Kupe- Polynesian HeroHero"Discoverer of Aotearoa"
Description
A giant octopus kept stealing Kupe's fishing bait, so he chased it across the open Pacific—and discovered an unknown land draped in long white clouds. His wife Kuramārōtini named it Aotearoa.
Mythology & Lore
Te Wheke-a-Muturangi
Something kept stealing Kupe's bait. Every time he set his fishing lines in the waters near Hawaiki, something stripped them clean. The thief was Te Wheke-a-Muturangi, a giant octopus, and Kupe would not tolerate it. He launched his canoe and gave chase.
The octopus fled south across the open Pacific, and Kupe followed. Past the last islands anyone knew, past the edge of every chart held in memory, the chase continued. In Grey's Polynesian Mythology and Te Rangi Hiroa's The Coming of the Maori, the voyage is told as a single relentless pursuit: one man in a canoe, hauling after a creature that would not stop running.
The Long White Cloud
Then land appeared. A coastline no Polynesian navigator had ever seen, draped in cloud that stretched from horizon to horizon. Kupe's wife Kuramārōtini saw it first and spoke its name: Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud.
Kupe sailed its shores, naming headlands and harbors as he went. The octopus had not escaped. He cornered Te Wheke-a-Muturangi in the strait between the two main islands, where the currents collide and the water churns white. He killed it there. The turbulence in that strait is sometimes said to be the last thrashing of the creature's arms.
The Way Back
Kupe did not stay. He sailed back to Hawaiki carrying star paths and wind signs that would let others follow. The great migration canoes that brought the ancestors of the Māori to Aotearoa depended on those directions. Kupe found the land. Others would fill it.
Relationships
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