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Teraura

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Teraura
Excerpt from Fanshawe's 1849 drawing of Teraura
Bornc. 1775(1775)
Moorea
DiedJuly 1850(1850-07-00)(aged 74–75)
Pitcairn Island
Other namesSusan Young
Susannah Young
Partners
  • Ned Young
  • Matthew Quintal
  • Thursday
  • October Christian

Teraura,alsoSusanorSusannah Young(c. 1775– July 1850), was aTahitianwoman who settled onPitcairn Islandwith theBountyMutineers.She took part inNed Young's plot to murder male Polynesians who had travelled on HMSBountyand killed Tetahiti. Atapamaker, examples of her craft are found in theBritish Museumand atKew Gardens.

Biography

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Whilst little is known about Teraura's early life, it is likely that she was born onMoorea,an island inFrench Polynesia.[1]Tradition on Pitcairn states that she was from a chiefly family.[2]It is possible that she was born c. 1775, since she was reportedly 15 years old when she leftTahitiwithFletcher Christianand his crew in 1789.[1]It is unknown whether she was kidnapped or went with them of her own volition.[1]The journey lasted several weeks, and according to Teraura they passed the island ofTanna.[3]During the journey, she andNed Youngbecame sexual partners, a relationship that continued once the group landed on Pitcairn Island on 15 January 1790.[1]Teraura also had an affair withMatthew Quintal,another mutineer, and had a son,Edward Quintal,who became the island's first magistrate.[4]

Racial tensionsbetween the Polynesian and European settlers came to a head in 1793, leading to successive murders on the island. On 20 September 1793, the four remaining Polynesian men beheaded mutineers Isaac Martin and John Mills, shot John Williams and William Brown dead, and fatally wounded Fletcher Christian in a carefully executed series of murders. Teraura, acting on the orders of Ned Young, beheaded the PolynesianTetahiti.[5]According to the account recorded byEdward Gennys Fanshawein 1849, Tetahiti was seduced by one of the other Tahitian women, so that Teraura could execute him, and at the same moment shout a warning to Young enabling him to kill the other Polynesian man.[6]

After the death of Young in 1800,[7]Teraura marriedThursday October Christian I,the son of Fletcher Christian - he was at least fifteen years her junior at the time of their marriage.[1]They had six children, whose descendants live on the island today.[8]In 1831, Christian and Teraura relocated to Tahiti; however, Christian and three of her children died as a result of an infectious disease contracted there. Teraura returned to Pitcairn.[9]

Teraura was also atapamaker, and there is a record of her giving a piece of coloured cloth to a sailor in 1833.[10]It is likely this cloth was dyed with thecandlenut,giving it a reddish-brown colour.[11]Fragments of tapa beaten by Teraura and byMauatuaare held in the collections of the British Museum and at Kew Gardens.[11]

In 1849, during Fanshawe's visit to Pitcairn, he drew a pen-and-ink sketch of Teraura, where she is wearing an eye patch.[6]The sketch is held in the collection of theNational Maritime Museum.[12]She died in July 1850, the last of the original settlers.[6][13]

Legacy

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According to historianPauline Reynolds,Teraura and the other women who joinedHMSBountywere "probably the most travelled Polynesian women of their day".[10]

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See also

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References

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  1. ^abcde"Teraura".2008-07-24. Archived fromthe originalon 2008-07-24.Retrieved2021-11-07.
  2. ^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.ISSN0022-3344.PMID18286752.S2CID38078038.
  3. ^Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle.1841.
  4. ^Nechtman, Tillman W. (2018-09-13).The Pretender of Pitcairn Island: Joshua W. Hill – The Man Who Would Be King Among the Bounty Mutineers.Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-108-42468-4.
  5. ^Coenen, Dan T. (1997)."Of Pitcairn 's Island and American Constitutional Theory".William & Mary Law Review.38(2).Retrieved5 March2019.
  6. ^abc"'Susan Young, The only surviving Tahitian woman, Pitcairn's [Island], Augt 1849' | Royal Museums Greenwich ".2021-11-07. Archived fromthe originalon 2021-11-07.Retrieved2021-11-07.
  7. ^Marks, Kathy (2009).Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed.Simon and Schuster. p. 16.ISBN9781416597841.Retrieved5 March2019.
  8. ^MAUDE, H. E. (1959)."TAHITIAN INTERLUDE: The Migration of the Pitcairn Islanders to the Motherland in 1831".The Journal of the Polynesian Society.68(2): 115–140.ISSN0032-4000.JSTOR20703726.
  9. ^Albert, Donald Patrick (2021)."Teehuteatuaonoa aka 'Jenny', the most traveled woman on the Bounty: Chronicling female agency and island movements with Google Earth".Island Studies Journal.16:190–208.doi:10.24043/isj.153.S2CID234260181.
  10. ^abReynolds, Pauline."The forgotten women of the Bounty and their material heritage."Māori and Pacific Textile Symposium.2011.
  11. ^abReynolds, Pauline (2016-07-02)."Tapa Cloths and Beaters: Tradition, Innovation and the Agency of the Bounty Women in Shaping a New Culture on Pitcairn Island from 1790 to 1850".Textile History.47(2): 190–207.doi:10.1080/00404969.2016.1211435.ISSN0040-4969.S2CID163849896.
  12. ^McAleer, John; Rigby, Nigel (2017-01-01).Captain Cook and the Pacific: Art, Exploration and Empire.Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-20724-8.
  13. ^"Pitcairn Islands Study Center".Pacific Union College Library.2023-06-04. Archived fromthe originalon 2023-06-04.Retrieved2023-08-29.
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