Topic: Oceanic Mythology

[Prometheus]

IX. Oceanic, by R.B. Dixon. 1916.--   https://archive.org/details/mythologyofal09gray/page/n14

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES


Volume IX
OCEANIC






PLATE I


Image' of Kuila-moku, one of the Hawaiian patron
deities of medicine. Prayers and offerings were made
to him by the Kahunas, or shamans, when trying to cure
patients. Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts,



THE MYTHOLOGY
OF ALL RACES

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES
LOUIS HERBERT GRAY, A.M., PH.D., Editor

GEORGE FOOT MOORE^ A.M., D.D,, LL.D,, Consulting Editor


OCEANIC

BY

ROLAND B. DIXON, Ph.D.

PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY



VOLUME IX



BOSTON

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
M DCCCC XVI



Copyright, 1916
By Marshall Jones Company


Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London


All rights reserved

Printed September, 1916



Aco» , A

3;:k


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF' AMERICA BY THE TJNrVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY



AUTHOR’S PREFACE



r j the following pages we shall seek to present an outline of
the mythology of the Oceanic peoples. Although certain
aspects of the mythic system of this area, as well as the myths
of separate portions of it, have been treated by others, the
present writer does not know of any recent endeavour to gather
all available materials from the whole region, or to discuss the
relationship of the mythologies of the various portions of
Oceania to one another, and to the adj acent lands. The attempt
has been made to go over all the myths of worth which have
been published; but it is not impossible that valuable and im-
portant material has been overlooked. Some omissions, how-
ever, have been due to circumstances beyond control. A num-
ber of volumes containing material, probably of considerable
value, were not to be found in the' libraries of the United States,
and disturbances consequent upfen- the' European War have
made it impossible to secure them; while other gaps are due
to the author’s insufficient knowledge of Malay languages,
which prevented the use of some collections of tales, published
without translations.

The selection of the legends to be presented has offered con-
siderable difficulty, this being especially marked in the class of
what may be denominated, for convenience, miscellaneous
tales. No two persons would probably make the same choice,
but it is believed that those which are here given serve as a
fair sample of the various types and include those which are
of widest interest and distribution. In the majority of cases
the tales have been retold in our own words. For strictly
scientific purposes exact reproductions of the originals would,
of course, be required; but the general purpose of this series.


I



VI


AUTHOR’S PREFACE


and the limitations of space, have made this method impossi-
ble. References have in every case, however, been given; so
that those who wish to consult the fuller or original forms of
the tales can do so easily. These references, and all notes, have
been put into an Appendix at the end of the volume, thus
leaving the pages unencumbered for those who wish only to
get a general idea of the subject. The Bibliography has, with
few exceptions, been restricted to the titles of original pub-
lications; reprints and popular and semi-popular articles and
volumes have been omitted. Every care has been taken to
make the large number of references correct, though it is too
much to hope that errors have not crept in.

In the brief discussions at the end of each section, and again
at the end of the volume, we have sought to draw conclusions in
regard to the probable origin of some of the myths and to point
out the evidences of transmission and historical contact which
they show. Merely to present the tales without offering any
suggestions as to how they had come to be what they are and
where they are, seemed to fail of attaining the full purpose of
this series. No one is more conscious than the author that the
hypotheses offered will not meet with universal acceptance;
that they rest, in many cases, upon uncertain foundations;
and that, plausible as they may look today, they may be funda-
mentally modified by new material and further study. Should
this essay only serve to stimulate interest in this field, and lead
to greater activity in gathering new material while yet there
is time, he will be quite content.

ROLAND B. DIXON.

Harvard University, June I, 1916.



CONTENTS

PAGE

Autho3r.’s Preface v

Introduction xi

Part I. Polynesia i

Chapter I Myths of Origins and the Deluge 4

II The Maui Cycle \ , 41

III Miscellaneous Tales . 57

IV Summary 92

Part IL Melanesia loi

Chapter I Myths of Origins and the Deluge 105

II Culture Hero Tales 122

III Miscellaneous Tales 130

IV Summary 148

Part IIL Indonesia 151

Chapter I Myths of Origins and the Deluge 155

II Trickster Tales 186

III Miscellaneous Tales 206

IV Summary 240

Part IV. Micronesia 245

Chapter I Myths of Origins and the Deluge 248

II Miscellaneous Tales 258

III Summary 263

Part V. Australia 265

Chapter I Myths of Origins and the Deluge . 270

II Animal and Miscellaneous Tales . 288

III Summary . 301

Conclusion . . ...... . . . . . ... . .304

Notes . . ... . . ... 309

B.IBLIOGRAPHY' . " . . .. ' .. ; . ?" ^ .. .. ,. 345




ILLUSTRATIONS

FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE

I Image of Kuila-Moku, Hawaii — "PhLOtogtSiVViXt Frontispiece
II Wooden Figure of Tangaroa Upao Vahu, Austral Island 5

III Carved Club Head, Marquesas Islands 10

IV Wooden Figure of Taria-Nui, Rarotonga, Cook Islands 18

V Carved End of Wooden Staff, Cook Islands ..... 26

VI ^^Hei-Tiki,” Jadeite Amulet, New Zealand — Coloured 37

VII Carved Wooden Figure, New Zealand 48

VIII Carved Wooden Panel, Mythological Subjects, New

Zealand 58

IX Mythical Animal, Carved from Drift-Wood, Easter

Island 69

X Tapa Figure, Easter Island — Coloured 76

XI Monolithic Ancestral Image, Easter Island 88

XII Wood Carving, New Ireland — Coloured 105

XIII Mask from Elema, British New Guinea — Coloured . 117

XIV Ancestral Mask Made of a Skull, New Hebrides —

Coloured 125

XV Wooden Dance-Mask, New Ireland — Coloured . . . 138

XVI Wooden Ghost-Mask, Borneo — Coloured 158

XVII Image of Bugan, the Sister-Wife of Wigan, Philippine

Islands 171

XVIII Dyak Drawing on Bamboo, Borneo 183

XIX Ifugao Ancestral Image, Philippine Islands 199

XX Wooden Ancestral Image, Nias Island 220

XXI A. Native Carving Representing Mythological Sub-

jects, Pelew Islands 250

B. Native Carving Representing Mythological Sub-
jects, Pelew Islands. . . 250

XXII Aborigmal Drawing of Totemic Being, Australia . . . 271

XXIII Native Drawing of an Evil Spirit, called Auuenau,

? Australia . . . . . . . . '. . . 285



X ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE

XXIV Wurruna Spearing EmuSj Aboriginal Drawing, Aus-
tralia . 295

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

FIGURE PAGE

1 Native Drawing of a Sea-Spirit 135

2 Native Drawing of a ^^Dogaiy^^ or Female Bogey .... 142

3 Native Drawing of a ^^Bunyip^^ 280

MAP

FACING PAGE

Oceania . 364



INTRODUCTION


T he myths and tales in this volume have been gathered
from all parts of Oceania, and it may be wise, therefore,
at the outset to indicate just what area is included in our sur-
vey; to sketch very briefly the character of the peoples and
the environment in which they live; and to state the general
plan and purpose of the book.

The use of the term Oceania is, and has been, rather variable.
By some it is taken to include only the smaller islands of the
Pacific Ocean, comprised for the most part within the limits
of Polynesia and Micronesia, while others extend the applica-
tion of the term so as to include also Melanesia as well as the
whole group of the East Indies. In the present case it is this
latter usage which is followed, and the great island-continent
of Australia, together with its appendage of Tasmania, is fur-
ther added. Thus by Oceania will be meant all island areas,
great or small, from Easter Island to Sumatra and from
Hawaii to New Zealand.

This great region may, for our purposes, be conveniently
divided into five sections: (l) Polynesia, which may be roughly
defined as including all the islands lying east of the 180th me-
ridian, together with New Zealand; (2) Melanesia, comprising
the huge island of New Guinea, together with all the islands
and archipelagos extending therefrom to the east and south-
east as far as Fiji and New Caledonia; (3) Indonesia, which
includes all the islands often spoken of as the East Indies, and
extends from the Moluccas on the east to Sumatra on the west,
and from Java and Timor in the south to the northern ex-
tremity of the Philippines; (4) Micronesia, composed, as its
name implies, mainly of small islands, and occupying the area



INTRODUCTION


xii

north of Melanesia and east of the 130th meridian of east longi-
tude; and lastly (5), but by no means least in importance,
Australia, together with Tasmania.

As compared with all the other great divisions of the world,
Oceania is unique in that, if we exclude Australia (which, al-
though an island, is so enormous in size as to lose all insular
characteristics), it is composed wholly of islands. These vary
in size from mere reefs or islets, only a mile or so in diameter,
to great land masses, like New Zealand or Borneo, whose
areas are to be measured by hundreds of thousands of square
miles. Some are low coral atolls elevated only a few feet above
the surface of the sea; others are volcanic and mountainous,
their summits rising into the realms of perpetual snow. Al-
though the greater part of Oceania lies within the tropics and
has the usual features of tropical environment in the way of
climate, flora, and fauna, it extends here and there far into the
temperate zone, and the snowy New Zealand Alps, with their
huge glaciers, suggest Switzerland and Norway rather than
anything else. In New Guinea, Borneo, and (to a less degree)
in a few other islands the same great contrast in environment
is produced by elevation alone, and one may thus pass from
the barren peaks and snows of the highest ranges down through
all the intermediate stages to the hot tropical jungle and fever-
laden swamps of the coasts. Australia, in its vast expanses of
terrible deserts, again presents a striking contrast to the other
parts of the area, although one of a different sort.

The native peoples of the Oceanic area are almost as varied
as are its natural features and environment. Some, like the
recently discovered New Guinea pygmies or the now extinct
Tasmanians, serve as examples of the lowest stages known in
human culture. With their black skins, ugly faces, and short
woolly hair they are in striking contrast to the often little more
than brunette Polynesians, with their voluptuously beautiful
forms and faces and long, wavy hair, or to the lithe, keen-faced,
straight-haired Malay, both of whom attained to no mean



INTRODUCTION


Xlll


development on the material as well as on the Intellectual
side of their respective cultures.

The origiuj evolution, and affiliation of the various peoples
of Oceania is a problem whose complexity becomes more and
more apparent with increasing knowledge. While anthropol-
ogists are still far from satisfactorily explaining these matters,
it is patent to all that the ethnic history of the region involves
the recognition of a series of waves of migration from the west-
ward, each spreading itself more or less completely over its
predecessors, modifying them, and In turn modified by them,
until the result is a complex web, the unravelling of which leads
us inevitably back to the Asiatic mainland. It is obvious that,
while migrations on land are not necessarily conditioned by
the stage of culture of a people, in an island area, especially
where the islands are separated by wide stretches of ocean,
movement is Impossible, or at least very difficult, for peoples
who have attained only the rudiments of the art of seaman-
ship. A glance at the map will show that, so far as Indonesia,
much of Melanesia, and Australia are concerned, the diffi-
culties in the way of the migration of a primitive people are
far less than in the case of Micronesia and Polynesia. In the
former areas, indeed, some land masses now separated were In
comparatively recent times joined together, so that migrations
were then possible which now would be difficult for a people
without knowledge of any means of navigation; but to reach
the widely separated Islands farther out in the Pacific would
have been impossible to those unprovided with adequate
vessels and skill to use them. Thus we are forced to assume
that It was not until man had attained a considerably higher
development than that shown by the Tasmanians or Austra-
lians that these outlying and isolated parts of the Oceanic
area could have been inhabited. It is indeed probable that
they were, of all the occupied portions of the globe, the last
to be settled.

From what has been said it may be seen how fertile and



XIV


INTRODUCTION


fascinating a field Oceania presents to the student of anthro-
pology. In the following pages we are concerned, however, with
one aspect only of the whole complex of human culture, namely,
mythology. In order to make clear the differences between
the various portions of the area, each of the five subdivisions
will be considered by itself alone, and also in its relation to the
others, while, in conclusion, an attempt will be made to sum up
these results and to point out their wider bearings. Through-
out the purpose has been, not only to sketch the more im-
portant types of myths, but to draw attention to resemblances
and similarities between the myth-incidents of one area and
another. In the present state of our knowledge the conclu-
sions which are drawn are, it cannot be too strongly empha-
sized, only tentative — they must stand or fall according as
they are substantiated or disproved by further material, both
mythological and other.

A word may be said In regard to the method of treatment
and point of view here adopted. In indicating similarities
and suggesting possible relationships, individual incidents in
myths have been largely taken as the basis. The author is
well aware how easily such a method may lead to wild and im-
possible conclusions; the literature of mythology and folk-lore
affords only too many examples of such amazing discoveries;
but where caution is observed, and due regard is paid to known
or probable historical associations, the evidence to be derived
from a study of the distribution of myth-incidents is often re-
liable and corroborated by collateral information derived from
other fields. It should also be pointed out that in the follow-
ing pages we have endeavoured to present only the myths them-
selves, and have purposely refrained from all attempts at
rationalizing them or explaining this as a lunar, that as a solar,
myth. Such attempts are, we believe, almost wholly futile in
the present state of our knowledge of Oceanic mythology,
culture, and history. A dextrous imagination can evolve either
a lunar or a solar explanation for any myth, and one needs to



INTRODUCTION


XV


have but little personal experience with native peoples to
realize how hopeless it is for the civilized inquirer to predicate
what the symbolism of anything really is to the native mind.
The study of mythology has, in the last few years, also demon-
strated to what a degree all myths are in a state of flux, new
elements and incidents being borrowed and incorporated into
old tales and modified to accord with local beliefs and predis-
positions. Thus, what starts out, perhaps, as a solar incident
may come to be embodied in another myth of quite different
origin, and in so doing may wholly lose its former significance;
or an entire myth, originally accounting for one thing, may
become so modified by transmission that its first meaning
becomes lost.

Lastly, we may again point out that at present the available
material is still so imperfect that all conclusions must be ac-
cepted with reserve. Not only are there large areas from which
no data whatever have been collected (and even some from
which, owing either to the extinction of the population or their
greatly changed manner of life, none can ever be obtained),
but very little, comparatively, of what has been gathered has
been recorded in the language of the people themselves. Mis-
understandings, conscious or unconscious colouring of state-
ments to accord with preconceived ideas of what the people
ought to think, statements made by natives who obligingly tell
the investigator just what they think he wants to hear — these
and other sources of error must be eliminated so far as possible
before we can be sure of our ground. In spite of all this, how-
ever, it is worth while to take account of stock, as it were, and
to see, as well as we can, where we stand. By so doing we may
at least recognize the gaps in our knowledge and be spurred
on to try to fill them while yet there is time.




OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


PART I


POLYNESIA




OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


PART I

POLYNESIA

T hat portion of Oceania whose mytholog7 is both most
widely known and to which reference is most frequently
made is undoubtedly Polynesia. One of the chief reasons for
this lies in the character of the legends themselves, for they
are both pleasing and in many respects unusual. We may
well begin then with Polynesia in presenting an outline of
Oceanic mythology.

The people of these Happy Isles have, from the beginning,
been of great interest to anthropologists; but although much
has been learned regarding them, the problems of their origin
and ethnic history are still far from being settled. Most stu-
dents of the subject, however, are now agreed that in the
Polynesians we must see a somewhat complex blending of
several waves of immigration, bringing relatively fair-skinned
peoples from the Indonesian area (or perhaps from still far-
ther west) eastward through Melanesia into the Pacific. That
there have been at least two, and probably more, such great
waves, and that these have in varying degree mixed with the
dark-skinned people of Melanesia in transit, seems clear; but
whether other racial elements also enter into the question is
not yet certain. Although older and younger waves are prob-
ably represented in all the island-groups of Polynesia, the
oldest seems especially noticeable in two of the most outlying
portions of the whole region, i. e. New Zealand and Hawaii.
The detailed study of the spread of these waves can as yet
however be said only to have begun.

[Prometheus]

CHAPTER I

MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE

I N considering the mythology of these peoples it will be most
convenient to begin with the cosmogonic myths, for these
are not only in themselves very interesting, as presenting un-
usual features, but also show, in an unmistakable manner, the
composite character of the mythology as a whole. It is usual
to speak of the Polynesian origin-myths as if they formed a
substantially uniform system, to comment on their rather sur-
prisingly philosophic aspect, and to indulge in somewhat vague
theorizing in an attempt to explain conditions and the pecu-
liar resemblances to the myths of other parts of the world.
When, however, careful study and comparison of the avail-
able material are made, it is clear that the problem is by no
means as simple as it looks at first sight, and that we have
here one of the most interesting of all fields for mythologic
investigations.

Comparing the various myths and myth fragments in which
the cosmogonic ideas of the Polynesians have been preserved,
it appears that these may be separated quite easily into two
types: one (usually assumed to be the normal or only form) in
which we have what may be called a genealogical or evolu-
tionary development of the cosmos and the gods from an
original chaos; the other, in which there is a more or less defi-
nite act of creation by a deity or deities. To make clear the
differences between these two types and to define the problem
raised by the presence of these two contrasted sets of beliefs,
it will be advisable to consider the two groups of myths
separately.



PLATE II


Wooden figure of Tangaroa Upao Vahu^a sea-deicy,
represented in the act of creating other gods and men.
From a temple in Rurutu Island, Austral Group.
British Museum.








MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 5

The Genealogical or Evolutionary Type. — Omitting for the
moment such variations as exist between the versions current
in the different islands, the essential elements of this form of
the myth may be stated as follows. In the beginning there
was nothing but Po, a void or chaos, without light, heat,
or sound, without form or motion. Gradually vague stirrings
began within the darkness, meanings and whisperings arose,
and then at first, faint as early dawn, the light appeared and
grew until full day had come. Heat and moisture next de-
veloped, and from the interaction of these elements came sub-
stance and form, ever becoming more and more concrete, until
the solid earth and overarching sky took shape and were per-
sonified as Heaven Father and Earth Mother. At this point,
as a rule, the evolutionary sequence stops and all further
things, both natural phenomena and all the myriad gods, are
the offspring of bright Heaven by Earth or some other female
principle.

This conception of a self-evolving cosmos, of a universe de-
clared by some to be only the body or shell of a great primal
cause, is a most surprising one to find among a people upon
the plane of culture in which the Polynesians were living at
the time of their discovery. As an explanation of the riddle of
the universe, and as a philosophic system, it would seem far
more appropriate to early Greek or Hindu speculation; and
indeed, in the form which was preserved in Hawaii, we really
find an extraordinary echo of the doctrines of early Hellas
and India; while the resemblances to Scandinavian mythology
are also striking. Before attempting, however, to discuss the
origin of these beliefs in Polynesia, it will be necessary to con-
sider somewhat more in detail the varied forms which they
take in the different island groups within the Polynesian
area.

As pointed out above, ^ New Zealand presents us with what
is, in many respects, one of the oldest and simplest forms of
Polynesian culture, and we may, therefore, well begin a con-



6


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


sideration o£ the origin-myths by examining those found in
this extreme south-western corner of the Polynesian area.
From New Zealand a number of versions have been recorded,
the forms traditional among different tribes being often quite
variable. A comparatively brief account is given by the Nga-
i-tahu of the South Island. “Po begat Te-ao (light), who
begat Ao-marama (daylight), who begat Ao-tu-roa (long-stand-
ing light), who begat Kore-te-whiwhia (did not possess), who
begat Kore-te-rawea (was not pleased with), who begat Kore-
te-tamaua (was not held), who begat Kore-te-matua (without
parent), who begat Maku (damp). Maku took to wife Ma-
hora-nui-a-tea (great spreading out of light) and begat Raki
(Rangi).” After this Rangi, by various wives (whose origins
are seldom recorded), begat a great number of descendants,
many of them deities; and one of these spouses was originally
the wife of Tangaroa, the sea-god of whose provenance little
is said. Angered by her faithlessness, Tangaroa attacked
Rangi and wounded him in the thigh with a spear.^

It will be seen at once why the term “genealogical” has been
applied to this class of origin-myths, the successive stages in
the development of the cosmos being individualized and per-
sonified and each being regarded as the offspring of the next
preceding. A different, and in some ways more interesting,
version of creation recorded from the New Zealand region is
as follows:®


“TeKore . . . . .
Te Kore-tua-tahi .
Te Kore-tua-rua .
Te Kore-nui . . .
Te Kore-roa ...
Te Kore-para . .
Te Kore-whiwhia .
Te Kore-rawea . .
Te Kore-te-tamaua
TePo . . . . .

Te Poteki . . . .
Te Po-terea . . .


The Void

The First Void

The Second Void

The Vast Void

The Far-Extending Void

The Sere Void

The Unpossessing Void

The Delightful Void ^

The Void Fast Bound

The Night

The Hanging Night

The Drifting Night



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 7


Te Powhawha . . . . The Moaning Night
Hine-maki-moe . . . , The Daughter of Troubled Sleep

Te Po . The Night

TeAta . . , ... . The Dawn
Te Ao-tu-roa ..... The Abiding Day
Te Ao-marama .... The Bright Day
Whai-tua ...... Space.”


In Whai-tua two existences without shape were formed:
Maku (‘‘Moisture”), a male; and Mahora-nui-a-rangi (“Great
Expanse of Heaven”), a female; and from these sprang Rangi-
potiki (“The Heavens”), who took to wife Papa (“Earth”)
and begat the gods. The sequence here, leading from the orig-
inal undifferentiated void through various stages of darkness
and light to space, in which the parents of the bright sky took
form, illustrates at once the dual character of this type of
myth; for here we find both the idea of progressive develop-
ment and the individualization of the successive stages in this
evolution as a genealogic series.

One more example of this type may be given: ^

“ From the conception the increase
From the increase the swelling
From the swelling the thought
From the thought the remembrance
From the remembrance the consciousness, the desire.

The word became fruitful:

It dwelt with the feeble glimmering
It brought forth night;

The great night, the long night,

The lowest night, the loftiest night,

The thick night, the night to be felt,

The night touched, the night unseen.

The night following on,

The night ending in death.

From the nothing, the begetting,

From the nothing the increase
From the nothing the abundance,

The power of increasing, the living breath;

It dwelt with the empty space,

It produced the atmosphere which is above us.

The atmosphere which floats above the earth,



8


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


The great firmament above us,

The spreadout space dwelt with the early dawn,

Then the moon sprang forth;

The atmosphere above dwelt with the glowing sky.

Forthwith was produced the sun.

They were thrown up above as the chief eyes of Heaven :

Then the Heavens became light, the early dawn, the early day.
The mid-day. The blaze of day from the sky.

The sky which floats above the earth
Dwelt with Hawaiki.”

From these came various lands and gods.®

Apparently it has been generally assumed that this evolu-
tionary, genealogical myth was entirely typical of Maori myth-
ology; but in reality the matter is far from being so simple,
for the New Zealand beliefs appear to be somewhat confused
on the subject of the origin of Rangi and Papa. The version
just outlined ascribes to Rangi a long ancestry and develop-
ment, but other legends ^ allude to a primeval sea, out of which
the earth (Papa) grew, later to be taken to wife by Rangi,
the Sky Father. Other myths,® again, omit all reference to an
original chaos, and without attempting to account for Rangi
and Papa simply assume their existence, and then go on in
much detail to describe the birth of Rangi’s various progeny
by a series of wives, who are usually given as six.® By the
first, Poko-ha-rua-te-po (“Pit of the Breath of Night”), he
had as offspring Ha-nui-o-rangi (“Great Breath of Heaven”),
Ta-whiri-ma-tea (“Beckoned and Desired”), and a whole
series of winds, as well as rites and incantations, all personi-
fied. By the second, Papa-tu-a-nuku (“Flat, Resembling the
Earth”), he was the parent of Rehua, Tane, Paia, Tu, Rongo,
Ru, and a host of other minor deities. Now Papa-tu-a-nuku
was the wife of Tangaroa, but had deserted him, coming to
Rangi while Tangaroa was away. When the latter returned
and learned of his wife’s faithlessness, he attacked Rangi and
speared him in the thigh; and during the time that the Sky
Father was thus wounded, he begat another series of deities.



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 9

Rangi’s third wife was Heke-heke-i-papa (“Coming Down to
Earth”), by ‘whom he had many children, the most important
being Tama-nui-a-rangi (“Great Son of Heaven”). By his
fourth wife, Hotu-papa (“Sobbing Earth”), he was the father
of a host of children, for the most part of little note, though
Tu and Rongo again appear among them. The offspring of
the fifth and sixth wives were unimportant. Although Rang!
is thus said to have had various wives, a comparison of the
different accounts would seem to emphasize the pre-eminent
importance in the Maori mind of the Heaven Father and Earth
Mother pair; and, indeed, some versions^** do not seem to
recognize any other. This conception, familiar in classical
mythology and elsewhere, seems very characteristic of New
Zealand, and apparently reached a higher development there
than elsewhere in Polynesia. For the Sky Father an origin
from the primeval night or chaos is, as we have seen, some-
times asserted; but no explanation of the origin of the Earth
Mother is usually thought necessary. New Zealand thus ex-
hibits a type of cosmogony in which the evolutional element,
although sometimes well marked, is not invariably present; and
in which the belief in the Sky Father and the Earth Mother
seems especially strong. The general character of the variants
found in different versions suggests that these may be the
result of the blending of several sets of beliefs.

It is pretty well established that when New Zealand was
discovered, its inhabitants were composed of two main ele-
ments: first, the descendants of the great influx of the four-
teenth century, who formed the bulk of the population; and
second, some remnants of older immigrants more or less mixed
with the earliest dwellers found there by these original in-
vaders. Unfortunately, little attempt has been made to re-
cover the undoubtedly older mythology of these “ aborigines, ”
so that we have little evidence as to what their beliefs may
have been. Some light may be thrown on the question, how-
ever, by the fragments recovered from the Moriori of the



10


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Chatham Islands, “ which were colonized from New Zealand
before the coming of the historic immigration. Unhappily,
the actual cosmogonic myths recorded from the Moriori are
very brief, but, so far as they go they make little mention of
the evolutionary theme, ascribing the beginning of all things
to Rangi and Papa, of whose origin almost nothing is said.^®
We may, perhaps, regard this as a survival of the older New
Zealand belief, which would thus seem to have lacked the
evolutionary element, and we should thus be led tentatively
to assume that this latter and more philosophic feature repre-
sents a later development. ,

Leaving Maori mythology and turning to the other island
groups in Polynesia it is apparent that the cosmogonic myths
current in the Marquesas present striking analogies to some
of those in New Zealand. Here, again, in the beginning is the
primeval void in which “arises a swelling, a seething, a dark
surging, a whirling, a bubbling, and a swallowing — there
arises a whole series of supports or posts, the great and the
small, the long and the short, the crooked and the bent —
there arise innumerable and endless supports. They riot in
such contrasts and synonyms. There arises in particular the
foundation — the firmness — there arises space and light and
cliffs of various sorts.” The evolutionary or genealogical
character is here strongly emphasized, both in its extent and
intricacy, and the series of personified abstract qualities and
contrasts rivals, and even exceeds, the similar examples from
New Zealand. In comparison with New Zealand, accordingly,
there seems to be a much greater development of the evolu-
tional, or, as it might perhaps more accurately be termed, the
developmental, theme. The antecedents of the existing universe
comprise a bewildering series of abstract and partially per-
sonified, contrasted qualities; and there is an evident attempt
to carry these, on the one hand, backward to an original, nega-
tive void, and on the other, forward to an ultimate, primitive
substance. In other words, we have here more of a philo-




PLATE":lll.


„GIub from' the, Marquesas Islands*' ; ,The,;d
.of heads .and. faces -in' various combinations is : uiiques-'
tionably' ; symbolic, but ?; the .precise;';®

:;various figures . is unknown* ^. . Peabody . Mu,se.iim,:..Cani-.'

bridge, Massachusetts.














MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE ii


sophic system: in New Zealand the briefer developmental
series led only to the personified Sky Father; here it is the
origin of all substance and of solid matter itself which is sought.
Another version serves as a transition to the forms found
in the Society Group. According to this, Tanaoa and Mutuhei
Darkness^’' and Silence”) ruled supreme in the primeval
Po. In the course of time Atea Light”) evolved or separated
himself from Tanaoa, and drove him away; and after this,
Ono (^^Sound”) evolved himself from Atea and destroyed
Mutuhei. From these two struggles arose Atanua (‘^Dawn”),
whom Atea took to wife, and so begat a host of deities, besides
creating the heavens and the earth. This second version in-
troduces a new factor in the suggestion of a primeval deity,
Tangaroa. This feature is usually regarded as foreign to New
Zealand mythology,^^ yet in a recent and most important con-
tribution to our knowledge of Maori mythology there seems
to be a clearly expressed idea of a supreme, primeval deity, lo,
who was before all things, and who is in the ultimate analy-
sis the origin and creator of the universe and all the gods.^^

The versions given from the Society Islands accord with that
from the Marquesas in which Tanaoa ( = Tangaroa =Taaroa =
Kanaloa) is regarded as a deity existent from the beginning,
but carry this ascendancy of Tanaoa considerably further.
One text recounts the origin as follows:

“He existed. Taaroa was his name.

In the immensity

There was no earth, there was no sky,

There was no sea, there was no man.

Taaroa calls, but nothing answers.

Existing alone, he became the universe.

Taaroa is the root, the rocks (foundation).

Taaroa is the sands.

It is thus that he is named.

Taaroa is the light.

Taaroa is within.

Taaroa is the support.



IZ


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Taaroa is wise.

He erected the land of Hawaii,

Hawaii, the great and sacred,

As a body or shell for Taaroa.

The earth is moving.

0, Foundations, O, Rocks,

0, Sands, hither, hither,

Brought hither, pressed together the earth.

Press, press again.

They do not unite.

Stretch out the seven heavens, let ignorance cease.
Create the heavens, let darkness cease.


Let immobility cease.

Let the period of messengers cease.

It is the time of the speaker.

Completed the foundations,

Completed the rocks,

Completed the sands.

The heavens are enclosing,

The heavens are raised.

In the depths is finished the land of Hawaii.’’

A second version is interesting in comparison with this.
^^Taaroa (whose origin is not described) embraced a rock, the
imagined foundation of all things, which afterward brought
forth the earth and sea. . . . Soon after this, the heralds of
day, The dark and light blue sky, appeared before Taaroa, and
solicited a soul for his offspring — ^ the then inanimate universe.
The foundation of all replied, Ht is done,’ and directed his son,
the Sky-producer, to accomplish his will. In obedience to the
mandate of Taaroa, his son looked up into the heavens, and
the heavens received" the power of bringing forth new skies,
and clouds, sun, moon, and stars, thunder and lightning, rain
and wind. He then looked downwards, and the unformed mass
received the power to bring forth earth, mountains, rocks,
trees, herbs, and flowers, beasts, birds, and insects, fountains,
rivers, and fish. Rai-tubu, or Sky-producer, then looked to the
abyss, and Imparted to it the power to bring forth the purple
water, rocks and corals, and all the inhabitants of the ocean.”



MYTHS OF ORIGINS, AND THE DELUGE 13

It is obvioiis that we are now dealing with quite a different
aspect from that with which we started. Tangaroa is here a
sort of world soul; a self-evolving, self-existent, creative deity,
who alone is ultimately responsible for the origin of the universe.
The idea of a primeval, creative deity is, however, not wholly
absent from New Zealand, as is shown by the following:

dwelt within the breathing-space of immensity.

The Universe was in darkness, with water everywhere,

There was no glimmer of dawn, no clearness, no light.

And he began by saying these words, —

That He might cease remaining inactive:

/'Darkness! become a light-possessing darkness.^

And at once light appeared.

(He) then repeated those self-same words in this manner,

That He might cease remaining inactive:

‘Light! become a darkness-possessing light.’

And again an intense darkness supervened,

And a third time He spake, saying:

‘ Let there be one darkness above,

Let there be one darkness below (alternate),

Let there be a darkness unto Tupua,

Let there be a darkness unto Tawhito,

It is a darkness overcome and dispelled.

Let there be one light above,

Let there be one light below (alternate),

Let there be a light unto Tupua,

Let there be a light unto Tawhito,

A dominion of light,

A bright light.’

And now a great light prevailed.

(lo) then looked to the waters, which compassed him about,

And spake a fourth time, saying:

[Prometheus]

‘Ye waters of Tai-kama be ye separate
Heaven, be formed ’ Then the sky became suspended.
‘Bring-forth, thou, Tupua-horo-nuku.’

And at once the moving earth lay stretched abroad.”

The cosmogonic ideas of the inhabitants of the Cook or
Hervey Group are not clear. The form in which they are given
is quite divergent from that in other islands, but the account
really gives no true cosmogony, for it describes only the origin



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


14

of several deities. The universe, of whose beginning nothing
is said, is pictured as a hollow shell, in form like a beet, at the
lower extremit7 of which is “The Root of All Existence,”
above which comes “Breathing All Life” and the “Long-
Lived.” Next above, where the walls of the shell come to-
gether, is Vari-ma-te-takere (“The Very Beginning”), a female
deity who creates six other deities — Vatea (called Atea in
the Marquesas, and Wakea in Hawaii), Tinirau (“Innumer-
able”), Tango (“Support”), Tu-mute-anaoa (“Echo”), Raka
(“Trouble”), and Tu-metua (“Stick by the Parent”). Vatea,
whose abode was “The Thin Land,” espoused Papa (“Founda-
tion” or “Earth”), the daughter of Tima-te-kore (“Nothing
More”), and became the parent of the five great deities, Tang-
aroa, Rongo, Tonga-iti, Tangiia, and Tane. The account does
not harmonize well with any of the preceding beliefs, almost its
only point of contact being the union of Vatea (associated with
the light or bright sky) and Papa, and their consequent be-
getting of the gods. It seems very probable that the real cos-
mogonic myths of this group have not been recorded.

Summing up the material thus far presented, it may be said
that we have in New Zealand one form of cosmogonic myth
which indicates a belief in the origin, from an initial chaos,
of a Sky-God, Rangi, who, in conjunction with Papa (“The
Earth”) and other female powers, becomes the father of gods
and men. The accounts, as we have them, give the impres-
sion of being somewhat fragmentary, as well as composite,
and they represent, it may be suggested, the overlaying of an
older stratum by the type of origin-myth which was current
in the Cook and Society Groups in the fourteenth century — -
the time of the historic emigration from this portion of central
Polynesia which brought to New Zealand the ancestors of the
great bulk of the population found there at the period of its
discovery. This central Polynesian form of myth appears to
be strongly developed in the Marquesas also, though with some
modifications, notably in tracing the origin of Papa more


MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 15

definitely.^® Here, however, this type appears itself to be
strongly modified in some versions by still another class of
myth, that, namely, in which Tangaroa plays the part of a real
creator. In the Society Group this feature is still more pro-
nounced, and we have Tangaroa treated almost as a world soul,
a deity of whom the cosmos is only a manifestation.

One of the most curious and interesting of Polynesian cos-
mogonic myths is that found in Hawaii, which, although differ-
ing in several important particulars from those just outlined,
must yet be considered as belonging to the same general type.®*
In the very beginning, however, a striking variation occurs,
in that although we have the source of all things from chaos,
it is a chaos which is simply the wreck and ruin of an earlier
world. “And so, creation begins in the origin of a new world
from the shadowy reflex of one that is past. ...

“Unsteadily, as in dim moon-shimmer,

From out Makalii’s night-dark veil of cloud

Thrills, shadow-like, the prefiguration of the world to be.”®*

The drama of creation, according to the Hawaiian account,
is divided into a series of stages, and in the very first of these
life springs from the shadowy abyss and dark night. There is
here, however, no long series of antecedent, vaguely personi-
fied entities ranged in genealogical sequence, but the imme-
diate appearance of living things. At first the lowly zoophytes
and corals come into being, and these are followed by worms
and shellfish, each type being declared to conquer and destroy
its predecessor, a struggle for existence in which the strongest
survive. Parallel with this evolution of animal forms, plant
life begins on land and in the sea — at first with the algae, fol-
lowed by seaweeds and rushes.®® As type follows type, the accu-
mulating slime of their decay raises the land above the waters,
in which, as spectator of aU, swims the octopus, the lone sur-
vivor from an earlier world. In the next period Black Night
and Wide-Spread Night give birth to leafy plants and to in-
sects and birds, while in the darkness the first faint glimmering


i6


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


of day appears. The sea brings forth its higher forms, such as
the medusae, fishes, and whales; and in the dim twilight mon-
strous forms creep in the mud. Food plants come into exist-
ence while all nature is thrown into an uproar under the stress
of its birth-pains. The fifth period sees the emergence of swine
(the highest mammal known to the Hawaiian), and night be-
comes separated from day. In the sixth, mice appear on land,
and porpoises in the sea; the seventh period witnesses the
development of various abstract psychic qualities, later to be
embodied in man; while in the eighth, the turmoil and uproar
having subsided, from peace and quiet, fructified by the light,
which is now brilliant, woman is born, and also man, together
with some of the higher godst.

The principal difference between this conception — which
is truly remarkable for a savage people — and the myths pre-
viously outlined are fivefold : first, the derivation of the present
world from the wreck of an earlier; second, the omission of
much of the cosmic development, if it may so be called; third,
the ascription of the origins of life to the earliest period of
creation and the tracing of its evolution from lower to higher
forms; fourth, the suggestion, at least, of the building up of
the solid earth as due to the gradual accumulation of the
products of decay of the first life; and, lastly, the absence of
the Heaven Father and Earth Mother, figures which form so
characteristic a part of the New Zealand myths. In spite of
these divergencies, however, the fundamental idea of evolu-
tionary sequence, as opposed to creation, is clearly marked;
and here, as in the New Zealand myths, the gods are a product
of, or an emanation from, the universe, rather than the pre-
existent germ of all development. Nevertheless here, as in
other Polynesian groups, there were several conflicting ver-
sions of the origin-myth; and we find, among others, one in
which a triad of gods (not including Tangaroa, however) is
said to have “existed from and before chaos.” ^ The evolu-
tionary myth, moreover, which has been outlined above.


MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 17

itself shows indications of a complex origin; so that in Hawaii,
as elsewhere in Polynesia, there is evidence that the beliefs of
the people in regard to origins are far from presenting a uni-
form type.

The evolutionary motive has been shown to be well developed
both in New Zealand and in Hawaii as well as in the Mar-
quesas; but in the West it appears to survive only in more or
less fragmentary form, being largely overlaid and supplanted
by other themes. In Samoa one version of the origin-myth
begins with a genealogical series of rocks or cliffs,®® from which
at length arises the octopus, whose children are fire and water.
Between their descendants arises a mighty conflict, in which
water wins and the world is destroyed by a flood only to be re-
created by Tangaloa. This element of world-destruction and
re-creation suggests the Hawaiian myth already outlined, but
the evolutionary feature is here reduc^ to a mere fragment.
Another version,®® in giving the genealogy of the Malietoa,
or ruling chief, carries the ancestors back through a long series
of pairs of deities or natural phenomena to “The High Rocks”
and the “Earth Rocks,” as follows:


Male

Female

Progeny

high rocks

The earth rocks

The earth

The earth

High winds

Solid clouds

Solid clouds

Flying clouds

Confused winds
Quiet winds
Boisterous winds
Land beating winds
Dew of life

“Dew of Life

Clouds clinging to
the heavens

Clouds flying about

?Clouds flying about

Clear heavens

Shadow

Twilight

Daylight

Noonday

Afternoon

Sunset

Quiet winds

Beautiful clouds

Cloudless heavens

Cloudless heavens

Spread-out heavens

Tangaloa


IX— ,3



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


i8

In these forms we see very clearly the genealogical impulse
and the developmental idea, but here the primeval pair is
the solid rock rather than the formless chaos and silence of
Marquesan and New Zealand myths. Another version re-
calls more strongly the Hawaiian type, since it presents a succes-
sion of forms of vegetable life following each other as offspring
and parent, although the elaborateness and coherence of the
Hawaiian evolution of life forms is far from being equalled.
In the few fragments of the Tongan mythology which have
been preserved no trace of this evolutionary theme appears.

The Creative Type. — Turning to the second of the main
themes shown in the origin-myths, namely, that characterized
by belief in a more or less definite creation, notable differ-
ences in distribution are at once apparent. In outline the
legends of this class recount that in the beginning the gods
dwelt in an upper sky-world, below which there was nothing
but a wide-spread sea. Into this a deity cast a stone, which
ultimately became the world, where, after some of the heav-
enly beings had descended, mankind later appeared. For the
fullest versions of this myth we must turn to Samoa,*® on the
western verge of the Polynesian area, where, it will be remem-
bered, only fragments of the evolutionary theme still survive.
From the high heavens Tangaloa saw a stone floating in the
boundless sea beneath, and this he brought up to the skies,
where he shaped it into human form, inspired it with life, and
took it to wife.®^ She bore him a bird, which he sent down from
the sky-world, casting into the sea a great rock to serve it for
a home. After a while the bird returned to Tangaloa, complain-
ing of the shadeless character of the land, and so the god cast
down a vine which grew and gave shadow, but afterward Tan-
galoa in anger sent worms, which fed upon the vines and killed
them, and from the worms or maggots, developed from the
rotting vines, man was later made. In this and in other ver-
sions from Samoa there is, as a rule, little of an actual fashion-
ing or shaping of the world, although this element appears in







PLATE IV

P'igure of Taria-nui, ^‘Big-Ears,’’ a fishing god,
venerated by fishermen and prayed to for success,
Rarotonga, Cook Group. Peabody Museum, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts.



...



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 19

one or two cases.®® The important feature is the belief in a
pre-existing world of the gods above, whence something from
which the world is ultimately to be made is cast down into the
universal sea below; and a further element is the appearance
of the bird, who is the messenger or offspring of the sky-deity.
A similar version is (or was) current in Tonga.®® Tama-pouli-
alamafoa (“King of Heaven”), Tangaloa-eiki (“Celestial
Chief”), Tangaloa-tufuga (“Celestial Artisan”), and Tanga-
loa-atu-logo-logo (“Celestial Messenger”) dwelt in the heavens.
Tangaloa, the divine messenger, was ordered to descend to this
world to see if he could find any land, wherefore he departed
on a bird, and after flying about for a long time descried a sand-
bank on which the waves broke. Returning to the skies, he re-
ported that he could find no dry land, but the lords of heaven
said to him, “Wait for seven days, and then go back and look
again.” He did so and found the land already risen above the
waters. Bringing back tidings of his discovery, he was again in-
structed to wait and to look once more, for this dry land which
he had seen was indeed the earth. Tangaloa, the divine messen-
ger, then complained that there was no place below where he
could rest and was told to ask Tangaloa, the divine artificer, to
cast down chips and shavings from his work. This he did, and
the island of Eua arose. The divine messenger again descended
and lo, there was land which thus had fallen from the skies.
The lords of heaven now ordered him to go and live upon this
land, but when he had visited it he returned again to heaven
and said, “It is a great land that I have seen, but there is in
it no plant or tree.” Then the divine chief gave him a seed,
ordering him to plant it, and when he had done so, the seed
germinated and grew, and a great vine arose, spreading until
it covered all the land.

Outside of Samoa and Tonga this form of origin-myth
scarcely occurs, except in so far as one may perhaps detect an
echo of it in the statement that in the beginning there was
nothing but a wide-extending sea, on which a deity floated



20


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


or over which he flew. Thus, in the Society Group, a myth
fragment states:®^ “In the beginning there was only the god
Ihoiho.®® Afterward there was an expanse of waters that cov-
ered the abyss; and the god Timo-taata floated on the surface.”
Similarly, in the Marquesas we find it stated that “In the
beginning there was only the sea, on which Tiki, a deity ex-
isting from the first, floated in a canoe, and afterward fished
up the land from the bottom of the ocean.” These-suggest the
Samoan versions,^® according to which Tangaroa, in the be-
ginning, flew far and wide over the boundless waters, seeking
a place to rest. The theme is, perhaps, still more clearly recog-
nizable in another version from the Society Group, accord-
ing to which Taaroa existed alone in the heavens, where he
created his daughter with whom, on the foundation of a rock
in the sea, he made the earth, the sky, and the sea. Tongan
mythology also refers to the primeval sea and to the realm of
the gods far away, whence Maui sails to fish up the land of
Tonga.'*® This latter episode seems to represent a different
element almost throughout Polynesia and probably should
not be regarded as belonging to this theme.*®

Still another origin-myth, which is particularly interesting
because of its similarities, is that of the cosmic egg. A frag-
ment of a myth from the Society Group ** states, “ In the be-
ginning, Taaroa existed in an egg, in darkness, from which he
later burst forth.” In Hawaii another version appears, ac-
cording to which a bird laid an egg upon the primeval waters,
and this afterward burst of itself and produced the world.*®
A somewhat similar tale has been reported from New Zealand
also,*® according to which a great bird flew over the primeval
sea and dropped into it an egg, which burst after floating for
some time. An old man and an old woman emerged with a
canoe, and after they had entered it — together with a boy
and a girl, one carrying a dog, the other a pig — it drifted to
land in New Zealand. The resemblance shown to Hindu cos-
mogonic ideas is not a little striking, and leads to possible con-


MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE zi


elusions of importance regarding the period of Polynesian
migrations, since, if this similarity be regarded as too great to
be explained otherwise than by actual transmission, we should
have evidence that the last wave of Polynesian immigrants
must have left the Indonesian area at least as late as the first
or second century a. d., by which time Indian civilization had
become established in Java. Such a migration, coming into
central Polynesia, might have brought this, together with other
elements, which later were distributed north to Hawaii and
south to New Zealand before the period of wide contact came
to an end in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries.

The simple statement that the heavens and the earth, sun,
moon, plants, and animals were all made or created by some
deity is found in one form or other in every Polynesian group,
and while such a declaration is not so significant as the more
detailed forms, yet it serves to indicate a distinctly different
conception from what has been called the “evolutionary”
theme.

From the materials at present available it would appear
that we may with reasonable certainty draw the conclusion
that the cosmogonic myths of the Polynesian people are based
on at least two themes, one of which may be called the evolu-
tionary or genealogical, and the other the creative. The rela-
tive importance and geographic distribution of these two con-
trasted themes have, moreover, been shown to differ in that
the former seems best developed in New Zealand and Hawaii
and is largely modified or overlaid by the second in central
and western Polynesia. This latter, although it is found almost
everywhere in its simple contrast of creation as opposed to
evolution, presents an altogether special form in Samoa, and
perhaps also in the Marquesas and Society Groups. The
evolutionary or genealogical element in Polynesian legends
has always attracted attention, and to a certain extent the
inborn interest in genealogy shown by all Polynesians is prob-
ably responsible for the growth of this side of the mythology.



22


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Everywhere chiefs, as well as common people, preserved lists
of their ancestors extending back for many generations, and
in the case of the chiefs a divine descent was claimed. To a
people so infused with this genealogical habit the ascription
of an ancestry not only to the gods, but to the world and to
all natural phenomena, was not an illogical step. Other factors,
however, also entered into the problem, for from the char-
acter of most of these primitive ancestral pairs it is clear that
the Polynesian mind had -something of a philosophic turn,
and that it groped about for a’real cause or beginning, seeking
to derive the concrete and tangible from the abstract and in-
tangible.

[Prometheus]

It has been most ingeniously suggested that the peculiar
environment of the Polynesians had much to do with the de-
velopment of their special type of cosmogony. Living, as they
did, isolated on small islands in the midst of a wide-reaching
expanse of ocean — with the contrast between the immobility
and changelessness of their little lands and the ever-moving,
ever-changing sea always before them — it would not be sur-
prising if they were led to try to account for this stability in
the midst of universal flux on some such basis as that which
we actually find. On that theory it is evident that this type
of cosmogonic myth would be said to be a strictly local product
of the environment in which the Polynesians dwelt; but, on
the other hand, there is not a little evidence that the germs,
at least, of this type were present among the original immi-
grants. Theoretically, a quite different solution of the problem
might be proposed, based on real or fancied resemblance to
Hindu speculation. On this basis it might be argued, as pre-
viously in regard to the cosmic egg, that the last immigrant
groups to reach Polynesia from the West did not leave the In-
donesian region until after this had been influenced by Indian
culture, already strong in south-eastern Asia at the beginning
of our era; and although this theory meets with several serious
difficulties, it must, nevertheless, be taken into consideration.


MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 23

Further discussion of the question of possible Indian influence
in Polynesia may, however, best be reserved for the final esti-
mate of Oceanic mythology as a whole. Critical considera-
tion and comparison of the creation theme must also be left
until the Indonesian myths have been discussed, for this type,
especially in the particular form in which it appears in Samoa
and Tonga, is widely distributed in the more westerly area —
a region in which, moreover, the proximate origin of the Poly-
nesian peoples must be sought.

The myths thus far considered have been those which were
concerned only with the source of the world; we have now to
deal with those which describe the origin of man. As before,
we may recognize more than one type of myth. There is, first,
the form according to which the ancestors of mankind were
directly created by one or other of the deities. A second type
is that where the first human being, a woman, was thus immedi-
ately created by a deity and subsequently taken to wife by him,
so that man, as his descendant, is thus in origin half divine.
Related to this is a third form, where man is said to be the
direct offspring of the deities, and so wholly divine. Lastly,
we have the types in which human beings are thought to be
the result of a sort of evolutionary process, developing from
worms, which are shaped and moulded into human form.

Maori mythology offers examples of the type which as-
cribes the origin of man to direct creation. According to one
version,'*® Tane desired to make man, so he formed a model of
earth. “The arms stood forth, and the head, and the feet, and
the thighs, and the whole body; and all were fashioned to
the design he had formed in his mind — made to resemble the
body of man. He patted it with bis hands into form from the
soil of Hawaiki. When he had completed it, he raised it up
and stood it erect . . . Tiki or Tiki-au-a-ha was the name Tane
gave to the form he made of the earth, which was the first in-
habitant of the world.” Tane next meditated how he could
make a woman who should be a companion to Tiki-au-a-ha,



24


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


so he again modelled the soil of Hawaiki and prayed, and lo-
wahine was produced. Then he ordered her to live with Tiki
as his wife, and by them all the world was peopled.®® Accord-
ing to other versions, however, it was Tiki himself who, as a
deity, made the first man of red clay or of clay mixed with his
own blood.®^

In Hawaii we also find the myth of the direct creation of
man. Here it was said that the three great gods, Kane, Ku,
and Lono, formed man of red earth and the spittle of the gods,
shaping him in the likeness of Kane; and having made the
image, they breathed Into it, calling on it to rise, and It became
alive. The ensuing episode of the creation of the first woman
from one of the man’s ribs is clearly the result of missionary
contact. A similar tale is given from Tahiti,®® where, however,
Taaroa is the creative deity.

The second type of myth, that, namely, which recounts the
creation of a female human being and her marriage to her crea-
tor, is found in numerous versions. One from New Zealand runs
thus:®* “Some time after this Tane desired to have his mother
Papa for his wife. But Papa said, ‘Do not turn your inclination
towards me, for evil will come to you. Go to your ancestor Mu-
muhango.’ So Tane took Mumuhango to wife, who brought
forth the totara-trce. Tane returned to his mother dissatisfied,
and his mother said, ‘Go to your ancestor Hine-tu-a-maunga
(=the mountain maid).’ So Tane took HIne-tu-a-maunga to
wife, who conceived, but did not bring forth a child. Her off-
spring was the rusty water of mountains, and the monster rep-
tiles common to mountains. Tane was displeased, and returned
to his mother. Papa said to him, ‘Go to your ancestor Ranga-
hore.’ So Tane went, and took that female for a wife, who
brought forth stone. This greatly displeased Tane, who again
went back to Papa. Then Papa said, ‘Go to your ancestor
Ngaore (=:the tender one).’ Tane took Ngaore to wife. And
Ngaore gave birth to the toetoe (a species of rush-like grass).
Tane returned to his mother in displeasure. She next advised



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 25

him, ‘Go to your ancestor Pakoti.’ Tane did as he was bid,
but Pakoti only brought forth harekeke {=Phormium tenax).
Tane had a great many other wives at his mother’s bidding,
but none of them pleased him, and his heart was greatly
troubled, because no child was bofn to give birth to Man; so
he thus addressed his mother — ‘Old lady, there will never be
any progeny for me.’ Thereupon Papa said, ‘Go to your an-
cestor, Ocean, who is grumbling there in the distance. When
you reach the beach at Kura-waka, gather up the earth in the
form of man.’ So Tane went and scraped up the earth at Kura-
waka. He gathered up the earth, the body was formed, and
then the head, and the arms; then he joined on the legs, and
patted down the surface of the belly, so as to give the form of
man; and when he had done this, he returned to his mother,
and said, ‘The whole body of the man is finished.’ . . . Then
he named this female form Hine-ahu-one (= the earth formed
maid).”

Tane took Hine-ahu-one to wife. She first gave birth to Tiki-
tohua — the egg of a bird from which have sprung all the birds
of the air. After that, Tiki-kapakapa was born — a female.
Then first was born for Tane a human child.

From another of the Maori tribes a briefer form is given.®®
Tane took a tree to wife, but his offspring were trees, not
men. He went, therefore, and took mud, and mixing it with
sand upon the beach of Hawaiki, he made a figure of a woman
from it. When he had formed her, he laid her down, covered
her with garments, breathed into her mouth and left her; but
after a while he returned, and found her moving and shaking
and gazing on this side and Jon that to observe all that she
could see. Looking behind her, she beheld Tane and laughed,
so he put out his hand and took her, and made her his wife.®®
A similar tale is found in the Society Group, ®’^ according to
which Tii made a woman from the earth at Ati-auru and dwelt
with her, thus becoming the parent of a daughter, from whom
and Tii-maaraatai all men are descended. Some form of this



26


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


story seems also to have been current in the Marquesas,®® where
again it is Tiki who thus creates a wife for himself from the
sands of the shore.

A belief in the direct descent of man from the gods seems
not to be so clearly or explicitly stated in the Maori myths,
although references to this type do occur.®® In the Cook
Group,®® three sons of Rongo are said to be the ancestors of all
the peoples of Mangaia, though we are not told of the divine
origin of their wives. The Marquesans ®^ appear also to have
had a similar belief, since mankind was derived from Tii-tapu
(the son of Tii, who was a descendant of Atea and Atanua)
and Hina-ua.

Legends of this sort were current in Hawaii as well.®® In the
long cosmogonic myth or chant already mentioned in speaking
of the evolutionary type of creation-myths in Hawaii, man-
kind, like the greater gods themselves, is the direct offspring of
the Bright Light and Pleasant Quiet,®® for the female being of
cosmic origin thus engendered is the parent both of gods and
of Kii (= Tii = Tiki), the ancestor of all men by incestuous union
with his mother. Another version ®^ of what is apparently the
same myth states that La’i-la’i, the first female being, was be-
gotten of Po or Chaos. “The King who Opens the Heavens ”
(evidently a sky-deity), looking down, beheld her, and de-
scending, took her to wife, and from these two all men are
derived.®®

The most detailed form of the myth is, however, that from
T ahiti.®® Hina, the daughter-wife of Taaroa said to him, “ ‘ What
shall be done, how shall man be obtained? Behold, classed
or fixed are the gods of the po, or state of night, and there
are no men.’ Taaroa . . . answered, ‘Go on the shore to the
interior, to your brother.’ Hina answered, T have been inland,
and he is not.’ Taaroa then said, ‘Go to the sea, perhaps he
is on the sea; or if on the land, he will be on the land.’ . . . When
the goddess had departed, Taaroa ruminated within himself as
to the means by which man should be formed, and went to the




PLATE V


Carved end of a long staff, once wrapped in a great
roll oi tapa^ or bark-cloth, and representing one of the
great gods in the island of Rarotonga, Cook Group.
It is probable that the deity is Rongo and his three
sons. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.





MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 27

land, where he assumed the appearance and substance which
should constitute man. Hina, returning from her unsuccessful
search . . • met him, but not knowing him said, ‘Who are
you ? ’ ‘ I am Tii-maaraatai,’ he replied. ‘ Where have you been ? ’
said the goddess. ‘I have sought you here, and you were not;
I went to the sea to look for Tii-maaraatai, and he was not.’
‘I have been here in my house, . . . ’answered Tii-maaraatai,
‘and, behold you have arrived, my sister, come to me.’ Hina
said, ‘So it is you who are my brother; let us live together.’
They became man and wife, and the son that Hina afterward
bore they called Tii. He was the first-born of mankind.”

A comparison of these various myths of the origin of man-
kind shows the presence of no little confusion. Tiki or Tii is
at once the first man, and the creator or. progenitor of man;
other myths do not speak of the first woman made by Tane
as human, but as a deity, whose descendant, Hine-nui-a-te-po,
becomes the guardian and goddess of the underworld; and
many or most of the characters in the myths are nothing more
than thinly disguised personifications of natural phenomena.
All this obviously implies a confusion of the human and the
divine — theories of actual creation, influenced by the deep-
seated desire to trace ancestry back to a divine source.

A transition to the last type of myths explaining the origin
of the human race is afforded, in some senses, by a legend from
New Zealand which apparently ascribes an independent
origin to man. According to this,®’^ “ an aquatic plant growing
in swamps was the male procreating power which engendered
the red clay seen in landslips, whence came the first man.
This man was discovered by one of the gods before light had
dawned on this world. ”

“Seeking, earnestly seeking in the gloom.

Searching — yes, on the coastline —

On the bounds of light of day.

Looking into night
Night had conceived
The seed of night.



28


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


The hearts the foundation of nighty
Had stood forth self-existing
Even in the gloom.

It grows in gloom —

The sap and succulent parts.

The life pulsating,

And the cup of life.

The shadows screen
The faintest gleam of light.

The procreating power,

The ecstasy of life first known,

And joy of issuing forth,

From silence into sound.

Thus the progeny
Of the Great extending
Filled the heaven’s expanse;

The chorus of life
Rose and swelled
Into ecstasy,

Then rested in

Bliss of calm and quiet.”

Inasmuch as the ^^man” thus discovered was the grand-
father of him who separated heaven and earth, it is obvious
that here again we have a confusion of terms, and that this
man was not regarded as an ordinary human being in any
sense, for his exploits are those of gods — exploits, indeed,
expressly attributed to Tane and other deities in variant myths.

In the comparison of the legends of the origin of the world
it has been seen that Samoa presented special features, and in
its most generally received version of the provenance of man
it shows a similar individuality and oflFers the best form of the
last of the types of myths relating to human origins. Accord-
ing to the Samoan tale, after Tangaroa had created the world
by casting down a rock from heaven and had sent earth and
creeping plants to cover it and give it shade, these vines died
or were killed, and from the worms which killed them or into
which their rotting stalks were changed man either developed
or was made.®®

^^The earliest traditions of the Samoans describe a time when



MYTHS GF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 29

the heavens alone were inhabited, and the earth covered over
with water. Tangaloa, the great Polynesian Jupiter, then sent
down his daughter in the form of a bird called the turi (a snipe),
to search for a resting-place. After flying about for a long time,
she found a rock partially above the surface of the water. . . .
Turi went up and told her father that she had found but one
spot on which she could rest. Tangaloa sent her down again to
visit the place. She went to and fro repeatedly, and every time
she went up reported that the dry surface was extending on
all sides. He then sent her down with some earth and a creep-
ing plant, as all was barren rock. She continued to visit the
earth and return to the skies. Next visit, the plant was spread-
ing. Next time, it was withered and decomposing. Next visit,
it swarmed with worms. And the next time, the worms had
become men and women!’’

It should be noted that, according to one of these versions,
when man was first made or evolved from the worms, he was
^Tormless,” the meaning apparently being that he did not
yet have human shape. Outside of Samoa this myth does not
occur in just this form, but in Tonga we find a tale describ-
ing the origin of man from worms scratched out of the sand
by the sandpiper and left to rot in the sun. It was this bird
which was the daughter of Taaroa in the Samoan myths, and
which, in one version, brought to Taaroa the worms developed
from the rotting vines that he might make them into man.
Elsewhere in Polynesia we find little trace of this story, unless
the fact that in the Society Group the first men were said
to have been originally like a ball, their legs and arms being
afterward pulled out, may be taken as comparable to the
Samoan idea of an originally formless being.^^ We shall see
later that this conception of an amorphous being, afterward
becoming human in shape, was also characteristic in parts of
Indonesia and Australia.

Reference must be made to one other myth of the origin of
mankind which, like the last, is confined to narrow limits,



30


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


but whose affiliations run in quite a different direction. In the
Chatham Islands (whose population, it will be remembered,
represents largely a pre-Maori people) a myth has been re-
corded which states that man originated miraculously from
a clot of blood placed by two deities in a hollow tree. Else-
where in Polynesia mankind is not ascribed to such a prove-
nance, but in Samoa ” it is given in several myths as the mode
of origin of minor deities. It is, however, a wide-spread myth
of the source of mankind or of individual human beings in
various parts of Melanesia and would thus seem to suggest
an early Melanesian element in western Polynesia and the
Chatham Islands. An origin-myth of a still different sort is
that found in the little island of Nieue, which lies between
Tonga and the Cook Group, according to which the first man
was born from a tree; and perhaps a trace of this same idea
may be seen in the New Zealand myth ” of Tane marrying a
tree which gave birth to living beings and minor deities.

In discussing the legends relating to the origin of the world
it has already been pointed out that analysis reveals com-
plexity, and that comparison suggests relationship beyond
the limits of Polynesia. It is equally clear that in the accounts
given of the origin of man there is an equally complex series
with similar suggestions of affiliation far afield. This diversity
in type within the Polynesian area, and the wide ramification
of similarities in the areas lying farther 'vyest, will, as we pro-
ceed, be found to be no less characteristic of almost all portions
of Polynesian mythology.

In a previous section it has been shown how, among the
Maori, an evolutionary or genealogical type of cosmogonic
myth led up to the conception of a Sky Father and Earth
Mother who were the parents of a great group of deities and
even (in some versions) of man himself. We must follow this
concept onward and trace the further experiences of the divine
pair. According to the New Zealand belief, Rangi, the Sky
Father, felt love for Papa-tu-a-nuku (“The Earth”) , who lay be-

[Prometheus]

MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 31

neath him, so he came down to Papa. At that time “absolute
and complete darkness prevailed; there was no sun, no moon,
no stars, no clouds, no light, no mist — no ripples stirred the
surface of ocean; no breath of air, a complete and absolute
stillness.” And Rangi set plants and trees to cover the naked-
ness of Papa, for her body was bare, placing insects of all
kinds appropriate to the various sorts of vegetation, and giv-
ing their stations to the shellfish and the crabs and various
sorts of living things. Then Rangi clave unto Papa, the Earth
Mother, and held her close in his embrace, and as he lay thus
prone upon Papa, all his offspring of gods which were born to
him, both great and small,^® were prisoned beneath his mighty
form and lived cramped and herded together in darkness.
“Because Rangi-nui over-laid and completely covered Papa-
tua-nuku, the growth of all things could not mature, nor
could anything bear fruit; . . . they were in an unstable condi-
tion, floating about the Ao-pouri [the world of darkness], and
this was their appearance : some were crawling, . . . some were
upright with arms held up, . . . some lying on their sides, . . .
some on their backs, some were stooping, some with their
heads bent down, some with legs drawn up, . . . some kneel-
ing, ... some feeling about in the dark, ... they were all
within the embrace of Rangi and Papa.” So for a long time
the gods dwelt in darkness, but at last the desire came to them
to better their condition, and for this purpose they planned to
lift Rangi on high. The version of this myth of the raising of
the sky, given by Sir George Grey,®^ is one of the classics of
Polynesian mythology, and deserves to be quoted almost in
full.

“Darkness then rested upon the heaven and upon the
earth, and they still both clave together, for they had not yet
been rent apart; and the children they had begotten were ever
thinking amongst themselves what might be the difference
between darkness and light; they knew that beings had multi-
plied and increased, and yet light had never broken upon them.



32


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


but it ever continued dark. ... At last the beings who had
been begotten by Heaven and Earth, worn out by the con-
tinued darkness, consulted among themselves, saying, ‘Let us
now determine what we should do with Rangi and Papa,
whether it would be better to slay them or to rend them apart.’
Then spake Tu-matauenga, the fiercest of the children of
Heaven and Earth, ‘It is well, let us slay them.’

“Then spake Tane-mahuta, the father of forests and of all
things that inhabit them, or that are constructed from trees,
‘Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let the
heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet.
Let the sky become a stranger to us, but the earth remain
close to us as our nursing mother.’

“The brothers all consented to this proposal, with the ex-
ception of Tawhiri-ma-tea, the father of winds and storms,
and he, fearing that his kingdom was about to be overthrown,
grieved greatly at the thought of his parents being torn apart.
Five of the brothers willingly consented to the separation of
their parents, but one of them would not agree to it. . . .

But at length their plans having been agreed on, lo, Rongo-
ma-tane, the god and father of the cultivated food of man, rises
up, that he may rend apart the heavens and the earth; he strug-
gles, but he rends them not apart. Lo, next Tangaroa, the god
and father of fish and reptiles rises up, that he may rend apart
the heavens and the earth, but he rends them not apart. Lo,
next Haumia-tikitiki, the god and father of the food of man
which springs up without cultivation, rises up and struggles,
but inefi'ectually. Lo, then, Tu-matauenga, the god and
father of fierce human beings, rises up and struggles, but he,
too, fails in his efforts. Then, at last, slowly uprises Tane-
mahuta, the god and father of forests, of birds, and of insects,
and he struggles with his parents; in vain he strives to rend
them apart with his hands and arms. Lo, he pauses; his head
is now firmly planted on his mother the earth, his feet he raises
up and rests against his father the skies, he strains his back and



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 33

limbs with mighty effort. Now are rent apart Rangi and Papa,
and with cries and groans o£ wo they shriek aloud, ‘ Where-
fore slay you thus your parents? Why commit you so dread-
ful a crime as to slay us, as to rend your parents apart?’ But
Tane-mahuta pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and
cries; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far
above him, he thrusts up the sky. ...

Up to this time, the vast Heaven has still ever remained
separated from his spouse the Earth. Yet their mutual love
still continues — the soft warm sighs of her loving bosom still
ever rise up to him, ascending from the woody mountains and
valleys, and men call these mists; and the vast Heaven, as he
mourns through the long nights his separation from his be-
loved, drops frequent tears upon her bosom, and men seeing
these, term them dewdrops.”

Another Maori version introduces several other elements.
“Raki, though speared by Takaroa, still adhered to the top
of Papa; and Raki said to Tane and his younger brothers,
‘Come and kill me, that men may live.’ Tane said, ‘0 old
man! how shall we kill you?’ Raki said, ‘0 young man! lift
me up above, that I may stand separate; that your mother
may lie apart from me, that light may grow on you all.’ Then
Tane said to Raki, ‘O old man! Rehua shall carry you.’ Raki
answered Tane and his younger brothers, ‘O young men! do
not let me be carried by your elder brothers only, lest my eyes
become dim. Rather all of you carry me above, that I may
be elevated, that light may dawn on you.’ Tane said to him,
‘Yes, 0 old man! your plan is right — that light may grow
into day.’ Raki said to Tane, ‘It is right, O Tane! that I be
taken and killed (separated from my wife), that I may be-
come a teacher to you and your younger brothers, and show
you how to kill. If I die, then will light and day be in the
world.’ Tane was pleased with the reasons why his father
wished them to kill him; and hence Tane said to another branch
of the offspring of Raki . , . ‘Tread on Papa, tread her down;

IX — 4


34


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


and prop up Raid, lift him up above , . . that the eyes of Raki,
who is standing here, may be satisfied.’ . . . Now, this was the
origin of the heaven. It was made by Tane and admired by
him, and he uttered the words of his prayer to aid Rehua to
carry their father above. . . . Tane now took Raki on his back;
but he could put Raki no higher. Raki said to Tane, ‘You too,
you and your younger brother (Paia) carry me.’ Then Paia
prayed his prayer, and said:

‘Carry Raki on the back.

Carry Papa.

Strengthen, O big back of Paia,

Sprained with the leap at Hua-rau.’

Now, Raki was raised with the aid of this prayer, and spoke
words of poroporoaki (farewell) to Papa, and said, ‘O Papa! O!
you remain here. This will be the (token) of my love to you ;
in the eighth month I will weep for you.’ Hence the origin of
the dew, this being the tears of Raki weeping for Papa. Raki
again said to Papa, ‘0 old woman! live where you are. In
winter I will sigh for you.’ This is the origin of ice. Then
Papa spoke words of farewell to Raki, and said, ‘0 old man!
go, 0 Raki ! and in summer I also will lament for you.’ Hence
the origin of mist, or the love of Papa for Raki.

“When the two had ended their words of farewell, Paia up-
lifted Raki, and Tane placed his toko (pole) . . . between
Papa and Raki. Paia did likewise with his toko. . . . Then
Raki floated upwards, and a shout of approval was uttered
by those up above, who said, ‘0 Tu of the long face, lift up
the mountain.’ Such were the words shouted by the innumer-
able men (beings) from above in approval of the acts of Tane
and Paia; but that burst of applause was mostly in recogni-
tion of Tane’s having disconnected the heaven, and propped
up its sides, and made them stable. He had stuffed up the
cracks and chinks, so that Raki was completed and fur-
nished, light arose and day began.”

Similar but briefer versions of this same myth are found



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 35

in the Chatham Islands,®^ where the raising of the heavens
was done by a being called “Heaven-Propper,” the sky being
lifted upon ten pillars, set one above the other. In the Cook
Group,®® the raiser of the heavens was Ru. Originally the heav-
ens were low, so low that they rested on the broad leaves of
certain plants, and in this narrow space all the people of this
world were pent up, but Ru sent for the gods of night and the
gods of day to assist him in his work of raising the sky. He
prayed to them, “Come, all of you, and help me to lift up the
heavens.” And when they came in answer to his call, he
chanted the following song:

“O Son! O Son! Raise my son
Raise my son!

Lift the Universe! Lift the Heavens!

The Heavens are lifted,

It is moving!

It moves.

It moves ! ”

The heavens were raised accordingly, and Ru then chanted the
following song to secure the heavens in their place: •

“Come, O Ru-taki-nuhu,

Who has propped up the Heavens.

The Heavens were fast, but are lifted.

The Heavens were fast, but are lifted.

Gur work is completed.”

This conception, that the sky was originally low, resting on
the leaves of plants, is also found in the Society Group,®^
where Ruu is again the deity by whose aid the task of raising
the heavens was accomplished. It likewise occurs in Samoa,®®
and in somewhat similar form in the Union Group,®® whereas
in Hawaii the incident of the separation of heaven and earth
is referred to but vaguely and seems to play a very insignifi-
cant part in the beliefs of the people.®®

It will be observed that the idea of a Sky Father and Earth
Mother, so characteristic in New Zealand, is lacking in cen-
tral Polynesia. What is said is merely that once the sky was


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


36

very low, and that one of the deities raised It to its present
position. Now this form of the myth appears In the New
Hebrides,®^ where the heaven was said originally to have been
so low that a woman struck it with her pestle as she was pound-
ing food, whereupon she angrily told the sky to rise higher,
and it did so. Almost identically the same type appears in the
Philippines,®® and the simple theme of raising the heavens,
which once were low, is frequent in several other parts of In-
donesia as well as in the intervening area of Micronesia.®^
It would seem, therefore, that the Maori form of the myth
represents a special or locally developed form of this wide-
spread theme, which reaches back almost without a break
from central Polynesia to Indonesia.

In the foregoing legends of the raising of the sky this is
accomplished by one or other of the gods, and it is clearly a
cosmogonic feature, especially well brought out In New Zea-
land, as will be shown presently when the myths of the origin
of the sun, moon, and stars are considered. The episode, how-
ever, appears in parts of Polynesia in quite another aspect,
i. e. as one of the exploits of the hero Maui,®® but since the
Maui cycle will be treated in a special chapter, discussion of
the place of this episode in it may best be postponed for the
present. Nevertheless, it should here be noted that whereas
in Hawaii the theme occurs only in connexion with Maui, in
New Zealand it is known solely as a cosmogonic myth, while
both forms are found in central Polynesia.

The myths of origin relating to the heavens and the earth
having been outlined, there remain those regarding the prove-
nance of the sun, moon, and stars, the sea, and other natural
features. Turning again to the Maori account of the separa-
tion of Rangi and Papa, it appears that Tane’s efforts did not
cease with the parting of his parents, but that he sought to
clothe and beautify them. “Tane saw that his father Raki was
naked; so he went and obtained (red) to make his father
look comely; but this did not suffice. He then went to bring



PLATE VI


Nephrite ornament and amulet, known as Hei-tiki.
It is supposed to represent a human foetus and is worn
to preserve the wearer against the attacks of the spir-
its of still-born children, who are supposed to be
especially malicious because they regard themselves as
cheated out of the chance of life. Maori of New
Zealand, Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.





MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 37

the stars from . . . ‘The Mat of Dread’ and ‘The Mat of the
Sacred Holding’ . . . stars were the fastenings of these mats. . . .
Tane placed the stars on Raki in the daytime, but they were
not beautiful; but at night his father Raki looked grand.”

The sun and moon in the Maori myth seem generally to be
regarded as Rangi’s olf spring who were later placed for
eyes in the sky,®® and similar beliefs prevailed in the Society
Group ®® and in Samoa.^®° In the Cook Group the sun and moon
were said to be eyes of Vatea,^®^ and other versions from this
area give further details. According to these, Vatea and Tonga-
iti (or Tangaroa, by one version) quarrelled as to the parent-
age of the first-bom of Papa, each claiming to be the father,
and to settle the dispute the child was cut in two, half being
given to Vatea and half to Tonga-iti. Vatea took the upper
portion, which was his, and threw it into the sky, where it
became the sun, while Tonga-iti allowed his share, the lower
half, to remain on the ground. Later, imitating Vatea, he also
tossed his portion into the heavens, where it became the moon,
but, owing to the fact that the blood had drained out of it
and that it had partly decomposed, it shone with a paler
light.io® The simple statement that the sun and moon were
made by the deity is found in the Society Group,^®^ and little
more seems to be recorded from Hawaii.^®®

The origin of the sea, a feature of the environment of neces-
sity particularly prominent for an island people, has already
been mentioned in passing, but a few further points may well
be added here. The conception of a primeval sea has been
shown to be especially prevalent in central and western Poly-
nesia, where we also find belief in the origin of the ocean from
the sweat of Taaroa in his labours of creation.^®® A variant
appears in Samoa, where the sea is said to have arisen from
the bursting of the ink-sack of the primeval octopus, ^®^ but in
the Marquesas,^®® on the other hand, it is stated that the ocean
was derived from the amniotic liquor when Atanua, the wife
of the Heaven-Deity Atea, suffered a miscarriage. One other



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


38

Samoan myth fragment relating to the origin of the sea is of
interest as evidencing the Melanesian influence to be found on
this western margin of Polynesia. According to this tale, the
sea was originally concealed and kept shut up, but was later
let out, the result being a flood.^°® More detailed versions
of this incident are wide-spread in Melanesia,^^® whence this
Samoan fragment was probably derived.

The evolutionary growth and origin of plants and trees in
Hawaiian mythology has already been outlined, and Rangi’s
setting of plants and trees upon Papa in the Maori myth has
also been noted,^^^ but some versions include a curious inci-
dent. According to these forms of the myth,“^ Tane planted
trees upon his mother. Earth, after the raising of Rangi. At
first he set them with their heads (i. e. their roots) up and their
feet down, but since he did not like their appearance he re-
versed them, and placed them with their heads in the earth
and their feet up. With this he was much pleased, and so they
grow to this day. The unusual idea of trees having formerly
been upside down may perhaps be connected with the fre-
quent Indonesian and Micronesian theme of the great
tree hanging upside down in the sky, by whose branches men
passed back and forth to the upper world.

The importance of flood-myths in Polynesia was apparently
not very great. Deluge-episodes, of course, do occur; but so
far as the published material goes, the floods referred to are
merely incidents — and, as a whole, minor incidents — in
other stories. For instance, Tawhaki is said to have caused
a deluge by stamping on the floor of heaven, which cracked
so that the waters flowed through and covered the earth ;
or, again, his mother is recorded to have wept at the actions
of her son, her tears falling to earth and flooding it, thus over-
whelming ail men; while another version declares that
Tawhaki, wishing to be avenged for the attempt to kill him,
called upon the gods to send a deluge to overwhelm the World
after he and his friend had taken refuge on the top of a moun-



MYTHS OF ORIGINS. AND THE DELUGE 39

tain. Of a similar type are the references in Hawaiian myth-
ology to the ^^Sea of Kahinalii.” According to this tale/^®
Pele, the fire-goddess^ once lived far to the south-west, but
when her husband deserted her, she set out to try to find him.
To aid her in the search, her parents gave her the sea to go
with her and bear her canoes, and as she journeyed she poured
forth the sea from her head, the waters rising until only the
tops of the highest mountains were visible, but later retiring
to their present level.

A somewhat more elaborate flood-myth is reported from
Raiatea in the Society Group.^^^ According to this version,
a fisherman once got his hook entangled in the hair of Rua-
haku, a sea-god, who was asleep at the bottom of the sea,
but when the man tried to pull in what he fancied to be a great
fish, he so enraged the deity that he was about to destroy his
disturber. The fisherman, however, begged for mercy, and
the god finally agreed to spare him, but insisted on revenging
himself upon the rest of the world. By Rua-haku’s advice, the
fisherman took refuge on an islet with a friend, a hog, a dog,
amd a couple of hens, and the sea then began to rise, con-
tinuing so to do until all the world was overflowed, and all the
people had perished, after which the waters retired to their
former level.

In Mangaia, in the Cook Group, a tale is told of a con-
flict between Aokeu and Ake, a sea-deity. The two quarrelled
as to which was the more powerful, and Ake, to show his might,
caused the sea to rise and dash upon the land in great waves,
while Aokeu made rain to fall in floods, so that, between the
two, the island was covered, except for a small bit which pro-
truded. Rangi (not the deity, apparently), the first king of
Mangaia, took refuge on this fragment of dry land, and,
alarmed lest he should be drowned, prayed to Rongo to aid
him, whereupon the latter deity forced the two contestants to
cease their display of power, and the deluge subsided.^^^

The two legends which have been recorded from Samoa are

[Prometheus]

OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


40

of a somewhat different type in that they are more a part of
the cosmogonic tales. According to one version/^* in early times
there was a flood which destroyed all beings, except one man,
Pili, and his wife, who took refuge on a rock, these survivors
subsequently becoming the ancestors of mankind. Another
form of the myth states that when the flood came, Seve
and a man called Pouniu alone saved themselves by swimming.
Tangaloa saw them from the sky, and pitying their plight
sent down two men from the heavens with hooks, who drew
Samoa from under the sea to serve as a refuge for the two
who were thus rescued.

Although there may be some question whether the end of
the Raiatea story shows traces of missionary influence, all
these flood-tales are probably aboriginal. As much cannot be
said, however, for the versions from New Zealand, the Mar-
quesas,^^® and Hawaii,^®^ in all of which the Biblical parallel,
extending even to names and details, is far too close to permit
us to regard the tales as other than local adaptations of mis-
sionary teaching.



CHAPTER II


THE MAUI CYCLE

O F all the myths from the Polynesian area, probably none
have been more frequently quoted than those which
recount the deeds and adventures of the demigod Maui.
Among the Polynesians themselves almost every group had
its own versions of the tales, and the large number of variants,
many of which have fortunately been recorded, make the
Maui cycle one of the most important for the study of this
whole area.

Maui, the hero of these tales, is generally described as one
of a series of brothers, the number varying from three in Raro-
tonga to six in some of the New Zealand versions, although in
Mangaia he is spoken of as having no brother.^ As in hero
tales generally, he is usually the youngest child, and in New
Zealand especially the older Mauis are described as stupid
or forgetful, while Maui, the hero, is clever or mischievous.*
Thus the elder brothers used spears without barbs and eel-
pots without trap-doors, and wondered why they were un-
successful; but the youngest invented the barb on the spear
and the trap-door for the eel-pot, and so succeeded where they
failed. These two elements, i. e. that the hero is one of a num-
ber of brothers and that the others are stupid or foolish while
he is wise and clever, are very strikingly developed in the Mela-
nesian myths,® which often record two brothers and in which
there is sometimes a greater antithesis of good and evil than
is implied in the Polynesian myths. In the New Hebrides and
vicinity, indeed, the hero at times appears under the name of
Maui.'‘ While in the non-Maori parts of the Polynesian area



42


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Maui’s birth is generally not dissimilar to that of his other
brothers, in New Zealand the hero is declared to have been an
abortion, which his mother wrapped up in her apron or top-
knot, and either abandoned in the bush or threw into the sea.®
Although thus deserted by his parent, Maui survived,® for
the unformed child was tended by supernatural beings and
reared to manhood, some versions declaring that he was taken
up into the sky-world. There he grew up and engaged in a
conflict with Maru (by one account, an elder brother),^ whose
crops he ruined by sending rain or snow upon them, for which
Maru revenged himself by causing frost to kill Maui’s crops,
whereupon, in retaliation, the hero slew him.® Having at
length reached maturity, Maui determined to seek out his
parents and brothers, and came upon the latter engaged in
playing at niti or teka. In this game reeds, fern stalks, or
spears are cast so as to rebound from a small hillock of earth
and slide along the ground, the winner being he whose niti
goes farthest. After the brothers had hurled their spears,
Maui asked to be allowed to throw, and as he did so he shouted
his name, but the others at once disclaimed him and said that
he had no right to be called Maui. He asked them, however,
to summon their mother that she might decide, yet when she
came, she at once declared that he was no child of hers and
bade him begone. Maui next asked her to recall her past, and
then she remembered that which she had cast away. Maui
declared this to have been his origin and that his ancestors
had saved him and brought him up. His mother finally
recognized him, declared him her youngest son, and made him
her favourite.® This episode of the return of the abandoned
child is strikingly parallel to tales current in Melanesia,^®
where a deserted child joins others who are playing a game
and is ultimately recognized by his parent. So far as reported,
this incident does not occur elsewhere in Polynesia, except in
Nieue.^^

Of the many exploits of Maui three seena to be most widely



THE MAUI CYCLE


43


spread, and these may, therefore, be first considered. They
are fishing up the land, snaring the sun, and the quest of fire.
As an example of the first of these feats we may take one of
the New Zealand versions.^^ Maui had an ancestress to whom
it was the duty of the elder brothers to carry food, but they
neglected her and ate it themselves. Maui offered to take
their place, but when he came to his ancestress, he found her
ill, one half of her body being already dead, whereupon he
wrenched off her lower jaw, made from it a fish-hook, which
he concealed about him, and then returned to his home. His
brothers did not like to have him accompany them on their
fishing trips, but Maui hid in their canoe, and when they were
out at sea next day, he disclosed himself. At first they were
going to put him ashore, but finally they agreed to let him
stay, since they thought that he could not fish if they did
not give him a hook. Nothing dismayed, Maui took out his
magic hook, struck his nose with his fist until it bled, and baited
his hook with the blood.^^ Lowering his line, he soon got a
tremendous bite and at last hauled in the land, like a great fish,
from the bottom of the sea. Telling his brothers not to cut it
up, he went away, but they disobeyed him and began to hack
with their knives, thus causing the great fish to struggle, break
the canoe, and kill the brothers, while, owing to the cuts made
by them, the land became rough and rugged. In some versions
of the myth the land so hauled up was that of Tonga; in others,
it was New Zealand, which some of the Maori called Te-ika-
a-maui, ^^The Fish of Maui.’’ According to another account,
the magic fish-hook was made from the jaw-bone of Maui’s
oldest son, whom Maui had killed for this purpose, the bait
being the ear of this same child; and for three moons he laboured
to drag up the great fish with the aid of Rupe, a pigeon, to
whom he gave one end of the line.

It is in New Zealand that the story of this exploit of the
hero is told with the greatest wealth of detail, although Hawaii
also furnishes versions nearly as fulld^ Here the reason is



44


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


given why the brothers did not like to have Maui go fishing
with them. He was not a very good fisherman, but was full
of mischievous tricks by which he secured the catch actually
taken by his brothers. When one of them began to haul in a
prize, Maui would cry, “Look out, we have both caught the
same fish,” and would rapidly pull in his line, so manoeuvr-
ing as to foul that of the other. As the fish was brought near
the canoe, he would then slip his hook toward the head of the
fish and flip it over into the canoe, thus causing his brother’s
line to slacken, and then, holding up the fish, he would say, “Oh,
you lost your fish. Why didn’t you pull steadily?” When
at last the brothers allowed the tricky fellow to accompany them
again, he baited his magic fish-hook with a bird, sacred to his
mother, Hine; but the fish which he caught was so huge that
he asked his brothers to help him haul it in, and as the land
began to emerge from the sea, he cautioned them not to look
back or the prize would be lost. One of the brothers dis-
obeyed, and at once the line broke and the land also, so that,
instead of a great single mass, it was fractured into a group of
islands. Central Polynesia and Tonga present, so far as
published materials go, much briefer accounts and in almost
all cases attribute the same feat to Tangaroa also or some other
deity or demigod. The episode seems to be but little known
in Samoa.^® There it is attributed solely to Tangaroa and
is a variant of the story of how, in the beginning, he cast a
rock down from the sky to serve as an abiding place for his
daughter, the snipe, in the world of waters. From the evi-
dence it would appear that the episode was one which was
a part of the older structure of Polynesian mythology and
which in the central and western areas had been overlaid by
later elements. Outside of the Polynesian region comparable
myths have so far been noted in certain of the New Hebrides,^®
Fotuna,^® Union Group, Gilbert Islands,^^ and New Britain.®^
A Hawaiian version ® of the snaring of the sun may be taken
as an example of Maui’s next exploit. Maui’s mother was



THE MAUI CYCLE


45


much troubled by the shortness of the day, occasioned by the
rapid movement of the sun; and since it was impossible to
dry properly the sheets of tafa used for clothing, the hero
resolved to cut off the legs of the sun so that he could not
travel so fast. His mother, accordingly, made strong ropes
for him and sent him to his blind old grandmother to get added
assistance. He found her cooking bananas, and as she laid
them down one after the other, Maui stole them. At length
discovering her loss, but unable to see the culprit, she sniffed
about angrily until she smelt a nian, whereupon she asked
who it was, and when Maui told her that he was her grand-
son, she forgave him and presented him with a magic club to
aid him in his attack on the sun. Maui now went off east-
ward to where the sun climbed daily out of the underworld,
and as the luminary came up, the hero noosed his legs one
after the other and tied the ropes strongly to great trees.
Fairly caught, the sun could not get away, and Maui gave him
a tremendous beating with his magic weapon. To save his
life, the sun begged for mercy, and on promising to go more
slowly ever after, was released from his bonds.

Substantially the same form of the story is found in New
Zealand.^^ Maui “observed that the time between the sun’s
rising and setting was very short, and he said to his brothers,
‘Let us tie the sun, that it may not go so fast, that man may
have time to provide food for himself.’ But his brothers said,
‘Man cannot go near to the sun on account of the heat.’
Maui said, ‘You have seen the many acts- that I have per-
formed. I have taken the form of a bird, and again resumed
that of a man, while you have ever had the form of men. And
now, my brothers, I can do what I propose, and even greater
acts than this.’ His brothers consented, and commenced to plait
ropes. . . . When these had been made Maui took his weapon,
made of the jaw-bone of his progenitor . . . and his brothers
took their weapons and the ropes, and they . . . journeyed
till they had got near where the sun came up. Maui, address-



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


46

ing his brothers, said, ‘Beware you do not surprise and unneces-
sarily startle the sun; but let his head and shoulders be fully
within the noose, and be ready when I call to pull the opposite
ends of the ropes. When the sun is caught, I will rise and beat
him. But let the ropes be securely fastened that he may be
held for some time. And O young men! do not heed his cry of
pain. Then we will let him go.’

“The sun came up like blazing fire, and when his head and
shoulders had entered the noose Maui encouraged his brothers
to action by saying ‘Now pull.’ They did so, and the sun drew
his limbs together with a twitch. Maui rushed at him with
his weapon, and scarce had the sun time to call before Maui
was belabouring him, and continued to so do for some time.
When they let him go he went away crippled, and in the an-
guish of his pain he uttered another of his names, Tama-nui-a-
te-ra (great child of the sun), and said, ‘Why am I so beaten
by you, O man! I will have my revenge on you for having
dared to beat the great child of the sun.’ He departed on his
way, but was unable to travel so fast as before.”

It will be noted that this and other New Zealand versions,^
like all those so far recorded from the rest of Polynesia,^® lack
the incident of the visit to the blind grandmother. This epi-
sode of the stealing of food from a blind person is, however,
widely current in Polynesia, but is, as a rule, told in connexion
with another hero, Tawhaki, whose adventures and relation-
ship will be considered later. On the other hand, it is not un-
common in Melanesia, and is also found in Micronesia
and Indonesia.®® In the Society Group a somewhat dif-
ferent aspect is given to the story by the fact that the pur-
pose was not to make the sun go more slowly, but to bring it
nearer, so that it might more quickly heat the stones that
Maui used in cooking his food.®® In Samoa the adventure,
albeit in a somewhat abbreviated form, is attributed not to
Maui but to the Sun-Child, some of whose other adventures
are widely spread in Polynesia.


THE MAUI CYCLE


47


The third of the great exploits usually accredited to Maui
is that of the fire-quest. As with much of the Maui cycle, the
fuller versions have been best preserved in New Zealand.®^
According to these, Maui and his brothers lived with their
mother, but every morning she disappeared before they awoke,
and none knew whither she went. Determining to solve the
mystery, Maui stopped up every chink and cranny in the house,
thus preventing the morning light from coming in,®® so that
his mother overslept, and Maui, waking in time, saw her leave
the house, pull up a clump of reeds or grass, and disappear
down the opening thus revealed. Adopting his favourite dis-
guise of a bird, he followed, flying down the aperture to the
world below, where he revealed himself to his parent and de-
manded food. The fire being out, his mother was about to
send a servant to secure some, when Maui volunteered to
bring it and accordingly went to the house of his ancestor
Mafuike, an old woman who was the owner and guardian of
fire. Of her he begged a brand, and she gave him one of her
fingers, in which fire was concealed. He started away, but
when out of sight, quenched it in a stream and returned for
more. She gave him another finger, which he extinguished in
a similar manner, and thus got from her in succession all her
fingers and toes, except the last, with which, in anger, she set
the world afire.®® Maui fled, but was pursued by the flames,
which threatened to consume everything, so that in distress
he called upon rain, snow, and hail to aid him, and they, com-
ing to his assistance, succeeded in putting out the conflagra-
tion and thus saved the world. In some versions Maui then
returned to this world, having conquered the fire-deity; but
in others the latter threw the last of the fire into various
trees, which since then have preserved the germ of fire,
which can be called forth by friction. Similar tales have been
recorded from several of the other Polynesian groups.®^ The
practical absence of this myth from the Society Group is prob-
ably due to the very small amount of myth material so far



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


48

published from there; on the other hand, the whole Maui cycle
is apparently less important in this Group than elsewhere.

The various versions of this legend which have been recorded
in the Polynesian area present minor differences which would
seem to be significant, and a consideration of some of the sepa-
rate incidents of this myth may, therefore, be instructive.
In the first place, the idea that fire was originally obtained
from the underworld (a feature found in all these Polynesian
versions) is one which also occurs in Melanesia; although,
on the other hand, a more usual explanation in this area is
that fire was either brought from another land by some animal
after several unsuccessful attempts or was accidentally dis-
covered.®® In the Polynesian versions of Maui’s exploit the
method by which his parent and he reached the underworld
varies considerably. Thus, in the form outlined above, the
opening to the nether world is concealed under a tuft of
reeds or grass, and this same idea appears in both the Sa-
moan version and in that from Nieue. Forms of the tale
from New Zealand, Samoa, and Mangaia (Cook Group), how-
ever, state that the parent went to a rock or cliff, and re-
peating a charm caused it to open, thus revealing the entrance
to the lower world. This “Open Sesame” incident by itself is
found in numerous other myths from New Zealand,®® as well
as from the Chatham Islands ®® and Tahiti,®® and is reported
also from British New Guinea and from Halmahera.^® Still
another way of descent to the underworld, namely, by pulling
up one of the house posts, occurs in one of the Maori versions,
as it does in that from Manihiki.

In the New Zealand myths the underworld deity from whom
Maui secures fire is described as an old woman, whereas in
practically all the other portions of Polynesia where the myth
is found this divinity is male — a distinction which is possibly
significant in view of the fact that in Melanesia we find an old
woman as the owner or guardian of fire, from whom it is stolen
or by whom it is given to naankind.^® Again, when Maui asks




PLATE VII


Wooden figure representing an ancestor or possi-
bly some minor deity. New Zealand. Peabody
Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.







THE MAUI CYCLE


49


the New Zealand fire-goddess for fire, she takes off and gives
to him one of her fingers or toes, the igneous element thus
being obtained from the body of its owner. This incident is
also found in the Chatham Island versions, and in a slightly
modified form in the Marquesas, ' though it is lacking in other
portions of Polynesia; but it is interesting to note, on the other
hand, that this same conception of the obtaining of fire from
the body of its owner occurs both in Melanesia ® and in Micro-
nesia.^* Where this myth is recorded in the Polynesian area,
Maui is given merely a firebrand by the deity. In the Maori
tales Maui has no fight with the owner of fire, but this is an
important element in the versions elsewhere. In some cases
(Mangaia, Manihiki, Marquesas, Society Group) Maui kills
the fire-god, although in the Manihiki myth he miraculously
restores him to life afterward. In Samoa (and in one version
from the Marquesas) he does not kill the fire-god, but in wrest-
ling with him tears off one of his arms, sparing the other at
the deity’s urgent request, a feature which seems to have
analogues in Micronesia and Melanesia.**

[Prometheus]

The incident of the rain being invoked to extinguish the
conflagration which threatens to destroy the world is also
known from the Melanesian area.** From the foregoing it
would appear that we must admit that Melanesian elements
are to be recognized particularly in the New Zealand and
Chatham Island versions of the myth, and perhaps in the
Marquesas as well.

It will be noticed that in discussing this exploit of Maui
no reference has been made to Hawaiian versions, this being
?due to the significant fact that Hawaii, alone of all the Poly-
nesian groups, lacks the tale completely, although it possesses
one of wholly different character. According to the Hawaiian
story, *^ when Maui and his three brothers were out fishing,
they saw a fire burning on the shore, but on going in search of
it, the birds (mud-hens) who had made it put it out and ran
away. After several attempts to surprise them, Maui stayed



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


50

on shore and sent his three brothers out in the canoe, thinking
thus to fool the clever birds; but when they perceived that one
of the Maui brothers was missing from the boat, they refused
to build a fire. At last Maui hit upon a stratagem. Setting
up in the canoe a roll of tap a arranged to look like a man, he
hid on shore while his brothers put to sea with the dummy.
The birds were deceived and set to work to build a fire, but
before they had finished, Maui, who could not restrain his
impatience, rushed up and caught one of them, threatening to
kill it unless it divulged the secret of how to make fire. The
bird tried to cheat him several times by giving him false in-
formation, but at last, in peril of its life, told him the correct
sorts of wood to use, and so the mystery was learned. In re-
venge for their attempted treachery Maui then rubbed the
head of the bird with a firebrand, and so ever since these
birds have had a red spot on the top of their heads.

In speaking of the more usual version of Maui’s exploit it
was pointed out that a wide-spread myth of the origin of fire
in Melanesia and Indonesia declared that animals or birds
brought it from a distant land.^^ While this is by no means
an exact parallel to the Hawaiian tale, it presents the nearest
approach to it of any of the myths of the origin of fire that are
known from the whole Pacific area.

One of the exploits attributed to Maui is that of raising the
sky. In recounting the cosmogonic myths it has been shown
that in New Zealand, and also in portions of central and west-
ern Polynesia, this elevation of the heavens was performed by
one or other of the great gods and is thus in reality a portion of
the cosmogonic beliefs. As an episode of the Maui cycle, the
incident seems to be lacking in New Zealand, while prevalent
in central and western Polynesia and Hawaii. In Hawaii and
Samoa the versions are nearly similar. The heavens were
formerly, it is said, very low, and Maui volunteered to raise
them if a woman would give him a draught of water from her
gourd. She agreed, and by a series of exertions Maui lifted



THE MAUI CYCLE


51


the sky, first to the level of the tree-tops, next to the moun-
tain-tops, and then by a mighty effort thrust it up to its
present height.®® The deed is here accomplished in a rather
commonplace manner, wholly by Maui, or Tiitii, as he is called
in Samoa, and no question of any deity whatever is involved.®^
In Hawaii no other form of the episode seems to exist, but in
Samoa ®® there are several variants, according to which the
sky is raised by another being at the behest of Tangaloa.
Two types appear in the remainder of central Polynesia from
which we have material available. There is, first, that where
the action is attributed to one of the deities, usually Ru; ®*
and secondly, that form which ascribes the deed to Maui,
aided by Ru.®* Almost throughout this area ®® the myth is
characterized by the statement that before the sky was raised
it was held up by plants, which owe their flat leaves to the
pressure so exerted. As was suggested on a previous page, the
episode of the elevation of the heavens seems to have been
originally a part of the cosmogonic myths prevalent through-
out the Polynesian area, with the exception of Hawaii. In
New Zealand it remained such, owing to the rupture of all
communication with the rest of Polynesia after the period of
the great migrations of the fourteenth century; but in central
Polynesia, on the other hand, it largely lost its true cosmogonic
character and was assimilated by the Maui cycle, being car-
ried as such to Hawaii, which lacks any other form, though
vestiges of the older cosmogonic type linger in the central
area.

In the Maui cycle Hawaii presents a local and characteristic
version of the fire-quest, a theme which seems universally
present in one form or other. New Zealand, on the contrary,
shows an episode not found in any other portion of Polynesia —
Maui’s attempt to secure immortality for mankind. One can-
not do better than quote Grey’s version of this tale.®®

“Maui ... returned to his parents, and when he had been
with them for some time, his father said to him one day, ‘Oh,



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


52

my son, I have heard from your mother and others that you
are very valiant, and that you have succeeded in all feats that
you have undertaken in your own country, whether they were
small or great; but now that you have arrived in your father’s
country, you will, perhaps, be at last overcome.’

“Then Maui asked him, ‘What do you mean, what things are
there that I can be vanquished by?’ And his father answered
him, ‘By your great ancestress, by Hine-nui-te-po, who, if you
look, you may see flashing, and as it were, opening and shutting
there, where the horizon meets the sky.’ And Maui replied,
‘Lay aside such Idle thoughts, and let us both fearlessly seek
whether men are to die or live forever.’ And his father said,
‘My child, there has been an ill omen for us; when I was bap-
tizing you, I omitted a portion of the fitting prayers, and that
I know will be the cause of your perishing.’

“Then Maui asked his father, ‘What is my ancestress Hlne-
nui-te-po like?’ and he answered, ‘What you see yonder shin-
ing so brightly red are her eyes, and her teeth are as sharp
and hard as pieces of volcanic glass; her body is like that of
man, and as for the pupils of her eyes, they are jasper; and
her hair is like the tangles of long seaweed, and her mouth is
like that of a barracouta.’ Then his son answered him, ‘Do
you think her strength is as great as that of Tama-nui-ite-Ra,
who consumes man, and the earth, and the very waters, by the
fierceness of his heat? . . . But I laid hold of Tama-nui-
ite-Ra, and now he goes slowly.’ ... And his father answered
him, ‘That Is all very true, O, my last born, and the strength of
my old age; well, then, be bold, go and visit your great an-
cestress who flashes so fiercely there, where the edge of the
horizon meets the sky.’

“Hardly was this conversation concluded with his father,
when the young hero went forth to look for companions to
accompany him upon this enterprise; and so there came to him
for companions, the small robin, and the large robin, and the
thrush, and the yellow-hammer, and every kind of little bird.



THE MAUI CYCLE


53


and the water wag-tail, and these all assembled together, and
they all started with Maui in the evening, and arrived at the
dwelling of Hine-nui-te-po and found her fast asleep.

^^Then Maui addressed them all, and said, ^My little friends,
now if you see me creep into this old chieftainess, do not laugh
at what you see. Nay, nay, do not I pray you, but when I
have got altogether inside her, and just as I am coming out
of her mouth, then you may shout with laughter if you please,’
And his little friends, who were frightened at what they saw,
replied, ‘Oh sir, you will certainly be killed.’ And he answered
them, ‘If you burst out laughing at me as soon as I get inside
her, you will wake her up, and she will certainly kill me at
once, but if you do not laugh until I am quite inside her, and
am on the point of coming out of her mouth, I shall live, and
Hine-nui-te-po will die.’ And his little friends answered, ‘Go
on then, brave sir, but pray take good care of yourself.’

“Then the young hero started off, and twisted the strings
of his weapon tight round his wrist, and went into the house,
and stripped off his clothes, and the skin on his hips looked
mottled and beautiful as that of a mackerel, from the tattoo
marks, cut on it with the chisel of Uetonga, and he entered the
old chieftainess.

^^The little birds now screwed up their tiny cheeks, trying to
suppress their laughter; at last the little Tiwakawaka could no
longer keep it in, and laughed out loud, with its merry cheerful
note; this woke the old woman up, she opened her eyes, started
up, and killed Maui.”

This version lacks one element which appears in some,
i. e. that, to accomplish his purpose, Maui must pass through
into the world of night or death and then return, for thus, and
thus only, could man survive the coming fate.®^ In his attempt
he succeeds in the first portion of the self-appointed task, yet
is caught and killed just as the victory is all but gained. Al-
though this is one of the favourite tales of Maui in New Zea-
land, there are variant recensions of his attempt to secure im-



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


54

mortality for man, and these have considerable interest be-
cause, like that just discussed, they seem to be confined to
New Zealand and to show unmistakable relationship to the
tales of other areas. According to the other myths, it is the
moon who is responsible for the fact that death is lasting.
Maui wished that man might not die forever, and so said to
Hina, the moon, “Let death be very short — that is. Let man
die and live again, and live on forever,” whereupon Hina replied,
“ Let death be very long, that man may sigh and sorrow.” Maui
again said, “Let man die and live again, as you, the moon,
die and live again,” but Hina said, “No let man die and be-
come like soil, and never rise to life again.” And so it was.®®
We have here one of those simple tales, told in some form or
other by many peoples, which account for death by declaring
it to be the result of a dispute between two persons, one want-
ing immortality for man, the other not. Often, as in this in-
stance, the case is settled merely by fiat; in others there is some
form of conflict or other means of victory by one of the dis-
putants; while very frequently the desired regeneration is
compared to that of the snake which casts its skin and is thus
renewed. This type of myth appears to be wholly lacking in
Polynesia outside of New Zealand, with the exception of Tahiti,
where the incident is, however, not related of Maui, and where
the moon takes the positive instead of the negative side.®® It
is perhaps significant that similar tales, or those ascribing
the origin of death to some mistake or misunderstanding, are
widely current both in Melanesia and in Indonesia.®® The
prevalence of legends of this character in New Zealand and of
the more elaborated theories of the origin of death, as shown
in the myth of Maui and Hine-nui-te-po, may well be in-
terpreted, in view of their occurrence in Melanesia, as part of
the demonstrated Melanesian influence in Maori mythology.
Their absence in the rest of Polynesia, taken in connexion with
their presence in Indonesia, is not so easy to explain, unless
on the ground that they have been overlooked or not recorded.



THE MAUI CYCLE


55


The capture and imprisonment of the winds is one of the
minor feats often attributed to Maui in New Zealand,®* where
he is said to have caught and confined in caves all but the west
wind, which eluded him. In Samoa the winds are gathered
up and put in a canoe or coco-nut; while in the Chatham Is-
lands®® they are collected in a basket, not by Maui, but by
another hero, Tawhaki.

Two other episodes forming part of the New Zealand cycle
of Maui stories remain to be considered. In the first of these
Maui turns his brother-in-law into a dog, usually as a result
of being angered by some action, such as that of eating up the
bait prepared for fishing. There are many variants of the tale.®®
In some the unsuspecting brother-in-law is transformed while
Maui is cleaning his head; in others Maui moulds and models
the sleeping victim into his canine shape; while in others again
he produces the result by hauling his canoe over the body of
his brother-in-law, whom he has asked to serve as a skid.®’^ So
far as published material goes, this tale is not found outside
of New Zealand.

The other episode is that where Maui kills Tuna, the eel
lover of his wife.®® The latter went one day to the stream to
get water, and while she stood on the bank. Tuna came up in
the guise of a great eel, struck her with his tail, knocked her
into the stream, and maltreated her. Angry at this, Maui laid
down two logs on which Tuna might cross over, and then, hid-
ing, killed the eel as he came, after which various plants, trees,
fish, and monsters of the deep were derived from the creature’s
head and body.®® Unlike the previous episode, this seems to
be more or less closely related to other incidents found else-
where in Polynesia.

In Samoa,^® the Union Group,’’i Mangaia,^* and Tahiti ” a
myth told to account for the origin of the coco-nut must be re-
garded as related. According to the Mangaian version, Ina, a
maiden, was accustomed to bathe in a certain pool. One day a
great eel crept up to her and touched her, and this occurred



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


S6

again and again until finally the eel threw off his disguise and
revealed himself as a beautiful youth named Tuna, who there-
after, accepted by Ina, became her lover and visited her in
human form, resuming his animal shape when he left. At last
Tuna declared that he must depart for ever, but that on the fol-
lowing day he would make one final visit as an eel in a great
flood of water, when Ina must cut off his head and bury it. She
did this, and according to his request visited the spot daily. For
some time nothing was to be seen, but at length a green shoot
became visible and finally grew into a beautiful tree. In course
of time this produced fruits, which were the first coco-nuts, and
on each nut, when husked, the eyes and face of Ina’ s lover can
still be seen. In this form the tale occurs only in tropical Poly-
nesia, i. e. in the region where the coco-nut is found; but in
New Zealand, where this fruit does not grow, the legend seems
to have assumed a slightly different aspect, and it is apparently
lacking in Hawaii, although the coco-nut is abundant there.^^
Two aspects of this myth are worthy of further considera-
tion. The “Beauty and the Beast” incident (i. e. the lover who
comes in animal guise) is one widely current in parts of Mela-
nesia and Indonesia,^® but apart from this central and west-
ern portion it does not appear to be common in Polynesia.^^
The origin of the coco-nut from the buried head of an animal
or person is very wide-spread in Melanesia and occurs also
in Indonesia.^® The myth is, to be sure, one to which the gen-
eral resemblance of the coco-nut to the human head might be
expected to give rise, and in view of this its absence from
Hawaii is interesting.



CHAPTER III


MISCELLANEOUS TALES

W E have thus far considered the Polynesian cosmogonic
myths and those which group themselves in a cycle
about the hero Maui; but there is also a considerable mass of
myth material which, although less systematic, is nevertheless
of great importance in any survey of the mythology of the
area. It is obviously impossible to consider all of this data,
so that we must restrict ourselves to a selection of what seems
most typical and most significant. As the available material
is particularly abundant from New Zealand, it follows that
to a large extent the examples chosen must be taken from
there; although reference will likewise be made, so far as is
possible, to data from other island groups.

In Maori mythology a number of tales cluster about a hero-
deity named Tawhaki and his grandson Rata; and we may
well begin the consideration of the residuum of Polynesian
mythology with an outline of this story.^ Whaltari or Whati-
tiri (“Thunder”) was a female divinity of cannibalistic pro-
pensities who lived in the sky. Hearing of a man in this world,
a warrior known as Kai-tangata, or “Man-Eater” (apparently
not to be confused with the Kai-tangata, son of Rehua, who
was killed by Rupe),* and supposing from his name that he, too,
was fond of human flesh, she determined to marry him. De-
scending to earth, therefore, she slew one of her slaves and
carried the reeking heart to Kai-tangata as an offering, but
he indignantly refused to accept it and explained that his name
had reference merely to his warlike prowess. Although dis-
appointed, Whaitari married him and bore several children,



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


58

one of whom was Hema; but to appease her fondness for
human flesh she continued to slay men and accidentally thus
killed and ate certain of her husband’s relatives. Not knowing
who they Were, he used their bones to make fish-hooks, but
when Whaitari ate of the fish caught with these hooks, she was
stricken blind as a punishment for her evil deeds. Soon after
this, displeased at certain remarks which her husband made
about her, she resolved to leave him and return to the sky,
but before going she told Hema not to attempt to follow
her, although she said that if he had children they might be
successful in reaching the heavens. In some versions these
instructions were given to Kai-tangata’s other wife, who duly
reported them to the sorrowing husband. Whaitari herself
ascended to the sky in a cloud which came and enveloped her.

Hema grew up, married, and had as children Tawhaki and
Karihi, but when his wife had been carried off by evil beings,
Hema went to rescue her, only to be himself overcome and
killed by them.® Meanwhile Tawhaki’s cousins were jealous of
him, for owing to his beauty and prowess he won the favour
of all the maidens; so one day his kinsmen attacked him
while he was bathing and left him for dead. Found by his
wife, he was nursed back to health and revenged himself amply
on those who sought his death, by overwhelming them in a
flood sent by the gods in answer to his prayers.

Tawhaki now resolved to seek and rescue his mother. He
successfully accomplished the long journey to the distant
land where she was kept captive and found that she had to
remain outside the great house in which her goblin captors
lived, and rouse them daily at dawn. With her he concocted
a plan by which their enemies were destroyed. Concealing
himself in the house, he waited until all the occupants were
inside and asleep, whereupon, aided by his mother, he silently
stopped up every cranny by which light could enter and thus
kept all imprisoned until it was broad daylight. ? Then, when
the door was suddenly opened, those within were dazzled by

[Prometheus]

PLATE VIII


Portion of the carved front of a pataka/" or store-
house, in New Zealand. The human figure repre-
sents some mythical being, attacked by monsters.
After Hamilton, Maori Art^ Plate XXIIL







MISCELLANEOUS TALES


59


the unaccustomed glare and thus fell an easy prey to Taw-
haki, who rushed from his place of concealment and slew them
all.^

Hema, the father of Tawhaki, had now to be sought, and
on this quest Tawhaki was accompanied by his brother,
Karihi. The order of events varies in different versions, but the
incidents, as a rule, are much the same. The two set off in a
canoe to seek for their father, and after crossing the sea they
came to a land where they found a blind old woman who was
none other than Whaitari, their grandmother. She was busy
counting over and over a series of yams or baskets of food,
and Tawhaki (as in some versions of the Maui stories) quietly
snatched away one after another until she became aware that
something was wrong. She sniffed in all directions, hoping to
detect the thief and catch him, for she was a cannibal and
hungry for human flesh; but at last Tawhaki made himself
known as her grandson, and then restored her sight, either by
anointing her eyes with his spittle mixed with clay or by slap-
ping them with his hand.®

From his grandmother he learned of the way to reach the
upper world, which could be attained only by climbing a
spider’s web which hung down to earth. Up this Tawhaki ac-
cordingly went, his brother, who tried to ascend first, being
driven back by the winds so that he fell and was killed. Ar-
rived in the sky-world, Tawhaki inquired from an aged woman
whom he met where his father’s bones were to be found and
discovered that they were kept in a house. Paying no further
attention to them, apparently, he then proceeded to climb to
the highest heaven of all that he might learn from a deity
there the most powerful incantations and charms. He was
successful and brought them back to this world for the use
of man. Some versions have him take a wife in the upper
world and remain there as a deity of lightning; although if
we may believe others, his ascent to the sky was in quest of
his wife. While he still lived on earth, according to this latter



6o OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY

form of the myth, a beautiful sky-maiden was enamoured of
him and came down to earth secretly at night to visit him,
later deciding to remain openly as his wife and bearing him
a daughter. As a result of a disagreement, she determined
to return to her celestial home and did so, taking her child
with her, whereupon, disconsolate over his loss, Tawhaki re-
solved to seek her, had his encounter with the blind old
woman, and climbed to the upper world by means of the
spider’s web. Arrived in the sky, he assumed the guise of an old
man, and was forced by a group of people engaged in making
a canoe to carry their azes for them; but returning secretly
he completed the boat unaided in a marvellously short time,
after which he resumed his normal form, openly sought and
found his wife, and lived with her in the sky-world. However
Tawhaki secured his wife, she bore him a son, Wahieroa, who
married in his turn, but when his wife was about to give birth
to her child, she requested that a certain sort of rare food, to
be obtained only in far-away lands, be brought to her. Wahieroa,
accordingly, went off to a distant eastern country to secure it,
but was there caught and killed by a cannibal giant named
Matuku. The child, a son, was born, and named Rata.®

When Rata had grown up, he asked his mother about his
father and learned from her how he had been killed in a dis-
tant land, so he resolved to be avenged and accordingly set
about building a canoe. Selecting a great tree, he cut it down,
but was amazed the next day, on coming to continue his work,
to find the tree again erect and quite unharmed. A second time
he cut it down, only to discover it intact and standing when
he returned. A third time he felled the tree and then hid him-
self to observe what happened. Soon he heard voices singing:

“It is Rata. Rata you are

Felling the forest of Tane.

Fly this way, the splinters of Tane;

Stick together and hold.

Fly this way, the chips of Tane;

Yes, stick together, hold tremblingly.



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


6i

Fly this way, the ribs of Tane;

Yes, sticking together; yes, holding.

Stand straight up. O! stand up green and fresh.

Lift up; stand growing green.”

And as he watched, the chips that he had cut flew together to
the stump, and the tree slowly rose and became whole once
more. Rata then recognized the work of the little forest spirits
(in some versions said to have come in the guise of birds),
but when he called to them and asked them to desist, they in-
formed him that he had done wrong in not having made the
fitting sacrifices and said the proper charms before beginning
his work. The wood spirits took pity on him, however, and
told him that if he would go home, they would complete his
canoe for him overnight; and so indeed it happened, for in
the morning the work was all done, and a fine new boat stood
beside the door.

The canoe, thus magically provided, was soon launched, and
Rata, setting out with his followers to avenge his father,
came, after long voyaging, to an island where one of the can-
nibal giants lived. This monster first tried to swallow the whole
party at once, but by his power Rata multiplied his followers
so greatly that they spread over all the shore, and the giant,
huge as he was, could not accomplish the feat. Failing in this,
he tried to induce them, after they had entered his house, to
sit on mats cleverly contrived to conceal traps below, but this
fate they also escaped. They would not eat the food with which
he sought to tempt them, and after a vain search for water, for
which they asked, he returned cold and tired. This was Rata’s
opportunity, and promising the giant some warm and strength-
ening food, he threw into the monster’s great mouth some red-
hot stones from the fireplace, which caused him to burst and
killed him. The arch-cannibal, Makutu, who lived in a great
underground cave, remained, but by spreading nooses over the
opening, the giant was finally enticed to come out by the abund-
ant food which he hoped to secure. As he emerged, the nooses



62


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


caught him and were drawn tight, and although he struggled
tremendously, his wings (in some accounts he was winged 0
were broken, and he was finally overcome and killed. Rata
then gathered up the bones of his father and with them re-
turned to his home.

The whole story of Whaltari, Tawhaki, and Rata does not
appear to exist in other parts of Polynesia, at least in this form,
so that the best and easiest method of discussing it and its
relationships, both within and without Polynesia, will be to
consider the various incidents separately. In no portion of
Polynesia do tales involving cannibals and cannibalism appear
quite so prominently as in New Zealand. Whaitari was, as
has been seen, a female cannibal who, coming down from the
sky to secure men for food, used to capture them with a net; *
and a somewhat similar idea is shown in a tale from Mangaia,®
where a sky-cannibal lets down a basket in which he catches
and hauls up his human prey; while in Rotuma (a small island
west of Samoa, containing a mixed Polynesio-Melanesian
population) we again find something analogous, in that canni-
bal deities from the upper world were said to descend to earth
to fish and to catch men, carrying them back with them to
the sky.^®

Outside of New Zealand the Tahitian version alone brings
In the cannibalistic ancestress, although in a somewhat differ-
ent way, forming a prologue, as it were, to the tale as a whole.
According to this story a female deity named Haumea mar-
ried Ro’o-nui, who came up from the underworld; but as a
result of a quarrel between the two, Ro’o-nui abandoned his
wife and child, Tuture, and returned to the lower world.
Angry at this, Haumea became a cannibal, and Tuture feared
for his life. He therefore constructed a magic canoe which
the gods transported to the shore for him. In order to get a
good start in his projected flight he secretly pierced holes in
the bottom of the gourds used to carry water and then asked
his mother to bring him a supply from a distant spring.



MISCELLANEOUS TALES 63

She found the vessels empty on her return and at length, after
several attempts to bring water in them, discovered the trick,
whereupon she at once set out after Tuture to kill him. He
had meanwhile fled in his canoe, but swimming in pursuit, she
rapidly caught up with him and was about to swallow man
and canoe when he threw into her open mouth some stones
heated red-hot in the fire, and thus destroyed her. She was
not really killed, however, for her body drifted ashore and
there, coming to life again, she changed her name to Nona
(Rona) and continued her cannibalistic practices. She bore a
daughter who, when she grew up, had as lover one of the last
survivors of the people, most of the rest of whom her mother
had eaten. This lover kept himself hidden in a cave which
opened at a magic word, but the cannibal mother at last dis-
covered the secret, and going instead of her daughter, repeated
the charm, entered the cave, and killed and ate the fugitive.
In her anger she then determined to devour her daughter also,
but the latter, placing a log of wood in her bed to deceive her
mother, fled, only to be pursued by the relentless ogress. The
daughter took refuge with an old man whom she begged to
protect her. This he did, and when Nona came, he succeeded
in killing her, after which he married the daughter, one of
whose children was Hema, the father of Tawhaki.

In this episode and in the New Zealand myth the canni-
balistic feature is strongly marked, but in general cannibals
are not prominent figures in Polynesian mythology. On the
other hand, they are very frequently mentioned in Melanesia
and Indonesia, where they are commonly described as living
in or perching on trees and seem, as will be pointed out in
more detail later, to be possibly associated with or derived
from vampire spirits. Apart from the cannibal element, an-
other aspect of this initial part of the tale deserves attention
in that here we have a sky-maiden who comes down to earth
to become the wife of a mortal and later leaves him to return
to the upper world. Now, while this lacks certain rather char-



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


64

acteristic elements of the familiar “swan-maiden” episode,
it at least contains suggestions of it which, in view of the com-
monness of the “swan-maiden” tale in the adjacent portion of
Melanesia and the practical absence of any similar myth in
other parts of Polynesia may be significant.^ The “swan-
maiden” tale so wide-spread in many parts of the world ap-
pears in quite characteristic form in the New Hebrides,^® but
— so far as noted — nowhere else in Melanesia, except in the
western end of Dutch New Guinea.^ It is, on the other hand,
almost universal in Indonesia, as will be seen later.^

The remainder of the first portion of the tale, up to
Tawhaki’s search for his father, does not seem to be told
outside of New Zealand,^ although Hema and the two chil-
dren occur with the same names in Hawaii and in Ta-
hiti.^* The episode of the attempted murder of Tawhaki,
found in the Cook and Society Groups in somewhat different
forms, seems to be absent from Hawaii. In Tahiti the search
for and rescue of the mother is replaced, more or less, by
an episode lacking in New Zealand and elsewhere. Ac-
cording to this form of the tale, Arihi and a company of
companions went off on an expedition to slay certain evil
man-killing monsters. Tafa’i (= Tawhaki) wanted to go with
them, and although they refused to consent, he determined
to outwit them, so that, by securing a powerful charm, he
was enabled to ride over the sea on a great shark and reach
the destination first, surprising Arihi and the others, who
found him already there when they arrived. The first menace
to be overcome was a magic kava-^X&nt which stabbed and
killed all who approached it, but after some of Arihi’s fol-
lowers had been slain, Tafa’i conquered and destroyed it.
A man-killing monster was similarly disposed of, and then, his
tasks accomplished, the hero returned home on his magic
shark, once more arriving before Arihi and the rest. When
they came, he induced all but Arihi to climb into trees which,
by his magic power, he caused to grow tall and bend over;



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


6S

and he then struck the trees, whereupon the men who had tried
to prevent him from accompanying Arihi fell olF into the sea
and were transformed into porpoises.^®

The episode of the blind old woman, which occurs in sub-
stantially the same form in Mangaia and Tahiti, has already
been discussed in connexion with certain versions of Maui’s
snaring of the sun. The most important difference in the epi-
sode as told of Tawhaki lies in the attempts made by the blind
ogress to capture her tormentors. In one Tahitian version
obtained in the Tuamotu, Kui the Blind at first tried to en-
tangle Tawhaki and Arihi in a net, the usual cannibal cus-
tom, but failing in this, she essayed several other methods in
vain until at last she swung her great fish-hook, with which
she succeeded in catching Arihi. In the other version from here
and in that from Mangaia the hook seems to be the only
weapon. At her first attempt her only prize was a log, but
finally she succeeded in taking her human prey, which she
released when she discovered that it was her grandson. In
Mangaia the whole episode is attributed to Tane, not to
Tawhaki, and several incidents are added which are not
found in the other versions. According to this form of the story,
Tane agreed to go with a friend, a chief named Ako, to aid
him in prosecuting his suit for the hand of a beautiful maiden;
but Tane himself fell in love with the fair one and endeavoured
— though in vain — to win her away from his friend. Dis-
gusted at his failure, he sought his canoe in order to return
home, only to find that Ako had punctured the boat in re-
venge for Tane’s faithlessness. As it began to sink, Tane, to
save himself from drowning, leaped into a tree near the shore,
and swaying it violently, swung himself across the sea to a
distant land. Then he met Kui the Blind, and the episodes of
stealing her food and restoring her eyesight took place.

Here again there is a repetition of the incident of the swaying
tree, for Tane, having climbed to the top of a tall coco-nut-
tree, caused it to bend far over until its top was above his own

XX — 6 , ' '



66


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


home, whereupon he shook off the nuts and then caused the
tree to spring back to its original position. This twice-repeated
incident of the tree bending over to bring a person to a dis-
tant land appears in slightly different form in the Tahitian
account of Tawhaki’s deeds, ^ but seems not to be known else-
where in Polynesia, although it occurs in Melanesia,^ as well
as in Indonesia.*® Whether the incident of Kui the Blind is to
be regarded as originally belonging to the Tawhaki myth,
which has been assimilated by the Maui cycle in certain cases,
or vice versa, it is impossible to say. Tawhaki’s search for his
father involves the episode of the ascent to the sky in the New
Zealand story, a feat usually accomplished by climbing a
spider’s web, although in some versions this is replaced by a
cord or a vine, said to be let down by his heavenly ancestress.
In the other recensions of the story, a journey to a distant land
serves as a substitute. In the Rarotonga tale there are various
dangers to be encountered, chief of which is the island or land
of fierce women, all of whom wish to marry a rash intruder.
Possibly it Is not too hazardous to see In this an echo of the
Melanesian tale of the “island of fair women” — a veritable
Cythera where a man was in danger of dying of love if he should
be enticed to land.*^

The incident of the ascent to the upper world, as told in the
New Zealand tale, appears in several myths and is quite wide-
spread. In Polynesia, the spider’s web as a means of approach
seems to occur outside of New Zealand only in Hawaii,^ al-
though farther afield It has been noted in the New Hebrides “
and the Carolines.^’' A rope, on the other hand. Is not specifi-
cally referred to elsewhere in Polynesia, but is found in Mela-
nesia® and Indonesia,® whereas ascent by means of a vine
seems to appear only in Indonesia.®® The Hawaiian fragmen-
tary version of Tawhaki (Eaha’i) makes him and his brother,
Karlhl (Aliki), reach the upper world by travelling on the rain-
bow, there to Inquire of Tane and Tangaloa where their father,
Hema, had gone.®^ The Hawaiian Tawhaki myth is only a



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


67

fragment, and may perhaps, as Fornander thinks, have been a
direct importation from the south (Marquesas and Tahiti)
by the immigrants who came thence to Hawaii.®* Nowhere
else in Polynesia and Melanesia, however, so far as observed,
does the rainbow appear as a heavenly road, although it is so
regarded in Indonesia,®® whence the incident may be taken as
one of s,everal such purely Indonesian elements which occur
in Hawaii but not elsewhere in Polynesia. It might be noted
here that all the forms of the tale state that the captors of
Tawhaki’s father were cannibals, and the same is also true of
the following legend, for Rata’s parents were cannibals in some
versions.®^ These cannibalistic people are, moreover, described
as black. In rationalizing these myths. Smith ®® and others
regard this as referring to ancient encounters with Melanesian
peoples in the islands west of Polynesia.

Although the primary cause for Tawhaki’s ascent to the
sky was to seek for his father, in the New Zealand version he
paid little attention to his parent’s bones when found, but set
off to seek powerful charms in the highest heavens. In the
versions from the Cook Group and Tahiti the thread of the
story is better sustained. In Rarotonga Tawhaki rescued his
father from his enemies just as they were about to kill and roast
him. In Tahiti, on the other hand, he found that his parent
had been buried in filth by his captors, and from this un-
pleasant predicament Tawhaki rescued him, after which the
hero stretched nets about the house in which the perpetrators
of this insult were gathered, set fire to the dwelling, destroying
them all, and brought his father back in safety. According to
the Hawaiian version, Tawhaki himself was killed while search-
ing for his father, and it was Rata, his grandson, who finally
obtained his revenge.®®

The quest and capture or death of Wahieroa at the hands of
an evil monster appears also in Hawaii, Tahiti, and the Cook
Group, although in somewhat different form. In the Tahitian
version ®* Wahieroa and his wife left their child. Rata, in charge

[Prometheus]

68


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


of Ui the Blind when they went off on a fishing expedition,
but while they were gone, they were seized by a great bird,
Matu’u-ta’u-ta’uo, who swallowed Wahieroa and carried his
wife to a distant land. Rata, who had never known his par-
ents, was one day playing games with other children, but
when he proved to be the victor, they angrily taunted him
with being a foundling. Indignantly he asked the aged Ui,
who at last confessed the truth, after trying to put him off,
and told him how his parents had been abducted. Rata at
once determined to seek for them and refused to be influenced
by the accounts of the dangers on the way. Next follows the
incident of the building of Rata’s canoe, so that, in slightly
varying form, the story of the magic resurrection of the tree by
the wood spirits and of their subsequent completion of the
canoe for the hero in one night appears in several parts of
Polynesia.^®

The version from Aitutaki treats the incident in a somewhat
different light. Here Rata, on his way to cut a tree for a canoe,
passed a heron and a snake who were fighting, and though the
bird asked him for help, he went on unheeding and chopped
down his tree. Returning the next day, he found it re-erected,
so he felled it a second time, only to see it again erect and sound
on the following day. At this he remembered the heron who
had asked his aid and its declaration that his canoe-making
could not be finished without its help, so he sought for the
combatants, now nearly exhausted, and killed the snake.
Once more he cut down the tree, and then the heron, grateful
for the aid rendered, assembled all the birds, who miraculously
completed the canoe and carried it to Rata’s house. Outside
Polynesia the incident of the magic canoe appears in much
the same form both in Melanesia®* and Indonesia.'** The
New Zealand version gives only a meagre account of Rata’s
voyage, whereas in the Gook Group this part of the story is
amplified by several incidents. After his crew had been
picked, and just as he was about to start, a man named Nganaoa




PLATE IX


Mythical animal carved from drift-wood. 'Figures
of this sort are supposed to have been used in connex-
ion with ancestral worship, Easter Island. Peabody
M useu m, Cambridge, M assachusetts.





MISCELLANEOUS TALES 69

asked to be allowed to go with him, offering to take care of
the sails, to bale out the boat, or to do anything that Rata
might wish. His request was refused, and the canoe sailed
away, but Nganaoa had secreted himself on board and was
discovered soon after Rata was out of sight of land. Angered
at this trick. Rata threw his unasked companion overboard,
thinking thus to be rid of him; but soon afterward, seeing a
great gourd floating in the sea. Rata took it aboard, only to
find Nganaoa concealed within it. This time the persistent
fellow was threatened with death, but was finally permitted
to remain with the party on his promising to aid Rata in
destroying the monsters which beset the way. This promise
Nganaoa made good, killing first a giant clam which threatened
to close upon the canoe; next an enormous octopus which
tried to drag the boat under the waves; and lastly a whale
which was about to swallow the whole party. In this latter
crisis Nganaoa first wedged the monster’s jaws open with his
spear and then jumped down its throat. In its belly the hero
found his mother and father, who had, while fishing, been
devoured by it; > and with his fire-sticks Nganaoa kindled a
flame inside the whale, which rushed ashore in agony, so
. that all came forth in safety. The episode of being swallowed
by a sea-monster, the building of a fire within it, and the sub-
sequent escape appears both in Melanesia and Indonesia ^
and very widely in a closely related form.®

Rata’s conflicts with the two cannibal giants, as told in the
New Zealand versions, afford further points of comparison.
The trap of the concealed pitfall covered by mats, on which
the first ^ant tried to induce Rata and his men to sit, seems
to be lacking elsewhere in Polynesia, but is found in Melanesia,®
and appears also to be known in Indonesia.® The destruction
of a cannibal giant or monster by means of red-hot stones is
likewise an incident of wide distribution, occurring in Hawaii ®
and Tahiti within the Polynesian area, as well as in parts of
Melanesia® and Indonesia.®



70


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Having now considered in some detail the series of legends
which group themselves about Tawhaki and Rata, we may
turn to a few other myths which do not form in any sense a
connected series. Going back to the group of Maui tales, it
will be remembered that one of the hero’s exploits was the trans-
formation of his brother-in-law into a dog. According to the
New Zealand version of the story, Maui’s sister, Hina-uri, was
so distressed at the fate of her husband that in despair she
threw herself into the sea. For many months her body drifted
about until at last it was washed ashore, where it was found by
two brothers, who brought it to their house and by their care
restored it to life. Since Hina-uri was a beautiful woman, the
two brothers fell in love with her and made her their wife, not
knowing who she was; but after some time Tinirau, the chief
of this district, heard of the charming stranger and took her
from the brothers to be his own spouse. Tinirau already had
two wives who at once became jealous of the new favourite
and tried to kill her, but by her superior magic power she de-
stroyed them. Although her famous brother, Maui, was not
troubled over her loss, one of the younger Mauls (later known
as Rupe) was deeply grieved and set out to search for her. In
vain he sought her everywhere and finally determined to
ascend to the heavens to consult his ancestor, Rehua, one of the
children of Rangi and Papa. At last he penetrated from the
lower heavens to the tenth, where he found his godlike ancestor,
to whom he made himself known. To provide refreshment for
his visitor, Rehua shook from his heavy hair a flock of birds,
which he ordered to be cooked, but Rupe, fearing the tabu of
Rehua’s sacred head, refused to touch them. Learning from
his ancestor where Hina-uri was, Rupe turned himself into a
pigeon and flew down to the place in which she was living
as the wife of Tinirau. Some of the chief’s people tried to
spear the bird, but he dodged their weapons and at last was
recognized by his sister. Seizing his opportunity, Rupe took
both her and her child and flew away with them to the heaven



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


71


of Rehua, where he performed another task, an Augean labour,
in that he cleansed the courtyard of Rehua’s house, which had
become incredibly filthy in course of time.®“

With this we may compare a tale from Mangaia.^^ One day
Ina or Hina was left alone by her parents and charged to watch
carefully over the precious ornaments belonging to the family.
These were coveted by Nanga, a great thief, who could work,
however, only when the bright rays of the sun were clouded.
Taking advantage of such an opportunity, he crept up and
persuaded Ina to let him try on the beautiful ornaments,
after which, by a ruse, he escaped from the house in which
Ina thought to confine him and fled with the treasure. When
her parents returned, they were very angry with Ina and beat
her until she determined to run away. In her distress she called
upon the fish to aid her and one after another they came and
tried to carry her across the sea to the Island-home of Tinirau,
the king of fishes; but all were too small and weak for the task
until a shark appeared who was able to bear the burden. Ina
had with her two coco-nuts to serve as food and drink on the
way, but when she broke one of them on the head of her fishy
steed he became angry, and diving deep left Ina struggling
in the waves. The greatest of all sharks, however, came to
her rescue and bore her to her journey’s end, where she found
TInirau’s house, though he himself was absent. She accordingly
beat upon a great drum which was there, and when Tinirau
hurried back to see who had dared to invade his premises, he
found Ina and took her as his wife. Ina’s younger brother,
Rupe, was sorrowing for his sister and resolved to seek her,
therefore he entered into a small bird who flew across the sea
to where his sister was. Here he disclosed himself and then,
returning with the news of his sister’s safety, brought both her
parents to visit her and celebrated a festival in honour of her
children. Other versions are known [from NIeue and the
Chatham Islands,®® but the tale seems not to have been re-
corded elsewhere In the Polynesian area. One or two of the



72


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


incidents will repay brief examination. The quest of a woman
by a hero in the guise of a bird is, as has been seen, a feature
of both versions outlined. . This episode appears as one of
Maui’s minor deeds in Hawaii ^ and in a somewhat variant
form occurs likewise in legends from New Britain “ and the
Admiralty Islands in Melanesia; while Ina’s journey on a
shark finds its counterpart in several tales where fish or sea-
monsters act in a similar manner.®® The special incident of the
coco-nut being cracked on the head of a shark is also reported
from New Britain.

Several stories in the Polynesian area introduce the episode
of the descent to the underworld of the dead, familiar to us
from the classical myths of Orpheus, and in New Zealand, for
instance, the origin of tatuing is thus explained.®^ One day
Mataora was asleep in his house when a party of Turehu (a
people living in the underworld) came and discovered him.
At first they made fun of Mataora, not knowing whether he
was a man or no, for the Turehu were not as other folk;
but while they were debating, he awoke, and proving himself
to be a man, offered the visitors food. They, however, would
not eat it, since it was cooked, and they ate only uncooked
food, wherefore Mataora provided them with some raw fish,
and when they had finished eating, they danced. Nuvarahu,
one of the women of the Turehu, was very fair, and Mataora
fell in love with her at first sight and took her for his wife.
For a time all went well, but then, becoming jealous of his
brother, who admired Nuvarahu, a quarrel arose in which
Mataora beat his wife for her conduct. Angry at this treat-
ment, she fled back to the underworld, but her husband grieved
for his lost wife and resolved to seek her. From a man whom
he met he learned that Nuvarahu had passed that way, and
thus at length he reached the entrance to the underworld of
Po, where he descended and sought news of Nuvarahu, learn-
ing that she had passed, weeping bitterly. Finally he arrived
at the village of his father-in-law Uetonga, who was engaged



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


73


in tatuing a person. Until this time people in the world above
had only painted the designs upon their faces, but Uetonga
cut the patterns deeply into the flesh, so that not only were the
figures shown by the pigment, but the skin itself was carved.
The people of the lower world laughed at Mataora, and when
with their hands they had rubbed off the painting on his face,
they showed him that their way of decorating, or “moko"
could not be removed, for it was permanent. Mataora was
pleased at this and asked to have his face tatued in the same
way, whereupon Uetonga agreed, and as he chiselled the pat-
terns, Mataora sang to ease the pain. The sound came to tne
ears of Nuvarahu, who was weaving a mat near by, and from
the song she recognized her husband. She cared for him while
the tatu-wounds were healing, and for a time the pair lived
happily together; but Mataora yearned to return to the world
above and begged his wife to accompany him. At first reluc-
tant, she at last consented, and they started on their way.
Coming to the foot of the ascent, they met Tiwaiwaka, a bird,
who asked where they were going; but when he was told, he
counselled them to go back, for the upper world was full of
evil, and not to return until summer, when it would be safe to
make the ascent. This advice they followed, and as they started
again up the slope to this world, they were induced to take
with them the young of the owl, the bat, the rail, and the fan-
tail, who thus came to the earth. At last Mataora and his
wife reached the door leading into this world, but here a mis-
fortune occurred, for Nuvarahu tried to carry with her a
sacred garment made in the underworld. The guardian at the
door discovered this and forced her to leave it behind; and
when they had passed, he shut the door, so that never again
might living men descend to the world below, but only the
spirits of the dead.

The episode of the descent to the underworld to seek a lost
wife also appears in stories told of Tane.®* After the earth
had been formed, Tane desired a spouse, and shaping woman



74


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


out of earth, he endowed her with life.®® A daughter was born
whom he called Hine-i-tau-ira and whom he also took to wife
when she had grown up. Becoming curious to know who her
father was, she inquired, and learning that Tane himself was
her parent, she killed herself for shame. Descending to the
underworld, she then became Hine-nui-te-po, the great god-
dess of night, whom later Maui tried in vain to conquer.
Tane was saddened by the loss of his wife and resolved to seek
her in the world below. Passing one guardian after another,
he at last reached the house where she had taken refuge, but
although he knocked, he could not gain admittance. He
begged her to return with him to the world of light above,
but she refused, telling him that he must go back alone to
nourish their progeny in the light of day, while she remained
below to drag them down to darkness and death.*® So in sorrow
Tane departed, and as he went, he sang this lament :

“Are you a child.

Am I a parent.

That we are severed

By Rohi-te-kura (trembling red bloom) ?

Throbbing is my lonely heart.

Being left by you.

In Te Rake-pohutukawa . . .

I will enter and cry;

I will pass out of sight through the door
Of the house called
Pou-tere-rangi . . . O me!”®^

In Mangaia of the Cook Group we also find a myth embody-
ing this same episode.®® Eneene’s wife, Kura, with her sister
was one day gathering sweet-smelling flowers from a great
hua-txte, but in trying to get more than her just share she
leaned far out on a branch which broke and precipitated her
to the ground. At this moment the earth opened, and Kura
fell through into the underworld, whose people took her pris-
oner and tied her to a post in a house to be kept until they
were ready to kill and eat her, placing her under the guard of



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


75


a blind old man who continually called to her and whom she
answered, so that he knew that she was still safe. Her hus-
band, discovering his loss, determined to seek her and by the
aid of his guardian deity also penetrated to the underworld,
where, after much searching, he heard the blind guardian
calling Kura’s name and so discovered her whereabouts.
Stealthily climbing a tree, he gathered some coco-nuts and
spread the scraped meats along the eight paths which led to
the house in which his wife was imprisoned. The rats, smelling
the good food, came in droves, and covered by the turmoil
of their quarrelling over the booty, Eneene, the husband, was
able to break through the roof of the house. Here he quickly
cut the bonds of his wife and told her to run to the place where
he had descended from the upper world while he stayed in
her stead, imitating her voice as best he could whenever the
blind guardian called. Having given her a good start, he then
slipped away himself, joined his wife, and together they fled
to the world of light, just escaping the pursuit of the baffled
denizens of the world of shades.

The Hawaiian tale of Hiku and Kawelu ® brings in some
additional points of interest. According to this version, Hiku
was a youth who had been brought up by his mother far away
among the mountains and had never beheld other mortals
until at last his desire to see the world induced him to leave his
secluded retreat. Taking his magic arrow, he shot it into the
air, and following its flight, watched where it fell. Travelling
to this place, he shot it again, and thus led by it,®^ he approached
a village where the shaft dropped at the feet of a fair maiden
named Kawelu, who quickly hid it.®® Hiku at first was puz-
zled, but calling out to his arrow, it answered him and thus
revealed the hiding-place. So made acquainted, the pair
fell in love and were married. One day Hiku, remembering
his mother’s injunction to return and see her, eluded his wife,
who endeavoured to prevent his going, and escaped from the
house where she tried to keep him prisoner; but when Kawelu



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


76

discovered his absence she was heartbroken and soon died of
grief. Apprised of her sorrow, Hiku returned in haste, but was
too late and could only weep over her corpse. In despair,
and Stung by the taunts of his wife’s friends who upbraided
him for leaving his love, he determined to try to bring her
spirit back from the underworld. With the help of his friends,
he made a great length of rope, took with him a hollow coco-
nut, and anointing himself with rancid oil, that he might
smell like a corpse,®® had himself let down through the opening
to the world below, the odour of the fetid oil being so strong
that all the shades were deceived, even Miru, the lord of the
dead. The long rope or vine on which Hiku had been lowered
formed a most excellent swing, and the denizens of the un-
derworld were all anxious to try it, ®’^ among these being
Kawelu, who recognized her husband and gained permission
to swing with him. So interested was she in finding him and
so greatly pleased was she with the swing that she did not
notice the signal which Hiku gave to his friends above, who
began to haul up the vine. When she was aware of the trick,
she transformed herself into a butterfly and tried to escape;
but Hiku was ready, and catching the fluttering thing in his
coco-nut-shell, he was drawn rapidly to the upper world.
With his precious burden he hastened to where the corpse of
Kawelu lay, and making a hole in the great toe of the left
foot, he forced the unwilling spirit to re-enter the body which
it had left, and thus restored his wife to life and strength.

A strikingly close parallel to this Hawaiian tale is found in
New Zealand.®® Pare was a maiden of the highest rank, so
high that there was none of her own tribe who could marry
her. One day, when the people were amusing themselves with
games at a festival, a stranger, a chief of high rank named
Hutu, arrived by chance and joined in the contests. His skill
was great, especially in throwing the «,iri,®® and once, when he
hurled this, it flew far away and fell at Fare’s feet. Quickly
seizing the dart, she hid it in her house, but Hutu soon came




PLATE X


Figure made of over a slender framework or
wood, showing a man with typical tatuing* These
images were probably used in connexion with ances-
tral worship. Easter Island. Peabody Museum, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts.

[Prometheus]

MISCELLANEOUS TALES


77


in search of his lost plaything and asked Pare to return it.
She refused, and smitten with love for the handsome stranger,
begged him to take her as his wife; but ignoring all her en-
treaties, and in spite of force, he refused to accede to her wishes,
and escaping, fled away, whereupon Pare shut herself up in
her house in despair and hanged herself. When her relatives
heard of this, they were full of anger and determined that
Hutu must die, since he had been the cause of Pare’s death;
wherefore he was waylaid and brought a captive to the house
in which her body lay. Told that he must die, he said:
“ It is good, but do not bury Pare’s coipse. Allow me to de-
part. I will be absent three or four days, and then I will be
here again. It is right that you kill me to appease your sor-
row.” Believing his promise to return, the people allowed
him to depart, and Hutu accordingly hastened to the abode
of the spirits of the dead to find Pare and bring her back
to life. He came to Hine-nui-te-po and asked of her the
way, giving her presents to bribe her into telling him the
truth. She showed him the road, cooked food for him, and
told him to husband this supply, for, she said, “If you eat of
the food belonging to the world of spirits, you will not be able
to come back to this world.” Descending to the nether realm,
he sought for Pare and at last found where she was staying,
but could not induce her to ascend, wherefore he joined with
the other shades in games before her house in the vain attempt
to lure her forth. At last he thought of a new device. Plant-
ing a tall pole in the ground and tying a rope to the top,
he ordered the people to pull upon it until the top of the pole
was bent nearly to the ground. Then seating himself upon the
tip of the pole, he took one of the company on his back and
called to the people, “Let go your hold of the ropes and let the
top of the tree fly up.” They obeyed, and Hutu and his com-
panion flew high in the air to the great delight of the people.”

Tidings of this new mode of swinging were carried to Pare,
who from curiosity went to watch it; and at last her desire to



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


78

try the sport was so great that she begged Hutu to let her
swing with him. This was just what he had planned, and tell-
ing her to hold him firmly, he called to the people, “Pull the
head of the tree down, even to the earth.” They did so, and
when the ropes were let go, the tree sprang up with so prodi-
gious a jerk that the ropes were flung clear to the sky and were
caught among the roots of the grasses and bushes growing in
the world above. This was Hutu’s opportunity, and climbing
the ropes, he seized the grass at the entrance to this world and
pulled himself up. Carrying his precious burden, he hastened
to the house where the corpse of Pare was lying, and there the
spirit of Pare, which he had brought from the world of shades,
entered into her body, which became alive again. Then ac-
ceding to her request, Hutu took her to be his wife.

A somewhat different version of this Orpheus theme occurs
also in Samoa,^^ and it thus seems to be quite widely distributed
in Polynesia. In Melanesia the episode appears, so far as
noted, in the New Hebrides,” Banks Islands,” and German
New Guinea,” and in the first two, at least, instead of being
ascribed to merely mythical persons, it is actually told of re-
cent men. For Indonesia the episode does not seem to be
reported.

An incident whose distribution Is Instructive is told by
the Maori regarding Tura.” He once journeyed to a distant
country, where he married a wife from the strange folk who
inhabited it; but they were not human, for they preferred raw
food to cooked,” and Tura had to teach them the use of fire.
When the time approached for his wife to bear a child, her
female relatives came with obsidian knives. Curious to know
why these were brought, Tura asked, and was told by his wife
that her relatives intended to cut open her body in order that
her child might be born, for this was the custom of her coun-
try, adding that she herself must die as a result. Shocked at
the ignorance of the people, her husband told her that death
was unnecessary and instructed her in the ways of human be-



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


79


ings, after which he built a house of retreat where her child
was born in normal fashion, and her life saved. With this we
may compare a Rarotongan tale.^® Near a certain village
was a spring from which, at the time of the full moon, a
man and woman, whose home was in the underworld, used
to emerge to steal food from the gardens of mortal men, taking
this back with them and eating it raw. The villagers determined
to catch the thieves, and so one night, after the latter had
come up as usual, a net was spread in the spring, and when
the pair returned the woman was caught, although the man
escaped. The captive maiden, who was very fair, was taken
to wife by the chief, and when, in due course of time, she told
her husband that she was about to bear him a son, she begged
him, after cutting open her body, to bury her carefully and
cherish their child. Horrified at her proposal, which, she said,
was the customary procedure in the underworld, he refused,
with the result that the child was born in the normal manner,
and the life of his spirit wife was saved. A similar tale is
known from Nieue and Rotuma,®® in the latter instance the
“unnatural people” being described as cannibals living in the
sky. A Melanesian legend closely similar is reported from the
Santa Cruz Group,®^ and is also known from Micronesia.®®
Quite unlike these tales in character and feeling is the Maori
story of Tama-nui-a-rangi and his wife Ruku-tia.®® Once
upon a time Tu-te-koro-punga visited Tama-nui-a-rangl, and
becoming enamoured of his wife, took advantage of his host’s
temporary absence and carried her off. Apprised of her faith-
lessness by his eldest child, Tama-nui-a-rangi hastened back
and wept over his children, asking them why they had de-
serted their mother. They replied; “She has forsaken you
on account of your ugliness and has become enamoured of
Tu-te-koro-punga, the noble-looking man.” Telling them to
remain at home, Tama-nul-a-rangi went off, and transform-
ing himself into a crane, flew away to a strange country where
he was trapped and caught. Resuming his human form, he



^ OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY

told his captors that he had come to learn from them the
way in which they marked their faces so beautifully and per-
manently, for his face-decorations washed off whenever he
bathed. The people referred him to his ancestors, and going
to visit them, he begged them to “moko” (carve) his face.®*
The operation was very painful, and Tama-nui-a-rangi fainted
several times, but at last it was completed, and now he was
even more beautiful than he who had stolen Ruku-tia’s affec-
tions. Returning to his home, he comforted his children and
set out to seek his wife. Her abductor had placed all sorts of
obstructions in the way, but Tama-nui-a-rangi successfully
forced a path through them until, disguised as an old man
in filthy garments, he came to the place where his wife lived.
That evening, as he sat unrecognized in the house of his enemy,
Ruku-tia got up to dance, but by his charms he made her
weep so that she was unable to continue; and later, removing
his disguise, he secretly revealed himself to his wife, who begged
him to take her home, for she no longer loved Tu-te-koro-
punga, who beat her. But Tama-nui-a-rangi said: “No, stay
with your husband. You left me because I was an ugly man.
Now you must stay with Tu-te-koro-punga. Yet, if you wish
to return with me, climb up upon a food-stage, and when the
first streaks of day are seen, call out in a loud tone:

‘Shoot up, O rays.

Of coming day!

And also, moonbeams.

Shine ye forth.

To light the path
Of the canoe of my
Husband Tama.’”

This said, the injured husband left at once and returned to his
home, where he gathered a crew and sailed again for the is-
land where Ruku-tia was living. As the dawn appeared, she
climbed upon a food-stage and called out as Tama-nui-a-rangi
had told her. Tu-te-koro-punga, hearing her song, could not
believe that Tama-nui-a-rangi had been able to overcome the



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


8 1


obstructions in his way; but the latter called out to Ruku-tia
to jump into the sea and swim to him. This she did, and as
she came near the side of the canoe, he caught her by the hair
and with his axe cut off her head, thus punishing her for her
evil deeds. Wrapping it up carefully, he turned swiftly home-
ward and buried the head by his house. He now had his revenge,
but was full of remorse, still mourning and yearning for his
dead wife; and as he wept, he chanted this song:

“Her praise is ever heard —

’Tis praise of kindness.

I am shorn of all,

And live in silence,

Friendless and alone.

I would, could I

But haste me

Far up to the heavens.

Oh! that wanderers from above
Would come,

That I might weep
In the house of
Him, the god of
Blood-red crime!

O spreading heaven!

Urge me to be brave.

And not with tears
Atone for my spouse.

Stir up my inmost
Soul to deeds of daring
For my fell calamity.

Has Me-rau ...

Become extinct,

That I for ever
Still must weep
Whilst day on day
Succeeds, and each
The other follows?

Grief to grief now
Gathers all my woe,

And floods my heart with weeping;

Yet I dread agony,

And withdraw me
At fear of e’en


IX— 7



82


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


One drop of rain.

At eventide,

As rays of twinkling stars
Shine forth, I’ll weep
And gaze on them,

And on the paths they take.

But, Oh! I float
In space for nought.

Oh! woe is me!

Like Rangi am,

And Papa once divided.

Flows with flood
The tide of keen regret,

And, severed once,

For ever severed
All our love.”

So Tama-nui-a-rangl lived alone in sorrow, but in the spring,
when all the trees were blossoming, he heard a faint sound, as
of the buzzing of a fly, which seemed to come from where he
had buried the head of Ruku-tia; and uncovering the place,
what was his joy to find her sitting there restored to life. All
radiant with smiles, she rose to greet him, and each forgiven
by the other, they started life anew.

Another tale is told of Rupe’s sister, Hine.®® She was taken
to wife by Tinirau, but he tired of her and left her for another.
When Hine knew that she was soon to bear a child, she sent
for Tinirau that he might prepare a special retreat for her and
supply her with food; but though he came, he again left her
alone after providing a secluded place. His neglect grieved her,
and when the child was born, she called upon her brother
Rupe, who, in the form of a pigeon, came and flew away with
her and her child.*® In vain Tinirau begged her to return,
but this she would not do, though partially relenting she
dropped the infant, which Tinirau caught and tenderly cared
for. When the boy grew up he excelled all his playmates in
games, and in retaliation they angrily taunted him with hav-
ing no mother.®^ Smarting under their jibes, the boy, Tu-huru-
huru, asked where his mother was, and though Tinirau at first



MISCELLANEOUS TALES 83

refused to say, he at last told the lad, who determined to set
out immediately to find her. His father accordingly gave him
much advice, bidding him to blacken himself with soot that
he might look like a slave, and also telling him that, if he was
asked to pour water for Rupe to drink, he should pour it on
his nose; and that if his mother should dance, he must repeat
a certain chant. Thus counselled, Tu-huru-huru set out, and
coming to the village where Hine lived, was promptly taken
to Rupe’s house as a slave. Carrying out his father’s instruc-
tions, he angered Rupe, who struck him, whereupon Tu-huru-
huru wept and murmured to himself, “I thought, when I
came, that Rupe was my relation, and Hine-te-iwa-iwa was
my mother, and Tinirau was my father”; but Rupe did not
hear him. Later his mother danced, and when he repeated
the chant which his father had taught him, she became angry
and struck the boy, who repeated his lament as above. His
mother heard and realized that she had beaten her own son.
Her joy in the discovery was great, and she and Rupe accom-
panied Tu-huru-huru back to his home, where Tinirau held
the baptismal ceremony for him, and he was baptized by Kae.
Now Kae wished to return to his home and begged from
Tinirau the loan of his pet whale, who carried him wherever
he wanted to go. With many misgivings Kae’s request was
granted, and Tinirau gave him instructions as to how to treat
the whale, but Kae disregarded them, and running the whale
upon the beach, he killed it and cut it up. Tinirau waited many
days for his pet to return, but in vain, until at last the south
wind brought the sweet savour of the whale’s flesh, which was
being cooked by Kae and his friends. Thus Tinirau knew of
Kae’s faithlessness ana resolved to be revenged; but the culprit
was very clever and could be caught only by a ruse. So Tinirau
sent his wife and several women to find Kae, telling them
that they might know him by his broken tooth, and instructing
them to dance and sing comic songs so as to make people
laugh, since only by this means would they be able to dis-



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


84

cover the telltale mark. All this they did, and thus detected
the criminal. That night they repeated a charm which threw
all the inmates of the house into a deep sleep, and seizing Kae,
they carried him to their canoe and brought him, still insensible,
to Tinirau’s home, where they laid the captive in a position
in the house exactly similar to that in which he had been lying
in his own, lit a fire, and set out food. Then Tinirau waked
Kae, saying, “ 0 , old man, look and see if this is your own
bed”; and Kae, dazed, and not realizing but that he was still
at home, said, “Yes, it is my own bed.” Then Tinirau asked
him to come and have food, directing him to sit upon a bed
of leaves and ferns that had been placed over a heated area
to conceal it. After Kae had seated himself and reached out
to take of the food offered him, the women poured water on
the leaves and ferns, and when this penetrated to the hot
stones below, the steam rushed up and scalded Kae to death.*®

Recalling some of the earlier tales of cannibals, the Maori
story of Houmea presents certain other interesting features.*®
One day when Uta, the husband of Houmea, returned from
catching fish for his wife and two children, he summoned her
to the shore to help carry up his catch; but she did not come,
and when he went to the house to upbraid her, she excused
herself, saying that she had been prevented by the disobedi-
ence of the children. Leaving Uta at the house, she then went
down to the canoe, where she ate up all the fish, scattering the
grass and trampling down the bushes, after which she made
many tracks, both large and small, in the sand, that it might
look as though a marauding party had come and stolen them.
Returning to the house all out of breath, she declared that
the fish had been stolen and that from the tracks the thieves
were evidently of supernatural origin. Uta pretended to be
convinced and went to sleep.

Next day he again went fishing, and on his return his wife
once more failed to come when called. She gave the same ex-
cuse, but as he started off, Uta secretly sent the two children



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


85

to spy upon her; and they, quickly coming back, told their
father the truth, so that when Houmea returned and a second
time pretended that the fish had been stolen, Uta convicted
her out of the mouths of the boys. She loudly denied her
guilt, however, and in her heart resolved to be avenged upon
the children. Accordingly, on the following day, after Uta
had gone fishing as usual, she sent one of them off to get water,
and then enticing the other boy to her, she swallowed him
whole. When the first child returned, she gulped him down
also, and lay groaning on the floor when Uta came home.
He asked her what was the trouble, and she said she was ill,
and when asked where the children were, declared that they
had gone away; but Uta knew that she was lying and by a
powerful charm soon caused her to disgorge the two boys,
who were none the worse for what they had experienced.

It was clear that Houmea was a very dangerous person, and
so Uta and his children resolved to escape before it was too
late. Counselling his sons not to obey him when he asked
them to go for water, he thus induced Houmea to go instead;
but after she had left Uta, by a charm, caused the water to
dry up and retreat before her, so that she was obliged to go
very far before she could find any.®° When the ogress had de-
parted, Uta and the children fled to the canoe, after ordering
the house, the trees, and various objects round about to answer
for them, should Houmea call; and then, without losing more
time he paddled hastily away. At last Houmea returned with
the water, and not seeing any one as she approached, called
out to Uta and the children. First one thing and then another
answered for them, and Houmea went hither and thither,
each time thinking that she heard their voices until at last
she discovered the ruse and realized that her prey had escaped.
Looking out to sea, she beheld the canoe, now a mere speck on
the horizon, and resolving to follow, she entered into the body
of a shag and hurried after the fugitives. As she approached,
Uta was overcome with fear and hid beneath the deck of the



86

[Prometheus]

OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


canoe j but Houmea came on, her mouth wide open to swallow
all, and asked the two children, Where is mj food?’’ They
first cast her some fish, but she was not satisfied and asked
for more, whereupon, telling her to open her mouth wide, as
they were about to give her a large fish, they took a hot stone
from the oven with the wooden tongs, and throwing it down
her throat, burned her to death.

A Maori tale that purports to record some of the reasons
for the traditional emigration from the ancestral fatherland
includes incidents which are of value from a comparative
standpoint. A dog belonging to Houmai-tawaiti had committed
an act of desecration on Uenuku for which it had been killed
and eaten by the latter and Toi-te-hua-tahi. Tama-te-kapua
and his brother, the sons of the owner of the dog, sought for
it everywhere, calling it by name. When they came to the
village where Toi-te-hua-tahi lived, the dog howled in his
belly, and though Toi-te-hua-tahi held his mouth tightly shut,
the dog kept howling loudly inside him so that Tama-te-kapua
discovered the guilty person. Resolved to be avenged, Tama-
te-kapua and his brother returned home and made a pair of
stilts on which, when night came, they went and ate the fruit
from the poporo-tree belonging to Uenuku. This continued
for several nights until the fruit was nearly gone, but at last
Uenuku discovered the theft, and looking for traces of the
robber, found the marks of the stilts. Lying in wait the next
night with some of his followers, he succeeded in catching
Tama-te-kapua’s brother, but Tama himself ran away. He
was, however, caught on the shore, and his captors said,
^‘Chop down his stilts so that he may fall into the sea,”
whereupon Tama-te-kapua called out, ^Hf you fell me in the
water, I should not be hurt, but if you cut me down on shore,
the fall will kill me.” So he deceived them, and they chopped
him down on the shore, and he fell, but quickly picking himself
up, ran swiftly away and escaped. His brother, Whakaturia,
was left, however, and after debating how to kill him, his



MISCELLANEOUS TALES 87

captors decided to hang him up under the roof of Uenuku’s
house that he might slowly stifle in the smoke. No sooner said
than done; and lighting a fire, they began to dance and sing
very badly, continuing to do so every night. After a time the
news of his brother’s plight reached Tama-te-kapua, who
determined to go and see if perchance his brother still lived.
Secretly climbing on the roof, he made a small opening over
the place where Whakaturia was suspended and whispered to
him. The poor fellow was still alive, and when he told his
brother how the people were always dancing, and that they
danced badly, Tama-te-kapua thought of a scheme to free the
captive. Acting on his suggestions, Whakaturia called out when
the dancing had begun on the following night, and told the
people that they did not know how to dance or sing. Asked
if he was better skilled in dancing, he declared that he was
and that if they would let him down and give him the proper
accoutrements, he would prove what he said. Suspecting no
guile, they did as he suggested, and he delighted them with
his skill. Meanwhile Tama-te-kapua came secretly and stood
outside the door, which his brother had asked to have opened a
little on account of the heat; and at a given signal Whakaturia
darted through the opening, while Tama-te-kapua quickly
shut and barred the door and window. After this he and his
brother ran away, leaving their enemies helpless; and when the
pair were safely gone, someone passing by heard the cries of
the imprisoned people and set them free. The feature of par-
ticular interest in this tale is the incident of the deceitful ad-
vice by which the captive persuades his captors to kill him in
the one way which he knows will not be fatal. So far as pub-
lished materials go, this incident does not seem to occur else-
where in Polynesia, and no instance of it has as yet been re-
ported in Melanesia. It is, however, common in Indonesia,®®
and is, as is well known, wide-spread elsewhere.

The Polynesian people had numerous astronomical myths, of
which the following may serve as examples. The Maori say



88


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


that one night Rona went to get water from a neighbouring
stream, but as she went the moon, which had been shining,
disappeared behind a cloud, so that in the gloom Rona stum-
bled over stones and roots and in her anger cursed the moon,
saying, “Oh, you cooked-headed moon, not to come forth and
shine!” At this the moon was displeased, and coming down at
once to earth, seized Rona and carried her away. In vain she
caught hold of a tree; it was torn up by the roots, and Rona,
her water-gourd, basket, tree, and all were taken up by the
moon, where they may all still be seen.®^ Other versions de-
scribe Rona as a man who, according to some, reached the
moon in pursuit of his wife. He is said to be the cause of the
waning of the moon, for he eats it, and is himself devoured by
it, both then being restored to life and strength by bathing in
the “living waters of Tane,” after which they renew their
struggle.® In the Cook Group there is a tale of the moon’s
becoming enamoured of one of the beautiful daughters of Kui
the Blind, so that he descended and carried her off with him,
and she may be seen in the moon with her piles of leaves for
her oven and her tongs to adjust the coals. She is always at
work making tapa, and this and the stones used for weighting
it when spread out to bleach are also visible. From time to
time she throws these stones aside, thus producing a crash
which men call thunder.®®

The majority of the Hawaiian myths and tales so far pub-
lished seem rather local in character, but some present fea-
tures of interest from the comparative point of view. Such,
for example, is the tale relating to the Pounahou spring.®'^
The wife of a certain chief died, leaving him with twins, a boy
and a girl, of whom their father was very fond. Thinking to
secure them better care, he married a second wife, but the
step-mother soon became jealous of the children, although in
her husband’s presence she treated them kindly enough. The
day came when the father had to be away for some time on a
journey, and then his wife’s hatred for the step-children had




PLATE XI


Stone ancestral image from Easter Island. These
colossal monolithic figures are cut out of rather soft
volcanic stone. Many of them stand as much as
twenty feet high and weigh forty or fifty tons. They
were set in rows on paved stone platforms, overlook-
ing the sea, and were intended to represent the ances-
tors whose bones were buried beneath. Many hun-
dreds of them have been found. Museum of
Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.






MISCELLANEOUS TALES 89

full scope, so that she persecuted and maltreated them un-
ceasingly, although they were not without aid, for the spirit
of their own mother was constantly assisting and protecting
them. At last, unable longer to endure their step-mother’s
malevolence, they ran away, and after being driven from one
refuge to another, finally sought a cave where they lived
for some time. Again discovered by their unrelenting op-
pressor, they fled to another more secret cave where they were
unmolested, and where the brother, aided by a water spirit,
made a spring and bathing-pool for his sister, which are to be
seen to this day. Later their father returned, and hearing of
the cruelty of his wife, first slew her and then committed
suicide. The tale, though simple and of merely local import-
ance, has a somewhat wider interest In that it would seem to
be the only Polynesian Instance of the “wicked step-mother
theme,” which, In .almost exactly this form. Is found in In-
donesia as well as Micronesia,®® and in a closely related
fashion In Melanesia.^® This same theme, moreover, is wide-
spread in Indonesia in a more general recension (i. e. without
the miraculous aid given by the true mother) and also oc-
curs In Melanesia.^®®

Another example of somewhat similar type is the story of
Kapipikauila.®®* On the northern coast of the island of Molokai
is a very precipitous cliff upon whose summit Kapipikauila
once dwelt, but becoming enamoured of Hina, the beautiful
wife of another man, he tempted her away and took her for
his own. Her first husband, Hakalanileo, lamenting his loss,
knew not what to do, for the heights of Haupu were inaccessi-
ble; and so he wandered about, seeking for some strong hero
to aid him to recover his wife. First he met Kamaluluwalu, a
strong man, one of whose sides was stone and one flesh. He
threw a great stone up until it struck the sky, and as it fell,
caught it on his stony side; but this feat was not enough to
satisfy Hakalanileo, who went In search of another hero. One
after another he met, but none proved to have the strength



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


90'

he thought was necessary until at last Nikeu, surnamed the
Rogue, heard of the fruitless quest, and kicking over the trees
as he went, met Hakalanileo and carried him to the house of
Kaua; but in terror at the fierceness of this hero the hapless
husband fled, when Kaua, stretching forth his hand, seized
him and brought him back- After hearing the story, Kaua at '
once espoused his cause and ordered Nikeu to get a canoe forth-
with, but since the latter did not succeed immediately, Kaua
stretched out his hand, and scratching among the forests,
brought forth two canoes which he placed upon the beach,
after which, taking his magic rod, he embarked with the
others and set off to be avenged upon Kapipikauila.

On the way a great reef impeded their progress, but this
was destroyed by means of the magic staff; and a second
danger, in the form of a mighty wall of water, was passed by
the same means, which also served to overcome several great
sea-monsters that disputed the way. At last they came to
Haupu, and Nikeu the Rogue was sent to climb up the cliff
and bring back Hakalanileo’s captive wife. Twice he tried in
vain, but the third time he succeeded in reaching the top, and
entering the house of Kapipikauila, led Hina away before the
astonished inmates realized what was happening. When they
awoke to the fact, the enraged Kapipikauila sent a flock of
birds to desecrate the head of Nikeu, which was sacred; and
after they had done this, in very shame he let go of Hina, who
was then seized and carried back by the birds. Returning to
Kaua and the others below, he at first tried to conceal the
cause of his failure, but at last was forced to confess. Then
Kaua resolved to fight. Standing up in the canoe, he stretched
himself until he was as tall as the heights of Haupu, but his
adversary was equal to the occasion, for cutting off the branches
of a magic tree which grew upon the summit of the cliff, he
caused the cliff to stretch upward also. But as the precipice
rose, Kaua stretched himself likewise; and thus they strove
one with the other until Kaua was as lean as a banana stalk



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


91

and at last as thin as a spider’s web — but still the cliff rose,
and Kaua confessed himself beaten.

Then he laid his great length down upon the sea, so that his
head reached across to Kona, in Hawaii, where his grandmother
fed him and nursed him until he grew plump and fat again.
Poor Nikeu, however, was left hungry, watching the feet of
Kaua; and when he saw these regain their fullness, he could
resist no longer, but severed one and ate it. After a time the
pain crept along the vast length of the body of Kaua to his
head, far away in Kona, and only then did he know that
his foot had been cut off. Now, however, he was restored to
strength and returned to the attack. First he severed all the
branches of the magic tree by whose aid Kapipikauila had
before been able to vanquish him; and then he revealed him-
self and began once more to stretch. This time the enemy was
helpless and could not cause the cliff to grow in height, so that
Kaua, stretching himself until he overtopped the rocks of
Haupu, slew Kapipikauila and brought Hina back to Haka-
lanileo. Then tearing down the cliff, he hurled great pieces of
it into the sea where they stand to this day, being known to
all as “The Rocks of Kaua.” In this tale it is the episode of
the hero’s stretching which is of interest for comparative
purposes, since this seems not to be recorded elsewhere in
Polynesia, although it occurs both in Melanesia and in
Micronesia.^®®



CHAPTER IV
SUMMARY

I N the foregoing pages we have endeaivoured to present some
of the more important and characteristic myths from Poly-
nesia. Forced to give undue emphasis to three or four of the
many groups because of the paucity of material from all but
these, we may, nevertheless, gain a pretty clear impression of
the type of tales once current throughout the entire area.

In the presentation of the material and in its discussion
resemblances have been pointed out between the various
island-groups, both within and without Polynesia; but this
has been done only for individual tales or striking incidents,
and no attempt has been made to summarize the results.
The fact of wide-spread relationship has probably become
evident, but the conclusions which may legitimately be drawn
are not perhaps apparent. Unless we are to depend entirely
upon impressions, some sort of statistical method must ob-
viously be employed. While these are particularly liable to
lead to erroneous conclusions because of the fragmentary
and unequal quality of the available material, we must use
some such method to extract meaning from the mass of in-
dividual similarities. All myths, as we have them, may be
analyzed into a series of separate incidents. This group of
incidents may, and indeed often does, remain intact for long
periods, and may be transmitted as a unit from one people
or area to another. Very often, however, in the course of time
or in transmission one or other of these drops out or is mod-
ified, and new ones are added; so that the result may be a
tale quite unlike the original, but in which certain of the orig-



SUMMARY


93


inal incidents survive. Individual incidents also may be widely
transmitted, and by the study of the distribution of these much
may be learned as to historic associations, lines of migration,
and cultural relationships. Myths, then, as we find them, are
of complex origin, the product of long modification, decay, and
accretion. If now we consider the mythology of Polynesia from
the standpoint of its constituent elements, i. e. its incidents,
much light may be thrown on its growth as a whole, on the . in-
terrelationship of the mythology of the different island-groups,
and on the kinship which the mythology of this area bears to
that of adjoining ones. For a really satisfactory study of this
sort relatively complete material from the whole region is
needed; but unfortunately, as already pointed out, this is not,
and probably never will be, available. Incomplete records from
certain island-groups inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions
in regard to the distribution of incidents, but with all due allow-
ance for these sources of error, and emphasizing the tentative
character of the results obtained, it is perhaps worth while to
see what conclusions may be drawn from the data which we
possess.

Within Polynesia itself such a study of the distribution of
myth-incidents leads to results of interest. Perhaps the most
striking of these is the apparently close relationship between
Hawaii and New Zealand, the two most widely separated
groups within the area, since of the Hawaiian episodes oc-
curring elsewhere in Polynesia two-thirds are found in New
Zealand, while in the much closer Cook and Society Groups
only about one-third appears. New Zealand’s similarities are
closest with the Cook Group (as indeed they should be, see-
ing that the bulk of the historic immigration came from there),
but the number of agreements with Hawaii is very nearly as
great, and a strong relationship to Samoa is also apparent.
Considering other groups, Samoa is most closely affiliated with
the Cook Group and New Zealand, and only secondarily with
Tonga. Central Polynesia, i. e. the Cook Group, Society,



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


94

and Marquesas, seems to form more or less of a unit with
affiliations running in all directions.

If the character of the incidents themselves be considered,
and not merely the number of agreements, it appears that in
the case of Hawaii and New Zealand the episodes which are
common to these two groups are, for the most part, other
than those which either shares with the geographically in-
termediate Cook or Society Groups. Similarly, although New
Zealand’s affiliation with Samoa is nearly as strong as with
Hawaii, the incidents which it possesses in common with the
former are, generally speaking, quite distinct from those which
it shares with the latter. The logical explanation of such a
condition, would seem to be that Polynesian mythology is,
as a whole, a complex of incidents derived from different
sources, one portion of the area having received its material
mainly from one source, another from another. Thus the myths
of any Individual group, such as New Zealand, would be the
result of a blending of two or more streams of incidents, or,
to vary the figure, would be composed of different strata super-
imposed in a definite historical order.

In the presentation of the myths, as given in the preceding
pages, frequent reference has been made to the occurrence
of similar incidents in Melanesia and Indonesia; whence a
consideration of the number and proportions of these similari-
ties in different parts of Polynesia may be expected to throw
light on this question of sources. The Melanesian area lies
immediately adjacent to Polynesia on the west, and we may
first consider how far Incidents found in Polynesia also occur
in Melanesia. Theoretically, any community of episodes dis-
covered between these two areas might be due to transmission
In either direction, i. e. from Polynesia to Melanesia, or from
Melanesia to Polynesia. Inasmuch, however, as a great mass
of evidence derived from other sources points to the drift of
peoples from west to east in the Pacific area, we may reason-
ably regard the bulk of the similarities as due to transmission

[Prometheus]

SUMMARY


9S


from west to east; i. e. that the incidents common to Melanesia
and Polynesia are at least in part of Melanesian origin. As-
suming for the moment that this is true, it is obvious that we
may have two sorts of agreement: incidents of Melanesian
origin (or at least of wide Melanesian distribution) which occur
only in a single group or in a restricted area in Polynesia; and
Melanesian incidents which are current over a considerable
portion or the whole of the Polynesian area. Beginning with
a consideration of the first of these types, it appears that about
one-sixth of the myth-incidents peculiar to the Hawaiian
group, and not found elsewhere in Polynesia, occur also in
Melanesia. As regards Samoa, however, almost half of the
episodes which are purely local and confined to Samoa, so
far as Polynesia is concerned, are recorded in Melanesia.
In New Zealand the comparable figure rises to nearly three-
fourths; but, on the other hand, there are practically no
episodes of this type in the Society and Cook Groups. It
is clear, then, that from this point of view there is a very
strong Melanesian element in New Zealand and Samoa,
while it is weak in Hawaii and apparently absent from
the Society and Cook Groups. The individual incidents of
Melanesian similarity are, moreover, different in each case,
one series being found in New Zealand, another in Samoa, and
a third in Hawaii. Moreover, we must note that the Mela-
nesian incidents showing similarity with the Hawaiian are
current, so far as our present information goes, only in the
Admiralty Islands and New Britain; whereas those occurring
in Samoa and New Zealand are more widely distributed
and are especially characteristic of eastern Melanesia. The
influence, therefore, exerted on Hawaiian mythology by that
of Melanesia would seem to have been not only slight, but local-
ized, as if the wave of Polynesian immigrants which settled in
Hawaii had merely touched the northern edge of Melanesian
territory. On the other hand, the ancestors of those who
reached Samoa and New Zealand must have passed through



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


96

much of eastern Melanesia and been subjected to a contact
of greater length and intensity-

If we now examine the second type of agreements the re-
sults are somewhat different. We are here dealing with myth-
incidents which are not confined to single portions of Poly-
nesia, but are common to two or more island-groups. Of this
class of episodes Hawaii shows a fifth which are of Melanesian
origin, the Society Group slightly less, the Cook Group and
Samoa slightly more, and New Zealand nearly one-half. The
latter area, again, reveals by far the strongest Melanesian
afiinities, while Hawaii, Samoa, and the Cook Group have a
much smaller proportion, with the Society Group showing
the minimum. It is fairly well established that Hawaii re-
ceived a considerable influx of population from central Poly-
nesia between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and the
obvious inference is that the Melanesian incidents which
Hawaii shares with this group are in large part to be traced
to this migration. The great proportion of Melanesian inci-
dents in New Zealand would argue a strong infusion of this
darker blood among the Maori.

Nearly all the recognized theories as to the origin of the
Polynesian peoples bring them in one way or other from the
Indonesian area, and ascribe to them only a temporary stay
in Melanesia en route to their homes in historic times. In
pointing out similarities of incident during the presentation
of Polynesian mythology, the Indonesian affinities have fre-
quently been mentioned, and we must now examine these in
the same way in which the Melanesian resemblances have
just been considered. Following our former order of treatment,
we may first investigate those myth-incidents which, although
localized in some one island-group in Polynesia, also have an
Indonesian or extra-Polynesian distribution. Of the impor-
tant incidents of this type in Hawaii, fully half occur also in
Indonesia; but in Samoa and New Zealand, on the other hand,
the proportion sinks to about one-eighth. Here again, as



SUMMARY


97


with the Melanesian incidents, the series of episodes in com-
mon are different for each group; but the conditions are ex-
actly reversed, for whereas in regard to Melanesian affinities
Hawaii shows but few, though New Zealand and Samoa possess
a large number, in respect to Indonesian similarities Hawaii
is strong, while New Zealand and Samoa are weak. The in-
ference would seem to follow, therefore, that Hawaii has pre-
served a larger proportion of its original Indonesian inherit-
ance than the other Polynesian groups, while in New Zealand
and Samoa this original element has been largely lost or over-
laid with borrowed Melanesian incidents. If instead of taking
the localized incidents we consider those of general Polyne-
sian distribution which are also found outside its bounds,
much the same general results are obtained, although the
disproportion between the different island-groups is not so
marked. Of this type of incidents Hawaii has nearly a fifth
that are also found in Indonesia; the Society and Cook Groups,
taken together, about one-tenth; and Samoa and New Zealand
even less. The relatively high proportion of Indonesian inci-
dents in central Polynesia is worthy of note in this connexion,
as indicating that here the ancestral material was not so largely
overlaid by elements of Melanesian origin as was the case in
Samoa, which is geographically nearer to Melanesia and which
for many generations had had close trade relationships with
its eastern margin.

One other line of investigation throws some light upon the
course of development of Polynesian mythology. The Indone-
sian incidents, whose general distribution in Polynesia has
just been discussed, have been such as occur in Indonesia and
Polynesia, but not in the intervening areas of either Melanesia
or Micronesia. If the Polynesian ancestors passed through
either of these regions in the course of their movement from
west to east, we might expect to find the evidences of such
migration in the presence of Indonesian incidents in Melane-
sian and Micronesian mjrthologies. This is precisely what

IX — 8



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


98

does occur, and thus one class of incidents is found in Indo-
nesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, and another in these areas
and in Micronesia as well. Of the first, Hawaii shows the
smallest proportion, followed by central Polynesia, Samoa,
and New Zealand, in the order given. Of the second, Hawaii
shows the largest proportion, followed by the other island-
groups in the same order as above, only with much greater
differences between the extremes, i. e. Hawaii shows five times
as many incidents of this most widely distributed type as does
New Zealand. It thus becomes once more apparent that
Hawaii has had less Melanesian influence brought to bear
upon it than the rest of Polynesia, and also that it shows close
relationship to Micronesia.

To sum up, then, it may be said that from a study of
the distribution of myth-incidents Polynesian mythology, as
known to us today, bears evidences of a composite origin.
The facts may be reasonably explained by assuming that the
ancestors of the Polynesian people were immigrants from the
west and that they came into the area in at least two waves:
an earlier, one branch of which, barely touching the edge
of northern Melanesia, passed northward into Hawaii, while
the main body delayed longer in Melanesian territory and
extended over the remainder of the area; and a later, which,
after traversing Melanesia, spread mainly through western
and central Polynesia to New Zealand, and afterward sent
an offshoot from the central region northward to Hawaii.
The latter group and New Zealand, owing to their compara-
tive isolation, preserved more of their early inheritance,
whereas in the remainder of the area this original material was
much changed and largely overlaid by the tales introduced by
the later immigrant wave. There are, to be sure, various
legends which do not exactly fit with this theory, but it at least
serves as a working hypothesis and harmonizes remarkably
with the data obtained from the study of other aspects of
Polynesian culture.



SUMMARY


99


In the foregoing discussion of Polynesian mythology no
attempt has been made to explain or to interpret the various
myths. Although some of them undoubtedly show features
characteristic of sun-myths, moon-myths, and so forth, and
although certain scholars have recognized a solar and lunar
cycle of tales of supposedly separate origin, it seems wise to go
very slowly in any such investigations. It has been so clearly
demonstrated that, in the transmission and migration of myths,
the original form of the tale may become so greatly modified
by the elimination of some incidents and the absorption of
others as quite to change its meaning and application, and
it has been demonstrated that myths originally told to ac-
count for or to explain one phenomenon ultimately come to
be applied to a very different one. Consequently we need a
much more detailed knowledge of the whole Oceanic area be-
fore trustworthy conclusions can be reached.




PART 11


MELANESIA




PART II


MELANESIA

G eographically Melanesia naturally fails into two
divisions : New Guinea with the smaller adjacent
islands forming one, and the long series of islands lying to the
north and east of it, from the Admiralty Group to New Cale-
donia and Fiji, constituting the other. From the anthropo-
logical point of view the population of the Melanesian area is
exceedingly complex, being composed of a number of different
racial types. While detailed knowledge of the area is still too
fragmentary to render conclusions other than tentative, it
may be said that at least three groups can be recognized. Pre-
sumably most ancient and underlying all others, though now
confined to certain of the more inaccessible parts of the in-
terior of New Guinea and possibly to some few islands of the
Eastern Archipelago, are a number of Negrito or Negrito-like
tribes in regard to which we thus far have only the scantiest
details. The bulk of the population of the interior of New
Guinea, of considerable stretches of its southern, south-
western, and northern coasts, and of portions of other islands
forms a second stratum known as Papuan. Mythological
material from them is exceedingly scanty. The third type is
that which occupies much of south-eastern New Guinea, to-
gether with part of its northern and north-western coasts, and
forms the majority of the inhabitants of the islands reaching
from the Admiralty Islands to Fiji. Strictly speaking, the
term Melanesian should be applied to this group only; and
from it and the Papuo-Melanesian mixtures the greater part
of the myth material at present available has been derived.



104


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


It is quite evident that no adequate presentation of the myth-
ology of the whole Melanesian area, using the term in its
broader geographical sense, can as yet be made; the most
that can be done is to present an outline of the material de-
rived from what is clearly the latest stratum of the population
and to supplement this, when possible, by such fragmentary
information as we possess from the older Papuan Group. Of
Negrito mythology, here, as in the case of Indonesia, abso-
lutely nothing is known.





PLATE XII


Carved and painted board with figures of a bird and
of fish. These figures refer to guardian spirits or clan
totems, the boards being used for the decoration of the
mask-houses, in which the sacred masks used in cer-
emonials are kept, and where many of the ceremonies
themselves are held. New Ireland. Original in
American Museum of Natural History, New York
City.








CHAPTER I

MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE

A pparently one of the dearest characteristics of the
mythology of the Melanesian area is the almost total
lack of myths relating to the origin of the world. With one or
two exceptions, the earth seems to be regarded as having
always existed in very much the same form as today. In the
Admiralty Islands ^ a portion of the population believed that
once there was nothing but a wide-spread sea; and one myth
states that in this sea swam a great serpent,® who, desiring a
place on which he might rest, called out, “Let the reef rise!”,
and the reef rose out of the ocean and became dry land. An-
other version differs in that a man and a woman, after having
floated upon the primeval sea, climbed upon a piece of drift-
wood and wondered whether the ocean would dry up or not.
At last the waters wholly retired, and land appeared covered
with hills, but barren and without life; whereupon the two
beings planted trees and created foods of various sorts. In
New Britain, among the coastal tribes of the Gazelle Penin-
sula,® we find the familiar stoiy of the fishing of the land from
the bottom of the sea, a task which was accomplished by the
two culture hero brothers, To-Kabinana and To-Karvuvu,
some of whose other deeds will be recounted later. The same
story in slightly greater detail is found also in the southern
New Hebrides.® This conception of a primeval sea is found
widely in central Polynesia, Micronesia, and Indonesia, and
it is perhaps significant that it apparently occurs in Melanesia
only on its northern margin, where contact with non-Melane-
sian peoples would theoretically be expected. A much closer



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


io6

affiliation with Polynesia is shown, however, in another class
of origin-myths to which we may now turn.

If there is little interest in the beginning of the world in the
Melanesian area, the same cannot be said of the origin of man-
kind, for on this subject there is considerable and widely
variant material. Three types of myths may be recognized:
one, that in which mankind is directly created by some deity
or pre-existing being; second, that in which man comes into
being spontaneously or magically; and, third, that where man-
kind descends to earth from the sky-land.

In the Admiralty Islands It is said ® that Manual was alone
and longed for a wife; so he took his axe, went into the forest,
and cut down a tree, and after he had fashioned the trunk into
the figure of a woman, he said, “My wood there, become a
woman!”, and the image came to life. In the Banks Islands a
somewhat more elaborate tale Is told.® Qat was the first to
make man, cutting wood out of the dracaena-tr&e and forming
it into six figures, three men and three women. When he had
finished them, he hid them away for three days, after which
he brought them forth and set them up. Dancing in front of
them and seeing that they began to move, he beat the drum
before them, and they moved still more, and “thus he beguiled
them into life, so that they could stand of themselves.” Then
he divided them into three pairs as man and wife. Now
Marawa, who was a malicious, envious fellow, saw what Qat
had made and determined to do likewise. So he took wood of
another sort, and when he had fashioned the images, he set
them up and beat the drum before them, and gave them life
as Qat had done. But when he saw them move, he dug a pit
and covered the bottom with coco-nut fronds, burying his
men and women in it for seven days; and when he dug them
up again, he found them lifeless and decomposed, this being
the origin of death among men.'^ According to another ver-
sion from this same area,® while the first man was made of red
clay by Qat, he created the first woman of rods and rings of



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 107

supple twigs covered with the spathes of sago palms, just as
they make the tall hats which are used in the sacred dances.

A tale of the creation of man from earth is told in the New
Hebrides.® “Takaro made from mud ten figures of men. When
they were finished, he breathed upon them, breathed upon
their eyes, their ears, their mouths, their hands, their feet,
and thus the images became alive. But all the people he had
made were men and Takaro was not satisfied, so he told them
to light a fire and cook some food. When they had done so, he
ordered them to stand still and he threw at one of them a
fruit, and lo! one of the men was changed into a woman. Then
Takaro ordered the woman to go and stay by herself in the
house. After a while, he sent one of the nine men to her to ask
for fire, and she greeted him as her elder brother. A second
was sent to ask for water, and she greeted him as her younger
brother. And so one after another, she greeted them as rela-
tives, all but the last, and him she called her husband. So
Takaro said to him, ‘Take her as your wife, and you two shall
live together.’” A still different version is that from New
Britain.^® In the beginning a being drew two figures of men
upon the ground, and then, cutting himself with a knife, he
sprinkled the two drawings with his blood and covered them
over with leaves, the result being that they came to life as
To-Kabinana and To-Karvuvu. The former then climbed a
coco-nut-tree which bore light yellow nuts, and picking two
unripe ones, he threw them to the ground, where they burst
and changed into two women, whom he took as his wives.
His brother asked him how he had come to be possessed of the
two women, and To-Kabinana told him. Accordingly, To-
Karvuvu also climbed a tree and likewise threw down two
nuts; but they fell so that their under side struck the ground,
and from them came two women with depressed, ugly noses.
So To-Karvuvu was jealous because his brother’s wives were
better looking than his, and he took one of To-Kabinana’s
spouses, abandoning the two ugly females who were his own.



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY

[Prometheus]

io8

Another version from the same region brings out more clearly
the distinction between the characters of the two brothers and
serves, moreover, to account for the two marriage classes into
which the people are divided. To-Kabinana said to To-Kar-
vuvu, “Do you get two light-coloured coco-nuts. One of them
you must hide, then bring the other to me,” To-Karvuvu,
however, did not obey, but got one light and one dark nut, and
having hidden the latter, he brought the light-coloured one to his
brother, who tied it to the stern of his canoe, and seating him-
self in the bow, paddled out to sea. He paid no attention to
the noise that the nut made as it struck against the sides of his
canoe nor did he look around. Soon the coco-nut turned into
a handsome woman, who sat on the stern of the canoe and
steered, while To-Kabinana paddled. When he came back to
land, his brother was enamoured of the woman and wished to
take her as his wife, but To-Kabinana refused his request and
said that they would now make another woman. Accordingly,
To-Karvuvu brought the other coco-nut, but when his brother
saw that it was dark-coloured, he upbraided To-Karvuvu and
said: “You are indeed a stupid fellow. You have brought
misery upon our mortal race. From now on, we shall be
divided into two classes, into you and us.” Then they tied
the coco-nut to the stern of the canoe, and paddling away as
before, the nut turned into a black-skinned woman; but when
they had returned to shore, To-Kabinana said: “Alas, you have
only ruined our mortal race. If all of us were only light of
skin, we should jiot die. Now, however, this dark-skinned
woman will produce one group, and the light-skinned woman
another, and the light-skinned men shall marry the dark-
skinned women, and the dark-skinned men shall marry the
light-skinned women.” ' And so To-Kabinana divided man-
kind into two classes.

Turning now to the second type of tales of the origin of man-
kind, the belief in a direct or indirect origin from birds may
first be considered. In the Admiralty Islands, according to



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 109

one version, a dove bore two young, one of which was a bird
and one a naan, who became the ancestor of the human race
by incestuous union with his mother. Ajiother recension
has it that a tortoise laid ten eggs from which were hatched
eight tortoises and two human beings, one man and one woman;
and these two, marrying, became the ancestors of both light-
skinned and dark-skinned people. At the other extremity of
Melanesia, in Fiji,^* it is said that a bird laid two eggs which
were hatched by Ndengei, the great serpent, a boy coming
from one and a girl from the other. A variant of this is found
in Torres Straits where, according to the Eastern Islanders, a
bird having laid an egg, a maggot or worm was developed from
it, which then was transformed into human shape.“

Myths of the origin of men or of deities from a clot of blood
are of interest in their relation to other areas in Oceania.
One version again comes from the Admiralty Islands.^ A
woman, named Hi-asa, who lived alone, one day cut her finger
while shaving pandanus strips. Collecting the blood from the
wound in a mussel-shell, she put a cover over it and set it
away; but when, after eleven days, she looked in the shell, it
contained two eggs. She covered them up, and after several
days they burst, one producing a man and the other a woman,
who became the parents of the human race.^'^ In the neigh-
bouring island of New Britain one account gives a similar
origin for the two brothers To-Kabinana and To-Karvuvu.
While an old woman was wading in the sea searching for shell-
fish, her arms pained her, and so, taking two sharp strips of
pandanus, she scratched and cut first one arm and then the
other The two strips of pandanus, thus covered with her
blood, she laid away in a heap of refuse which she intended to
burn; but after a time the pile began to swell, and when she
was about to set fire to it, she saw that two boys had grown
from her blood — from the blood of her right arm, To-Kabi-
nana, and from that of her left arm, To-Karvuvu.^® At several
points in German New Guinea ®^ we find similar tales of chil-



no


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


dren originating from clots of blood, although here, we must
note, they are not considered as the parents of mankind.

An origin of the human race from plants seems definitely
stated only in the Solomon Islands,^ where it is said that two
knots began to sprout on a stalk of sugar-cane, and when the
cane below each sprout burst, from one issued a man and from
the other a woman, these becoming the parents of mankind.^^
With this we may compare the tales from New Britain.^^
Two men (sometimes described as To-Kabinana and To-
Karvuvu) were fishing at night, and while they were so en-
gaged a piece of wild sugar-cane floated into the net, where
it became entangled. Disengaging it, they threw it away, but
again it was enmeshed and was once more discarded. When,
however, it was caught for the third time, they determined to
plant it, and did so. Taking root, the cane grew, and after a
time it began to swell, until one day, while the two men were
absent at work, the stalk burst and from it came out a woman
who cooked food for the men and then returned to her hid-
ing-place. The two came back from their work and were
much surprised to find their food ready for them;*® but since
the same thing occurred the next day, on the following morn-
ing they hid themselves to see who it was that had prepared
their food. After a time the stalk opened and the woman
came out, whereupon they immediately seized her and held
her fast. In some versions, the woman then became the wife
of one of the men, and all mankind are supposed to be descended
from the pair. An origin of the first woman from a tree and of
the first man from the ground is given by the Papuan tribes
of Elema in British New Guinea; ^ while in the New Hebrides
the first female being is said to have sprung from a cowrie-
shell which turned into a woman.

An origin of man from stone is told by the Baining of New
Britain.^® At first the only beings in the world were the sun
and the moon, but they married, and from their union were
born stones and birds, the former subsequently turning into



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE iii

men, the latter into women, and from these the Baining are
descended. The origin of Qat himself is ascribed in the Banks
Group to a stone, which in the beginning burst asunder and
gave birth to the culture hero — a concept which recalls the
tales of the source of the first supernatural beings in Tonga,
Celebes, and the Union and Gilbert Groups. The third type
of myths of the beginning of mankind has thus far been re-
ported apparently only from one portion of German New
Guinea.®®

Although Melanesia seems characteristically to lack myths
of the origin of the world, a tale recounting, the source of the
sea is quite widely spread. As told by the Baining in New
Britain,®^ the story runs as follows. In the beginning the sea
was very small — only a tiny water-hole, belonging to an
old woman and from which she got the salt water for the
flavouring of her food. She kept the hole concealed under a
cover of tapa cloth, and though her two sons repeatedly asked
her whence she obtained the salt water, she refused to answer.
So they determined to watch and eventually surprised her in
the act of lifting the cover and dipping up the salt water.
When she had gone they went to the spot and tore the cover
open; and the farther they tore, the larger became the water-
hole. Terrified by this, they ran away, each carrying a corner
of the cloth; and thus the water spread and spread until it
became the sea, which rose so that only a few rocks, covered
with earth, remained above it. When the old woman saw
that the sea constantly grew larger, she feared that the entire
world would be covered by it, so she hastily planted some
twigs along the edge of the shore, thus preventing the ocean
from destroying all things.®®

Of the origin of the sun and moon various tales are told.
In the Admiralty Islands it is said®® that when the sea had
dried so that man appeared, the first two beings, after plant-
ing trees and creating food plants, made two mushrooms, one
of which the man threw into the sky, creating the moon, while



II2


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


the woman tossed , the other upward and formed the sun.
A different account is given by the people of southern British
New Guinea.^ According to this, a man was digging a deep
hole one day when he uncovered the moon as a small bright
object. After he had taken it out, it began to grow, and finally,
escaping from his hands, rose high into the sky. Had the moon
been left in the ground until it was born naturally, it would
have given a brighter light; but since it was taken out pre-
maturely, it sheds only feeble rays. With this we may compare
a tale from German New Guinea®® which recounts how the
moon was originally kept hidden in a jar by an old woman.
Some boys discovered this, and coming secretly, opened the
jar, whereupon the moon flew out; and though they tried to
hold it, it slipped from their grasp and rose into the sky, bear-
ing the marks of their hands on its surface. The people of
Woodlark Island have another tale in which the origin of the
sun and moon is connected with the origin of fire. According
to this,®® in the beginning an old woman was the sole owner of
fire, and she alone could eat cooked food, while other people
must devour theirs raw. Her son said to her: “You are cruel.
You see that the taro takes the skin off our throats, yet you
do not give us fire with which to cook it”; but since she proved
obdurate, he stole some of the flame and gave it to the rest of
mankind. In anger at his action, the old woman seized what
was left of her fire, divided it into two parts, and threw them
into the sky,®^ the larger portion thus becoming the sun, and
the smaller the moon.

In all of these myths the sun and moon seem to be regarded
as inanimate objects, or at least as such in origin. Another
group of tales, however, considers them to be living beings. As
an example we may take the version given by one of the tribes
of the Massim district of British New Guinea.®® One day a
woman who was watching her garden close to the ocean, see-
ing a great fish sporting in the surf, walked out into the water
and played with the fish, continuing to do this for several



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 113

days. By and by the woman’s leg, against which the fish had
rubbed, began to swell and became painful until at last she
got her father to make a cut in the swelling, when out popped
an infant.®® The boy, who was named Dudugera, grew up
among the other children of the village until one day, in play-
ing a game, he threw his dart at the other children rather than
at the mark, whereupon they became angry and abused him,
taunting him with his parentage.^® Fearing lest the others
might really harm him, Dudugera’s mother determined to
send him to his father; so she took the boy to the beach, where-
upon the great fish came, seized him in his mouth, and carried
him far away to the east. Before he left, Dudugera warned
his mother and relatives to take refuge under a great rock,
for soon, he said, he would climb into a pandanus-Xxtt and
thence into the sky, and, as the sun, would destroy all things
with his heat.'*^ So indeed it came to pass, for excepting his
mother and her relatives, who heeded Dudugera’s advice,
nearly everything perished. To prevent their total annihila-
tion his mother took a lime-calabash, and climbing upon a hill
near which the sun rose, cast the lime into his face as he came
up, which caused the sun to shut his eyes and thus to decrease
the amount of heat.^®

The concept that originally there was no night is rather
characteristic of Melanesian mythology: day was perpetual
and night was discovered or brought to mankind. In the
Banks Islands, after Qat had formed men, pigs, trees, and rocks
he still did not know how to make night, for daylight was con-
tinuous. His brothers said to him, “This is not at all pleasant.
Here is nothing but day. Can’t you do something for us?”
Now Qat heard that at Vava in the Torres Islands there was
night, so he took a pig, and went to Vava, where he bought
night from I-Qong, Night, who lived there. Other accounts
say that Qat sailed to the edge of the sky to buy night from
Night, who blackened his eyebrows, showed him sleep and
taught him how to make the dawn. Qat returned to his brothers,

IX — 9



OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


1 14

bringing a fowl and other birds to give notice of the dawn.
He begged his brothers to prepare beds of coco-nut fronds.
Then for the first time, they saw the sun sinking in the west,
and they cried out to Qat that it was crawling away. “ ‘ It will
soon be gone,’ said he, ‘and if you see a change on the face of
the earth, that is night.’ Then he let go the night. ‘What
is this coming out of the sea,’ they cried, ‘and covering the
sky?’ ‘That is night,’ said he, ‘sit down on both sides of the
house, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down and
be quiet.’ Presently it was dark, and their eyes began to blink,
‘Qat! Qat! what is this? Shall we die?’ ‘Shut your eyes,’
said he, ‘that is it, go to sleep.’ When night had lasted long
enough the cock began to crow and the birds to twitter; Qat
took a piece of red obsidian and cut the night with it; the
light over which the night had spread itself shone forth again,
and Qat’s brothers awoke.” ^

Myths of the origin of fire present a number of interesting
types in the Melanesian area. We may begin with the form
widely current in British New Guinea. According to a ver-
sion told by the Motu,^ the ancestors of the present people
had no fire, and ate their food raw or cooked it in the sun until
one day they perceived smoke rising out at sea. A dog, a snake,
a bandicoot, a bird, and a kangaroo all saw this smoke and
asked, “Who will go to get fire?” First the snake said that he
would make the attempt, but the sea was too rough, and he
was compelled to come back. Then the bandicoot went, but
he, too, had to return. One after another, all tried but the dog,
and ail were unsuccessful. Then the dog started and swam
and swam until he reached the island whence the smoke rose.
There he saw women cooking with fire, and seizing a blazing
brand, he ran to the shore and swam safely back with it to the
mainland, where he gave it to all the people."*®

Some of the Massim tribes of eastern British New Guinea
give quite a different origin, according to which people had
no fire in the beginning, but simply warmed and dried their



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 115

food in the sun. There was, however, a certain old woman
called Goga who thus prepared food for ten of the youths, but
for herself she cQoked food with fire, which she obtained from
her own body.'*’’ Before the boys came home each day, she
cleared away all traces of the fire and every scrap of cooked
food that they should not know her secret; but one day a
piece of boiled taro accidentally got among the lads’ food, and
when the youngest ate it, he found it much better than what
was usually given him. The youths resolved to discover the
secret, so the next day, when they went to hunt, the youngest
hid at home and saw the old woman take the fire from her
body and cook with it. After his companions had returned,
he told them what he had seen, and they determined to steal
some of the fire. Accordingly, on the following day they cut
down a huge tree, over which all tried to jump, but only the
youngest succeeded, so they selected him to steal the fire. He
waited until the others had gone, and then creeping back to
the house, he seized the firebrand when the old woman was not
looking, and ran off with it. The old woman chased him, but
he jumped over the tree, which she was unable to do. As he
ran on, however, the brand burned his hand, and he dropped
it in the dry grass, which caught the blaze and set fire to a
pandanus-txte which was near. Now, in a hole in this tree,
lived a snake, whose tail caught fire and burned like a torch.
The old woman, finding that she could not overtake the thief,
caused a great rain to fall, hoping thus to quench the fire,*®
but the snake stayed in his hole, and his tail was not extin-
guished. 'When the rain had stopped, the boys went out to
look for fire, but found none, because the rain had put it all
out; but at last they saw the hole in the tree, pulled out the
snake, and broke off its tail, which was still alight. Then mak-
ing a great pile of wood, they set fire to it, and people from all
the villages came and got flame, which they took home with
them. “Different folk used different kinds of wood for their
firebrands and the trees from which they took their brands

[Prometheus]

OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


ii6

became their pitani (totems).” A snake in this tale pla^s the
part of the saviour of fire; but in other forms of the mfth the
serpent is the real source or bringer of flame. A version from
the Admiralty Islands runs as follows: The daughter of
Ulimgau went into the forest. The serpent saw her, and said,
“Come!” and the woman replied, “Who would have you for a
husband? You are a serpent. I will not marry you.” But he
replied, “My body is indeed that of a serpent, but my speech
is that of a man. Come!” And the woman went and married
him, and after a time she bore a boy and a girl, and her serpent
husband put her away, and said, “Go, I will take care of them
and give them food.” And the serpent fed the children and they
grew. And one day they were hungry, and the serpent said
to them, “Do you go and catch fish.” And they caught fish
and brought them to their father. And he said, “ Cook the
fish.” And they replied, “The sun has not yet risen.” By and
by the sun rose and warmed the fish with its rays, and they
ate the food still raw and bloody. Then the serpent said to
them, “You two are spirits, for you eat your food raw. Per-
haps you will eat me. You, girl, stay; and you, boy, crawl
into my belly.” And the boy was afraid and said, “What shall
I do?” But his father said to him, “Go,” and he crept into the
serpent’s belly. And the serpent said to him, “Take the fire
and bring it out to your sister. Come out and gather coco-nuts
and yams and taro and bananas.” So the boy crept out again,
bringing the fire from the belly of the serpent. And then hav-
ing brought the food, the boy and girl lit a fire with the brand
which the boy had secured and cooked the food. And when
they had eaten, the serpent said to them, “Is my kind of food
or your kind of food the better?” And they answered, “Your
food is good, ours is bad,” 5®

Similar to this in that the igneous element was obtained
from snakes, but on the other hand suggesting afiinities with
the fire-quest of the Polynesian Maui, is a myth current in
New Britain.®^ There was once a time when the Sulka were



..PLATE XIII

Mask worn in dances in which the participants
represent ghosts and spirits. The mask is made of a
light bamboo frame^ covered with tapa^ or beaten bark-
cloth. The fringe covers the wearer down to the
ankles. Elema tribe, Gulf of Papua, New Guinea.
Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.






MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 117

ignorant of fire; but one da7 a man named Emakong lost one
of his ornaments, which fell into a stream. Taking off his loin-
cloth, he jumped in and dove to recover the lost object, but
was amazed, on reaching the bottom, to find himself in the
yard of a house. Many people came up and asked him his name,
and when he replied that he was called Emakong, one of them
said, “Oh, that is also my name,” whereupon he took the be-
wildered man to his house and gave him a new loin-cloth.
Great was Emakong’s astonishment to see a fire in the house.
At first he was afraid of it, but after he had been given cooked
food and had found this much better than the raw viands which
he had always eaten before, he lost his fear of the new thing.
When it became night, the crickets began to sing and this
also alarmed him, for in the world above there was no night,
and crickets were unknown. His terror became still greater,
however, when he heard resounding claps of thunder from every
side and saw all the people turn into snakes in order to sleep.
His namesake reassured him, however, and said that he need
not fear, for this was their custom, and that when day should
come again, all would return to their human form. Then, with
a loud report, he also changed into a snake, and Emakong alone
retained the shape of man. In the morning, when the birds
sang to announce the coming day, he awoke, and with a crash
all the serpents again turned into men. His namesake now
did up a package for him, containing night, some fire, some
crickets, and the birds that sing at dawn, and with this Ima-
kong left, rising through the water. On reaching the shore,
he threw the fire into dry grass, but when the people saw
the blaze and heard the crackling of the flame, they were
greatly alarmed and all fled. Emakong, however, ran after
them and telling them of his adventures, explained to them
the use of the things that he had brought.

Although not cosmogonic in the stricter sense of the term,
we may conveniently include here the myths given to account
for the origin of death. According to the version current in



Ii8


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


Ambrym,®* the good and the malicious deities were discussing
man after he had been made. The former said: “Our men
seem to get on well, but haven’t you noticed that their skins
have begun to wrinkle.? They are yet young, but when they
are old, they will be very ugly. So when that happens, we will
flay them like an eel, and a new skin will grow, and thus men
shall renew their youth like the snakes and so be immortal.”
But the evil deity replied : “No, it shall not be that way. When
a man is old and ugly, we will dig a hole in the ground and put
the body in it, and thus It shall always be among his descend-
ants.” And because the one who has the last word prevails,
death came Into the world.®

With this we may compare another form of myth as told in
the Banks Islands,® according to which. In the beginning men
did not die, but cast their skins like snakes and crabs, and thus
renewed their youth. One day an old woman went to a stream
to change her skin and threw the old one into the water where,
as it floated away, it caught upon a stick. When she went
home, her child refused to recognize her in her new and youth-
ful form, and to pacify the infant, who cried without ceasing,
she returned and got her old skin, and put it on again. From
that time men have ceased to cast their skins and have died
when they grew old.

According to other tales, death was due to a mistake. Thus
in the Banks Islands it is said® that in the beginning men
lived forever, casting their skins, and that the permanence of
property in the same hands led to much trouble. Qat, there-
fore, summoned a man called Mate (“Death”) and laid him on
a board and covered him over; after which he killed a pig and
divided Mate’s property among his descendants, all of whom
came and ate of the funeral feast. On the fifth day, when the
conch-shells were blown to drive away the ghost, Qat removed
the covering, and Mate was gone; only his bones were left.
Meanwhile Qat had sent Tagaro the Foolish to watch the
way to Panoi, where the paths to the underworld and the upper



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 119

regions divide, to see that Mate did not go below; but the
Fool sat before the way of the world above so that Mate de-
scended to the lower realms; and ever since that time all men
have followed Mate along the path he took.

Still another explanation is that death was due to disobe-
dience. Thus the Baining in New Britain say that one day
the sun called all things together and asked which wished to
live forever. All came except man; so the stones and the snakes
live forever, but man must die. Had man obeyed the sun, he
would have been able to change his skin from time to time like
the snake, and so would have acquired immortality.

As a last example of this class of myths we may take one
which attributes the origin of death to ingratitude. In the
Admiralty Group one account states that a man once went
out fishing; but since an evil spirit wished to kill and eat him,
he fled into the forest. There he caused a tree to open, and
creeping inside, the tree closed again, so that when the evil
being came, he did not see his victim and went away, where-
upon the tree opened, and the man came out. The tree said
to him, “Bring to me two white pigs,” so the man went to his
village and got two pigs, but he cheated the tree in that he
brought only a single white one, the other being black whitened
with chalk. For this the tree rebuked him and said: “You
are unthankful, though I was good to you. If you had done
what I had asked, you might have taken refuge in me when-
ever danger threatened. Now you cannot, but must die.”
Soj as a result of this man’s ingratitude, the human race is
doomed to mortality and cannot escape the enmity of evil
spirits.

Of deluge-myths from the Melanesian area, only a few have
been reported which do not bear the marks of missionary in-
fluence. As told in British New Guinea,®* the story runs that
once a great flood occurred, and the sea rose and overflowed
the earth, the hills being covered, and people and animals hurry-
ing to the top of Tauaga, the highest mountain. But the sea



120


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


followed and all were afraid. Yet the king of the snakes, Rau-
dalo, did not fear. “At last he said to his servants, ‘Where
now are the waters?’ And they answered, ‘They are rising, lord.’
Yet looked he not upon the flood. And after a space he said
again, ‘Where now are the waters?’ and his servants answered
as they had done before. And again he inquired of them, ‘Where
now are the waters?’ But this time all the snakes, Titiko,
Dubo and Anaur, made answer, ‘They are here, and in a mo-
ment they will touch thee, lord.’

“Then Raudalo turned him about, . . . and put forth his
forked tongue, and touched with the tip of it the angry waters
which were about to cover him. And on a sudden the sea rose
no more, but began to flow down the side of the mountain.
Still was Raudalo not content, and he pursued the flood down
the hill, ever and anon putting forth his forked tongue that
there might be no tarrying on the way. Thus went they down
the mountain and over the plain country until the sea shore
was reached. And the waters lay in their bed once more and
the flood was stayed.”

Another tale®* from this same region presents features of
interest. One day a man discovered a lake in which were many
fish; and at the bottom of the lake lived a magic eel, but the
man knew it not. He caught many fish and returned the next
day with the people of his village whom he had told of his dis-
covery; and they also were very successful, while one woman
even laid hold of the great eel, Abaia, who dwelt in the depths
of the lake, though he escaped her. Now Abaia was angry
that his fish had been caught and that he himself had been
seized, so he caused a great rain to fall that night, and the
waters of the lake also rose, and all the people were drowned
except an old woman who had not eaten of the fish and who
saved herself in a tree.®® The association of snakes and eels
with the deluge in these tales strongly suggests the type of
deluge-myth current in parts of Indonesia,®^ and known also
apparently in the Cook Group.®®



MYTHS OF ORIGINS AND THE DELUGE 121

From the examples given it may be seen that the origin-
myths of Melanesia show clear evidence of composite origins.
From small groups like the Admiralty Islands several quite
different legends accounting for the same thing have been col-
lected, and throughout the whole area a striking variety exists.
In how far we are justified in attributing one set of myths to
the older Papuan stratum and another to the later Melane-
sian layer is very difficult to say, since but little from the
purer Papuan tribes of the area has as yet been recorded.
Comparison with Polynesia and Indonesia suggests that the
myths of the origin of the sea, of mankind as originally hav-
ing had the power to renew their youth by changing skins,
and of the obtaining of fire from or with the aid of snakes, were
primarily Papuan, for no traces of either appear in Indonesia,
and only the former is found in somewhat mutilated form in
Samoa, but nowhere else in Polynesia. Other themes, however,
such as the origin of human beings from eggs or from a clot
of blood, are widely known in Indonesia and also occur in
western and south-western Polynesia, and would seem to be
immigrant elements from the great culture stream which,
passing from Indonesia eastward into the Pacific, swept with
greatest strength the north-eastern and south-eastern parts
of Melanesia.



CHAPTER II

CULTURE HERO TALES

O NE of the most noteworthy features of Melanesian myth-
ology :is the prominence of tales relating either to two
culture heroes, one of whom is, as a rule, wise and benevolent,
while the other is foolish and malicious; or to a group of
brothers, usually ten or twelve in number, two of whom, one
wise and one foolish, are especially outstanding. Thus a rudi-
mentary sort of dualism is developed which stands in rather
marked contrast to Indonesian mythology, while showing
points of contact with Polynesian and Micronesian ideas.^

In New Britain we have already seen how To-Karvuvu un-
successfully imitated To-Kabinana in the making of woman;
and in the local forms of the myth of the origin of death it
was To-Karvuvu who cried and refused to recognize his mother
when she had shed her skin and become rejuvenated, so that
he was thus directly responsible for the entrance of death into
the world. A few other examples of his foolishness may be
given from the same region. According to one of these tales,®
To-Kablnana and To-Karvuvu were one day walking in the
fields when the former said to the latter, “Go, and look after
our mother.” So To-Karvuvu went, filled a bamboo vessel
with water, poured it over his mother, heated stones in the
fire, killed her, and laid her in the oven to roast, after which
he returned to To-Kabinana, who asked him how their parent
was and if he had taken good care of her. To-Karvuvu re-
plied, “I have roasted her with the hot stones,” whereupon
his brother demanded, “Who told you to do that.?” “Oh,”
he answered, “I thought you said to kill her!” but To-Kabi-



CULTURE HERO TALES


123


nana declared, “Oh, you fool, you will die before me. You
never cease doing foolish things. Our descendants now will
cook and eat human flesh.” ®

On another occasion To-Kabinana said to his brother,
“ Come, let us each build a house,” and accordingly each con-
structed a dwelling, but To-Kabinana roofed his house out-
side, while his foolish brother covered his on the inside. Then
To-Kabinana said, “Let us make rain!” so they performed
the proper ceremony, and in the night it rained. The dark-
ness pressed heavily on To-Karvuvu so that he sat up, and the
rain came through the roof of his house and fell upon him, and
he wept. In the morning he came to his brother, saying,
“The darkness pressed upon me, and the rain-water wet me,
and I cried.” But when To-Kabinana asked, “How did you
build your house?” the other replied, “I covered it with the
roof covering inside. It is not like yours.” Then they both
went to look at it, and To-Karvuvu said, “I will pull it down
and build like yours. ” But his brother had pity on him and
said, “ Do not do that. We will both of us live together in my
house.” ^

Many of the evil or harmful things in the world were the
work of the foolish brother. One day To-Kabinana carved a
TA«m-fish out of wood and let it float on the sea and made it
alive so that it might always be a fish; and the Thum-'hsh
drove the Malivaran-%sh. ashore in great numbers so that
they could be caught. Now To-Karvuvu saw them, and asked
his brother where were the fish that forced the Malivaran-ii^h.
ashore, saying that he also wished to make some. Accordingly,
To-Kabinana told him to make the figure of a TAwm-fish, but
instead the stupid fellow carved the effigy of a shark and put
it in the water. The shark, however, did not drive the other
fish ashore, but ate them all up, so that To-Karvuvu went
crying to his brother and said, “I wish I had not made my fish,
for he eats all the others”; whereupon To-Kabinana asked,
“What kind of a fish did you make?” and he replied, “A



124


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


shark.” Then ToKabinana said, “You are indeed a stupid
fellow. You have brought it about that our descendants shall
suffer. That fish will eat all the others, and he will also eat
people as well.” ®

The characters of the two brothers are seen to be quite
clearly distinguished, To-Karvuvu being in these tales (as in
many others from this same area ®) foolish or stupid rather
than designedly malicious, although his follies are usually re-
sponsible for the troubles and tribulations of human life;
whereas To-Kabinana, on the other hand, appears as actively
benevolent, his well-intentioned deeds in behalf of mankind
being frustrated by his brother. Tales of a similar type have
been collected at one or two points on the German New
Guinea shore, but appear to be much less common than among
the coast population of New Britain. F rom British New Guinea
few tales of this sort seem to have been collected,® although
stories of the wise and foolish brothers are very prevalent in
the Solomon, Santa Cruz, and Banks Islands and the New
Hebrides, where they are of the second type, in that, instead
of the usual two brothers, we have a group of ten or twelve.®

In the Banks Islands Qat is the great hero, and many
tales are told of him and his eleven brothers, all of whom were
named Tagaro, one being Tagaro the Wise, and one Tagaro
the Foolish.^ In the stories told in Mota, all seem to have
combined against Qat and endeavoured to kill him; but in
Santa Maria, another island of the group, Qat has his an-
tithesis in Marawa, the Spider,*® a personage who in Mota
seems to become Qat’s friend and guide. Thus, according to
one tale,*® when Qat had finished his work of creation, he pro-
posed to his brothers, Tagaro, that they make canoes for them-
selves. Qat himself cut down a great tree and worked secretly
at it every day, but made no progress, for each morning, when
he came back to his task, he found that all that had been done
the previous day was undone, and the tree-trunk made solid
again. On finishing work one night, he determined to watch.




PLATE XIV


Mask, made in part of a human skull, partly filled
out with plastic material and painted. These masks
are used in religious ceremonials and are thought to be
connected with an ancestral cult. New Hebrides.
Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.




CULTURE HERO TALES


125

[Prometheus]

and accordingly, making himself of very small size, he hid
under a large chip which he carried away from the pile that
he had made during the day. By and by a little old man ap-
peared from a hole in the ground and began to put the chips
back, each in the place from which it had been cut, until the
whole tree-trunk was almost whole once more, only one piece
being lacking, namely, that under which Qat. had hidden him-
self. Finally the old man found it, but just as he was about to
pick it up, Qat sprang out, grew to his full size, and raised his
axe to kill the old man who had thus interfered with his work.
The latter, however, who was Marawa in disguise, begged Qat
to spare his life, promising to complete the canoe for him if he
would do so. So Qat had mercy on Marawa, and he finished the
boat, using his nails to scoop and scrape it out.“ When the
canoes were finished, Qat told his brothers to launch theirs,
and as each slipped into the water, he raised his hand, and the
boat sank; whereupon Qat and Marawa appeared, paddling
about in their canoe and surprising the other brothers, who
had not known that Qat was at work.

After this, the brothers tried to destroy Qat in order that
they might possess his wife and canoe. “One day they took
him to the hole of a land-crab under a stone, which they had
already so prepared by digging under it that it was ready to
topple over upon him. Qat crawled into the hole and began
to dig for the crab; his brothers tipped over the stone upon
him, and thinking him crushed to death, ran off to seize Ro
Lei and the canoe. But Qat called on Marawa by name,
‘Marawa! take me round about to Ro Lei,’ and by the time
that his brothers reached the village, there was Qat to their
astonishment sitting by the side of his wife.” They tried to
kill him in many other ways,^® but Qat was always the victor,
and their plans were frustrated.

The element of the opposition of the wise and foolish brothers
is better brought out, it seems, in the New Hebrides, where
Tagaro becomes the chief actor and is pitted against Suqe-



126 OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY

matua. “Tagaro wanted everything to be good, and would
have no pain or suffering; Suqe-matua would have all things
bad. When Tagaro made things, he or Suqe-matua tossed
them up into the air; what Tagaro caught is good for food,
what he missed is worthless.” In a neighbouring island
Tagaro is one of twelve brothers, as in the Banks Islands, and
usually another of them is Suqe-matua, who continually
thwarts him. In Lepers Island Tagaro and Suqe-matua
shared the work of creation, but whatever the latter did was
wrong. Thus when they made the trees, the fruit of Tagaro’s
were good for food, but Suqe-matua’s were bitter; when they
created men, Tagaro said they should walk upright on two
legs, but Suqe-matua said that they should go like pigs; Suqe-
matua wanted to have men sleep In the trunks of sago palms,
but Tagaro said they should work and dwell in houses. So
they always disagreed, but the word of Tagaro prevailed.®® In
this latter feature we have the exact opposite of the conditions
in New Britain. Tagaro was said to be the father of ten sons,
the cleverest of whom was Tagaro-Mblti.®^

In another portion of this island Tagaro’s opponent, here
known as Meragbuto, again becomes more of a simple fool,
and many are the tricks that Tagaro plays upon him.®® One
day Meragbuto saw Tagaro, who had just oiled his hair with
coco-nut oil, and admiring the effect greatly, asked how this
result had been produced. Tagaro asked him if he had any
hens, and when Meragbuto answered that he had many,
Tagaro said: “Well, when they have roosted in the trees, do
you go and sit under a tree, and anoint yourself with the
ointment which they will throw down to you.” Meragbuto
carried out the instructions exactly and rubbed not only his
hair, but his whole body with the excrement of the fowls.
On the following day he went proudly to a festival, but as soon
as he approached every one ran away, crying out at the in-
tolerable odour; only then did Meragbuto realize that he had
been tricked, and washed himself in the sea.



CULTURE HERO TALES


127


Another time Tagaro placed a tabu upon all coco-nuts so
that no one should eat them; but Meragbuto paid no atten-
tion to this prohibition, eating and eating until he had devoured
nearly all of them. Thereupon Tagaro took a small coco-nut,
scraped out half the meat, and leaving the rest in the shell,
sat down to await the coming of Meragbuto, who appeared
by and by, and seeing the coco-nut, asked Tagaro if it was his.
“Yes,” said Tagaro, “if you are hungry, eat it, but only on
condition that you eat it all.” So Meragbuto sat down and
scraped the remainder of the nut and ate it; but though he
scraped and scraped, more was always left, and so he continued
eating all day. At night Meragbuto said to Tagaro, “My
cousin, I can’t eat any more, my stomach pains me. ” But
Tagaro answered, “No. I put a tabu on the coco-nuts, and
you disregarded it; now you must eat it all.” So Meragbuto
continued to eat until finally he burst and died. If he had not
perished, there would have been no more coco-nuts, for he
would have devoured them all.^®

At last Tagaro determined to destroy Meragbuto, and ac-
cordingly he said, “Let us each build a house.” This they did,
but Tagaro secretly dug a deep pit in the floor of his house
and covered it over with leaves and earth; after which he said
to Meragbuto: “Come, set fire to my house, so that I and my
wife and children may be burned and die; thus you will be-
come the sole chief.” So Meragbuto came and set fire to Ta-
garo’s house, and then went to his own and lay down and slept.
Tagaro and his family, however, quickly crawled into the pit
which he had prepared, and so they escaped death; and when
the house had burned, they came up out of their hiding-place
and sat down among the ashes. After a time Meragbuto
awoke, and saying, “Perhaps my meat is cooked,” he went
to where Tagaro’s house had been, thinking to find his victims
roasted. Utterly amazed to see Tagaro and his family safe
and sound, he asked how this had happened, and Tagaro re-
plied that the flames had not harmed him at all. “Good!”



128


OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


said Meragbuto, “when it is night, do you come and set fire
to my house and burn me also.” So Tagaro set fire to Merag-
buto’s house, but when the flames began to burn him, Meragbu to
cried out, “My cousin! It hurts me. I am dying.” Tagaro,
however, replied, “No, you will not die; it was just that way
in my case. Bear it bravely; it will soon be over.” And so it
was, for Meragbuto was burned up and entirely destroyed.***
Two points of special interest in connexion with these tales
deserve brief discussion. One of the most characteristic fea-
tures of Polynesian mythology is the prominence of the Maui
cycle; and if we compare these Polynesian tales with the Mela-
nesian stories of the wise and foolish brothers, there is a sug-
gestion of some sort of relationship between them. To be sure,
the similarity lies mainly in the fact that in both regions there
is a group of brothers, one of whom is capable, the others in-
capable or foolish, whereas the actual exploits of the two areas
are different. Again, it is only in New Zealand that even this
slight amount of correspondence is noticeable. In spite, how-
ever, of this very slender basis for comparison, it seems, in
view of the relative absence of this type of tale from the rest
of the Pacific area, that the suggestion of connexion between
the two groups of myths is worth further investigation. This
is especially evident in view of the second of the two points
to which reference has been made, i. e. the similarity between
Tagaro, the name of the Melanesian brothers in the New
Hebrides, and the Polynesian deity Tangaroa, who appears
in several guises, i. e. as a simple god of the sea in New
Zealand, as the creator in the Society and Samoan Groups,
and as an evil deity in Hawaii. It is not yet possible to deter-
mine the exact relationship between the Polynesian Tangaroa
and the New Hebridian Takaro, but it is probable that there
is some connexion between them. It may be that the use of
the name in the New Hebrides is due wholly to borrowing dur-
ing the comparatively recent Polynesian contact; ^ but on the
other hand, it is possible that Tangaroa is a Polynesian modi-



CULTURE HERO TALES


129


ficatlon of the Melanesian Tagaro. The general uniformity
of the conceptions of Tagaro in Melanesia, contrasted with the
varied character of Tangaroa in Polynesia, adds considerable
difficulty to the problem. The final elucidation of the puzzle
must wait, however, for the materials at present available are
not sufficiently complete to enable us to draw any certain
conclusions.



CHAPTER III

MISCELLANEOUS TALES


A very common class of tales in Melanesia deals with
cannibals and monsters, and our discussion of the gen-
eral or more miscellaneous group of myths may well begin
with examples of this type. As told by the Sulka, a Papuan
tribe of New Britain,^ one of these stories runs as follows.
Once there was a cannibal and his wife who had killed and
eaten a great many persons, so that, fearing lest they should
all be destroyed, the people resolved to abandon their village
and seek safety in flight. Accordingly they prepared their
canoes, loaded all their property on board, and made ready
to leave; but Tamus, one of the women of the village, was with
child, whence the others refused to take her with them, say-
ing that she would only be a burden upon the journey. She
swam after them, however, and clung to the stern of one of
the canoes, but they beat her off, compelling her to return to
the deserted village and to live there alone. In due time she
bore a son, and when he grew up a little, she would leave him
in her hut while she went out to get food, warning him not to
talk or laugh, lest the cannibals should hear and come and
eat him. One day his mother left him a dracaena-^l&nt as a
plaything, and when she was gone he said to himself, “What
shall I make out of this, my brother or my cousin?” Then he
held the dracaeiia behind him, and presently it turned into a
boy, with whom he played and talked. Resolving to conceal
the presence of his new friend. Pupal, from his mother, he
said to her on her return, “Mother, I want to make a parti-
tion in our house; then you can live on one side, and I will


MISCELLANEOUS TALES


13 1

live on the other,” and this he did, concealing Pupal in his
portion of the house. From time to time his mother thought
that she heard her son talking to someone and was surprised
at the quantity of food and drink he required; but though she
often asked him if he was alone, he always declared that he
was. At last one day she discovered Pupal and then learned
how he had come from the dracaena. She was glad that her
son now had a companion, and all three lived happily together.

Tamus was, however, more than ever afraid that the canni-
bals would hear sounds, and suspecting the presence of peo-
ple in the deserted village, would come to eat them; but the
two boys reassured her, saying, “Have no fear; we shall kill
them, if they dare to come.” Accordingly, making themselves
shields and spears, they practised marksmanship and also
erected a slippery barricade about the house, so that it would
be difficult to climb. When they had completed their prepara-
tions, they set up a swing near the house, and while they were
swinging, called out to the cannibals, “Where are you.'* We
are here, come and eat us.” The cannibals heard, and one
said to the other, “Don’t you hear someone calling us over
there.^ Who can it be, for we have eaten all of them.” So they
set out for the village to see what could have made the noise,
the two boys being meanwhile ready in hiding. When the
cannibals tried to climb the barricade, they slipped and fell,
and the boys rushing out succeeded in killing them both after
a hard fight. The children then called to the boy’s mother,
who had been greatly terrified, and when she came and saw
both the cannibals dead, she built a fire, and they cut up the
bodies and burned them, saving only the breasts of the ogress.
These Tamus put in a coco-nut-shell, and setting it afloat on
the sea, said: “Go to the people who ran away from here,
and if they ask, ‘Have the cannibals killed Tamus, and are
these her breasts?’ remain floating; but if they say, ‘Has Tamus
borne a son and has he killed the cannibals, and are these the
breasts of the ogress?’ then sink!”.


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OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


The coco-nut-shell floated away at once and by and by came
to the new village built by the people who had fled years
before. All occurred as Tamus had foreseen, and through the
aid of the coco-nut-shell and its contents the people learned
the truth. When they discovered the death of the cannibals,
they were overjoyed and set out at once for their old home;
but just as they were about to land. Pupal and Tamus’s son
attacked them, and the latter said, “Ye abandoned my mother
and cast her away. Now, ye shall not come back.” After a
while, however, he relented and allowed the people to land,
and all lived together again happily and safely in their old
home.®

Another cannibal story which introduces interesting fea-
tures is told in the New Hebrides.® There was once a cannibal
named Taso, who came one day upon the sister of Qatu and
killed her, but did not eat her because she was with child.
So he abandoned her body in a thicket, and there, though
their mother was dead, twin boys were born.^ They found
rain-water collected in dead leaves, and shoots of plants that
they could eat; so they lived, and when they grew old enough to
walk, they wandered about in the forest until one day they
found a sow belonging to their uncle Qatu. He came daily to
give it food, but when he had gone, the boys would eat part
of the sow’s provisions. Thus they grew, and their skins and
hair were fair. Qatu wondered why his sow did not become
fat, and watching, discovered the twins and caught them; but
when they told him who they were, he welcomed them as his
nephews and took them home with him. After they grew
bigger, he made little bows of sago fronds for them, and when
they could shoot lizards, he broke the bows, giving them
larger ones with which they brought down greater game;
and thus he trained them until they were grown up and could
shoot anything. When they were young men, Qatu told them
about Taso and how he had murdered their mother, warning
them to be careful, lest he should catch them. The twins, how-



MISCELLANEOUS TALES


133


ever, determined to Mil the cannibal, so they set a tabu on a
banana-tree belonging to them and said to their uncle: “If our
bunch of bananas begins to ripen at the top and ripens down-
wards, you will know that Taso has Mlled us; but if it begins
to ripen at the bottom and ripens upwards, we shall have
Mlled him.”®

So they set off to Mil Taso, but when they came to his house,
he had gone to the beach to sharpen his teeth, and only his
mother was at home. Accordingly they went and sat in the
gamal, the men’s house, to wait for him, and lighting a fire in
the oven, they roasted some yams and heated stones in the
blaze. Thereupon Taso’s mother sang a song, telling him that
there were two men in the gamal and that they should be
food for him and for her; so the cannibal quicMy returned from
the shore, and as he came, he moved his head from side to
side, striking the trees so that they went crashing down.
When he reached the gamal, he climbed over the door-rail,
but the boys immediately threw at him all the hot rocks from
the oven and knocked him down, and then with their clubs
they beat him until he was dead, after which they Mlled his
mother, and setting fire to the house over them, went away.
Now Qatu, hearing the popping of the bamboos as the house
burned, said, “Alas, Taso has probably burned the boys!”
Hastening to see what had happened, however, he met them
on the way and heard from them that they had killed Taso and
had revenged their mother whom he had slain.®

Although greatly feared, and capable of destroying people
in numbers, the cannibals are usually pictured as stupid
and easily deceived, as shown In the following two tales. In
a village lived four brothers, the eldest of whom one day took
his bow and went out to shoot fish. Those which were only
wounded he buried in the sand, and so went on until his arrow
hit and stuck in the trunk of a bread-fruit-tree; whereupon,
looking up and seeing ripe fruit, he climbed the tree and threw
several of them down. An old cannibal heard the sound as



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OCEANIC MYTHOLOGY


they dropped and said, “Who is that stealing my fruit?”
The man in the tree replied, “It is I with my brothers,” and
the old ogre answered, “Well, let us see if what you say is
true. Just call to them.” Accordingly the man shouted,
“My brothers!” and all the fish that he had buried in the sand
replied, so that it sounded as if many men were near; where-
upon the cannibal was frightened and said, “It is true, but
hurry up, take what you will, only leave me the small ones.”
So the man took the bread-fruit, gathered up the fish which
he had buried, and went home; but when his brothers begged
him to share his food with them, or at least to give them the
skins of the fish, he refused, telling them to go and get some
for themselves.

The next day the second brother went off, followed his
brother’s tracks, imitated his procedure, and came back with
fish and fruit; the third brother did the same on the following
day; and then it came the turn of the fourth to go. He, how-
ever, failed to bury the wounded fish, but killed them, and
when the cannibal asked him to call his brothers, there was
no reply. “Aha,” said the cannibal, “now I have got you.
You must come down from the tree.” “Oh, yes!” said the
youngest brother, “I shall come down on that tree there.”
Quickly the ogre took his axe and cut down the tree, and in
this way he felled every one that stood near. “Now, I surely
have you,” said he, but the youngest brother replied, “No, I
will come down on your youngest daughter there.” So the
cannibal rushed at her and gave her a fatal blow; and thus the
man in the tree induced the stupid monster to kill all his chil-
dren and his wife and lastly to cut off his own hand, where-
upon the man came down from the tree and slew the ogre.'^

The following story ® presents striking features of agreement
with certain Indonesian tales. A man and his family had
dried and prepared a great quantity of food, which they stored
on a staging In their home; and one day, when the man had
gone off to his field to work, a cannibal came to the house.