Maui Fishes Up the Islands

Maui, youngest and cleverest of his brothers, possessed a fishhook of extraordinary power. In some traditions, it was fashioned from the jawbone of his grandmother Murirangawhenua, who gave it to him as a gift. In others, he crafted it himself with divine magic. Whatever its origin, the hook had the power to catch anything - even land from beneath the sea.

Maui's brothers were great fishermen, but they refused to take their strange younger brother on their expeditions. They mocked him for his small size and his claims of supernatural power. But Maui was determined to prove himself.

One night, Maui hid in the hull of his brothers' canoe. When dawn came and they had paddled far out to sea, he revealed himself. His brothers were furious, but they could not turn back - they were too far from land.

"Give me bait," Maui demanded, "and I will show you fishing such as you have never seen."

His brothers refused, hoarding their bait for themselves. So Maui struck his own nose and used the blood as bait, or in some versions, used a piece of his own ear. He cast his magical hook deep into the water, far deeper than ordinary hooks could reach.

"Let this hook descend to the uttermost depths, where no line has gone before. Let it catch what lies below the foundations of the sea."

The hook sank down, down, through the realms of Tangaroa's fish, past the caves of sea spirits, until it caught on something vast and immovable. When Maui pulled, his brothers felt the canoe lurch. They thought they had struck a reef.

"Paddle!" Maui commanded. "Paddle as you have never paddled before, and do not look back!"

The brothers bent to their paddles while Maui hauled on his line. The sea churned and heaved. The sky darkened as something enormous rose from the depths. Slowly, incredibly, land began to emerge from the water - mountains breaching the surface like whales, valleys filling with waterfalls, forests springing up where a moment before there had been only ocean.

Maui had warned his brothers not to look, not to stop paddling until he told them the land was secure. But overcome with curiosity, one brother turned to see what Maui had caught. In that moment, the spell was broken.

The land, which had been rising smooth and flat, buckled and cracked. Mountains thrust upward in jagged peaks. Valleys collapsed into deep gorges. The beautiful, level land became rough and broken.

"Fools!" Maui cried. "If you had only waited, the land would have been flat and easy to travel. Now see what your impatience has caused!"

In Maori tradition, the North Island of New Zealand is Te Ika a Maui - the Fish of Maui. You can still see the shape of the fish: Wellington Harbour is its mouth, the East Cape is its tail, and the ranges down the center are its spine. The South Island is Maui's canoe, and Stewart Island is his anchor stone.

In Hawaiian tradition, Maui fished up the Hawaiian islands one by one, each a separate catch. The island of Maui is named for the demigod himself.

This story served multiple purposes for Polynesian peoples:

• Origin myth: It explained where the islands came from and why they have their particular shapes
• Cultural charter: It established Maui as the founder-figure who made human life possible by creating land
• Warning tale: The rough terrain was caused by impatience - a moral about obeying instructions and waiting for the right moment
• Navigation aid: The story encoded geographic knowledge about the shapes and relationships of islands