ^ Round, Sally (2016-08-25). "Mutineers' pigtails and bones under scrutiny". RNZ. Retrieved 2023-02-28.