Sent to Java to be a slave labourer, she fell ill on the way and, refusing to eat or take medicine, died on a ship in the Banda Sea.

She has also been honoured with two statues, one in Ambon and one in Abubu; other namesakes include a warship, street, Moluccan social organization, and women's magazine.

[4] However, in 1835-6, campaign leader Quirijn Maurits Rudolph Ver Huell published a memoir of his time as a colonial administrator which included an exaggerated account of Tiahahu, painting her with common colonialist tropes of the untamed Indian princess.

Ver Huell described Tiahahu as a "young and beautiful Indian [sic] girl" with "long, raven black hair ... hanging down completely, in wavy braids down her back" and says that she "had not only carried the weapons of her aging father, but had also participated as a warrior in the cakalele, or war dance, and had excelled in courage and bloodthirstiness.

"[5] In a 2018 monograph, Hans Straver observed that Ver Huell betrayed very basic misunderstandings of Pattimura's rebellion, including Pattimura's rank and Tiahahu's name, and shows no evidence of knowing any local language; he likely was repeating what he heard from other Dutch soldiers, further distorted by the loss of the original draft of his memoir in a shipwreck, which forced him to rewrite from memory.

Period Dutch diaries speak of Tiahahu's "wild appearance," but Ver Huell is the only source to claim she fought in battle.

[4][5] In the 1960s, Indonesia chose to make Tiahahu a National Heroine, principally to appropriate the Maluccan independence struggle as their own and delegitimize the resistance movement of the Republic of South Maluku.

[3] On that day, people in Maluku spread flower petals over the Banda Sea in an official ceremony honouring her struggle.

In Ambon, capital of the province of Maluku, an 8-metre (26 ft) tall statue of her holding a spear was erected in 1977; it stands in Karangpanjang overlooking the Banda Sea.