The Myth of the Hawaiian Demigod Maui

Maui was not an easy child. He would always disobey his parents and played tricks on his brothers. Hina and Akalana, didn't know what to do with him.

Finally Hina got so mad that she cut some of her hair off and wrapped Maui in it. She then set him adrift in the ocean. Maui floated out to sea.

As Maui floated in the sea he drifted far away to the sacred lands of Kuaihelani where the great Akua, the gods Kane and Kanaloa, lived. Maui stayed there for some time, living with the gods and learning their ways.

Maui then returned home. Maui had received a sacred fishhook named Manai-a-Kalani or "fishhook from the Heavens" from his father Akalana. Maui then set off in a canoe with his brothers paddling into the deep ocean.

Maui was hoping that he could catch the giant ulua fish named Pimoe. Maui reminded his brothers not to look at the giant Pimoe or it will die and turn into hard land.

Maui dropped his fishhook into the ocean and Pimoe grabbed a hold of it. Maui orders his brethren not to look back, or the expedition will fail. Hina, in the shape of a baling-gourd, appears at the surface of the water, and Maui, unwittingly, grasps the gourd and places it in front of his seat.

Suddenly there appears a beautiful woman whose beauty none can resist; and so the brothers look behind them to watch the beautiful water-goddess. The line parts, Hina disappears, and the effort to unite the chain of islands into one solid unit fails. Pimoe died and turned into solid land. That is how Maui brought land from the bottom of the sea and that is why the islands were never united.

Maui pulled the great hook out from the land and threw it up into the sky, where it became the constellation known as Maui's fishhook. It still hangs there today, known to some as Scorpio.