The Polynesian narrative or Polynesian mythology encompasses the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia together with those of the scattered cultures known as the Polynesian outliers. Polynesians speak languages that descend from a language reconstructed as Proto-Polynesian - probably spoken in the Tonga - Samoa area around 1000 BC.
In Māori mythology, Rongo or Rongo-mā-Tāne is a major god (atua) of cultivated plants, especially kumara, a vital crop. Other crops cultivated by Māori in traditional times included taro, yams (uwhi), cordyline (tī), and gourds (hue). Because of their tropical origin, most of these crops were difficult to grow except in the far north of the North Island, hence the importance of Rongo in New Zealand.
In Māori mythology, Tāne is the god of forests and of birds, and the son of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, the sky father and the earth mother, who used to lie in a tight embrace where their many children lived in the darkness between them.
Tangaroa is the great atua of the sea, lakes, rivers, and creatures that live within them, especially fish, in Māori mythology. As Tangaroa-whakamau-tai he exercises control over the tides. He is sometimes depicted as a whale.
Pulotu is the resting place of those passed on in the Polynesian narrative of Tonga and Samoa, the world of darkness "lalo fonua".
In Hawaiian mythology, Laka is the name of two different popular heroes from Polynesian mythology..
Kaha'i is a handsome Polynesian demigod whose exploits were popular in many Polynesian mythologies.
Mangareva is the central and largest island of the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia. It is surrounded by smaller islands: Taravai in the southwest, Aukena and Akamaru in the southeast, and islands in the north. Mangareva has a permanent population of 1,239 (2012) and the largest village on the island, Rikitea, is the chief town of the Gambier Islands.
The Gambier Islands are an archipelago in French Polynesia, located at the southeast terminus of the Tuamotu archipelago. They cover an area of 27.8 km2 or 10.7 sq mi, and are made up of the Mangareva Islands, a group of high islands remnants of a caldera along with islets on the surrounding fringing reef, and the uninhabited Temoe atoll, which is located 45 km south-east of the Mangareva Islands. The Gambiers are generally considered a separate island group from Tuamotu both because their culture and language (Mangarevan) are much more closely related to those of the Marquesas Islands, and because, while the Tuamotus comprise several chains of coral atolls, the Mangareva Islands are of volcanic origin with central high islands.
Sir Peter Henry Buck, also known as Te Rangi Hīroa or Te Rangihīroa, was a New Zealand doctor, military leader, health administrator, politician, anthropologist and museum director. He was a prominent member of Ngāti Mutunga, his mother's Māori iwi.
Tangaloa was an important family of gods in Tongan mythology. The first Tangaloa was the cousin of Havea Hikuleʻo and Maui, or in some sources the brother or son or father of them. He was Tangaloa ʻEiki, and was assigned by his father, Taufulifonua, the realm of the sky to rule.
Hotu Matuꞌa was the legendary first settler and ariki mau of Easter Island and ancestor of the Rapa Nui people. Hotu Matuꞌa and his two canoe colonising party were Polynesians from the now unknown land of Hiva. They landed at Anakena beach and his people spread out across the island, sub-divided it between clans claiming descent from his sons, and lived for more than a thousand years in their isolated island home at the southeastern tip of the Polynesian Triangle.
Mangareva, Mangarevan is a Polynesian language spoken by about 600 people in the Gambier Islands of French Polynesia and on the islands of Tahiti and Moorea, located 1,650 kilometres (1,030 mi) to the North-West of the Gambier Islands, where Mangarevians have emigrated.
The Mangarevan expedition of 1934 was a scientific expedition to investigate the natural history of the farthest southeastern islands of Polynesia, including Mangareva. It was a comprehensive natural history expedition of a kind more common during the previous century. Sponsored by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum of Honolulu, Hawaii and led by the malacologist Charles Montague Cooke Jr., its research team included the ethnologists Kenneth P. Emory and Peter H. Buck, the botanists Harold St. John and F. Raymond Fosberg, the malacologists Donald Anderson and Yoshio Kondo, and the undergraduate entomologist E. C. Zimmerman. After visiting 56 islands on a voyage of over 14,000 kilometers over a period of six months, they returned with an enormous quantity of data, including perhaps the richest collection ever made of plants in Polynesia.
ʻOro is a god in Tahiti and Society Islands mythology. The veneration of ʻOro, although practiced in varying intensity among the islands, was a major religion of the Society Islands in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially Tahiti, Tahaa, Moorea, and Raiatea. On Tahiti, ʻOro was the main deity and the god of war. The secret society of Arioi was closely linked because of its rites. On the Marquesas Islands, ʻOro bore the name Mahui.
Cook Islands mythology comprises historical myths, legends, and folklore passed down by the ancient Cook Islanders over many generations. Many of the Cook Islands legends were recited through ancient songs and chants. The Cook Islands myths and legends have similarities to general Polynesian mythology, which developed over the centuries into its own unique character.
The Mangareva Statue or Deity Figure from Mangareva is a wooden sculpture of a male god that was made on the Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia. The cult image was given to English missionaries in the early nineteenth century as the local population converted to Christianity. It was eventually bought by the British Museum in 1911.
Te Maputeoa was a monarch of the Polynesian island of Mangareva and the other Gambier Islands. He was the King or ʻAkariki, as well as the penultimate king of the island of Mangareva, and other Gambier Islands including Akamaru, Aukena, Taravai and Temoe. He reigned from 1830 until his death in 1857.
Tiripone Mama Taira Putairi, SS.CC., (1846–1881) was educated by French missionaries from birth and became the first indigenous Roman Catholic priest ordained in Eastern Polynesia. He was part of the native royal family of Mangareva, and his father Bernardo Putairi was the island's last ruling regent.
