Maui before there was a maui

Maui. Name of one of the Hawaiian Islands.

Mﾄ「i. Name of the famous demigod and trickster who snared the sun and discovered fire.

-Pukui & Elbert, New Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary

The island of Maui shares its name with the greatest hero ever to emerge from the mythological past of Polynesia, and some would argue, the world. Crafty like Odysseus, doer of labors to rival Hercules, bringer of fire like Prometheus, Maui the demigod tames the sun, lifts the sky and provides food and land for his family and his people by pulling up the islands they now inhabit from the depths of the ocean.

By Don Acuaman

W H ER E G U E ST B O O K

Photo credit gotham book 5.5/9pt

Maui before there was a Maui

Photo credit gotham book 5.5/9pt

solomon enos’ s painting depicts a hawaiian creation story, in which the demigod maui pulls the islands up from the bottom of the sea with his magic fish hooks.

In a typical Western approach concerned foremost with historical origins, early scholars suggested that some predecessor of Hawai‘i’s mythical Māui must lie in Indian or Cushite myth, untold epochs ago before the Polynesian culture diffused across the Pacific. But that puts the mudhen before the egg, in a manner of speaking. In Polynesia, Māui is a primordial source of identity; he is inseparable from the cultures’ origins. His stories are part of “what makes us Polynesians—along with our language, genealogies, chieftains, looks and behaviors,” insists Hokulani Holt, Director of Cultural Programs at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

“Māui is part of island lore,” concurs hula teacher and singer Manu Boyd, Cultural Director of the Royal Hawaiian Center. “Growing up, it’s part of who we are, these stories upon which our culture and Polynesian culture in general is based.”

“Māui and his mother Hina are found in many different places in Polynesia,” emphasizes Holt. In fact, Katherine Luomala’s scholarly book, Maui-of-A-Thousand-Tricks, says “more variants and data about the role of Māui in the culture have come from New Zealand than from any other region.”

“They have so many Māui stories!” exclaims Hoaka Delos Reyes, a practitioner of the ancient Hawaiian art of pōhaku, or stone carving. He visited New Zealand, where the connection with Hawaiians is as much fraternal as cultural.

“Coming from Maui, [the Maoris] treat us as the older brothers; they say they came here and then they went back, but we’re the older ones that stayed. We’re the older brothers.”

“Those that are related in Polynesia have different forms of Māui, which demonstrate that Polynesians share the same language, culture, myths,” explains Boyd. Documenting Māui appearances across Polynesia, Luomala and other scholars agree, reaching the conclusion that “Māui myths form one of the strongest links in the mythological chain of evidence binding the scattered inhabitants of the Pacific.”

At the same time, Māui myths are spiced with regional variations. From New Zealand to the Tuamotus, Luomala finds evidence to confirm what Hawaiian Mythology author Martha Beckwith notes about Hawai‘i’s Māui stories in particular: “[Māui stories] are always minutely localized for each island, and centering especially about a point above Kahakuloa for West Maui [and] Kauiki for East Maui.” Some local stories place Māui’s exploits east of majestic Haleakalā, where many versions position Māui when he tames the sun in order to enable his mother, Hina, to dry her kapa (cloth) in a single day.

Both Boyd and Holt mention Haleakalā when asked what locality they most associate with Māui. They also both mentioned another Māui story omnipresent in Polynesian cultures—and similarly marked by localization—in which Maui goes fishing for a delicious ulua for his mother. To catch the famously pugnacious fish, Maui is entrusted with his father’s divine fishhook, Manaiakalani. The fishhook’s power enables Māui to capture the mighty ulua named Pamoe, but only on the condition that no one look back at the catch as Māui attempts to pull it up. Māui’s brothers, tricked by the demigod into paddling the boat and towing its catch, are unfortunately seized by curiosity and they look back, breaking the hook’s power and snapping the line. The enormous fish is fractured into eight pieces of varying size, which become the eight Hawaiian Islands; Manaiakalani becomes the constellation known in the West as Scorpio.

When Māui’s hungry mother inquires about the fish she sent him for, the clever boy replies that the islands he has created will provide a source of food for everyone.

Māui and his fishhook, which may be seen on the Bishop Museum’s hawaiialive.org Web site, feature commonly in creation myths almost everywhere in Polynesia. Despite local disparities in details, Holt points out that “these stories are some of the links between us all” as a people.

Of course for Polynesians, links to Māui— and thus to each other—are more than simply

literal, they are ties of ancestry. Boyd affirms, “Māui does appear in Hawaiian genealogies as well as southern Polynesian genealogies, and as a historical figure throughout Polynesia.” In Hawai‘i, Māui has an outstanding appearance in the 15th generation of the Kumulipo, a chant that traces modern Hawaiians back to creation. As chanters recite the sacred words connecting them to their forbears, “they intersperse the list with descriptive passages about the ancestors.” The Kumulipo’s descriptive passage about the deeds of Maui takes up more than any other, as Luomala demonstrates. The “nine strifes” of Māui in the Kumulipo—a list of feats he completed—“correspond closely with the well-known series from South Polynesia,” according to Beckwith.

Given the similarities in his deeds across so vast an area, according to Luomala, many early scholars sought to build evidence establishing Māui as historical fact, a real man “whose great feats of navigation and leadership made his name immortal.” But this sort of dismissal misses the point of storytelling in oral cultures. “The creativity, imagery and poetry, the intrigue woven together by our kupuna—they’re testament to a strong oral tradition,” says Boyd.

The incredible mythical details saturating that tradition are just as important to the function of the stories as any credible clue they might divulge about Māui’s actual historicity. “I believe all myths are based in a reality,” opines Holt. The reality imbued in myth requires interpretation and an understanding of metaphor. These will be missed by listeners who get bogged down in the historic details and focus, for instance, on the print of Māui’s knee, visible where he “stooped to drink at a stream in East Maui near Kailua.”

Asked where Māui lived in the protean days before he pulled up the islands, Holt replies, “it’s not expected to really tell that—they’re metaphors, as are all of these [Māui stories]. To pull the islands up and together is to bring the islands closer to one another. Māui is drawing people together.” In Polynesia, it is a feat Māui continues to accomplish to this day.

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