50 Fun Facts About Polynesian Mythology and Religion

Which Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire is said to live in Halemaʻumaʻu crater at Kīlauea?

Pele reached Hawaii by canoe from Tahiti, legend says, and in one telling an older sister had banished her for the fires she started.

Which British explorer brought the word taboo into English after hearing it on a Pacific voyage in 1777?

James Cook heard the word in Tonga, where he noted it covered anything forbidden to be eaten or used. Māori say tapu and Hawaiians say kapu for the same idea.

Which Polynesian word for a sacred supernatural force now names the magic points spent in many video games?

Mana got its first detailed description in English from the missionary Robert Henry Codrington in 1891. The writer Larry Niven made it a fuel for casting spells in a 1969 short story.

In Māori mythology, which first man also gives his name to carved humanoid figures found across Polynesia?

Tiki found the first woman, Marikoriko, in a pond in one Māori tradition. A carved pendant worn around the neck is called a hei-tiki.

Which giant stone figures of Easter Island were carved as the living faces of deified ancestors?

Moai still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first arrived in 1722. Nearly half never left the quarry at Rano Raraku.

In Māori tradition, which part of New Zealand is the giant fish hauled up by the demigod Māui?

North Island is Te Ika-a-Māui, the Fish of Māui, in Māori. His hook was made from his grandmother's jawbone, and in some traditions his canoe became the South Island.

In Polynesian legend, what did the trickster Māui snare with ropes and beat until it agreed to move slowly?

The Sun once crossed the sky so fast that people had too little daylight for working and eating. Māui and his brothers noosed it at the pit where it slept at night.

Which Disney film sends a village chief's daughter across the ocean to find the shape-shifting demigod Maui?

Moana cast Dwayne Johnson as the voice of Maui. The idea took shape in 2011, when co-director John Musker began reading up on Polynesian mythology.

In Māori tradition, the ancestor Paikea reached New Zealand from Hawaiki on the back of which animal?

A whale carried Paikea to shore after, in the best-known telling, his half-brother Ruatapu tried to kill him and his brothers at sea. The film Whale Rider follows a girl who is named after him.

Which Polynesian dance was, in one legend, born on the island of Molokaʻi to the goddess Laka?

Hula was denounced as a heathen dance by the American missionaries who arrived in 1820, and newly Christian chiefs were urged to ban it.

In Māori myth, which god of forests and birds pushed apart his parents, the sky father and earth mother?

Tāne succeeded after several of his brothers had tried and failed, sending Ranginui into the sky and leaving Papatūānuku below. Until then their children had lived in darkness between them.

Which Māori god rules the sea and its fish, having fled there when his storm-god brother attacked?

Tangaroa is the enemy of the forest god in Māori thought, so anyone who puts to sea to fish or travel is entering an enemy's realm.

In Hawaiian legend, which dwarf-like people built the Alekoko fishpond on Kauaʻi in a single night?

Menehune are said to appear only at night, and to abandon any project they cannot finish before morning. Temples, roads and canoes were credited to them too.

Which group of stars marks Matariki, the Māori New Year, with its first rising in late June or early July?

Pleiades and Matariki are the same stars, in the constellation Taurus. New Zealand has marked their return with an official public holiday since 2022.

Which Hawaiian word for a priest or expert did the 1959 surf film Gidget carry into slang?

Kahuna covered doctors, dentists and expert seamen as well as priests. The surfing champion Duke Kahanamoku is said to have rejected the nickname Big Kahuna because he knew the original meaning.

Which Hawaiian god of peace and rain was honoured by the Makahiki festival, when war was forbidden?

Lono was represented by a long pole hung with a strip of tapa cloth, and fighting was outlawed so that his image could pass unhindered.

Which Hawaiian god of war was the only one whose worship included human sacrifice?

Kū, in his form Kūkaʻilimoku, was the guardian of the king who unified the islands. Three colossal statues of him were reunited at Honolulu's Bishop Museum in 2010 after almost 200 years apart.

Which Hawaiian king broke the kapu system in 1819 by sitting down to eat a meal with women?

Kamehameha II shared the meal with his mother Keōpūolani and his father's widow Kaʻahumanu six months into his reign. His forces then beat the old religion's last defenders at Kuamoʻo.

Which deposed Hawaiian monarch translated the Kumulipo creation chant into English while under house arrest?

Liliʻuokalani called the 2,102-line chant a prayer of the development of the universe and the ancestry of the Hawaiians. Her translation was published in 1897.

Which guardian water beings of Māori tradition had a New Zealand highway rerouted around a lair in 2002?

Taniwha can be protective guardians or dangerous predators. The Ngāti Naho tribe had part of State Highway 1 moved to protect one said to look like a large white eel.

In Māori myth, which small bird's laughter woke the death goddess Hine-nui-te-pō and doomed the hero Māui?

Fantail laughter rang out as Māui tried to win immortality for humankind by passing through the sleeping goddess's body. She woke and crushed him.

From which headland in New Zealand's far north do the spirits of Māori dead leap on their way to Hawaiki?

Cape Reinga is Te Rerenga Wairua in Māori, the leaping-off place of spirits. The dead are said to climb down the roots of an 800-year-old pōhutukawa tree to reach the underworld.

Which Hawaiian word names the temples that were built for purposes from healing the sick to success in war?

Heiau could be built to bring rain, to stop rain or to help a distant voyage. Many were deliberately destroyed after Hawaiian religion officially ended in 1819.

Which kind of Polynesian sacred ground has a UNESCO-listed example at Taputapuātea on the island of Raʻiātea?

Marae also means cleared and free of weeds or trees in the languages that use the word. Samoans say malae and Marquesans say meʻae for the same kind of place.

In Hawaiian belief, what is a deified ancestor who guards a family and may appear as a shark or an owl?

ʻAumakua might also show itself as an octopus, a lizard, a plant or even a rock. Eating the animal form of the family's own guardian was an offence it could punish with illness.

In Hawaiian tradition, which crop grew from the grave of Hāloa, the stillborn son of the god Wākea?

Taro became the staple food of the Hawaiian people. A second child, also named Hāloa, grew up to be their ancestor, which makes the plant an elder sibling of humankind.

Which Māori god of wind and storms is said to have torn out his own eyes and flung them into the sky?

Tāwhirimātea acted in rage after his brothers separated their parents and one of them beat him in battle. The winds are said to be unpredictable because he is blind.

In Easter Island's Birdman contest, what did swimmers race to bring back from the islet of Motu Nui?

A tern's egg won the contest for the swimmer's patron, who shaved his head and went into seclusion for a year. Christian missionaries ended the cult in the 1860s.

In Māori myth, Māui tricked the fire goddess Mahuika into giving up which burning parts of her body?

Her fingernails went one by one as Māui put out each flame she handed him. She threw the last at him in fury, but it missed and flew into groves of māhoe and kaikōmako trees.

In Māori myth, into which animal did Māui transform his brother-in-law Irawaru after a fishing trip together?

A dog was the result when Māui stretched out Irawaru's limbs back on shore, making him the first of the species. Versions differ on what the two had quarrelled about.

Which creator god of Easter Island gave his name to a dwarf planet found just after Easter 2005?

Makemake was chief god of the island's birdman sect as well as the creator of humanity. The astronomers who found the dwarf planet had nicknamed it Easterbunny.

In the Samoan legend of Sina and the eel, which tree grew from the eel's head after Sina planted it?

Coconut palm nuts still carry the eel's face, the story says: strip off the husk and three round marks look like two eyes and a mouth.

In Māori tradition, which navigator from Hawaiki is credited as the first person to discover New Zealand?

Kupe is said to have come south in pursuit of a rival's great octopus, which he finally destroyed with a blow to the head after a fierce battle.

Which drink made from the root of a Pacific pepper plant is shared in solemn Samoan and Tongan ceremonies?

Kava is a traditional ceremonial drink across Polynesia. The Māori word kawa, meaning ceremonial protocol, is thought to recall the stylised way it was once drunk.

Which Hawaiian mountain, home of the snow goddess Poliʻahu, saw mass protests against a new telescope?

Mauna Kea was so sacred that an ancient law let only high-ranking chiefs visit its peak. Protesters blockaded the summit road in 2015 to keep construction crews for the Thirty Meter Telescope away.

Which Māori greeting, made by pressing noses together, recalls the breath of life given to the first woman?

Hongi exchanges the ha, or breath of life. In legend the first woman, Hineahuone, sneezed and came to life after a god breathed into her nostrils.

In Hawaiian folklore, the night marchers who pass with torches and drums are the ghosts of which people?

Ancient warriors fill the ghostly ranks, and anyone who looks at them is said to die violently. Some say that lying face down and motionless shows enough respect to be spared.

In old Hawaii, what was a puʻuhonua, such as the one preserved at Hōnaunau on the Big Island?

A place of refuge, or puʻuhonua, let someone who had broken a kapu escape an otherwise certain death: a priest absolved the offender, who then walked free. Hōnaunau's is now a national historical park.

Which Māori incantations and prayers are used to ritually cleanse the home of the deceased after a burial?

Karakia once meant a spell or charm, and one old account lists versions for catching fish, snaring birds, trapping rats and finding anything lost.

In Māori tradition, the god Rongo is the guardian of cultivated plants and above all of which vital crop?

Kūmara, the sweet potato, was a vital crop, which made Rongo a major god. On the island of Mangaia he was a god of agriculture and of war.

Which British organisation landed its first missionaries in Tahiti from the ship Duff in the 1790s?

London Missionary Society workers reached Tahiti in March 1797, about seven months after the Duff sailed from England. The society itself had been formed only in 1795.

Which Māori faith healer founded a church that agreed an alliance with New Zealand's Labour Party in 1936?

T. W. Rātana began his mission during the 1918 influenza epidemic, after a vision in which a small cloud rolled in from the sea towards his house. His church was formed in 1925.

Which people of the Chatham Islands lived by Nunuku's Law, a sixteenth-century ban on murder and cannibalism?

Moriori chief Nunuku-whenua laid down the law after bloody fighting between three groups, and backed it with a curse on anyone who disobeyed.

Which Māori god of earthquakes and volcanoes is the youngest son of the sky father and the earth mother?

Rūaumoko was at his mother's breast, in one telling, when her sons turned her face down, so he was carried into the world below. His movements there shake the ground.

Which Tahitian god of war was honoured as founder by the Arioi, a secret religious order?

ʻOro had his power symbolised by feathers, usually red, fixed to the woven wrapping of his image. Tradition makes Taputapuatea on Raiatea his birthplace.

Which Māori experts and traditional healers did a 1907 New Zealand Act of Parliament set out to suppress?

Tohunga were meant to give way to western medicine under the Act. It was aimed in part at the prophet and faith healer Rua Kenana, but was never used against him.

Which Samoan warrior queen was deified after her death as a goddess of war?

Nafanua is said to have secured all four of Samoa's leading chiefly titles through her victories. In myth her father was a demigod.

Which legendary first settler of Easter Island is said to have landed with his party at Anakena beach?

Hotu Matuʻa is said to have sailed from a now unknown land called Hiva, and became the island's first supreme chief, or ariki mau.

Which grandfather of Machu Picchu's famous explorer led the first American Protestant mission to Hawaii?

Hiram Bingham sailed from Boston on the brig Thaddeus in 1819 and reached Hawaii in 1820. A grandson of the same name later brought Machu Picchu to the world's attention.

Which clifftop stone village on Easter Island was the ceremonial centre of the Birdman cult?

Orongo stands high on the edge of the Rano Kau volcanic caldera, a cluster of 53 low, windowless stone houses with even lower doors.