A2A World · Field Guide 13 of the World’s Mythologies
Māori · Hawaiian · Tahitian · Samoan · Tongan
Aotearoa New Zealand, Hawai‘i, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga and the islands of the Pacific triangle
Polynesian voyagers settled the widest ocean on Earth, from Hawai‘i to Aotearoa New Zealand to Rapa Nui, navigating by stars, swells and birds. Their myths travelled with them and grew new branches on every island.
Shared figures — the sky father and earth mother, the ocean god Tangaroa, the demigod Māui — appear across the Pacific in local forms, tied closely to particular mountains, coasts and genealogies.
© A2A World LLC 2026
Context
Polynesian knowledge is held in genealogy (whakapapa in Māori), chant, song, dance and carving. Places carry names that recall the deeds of ancestors and gods, so the land itself is a record of the stories.
Principal Sources
The Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant of over 2,000 lines. Māori traditions recorded by Māori scholars and in collections such as Sir George Grey’s Ngā Mahi a ngā Tūpuna (1854). Tahitian traditions recorded in the 19th century. Living oral traditions, chant (oli, karakia) and hula.
Wayfinding
Polynesian navigators crossed thousands of miles of open ocean without instruments, reading star paths, ocean swells, clouds and seabirds. The voyage of the canoe Hōkūle‘a in 1976 renewed these skills in modern times.
Whakapapa
In Māori thought everything has genealogy — people, mountains, rivers, fish and trees descend from the gods. To tell a myth is to recite a family tree that connects the listener to the land.
I · Creation
The parting of the first parents.
Rangi and Papa (Māori)
Key Attributes
Sky Father and Earth Mother.
Story
In the beginning Sky and Earth lay locked in an embrace, and their children lived cramped in darkness between them.
Look For in the Land
Two vast figures lying together; sky meeting land at a horizon.
Te Wehenga
Key Attributes
Light enters the world.
Story
Tāne lies on his back and pushes his father upward with his legs until Sky and Earth part. Rain is Rangi’s tears, and morning mist rises as Papa’s sighs.
Look For in the Land
A figure on its back pushing upward; rain; rising mist.
Kāne (Hawaiian)
Key Attributes
God of forests and birds.
Story
After separating his parents Tāne clothes his mother in trees and forms the first woman, Hineahuone, from red earth at Kurawaka.
Look For in the Land
A great tree; birds; a figure formed of earth.
Key Attributes
God of winds and storms.
Story
Angry at the separation, he goes up to live with his father and wages war on his brothers with winds, clouds and storms.
Look For in the Land
Storm clouds; bent trees; winds blowing from four quarters.
Hawaiian
Key Attributes
Creation chant from darkness.
Story
Life emerges from the deep night (pō): first coral polyps, then shellfish, seaweed, fish, birds, plants and finally people, in a genealogy linking the ruling families to the origin of the world.
Look For in the Land
Coral and shells; life rising from dark water.
II · Māui
The demigod trickster known across the Pacific.
Te Ika-a-Māui
Key Attributes
A magic fishhook from his grandmother’s jawbone.
Story
Māui hooks a giant fish from the ocean floor; in Māori tradition it becomes the North Island, Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island is his canoe. In Hawai‘i he fishes up the islands.
Look For in the Land
A fish shape in a coastline; a great hook; a canoe-shaped island.
Key Attributes
Ropes snare the sun.
Story
The sun races across the sky too fast. Māui and his brothers snare it with ropes and beat it so it moves slowly, giving longer days. In Hawai‘i this is done from Haleakalā, “house of the sun.”
Look For in the Land
Ropes around a sun; a high crater; a figure holding lines.
Key Attributes
Fire from Mahuika.
Story
Māui tricks the fire goddess Mahuika into giving up her fingernails of flame; she sets the world alight, and fire takes refuge in certain trees, from which people now make it by friction.
Look For in the Land
Flames at fingertips; a burning tree.
Key Attributes
Raising the heavens.
Story
In Hawaiian and Samoan tellings the sky lies so low people must crawl. Māui pushes it up to its present height.
Look For in the Land
A figure with arms raised against the sky.
Key Attributes
The quest to defeat death.
Story
Māui tries to win immortality by passing through the body of the goddess of death while she sleeps; a fantail laughs, she wakes, and Māui dies. Since then all people must die.
Look For in the Land
A small bird with fanned tail; a sleeping giantess.
III · Gods of Sea & Fire
Powers of the island world.
Kanaloa, Ta‘aroa
Key Attributes
God of the sea and its creatures.
Story
Ruler of the ocean and father of fish and reptiles. In Tahitian tradition Ta‘aroa is the creator who emerges from a shell and makes the world from his own body.
Look For in the Land
Waves; a great fish; an opened shell.
Hawaiian
Key Attributes
Goddess of the volcano and fire.
Story
Pele journeys from Kahiki, digging fire-pits along the island chain, until she makes her home in Halema‘uma‘u crater at Kīlauea. Her quarrels with her sister Nāmaka, of the sea, shape the islands.
Look For in the Land
Lava flows; a crater glow; a woman’s face in fire; strands of volcanic glass called Pele’s hair.
Key Attributes
Pele’s youngest sister; healer.
Story
Hi‘iaka travels the islands on a long quest for Pele, defeating monsters and reviving the dead. She is associated with the forest, the lehua blossom and hula.
Look For in the Land
Ferns and red blossoms on new lava; a traveller.
Sina
Key Attributes
Goddess of the moon; maker of bark cloth.
Story
Weary of work and her family, Hina climbs to the moon, where she can still be seen beating bark cloth beside a banyan tree.
Look For in the Land
A woman in the moon; a tree; a mallet.
Lono (Hawaiian)
Key Attributes
God of cultivation and peace.
Story
Patron of cultivated food, especially the kūmara (sweet potato). In Hawai‘i, Lono is honoured in the Makahiki season of harvest and peace.
Look For in the Land
Cultivated mounds; sweet potatoes; a staff with white cloth.
IV · Voyaging & Place
Where the stories meet the ocean and the sky.
Havai‘i, Savai‘i
Key Attributes
The ancestral homeland.
Story
The place from which the ancestors set out and to which spirits return after death, departing in Aotearoa from Cape Rēinga at the northern tip.
Look For in the Land
A distant island; a headland with a single tree above the sea.
Key Attributes
Navigator; discoverer of Aotearoa.
Story
Chasing a giant octopus across the ocean, Kupe reaches Aotearoa, names many places along its coasts and returns to Hawaiki with directions for the voyages that follow.
Look For in the Land
An octopus; a canoe on open sea.
Waka
Key Attributes
Ancestral voyaging canoes.
Story
Māori tribes trace descent from the crews of named canoes such as Tainui, Te Arawa and Aotea, each landing at a remembered place.
Look For in the Land
A double-hulled canoe; a carved prow.
Makali‘i (Hawaiian)
Key Attributes
The Pleiades; the new year.
Story
The rising of Matariki before dawn in midwinter marks the Māori new year, a time to remember the dead and plan for the season ahead. It became a public holiday in New Zealand in 2022.
Look For in the Land
A tight cluster of stars; a mother with children.
Key Attributes
Guardian beings of water.
Story
Powerful beings who dwell in rivers, lakes and the sea; they can be protectors of a tribe or dangers to be respected. Many are tied to specific places.
Look For in the Land
A great creature in a river bend; a dark pool; a reptile or shark form.
A Note on Names, Versions and Respect
Polynesian traditions belong to living peoples with deep ties to these places. Names follow standard Māori and Hawaiian spelling with macrons and ‘okina. Many versions exist across islands and tribes; note the source a telling follows.
© A2A World LLC 2026 · a2aworld.ai/field-guides/polynesian