Mauatua

Mauatua, also Maimiti or Isabella Christian, also known as Mainmast, ( 1764 – 19 September 1841) was a Tahitian tapa maker, who settled on Pitcairn Island with the Bounty mutineers. She married both Fletcher Christian and Ned Young, and had children with both men. Fine white tapa, which was her specialty, is held in the collections of the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, amongst others. Biography While the date of Mauatua's birth is not historically recorded, in later life she claimed to have witnessed the arrival of James Cook in Tahiti in 1769. This information, combined with an estimate that she was 23 or 24 years old in 1788 when HMS Bounty arrived, suggests that she was born circa 1764. She was reputedly the daughter of a chief, or at least was born in a high social group. The suffix -atua means 'for god/gods' and indicates a position within nobility. Mauatua left Tahiti with Fletcher Christian and the mutineers; before they reached Pitcairn Island, they attempted to begin a new settlement at Tubuai. She was the oldest woman to travel with the mutineers, and became a matriarch of the new society that was ultimately founded by them on Pitcairn Island. She married Fletcher Christian, and they had two sons and a daughter. Their sons were Thursday October and Charles Christian; their daughter was called Mary Anne and she was born after her father was murdered on 20 September 1793. After Christian's death, Mauatua became the partner of Edward Young, with whom she had three children: Edward, Polly, and Dorothea. Along with the other Polynesian women, Mauatua brought the practice of beating tapa cloth to Pitcairn. They adapted the process to reflect the natural materials they had access to. During her lifetime, she gave tapa that she had made as gifts, including a bale of the cloth to Frances Heywood, wife of naval officer and mutineer, Peter Heywood. From surviving examples and contemporary observations, it appears that Mauatua specialised in making a fine white tapa.