Teio
{{Short description|Original Pitcairn Island settler}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Teio
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date =
| birth_place = Tahiti
| death_date = {{death date |df=yes|1829|03|14}}
| death_place = Pitcairn Island
| other_names = Te'o, Mary, Sore Mummy
| occupation =
| parents =
| partner = {{blist|
| Tahitian man, before c. 1787 (father to Sully)
| Thomas McIntosh (consort of)
| William McCoy, d. 1798 (father to Daniel and Kate)
| John Adams (c. 1804–08, d. c. March 2, 1829, father to George)
}}
| spouse = {{marriage|John Adams|1825|1829|end=died}}
| children = 4
{{blist
| Sully/Sarah {{br}}(b. circa 1789, with Tahitian partner)
| Daniel {{br}}(b. circa 1792, with William)
| Kate {{br}}(b. circa 1799, with William)
| George Adams {{br}}(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.{{Cite journal |last=Albert |first=Donald Patrick |date=May 2021 |title=Teehuteatuaonoa aka 'Jenny', the most traveled woman on the Bounty: Chronicling female agency and island movements with Google Earth |url=https://islandstudiesjournal.org/files/ISJAlbertWomenBounty.pdf |journal=Island Studies Journal |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=190–208 |doi=10.24043/isj.153 |s2cid=234260181 |issn=1715-2593}}{{Cite book |last1=Mesenhöller |first1=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3wr5DAAAQBAJ |title=Made in Oceania: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Social and Cultural Meanings and Presentation of Oceanic Tapa |last2=Stauffer |first2=Annemarie |date=2016-11-14 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-4438-8772-4 |language=en}}
The Tahitian-born Teio's first connection to the Bounty crew was as the consort of Thomas McIntosh, who brought her to Tubuai.{{Cite web |title=Pitcairn Island Encyclopedia: TEIO ("Te'o," "Mary") |url=https://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/pitcairn/encyclopedia6.shtml |access-date=2023-02-28 |website=Pacific Union College Pitcairn Islands Study Center}}{{Cite web |title=Who Are the Pitcairners? |url=https://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/pitcairn/Pitcairners/index.shtml |access-date=2023-02-28 |website=Pacific Union College Pitcairn Islands Study Center}} McIntosh was a loyalist and did not join the mutineers, remaining in Tahiti. However, Teio sailed with the mutineers to Pitcairn in 1789, although it is unknown whether she went willingly or was brought by force. 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.{{Cite journal |last=Langdon |first=Robert |date=2000 |title='Dusky Damsels': Pitcairn Island's Neglected Matriarchs of the "Bounty" Saga |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25169464 |journal=The Journal of Pacific History |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=29–47 |doi=10.1080/713682826 |jstor=25169464 |pmid=18286752 |s2cid=38078038 |issn=0022-3344|url-access=subscription }}{{Citation |last=Laycock |first=Donald C. |title=Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties |chapter=The Status of Pitcairn-Norfolk: Creole, Dialect, or Cant? |date=2012-06-25 |chapter-url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110860252.608/html |pages=608–629 |publisher=De Gruyter |language=en |doi=10.1515/9783110860252.608 |isbn=978-3-11-086025-2 |access-date=2023-02-28}}
On Pitcairn, Teio partnered with William McCoy, with whom she had two children: Daniel, born in 1792, and Kate or Catherine, born in 1799.{{Cite book |last=Mühlhäusler |first=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lFk8EAAAQBAJ |title=Pitkern-Norf'k: The Language of Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island |date=2020-10-12 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |isbn=978-1-5015-0143-2 |language=en}} McCoy died by suicide in 1798, shortly before their daughter's birth. Teio remained on the island, and a little over a decade later she began a relationship with John Adams, whose consort Vahineatua had died.{{Cite book |last=Gough |first=Barry M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qgckDwAAQBAJ |title=To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of HMS Blossom, 1825–1828 |date=2017-05-15 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-01002-9 |language=en}} Teio and Adams, who were formally married by the visiting Frederick William Beechey in 1825, had one son, George Adams, in 1804.{{Cite book |last1=Nicolson |first1=Robert B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7P6HlYJwy0gC |title=The Pitcairners |last2=Davies |first2=Brian F. |date=1997 |publisher=University of Hawaiʹi Press |isbn=978-0-8248-1921-7 |language=en}}
Teio grew blind later in life, and she died in 1829, less than two weeks after her husband.{{Cite web |title=History of Pitcairn Island |url=https://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/pitcairn/history.shtml |access-date=2023-02-28 |website=Pacific Union College Pitcairn Islands Study Center}}{{Cite book |last=Ross |first=Alan Strode Campbell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G_UkAQAAMAAJ |title=The Pitcairnese Language |date=1964 |publisher=Oxford University Press |language=en}} Hers is one of very few marked graves on the island from this period.{{Cite web |last=Round |first=Sally |date=2016-08-25 |title=Mutineers' pigtails and bones under scrutiny |url=https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/311812/mutineers%27-pigtails-and-bones-under-scrutiny |access-date=2023-02-28 |website=RNZ |language=en-nz}}
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.