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I've always enjoyed the myth concerning the origin of New Zealand's North Island, said to have been hauled out of the Pacific by Maui and his brothers. This story is one of several so wonderfully captured in an illustration by Dittmer, reproduced in a book belonging to my grandmother, which I still have and recently re-discovered. But this myth has become something of a legend in itself, evolving throughout prehistory and during the cultural transition of colonisation to become a story that belongs to all New Zealanders regardless of ethnicity. The modern version was enacted before our eyes in Wellington earlier this week in the show Maui: One man against the gods.

Some of my favourite line illustrations, published in An illustrated encyclopedia of Maori life by A.W. Reed, are 100 years old this year. It thus seems fitting that they should be brought to life in a stage production. In one of his many escapades the demigod Maui and his brothers determine to trap the sun-god Ra—according to some accounts, with the purpose of slowing his rapid pace across the sky. As I watched the show it was as if these old drawings had become animated, leaping out of the page in a spectacle of light, aerial movement, and sound.

Maui takes on the sun-god Ra.

Image credits: Left: Dittmer, Wilhelm, 1866-1909: Maui's fight with the sun [from Te Tohunga. The ancient legends and traditions of the Maoris, London, Routledge, 1907]. Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image. Reference no. PUBL-0088-057. Right: With permission of Maui: One Man Against the Gods & Lightworkx Photography #.

But it is the story telling how Maui fished North Island out of the sea that is "world famous in New Zealand". The story is attributed to Mohi Ruatapu, a Ngãti Porou tohunga, who wrote a volume in the 1870s regarded as the most important single body of writing on myths and legends produced by any nineteenth-century Maori writer. He wrote:

... his bait was his nose; he punched it, the blood ran down, and he smeared it on the jawbone of his grandparent Muri-ranga-whenua. By the time the jawbone reached the bottom, his fish had bitten on it. Then the canoe was lifted up and its bow was pushed down. His elder brothers cried out in fear... Then his fish came to the surface... That fish continues to lie here as land. It is still inhabited by Maui, his elder brothers and their children. This is the origin of the presence of the Maori ancestors in this island.

This important genealogical link is referred to in Te Ara:

The tribal traditions which cite descent from or a relationship with Maui provide a basis for settlement in New Zealand. Descent from Maui is a starting point for tribal tenure of the land.

A contemporary author, E.R. Tregear, provides embellishment to the story in his Maori–Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Lyon and Blair: Lambton Quay, 1891 p.234):

Maui, using blood from his nose for bait, hauls the great fish up from the depths. When it emerges from the water, Maui goes to find a priest to perform the appropriate ceremonies and prayers, leaving his brothers in charge of the fish. They, however, do not wait for Maui to return, but begin to cut up the fish, which immediately begins to writhe in agony, causing it to break up into mountains, cliffs, and valleys. If the brothers had listened to Maui the island would have been a level plain and people would have been able to travel with ease on its surface. Thus the North Island of New Zealand is known as Te Ika-a-Maui (The Fish of Maui).

Maui goes fishing.

Image credits: Left: Dittmer, Wilhelm, 1866-1909: Maui fishing New Zealand out of the ocean [from Te Tohunga. The ancient legends and traditions of the Maoris, London, Routledge, 1907]. Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image. Reference no. PUBL-0088-049. Right: With permission of Maui: One Man Against the Gods & Lightworkx Photography #.

There are a number of other embellishments, and altogether different versions of events. For example, in Maui: One man against the gods, Ra's sacred patu (a short clubbing weapon) is used to conjure the spirits to fish a great land from the sea. It's natural to expect oral traditions to evolve, and one must bear in mind that there is no one "official" version given that prehistoric Maori existed as distinct tribal groups with local traditions, rather than as a unified nation. Although they no-doubt shared a traditional history, they were free to evolve the mythology, thus accounting for some variations in the stories. But what particularly interests me is the possibility that the "historic" versions may differ from the prehistoric telling, reflecting the impact of contact with an outside culture. When such contact takes place it is inevitable that, armed with new knowledge, people will attempt to make sense of a new world view. At the same time they will not want to forget where they came from, so must find ways to link the past with newly acquired knowledge. I think the "fish of Maui" story is a likely an example of this taking place.

Maui is a mythical figure known in antiquity to other Polynesian groups, whose oral traditions record similar escapades. For example, he lends his name to the Hawaiian island of Maui, pulling each of the Hawaiian Islands from the sea on his hook with the help of his brothers in their canoe. He did the same for the Tongan Islands, and is likewise involved in slowing the sun's journey and fire-making in several traditions. So it's quite conceivable that when the Maori colonised New Zealand they brought the island-hauling tradition with them. Hauling islands up from the seabed is one thing, but where does the fish/ canoe/ anchor stone come from?

In various places you will read that:

• The Maori name for North Island is Te Ika-a-Maui, "the fish of Maui";
• The Maori name for South Island is Te Waka-a-Maui, "the canoe of Maui";
• Stewart Island is the anchor stone of the canoe;
• Maui rested his foot against the Kaikoura or Banks peninsula while hauling in his catch.

I just don't buy that the disunited tribes of prehistoric New Zealand agreed on these global names, or that they had the cartographic skill to map the coastline without literacy. Even Cook's map requires an active imagination to see a fish, and raises some interesting considerations:

• Cook's map shows the name of North Island as Ea Heinom Auwe, and while "mauwe" may phonetically equate to Maui, it's a stretch to re-formulate this as Te Ika-a-Maui (ika means fish);
• Cook's map shows the name of South Island as Toai Poonamoo, perhaps a corruption of Te Wai Pounamu (the water of greenstone), but according to Read (p.161) it is more likely to have been Te Wahi Pounamu (the place of greenstone). No waka is mentioned;
• Cook incorrectly drew Banks Peninsula (a candidate footrest) as an island, and Stewart Island (the candidate anchor stone) as part of South Island;
• Wellington's harbour is not shown on Cooks map, sometimes said to be the mouth of the fish.

So what could this mean? Possibly that the canoe/ fish/ anchor stone story did not fully evolve until such time as better European maps were available—as they surely were by the close of the first century of re-colonisation. So I did some reading to see if my supposition might have any substance.

Prehistoric NZ is generally considered to have ended in 1769 with the arrival of Cook, as Tasman made only the briefest contact in 1642. This means that Ruatapu recorded traditions as they existed after 100 years of European contact and influence. In The prehistory of New Zealand Davidson notes (p.6) that in the late 1800s scholars:

...were not content to merely record traditions, but constantly tried to edit and improve them, to provide a more coherent story... By this time there had been more than a century of contact between Maori and European in some areas, and numerous oportunities for the growth and embellishment of traditions to accomodate new knowledge about the world beyond tribal boundaries and beyond the shores of New Zealand.

There is a research-based precedence for the view the fish of Maui may not be prehistoric. Davidson notes (p.10):

Just as a simple chronological account of New Zealand prehistory based on archaeology is likely to be an oversimplification, so is a unified New Zealand traditional history. Modern scholarly investigation of the sources of Maori tradition has shown conclusively that the commonly accepted tradition based on Kupe, Toi, and the Great Fleet is an unreal synthesis of many strands of more complicated regional traditions by scholars of an earlier generation. Traditions must be considered as the traditions of the tribes to which they belong. It then becomes apparent that individual heroes were important only to certain tribes and unknown to others; that the canoes of the Great Fleet were not contemporary, one with another, and cannot be considered as a Polynesian equivalent of the New Zealand Company settlement of nineteenth century New Zealand. Of course this does not mean that the famous canoes did not exist at all.

Reed also comments that it can be problematic to tease out early missionary influence. It's all too easy to imagine them enthusiastically educating their audience with the aid of European maps, and latching on to a suggestion from the students that North Island looked a bit like a fish.

I think this story is a good example of how traditions are not static, but undergo continuing development in order to fit with an evolving world view. Maui's fish is a New Zealand legend, not exclusively a Maori one. Although such traditions could be considered "damaged goods" thanks in part to to over-enthusiastic interpretation, they nevertheless made great stories—and history cannot deny them this.

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