Māui Fishes Up Islands
Māui
In Maui traditions gathered by Westervelt, extraordinary fishing becomes a way to explain the emergence and arrangement of islands within a heroic ancestral landscape.
The fishing motif turns seascape into genealogy and action: islands are not passive dots on a map but places connected to a remembered feat and named cultural hero.
Because related fishing-up-the-land traditions appear across Polynesia, this entry is explicitly source-bound. Similar narratives should be published as attributed variants rather than collapsed into one pan-Polynesian account.
Follow the thread
Connected lore
Curated relationships invite comparison without implying that distinct traditions are the same.
Sources & citations
Westervelt, W. D. Legends of Ma-ui—a Demi God of Polynesia, and of His Mother Hina. Honolulu: Hawaiian Gazette Co., 1910.
W. D. Westervelt · Hawaiian Gazette Co.; digital edition by Project Gutenberg · 1910
public domain