Maori - The Fish of Maaui
Polynesian legends attribute the creation of land to Maaui, the supreme angler who fished up the North Island of New Zealand. Long ago, perhaps 1000 years before the Christian era, on an island in the western Pacific, there lived a people who, because of their isolation, developed a physique, a culture, and a language which distinguished them from all others. Where they lived, these ancestral Polynesians, is not certain. Tonga is the likeliest homeland, but it might have been Samoa, or even Fiji.
There is no direct information about the appearance of these proto-Polynesians, no skeletal remains have been found which date that far back. But since their descendants today are physically similar, whichever island group they come from, it is certain these ancestors were like them - tall, brown-skinned, with wavy hair, dark eyes, and massive limbs ( sounds like Jonah Lomu!). A great deal is known about their culture, both from archaeological finds, and from the evidence of language. They were island-dwelling fishermen, and their familiarity with the sea was to lead them to discover and people hundreds of islands dotting millions of square miles of ocean surrounding their first homeland.
As fishermen they conceived the creation of their land, and of the islands they were to discover, as something fished from the sea. In almost every island group, from the Western Polynesian outliers in Melanesia, to Hawaii in the north and New Zealand in the south, the creation of the land was ascribed to the fishing prowess of the same super-man, Maaui-tikitiki, son of Taranga. Captain Cook has provided the first record of Maaui. In his journal for June 28, 1769, he says: "we proceeded further and met with a very extraordinary curiosity called Mahuwe... It was the figure of a man made in basket work 7 1/2 feet high and every other way large in proportion, the head was ornamented with four knobs resembling stumps of horns three stood in front and one behind."
Six months later and 3000 miles away Cook was to hear of Maaui again when he tried to get a name for the North Island from the Maoris of Queen Charlotte Sound. "Aehi no Mauwe" is Cook's spelling of what they said; "fished up by Maaui" - but Cook did not recognise the name of the hero whose image he had seen in Tahiti.
The early missionaries were to hear of Maaui, and record a little of his adventures. At first they thought that Maaui was a god, even the supreme god of Maori religion, but his real place in Maori myth was seen when gifted Maoris, using the techniques of writing taught them by the missionaries, wrote down at length the adventures of the greatest of the Polynesian heroes. The stories of these heroes, less than gods but more than men, superhuman but not immortal, form a large portion of the legends of any Polynesian island group...
There is no direct information about the appearance of these proto-Polynesians, no skeletal remains have been found which date that far back. But since their descendants today are physically similar, whichever island group they come from, it is certain these ancestors were like them - tall, brown-skinned, with wavy hair, dark eyes, and massive limbs ( sounds like Jonah Lomu!). A great deal is known about their culture, both from archaeological finds, and from the evidence of language. They were island-dwelling fishermen, and their familiarity with the sea was to lead them to discover and people hundreds of islands dotting millions of square miles of ocean surrounding their first homeland.
As fishermen they conceived the creation of their land, and of the islands they were to discover, as something fished from the sea. In almost every island group, from the Western Polynesian outliers in Melanesia, to Hawaii in the north and New Zealand in the south, the creation of the land was ascribed to the fishing prowess of the same super-man, Maaui-tikitiki, son of Taranga. Captain Cook has provided the first record of Maaui. In his journal for June 28, 1769, he says: "we proceeded further and met with a very extraordinary curiosity called Mahuwe... It was the figure of a man made in basket work 7 1/2 feet high and every other way large in proportion, the head was ornamented with four knobs resembling stumps of horns three stood in front and one behind."
Six months later and 3000 miles away Cook was to hear of Maaui again when he tried to get a name for the North Island from the Maoris of Queen Charlotte Sound. "Aehi no Mauwe" is Cook's spelling of what they said; "fished up by Maaui" - but Cook did not recognise the name of the hero whose image he had seen in Tahiti.
The early missionaries were to hear of Maaui, and record a little of his adventures. At first they thought that Maaui was a god, even the supreme god of Maori religion, but his real place in Maori myth was seen when gifted Maoris, using the techniques of writing taught them by the missionaries, wrote down at length the adventures of the greatest of the Polynesian heroes. The stories of these heroes, less than gods but more than men, superhuman but not immortal, form a large portion of the legends of any Polynesian island group...
posted by Robee Dobee at 9:50 PM
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