Polynesian Mythology

The Children of Heaven and Earth Ko Ngā Tama A Rangi Tradition Relating to the Origin of the Human Race

Men had but one pair of primitive ancestors; they sprang from the vast heaven that exists above us, and from earth which lies beneath us. According to the traditions of our race, Rangi and Papa, or Heaven and Earth, were the source from which, in the beginning, all things originated. 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 multiplied and increased, and yet light had never broken upon them, but it ever continued dark. Hence these sayings are found in our ancient religious services: “There was darkness from the first division of time, unto the tenth, to the hundredth, to the thousandth,” that is, for a vast space of time; and these divisions of times were considered as beings, and were each termed a Po; and on their account there was yet no world with its bright light, but darkness only for the beings which existed.

At last the beings who had been begotten by Heaven and Earth, worn out by the continued darkness, consulted amongst 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 spoke Tūmatauenga, the fiercest of the children of Heaven and Earth, “It is well, let us slay them.”

Now at nightfall when their mother came back to them, her children were dancing and singing as usual. As soon as they had finished, she called to her last born, “Come here, my child, let us sleep together;” so they slept together; but as soon as day dawned, she disappeared; the little fellow now felt quite suspicious at such strange proceedings on the part of his mother every morning. But at last, upon another night, as he slept again with his mother, the rest of his brothers that night also sleeping with them, the little fellow crept out in the night and stole his mother’s apron, her belt, and clothes, and hid them; then he went and stopped up every crevice in the wooden window, and in the doorway, so that the light of the dawn might not shine into the house, and make his mother hurry to get up. But after he had done this, his little heart still felt very anxious and uneasy lest his mother should, in her impatience, rise in the darkness and defeat his plans. But the night dragged its slow length along without his mother moving; at last there came the faint light of early morn, so that at one end of a long house you could see the legs of the people sleeping at the other end of it, but his mother still slept on; then the sun rose up, and mounted far up above the horizon; now at last his mother moved, and began to think to herself, “What kind of night can this be to last so long?” and having thought thus, she dropped to sleep again.

And his brothers replied again: “Make haste and throw it then.” And as he pulled it out from under his garments, the light flashed from the beautiful mother-of-pearl shell in the hollow of the hook, and his brothers saw that the hook was carved and ornamented with tufts of hair pulled from the tail of a dog, and it looked exceedingly beautiful. Māui then asked his brothers to give him a little bait to bait his hook with; but they replied: “We will not give you any of our bait.” So he doubled his fist and struck his nose violently, and the blood gushed out, and he smeared his hook with his own blood for bait, and then be cast it into the sea, and it sank down, and sank down, till it reached to the small carved figure on the roof of a house at the bottom of the sea, then passing by the figure, it descended along the outside carved rafters of the roof, and fell in at the doorway of the house, and the hook of Māui-tikitiki-o-Taranga caught first in the sill of the doorway.

Then, feeling something on his hook, he began to haul in his line. Ah! ah! there ascended on his hook the house of that old fellow Tonganui. It came up, up; and as it rose high, oh dear! how his hook was strained with its great weight; and there came gurgling

This old lady was at the moment employed in counting some taro roots, which she was about to have cooked, and as she was blind she was not aware of the strangers who stole quietly and silently up to her. There were ten taro roots lying in a heap before her. She began to count them, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Just at this moment Tāwhaki quietly slipped away the tenth; the old lady felt about everywhere for it, but she could not find it. She thought she must have made some mistake, and so began to count her taro roots over again very carefully, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Just then Tāwhaki had slipped away the ninth. She was now quite surprised, so she counted them again quite slowly, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; and as she could not find the two that were missing, she at last guessed that somebody was playing a trick upon her, so she pulled her weapon out, which she always sat upon, to keep it safe, and standing up turned round, feeling about her as she moved, to try if she could find Tāwhaki and Karihi; but they very gently stooped down to the ground and lay close there, so that her weapon passed over them, and she could not feel anybody; when she had thus swept her weapon all round her, she sat down and put it under her again. Karihi then struck her a blow upon the face, and she, quite frightened, threw up her hands to her face, pressing them on the place where she had been struck, and crying out, “Oh! who did that?”

“At last she reflected in her heart, saying ‘How can I then contrive to cross the lake to the island of Mokoia? it can plainly be seen that my friends suspect what I am going to do.’ So she sat down upon the ground to rest; and then soft measures reached her from the trumpet of Tūtānekai, and the young and beautiful chieftainess felt as if an earthquake shook her to make her go to the beloved of her heart; but then arose the recollection, that there was no canoe. At last she thought, perhaps I might be able to swim across. So she took six large dry empty gourds, as floats, lest she should sink in the water, three of them for each side, and she went out upon a rock, which is named Iri-iri-kapua, and from thence to the edge of the water, to the spot called Wairerewai, and there she threw off her clothes and cast herself into the water, and she reached the stump of a sunken tree which used to stand in the lake, and was called Hinewhata, and she clung to it with her hands, and rested to take breath, and when she had a little eased the weariness of her shoulders, she swam on again, and whenever she was exhausted she floated with the current of the lake, supported by the gourds, and after recovering strength she swam on again; but she could not distinguish in which direction she should proceed, from the darkness of the night; her only guide was the soft measure from the instrument of Tūtānekai; that was the mark by which she swam straight to Waikimihia, for just above that hot spring was the village of Tūtānekai, and swimming, at last she reached the island of Mokoia.