The Children of Heaven and Earth (Polynesian Creation)

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Men had but one pair of primitive ancestors; they sprang from the vast heaven that exists above us, and from the earth which lies beneath us. According to the traditions of our people, Father Rangi and Mother Papa, or Heaven and Earth, were the source from which all things originated. Darkness then rested upon the heaven and upon the earth, because Father Rangi and Mother Papa loved each other and clung to each other in embrace, not letting go. So the space between them, where all living things were, was nothing but darkness. The children they had begotten were ever thinking amongst themselves what light might be like; they knew that beings had multiplied and increased, and yet light had never broken upon them, but it ever continued dark.

At last the beings who had been begotten by Heaven and Earth, worn out by the continued darkness, consulted amongst themselves, saying, “Let us now determine what we should do with Father Rangi and Mother Papa, whether it would be better to slay them or to force them apart.” Then spoke Tu, the fiercest of the children of Heaven and Earth, “It is well, let us slay them.”

Then spoke Tane, the father of forests and of all things that inhabit them, and that are constructed from trees, “Not so! It is better to tear them apart, and to let the heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet. Let the sky become as a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing mother.”

The brothers all consented to this proposal, with the exception of Tawhiri, the father of winds and storms, and he, fearing that his kingdom was about to be overthrown, grieved greatly at the thought of his parents being torn apart. Five of the brothers willingly consented to the separation of their parents, but one of them would not agree to it.

But at length their plans having been agreed on, Rongo, the god and father of the cultivated food of man, rises up, that he may tear apart the heavens and the earth; he struggles, but he tears them not apart. Next, Tangaroa, the god and father of fish and reptiles, rises up, that he may tear apart the heavens and the earth; he also struggles, but he tears them not apart. Next, Haumia, the god and father of the food of man which springs without cultivation, rises up and struggles, but ineffectually. Then, Tu, the god and father of fierce human beings, rises up and struggles, but he, too, fails in his efforts. Then, at last, slowly uprises Tane, the god and father of forests, of birds, and of insects, and he struggles with his parents; in vain he strives to tear them apart with his hands and arms. He pauses; his head is now firmly planted on his mother the earth, his feet he raises up and rests against his father the skies, he strains his back and limbs with mighty effort. As plants and trees slowly grow upward, Tane slowly pushes upward and downward, and now Father Rangi and Mother Papa are forced apart, and with cries and groans of wo they shriek aloud: “Why do you slay your parents? Why do you commit so dreadful a crime as this, to tear your parents apart?” But Tane pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and cries; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far above him he thrusts up the sky.

So came the sayings from of old, “It was the fierce thrusting of Tane which tore the heaven
from the earth, so that they were torn apart, and darkness was made manifest, and so was the light.”

No sooner was heaven separated from earth than the multitude of human beings were discovered whom they had begotten, and who had previously lain concealed between the bodies of Father Rangi and Mother Papa.

Then, also, there arose in the heart of Tawhiri, the god and father of winds and storms, a fierce desire to wage war with his brothers, because they had torn apart their common parents. He from the first had refused to consent to his mother being torn from her lord and children; it was his brothers alone that wished for this separation, and desired that Mother Papa, or the Earth alone, should be left as a parent for them.

The god of hurricanes and storms fears also that the world should become too fair and beautiful, so he rises, follows his father to the realms above, and hurries to the boundless skies; there he hides and clings, and nestling in this place of rest he consults long with Father Rangi, and as the vast Heaven listens to the suggestions of Tawhiri, thoughts and plans are fanned in his heart, and Tawhiri also understands what he should do. Then by himself and the vast Heaven were begotten his numerous brood of winds and storms, and they rapidly increased and grew. Tawhiri send one of them to the westward, and one to the southward, and one to the eastward, and one to the northward; and he gives corresponding names to himself and to his offspring the mighty winds.

He next sends forth fierce squalls, whirlwinds, dense clouds, massy clouds, dark clouds, gloomy thick clouds, fiery clouds, clouds which precede hurricanes, clouds of fiery black, clouds reflecting glowing red light, clouds wildly drifting from all quarters and wildly bursting, clouds of thunder storms, and clouds hurriedly flying. In the midst of these Tawhiri himself sweeps wildly on. Alas! Then rages the fierce hurricane; and whilst Tane and his gigantic forests still stand, unconscious and unsuspecting, the blast of the breath of the mouth of Tawhiri strikes them, the gigantic trees are snapped off right in the middle. Alas! They are torn to bits, dashed to the earth, with boughs and branches torn and scattered, and lying on the earth, trees and branches all alike left for the insect, for the grub, and for loathsome rottenness.

From the forests and their inhabitants Tawhiri next swoops down upon the seas, and lashes in his wrath the ocean. Ah! Waves steep as cliffs arise, whose summits are so lofty that to look from them would make the beholder giddy; these soon eddy in whirlpools, and Tangaroa, the god of ocean, and father of all that dwell therein, flies affrighted through his seas; but before he fled, his children consulted together how they might secure their safety, for Tangaroa had begotten Punga, and he had begotten two children, Ikatere the father of fish, and Tutewehiwehi the father of reptiles. The father of fish took his creatures to shelter in the water; this is how the fish came to be in the sea. The father of reptiles took his creatures to shelter in the trees of Tane.

Tangaroa, enraged at some of his children deserting him, and, being sheltered by the god of the forests on dry land, has ever since waged war on his brother Tane, who, in return, has waged war against him.

Hence Tane supplies the offspring of his brother Tu with canoes, with spears and with fishhooks made from his trees, and with nets woven from his fibrous plants, that they may destroy the offspring of Tangaroa; whilst Tangaroa, in return, swallows up the offspring of Tane, overwhelming canoes with the surges of his sea, swallowing up the lands, trees, and , houses that are swept off by floods, and ever wastes away, with his lapping waves, the shores that confine him, that the giants of the forests may be washed down and swept out into his
boundless ocean, that he may then swallow up the insects, the young birds, and the various animals which inhabit them.

Tawhiri next rushed on to attack his brothers Rongo and Haumia, the gods and progenitors of cultivated and uncultivated food; but Mother Papa, to save these for her other children, caught them up, and hid them in a place of safety; and so well were these children of hers concealed by their mother Earth, that Tawhiri sought for them in vain.

Tawhiri having thus vanquished all his other brothers, next rushed against Tu, to try his strength against his; he exerted all his force against him, but he could neither shake him or prevail against him. What did Tu care for his brother’s wrath? he was the only one of the whole party of brothers who had planned the destruction of their parents, and had shown himself brave and fierce in war; his brothers had fled at once before the tremendous assaults of Tawhiri and his progeny — Tane and his offspring had been broken and torn in pieces — Tangaroa and his children had fled to the depths of the ocean or the recesses of the shore — Rongo and Haumia had been hidden from him in the earth — but Tu, or man, still stood erect and unshaken upon the breast of his mother Earth; and now at length the hearts of Rangi and Tawhiri became tranquil, and their passions were assuaged.

Tu, or fierce man, having successfully resisted his brother, the god of hurricanes and storms, next took thought how he could turn upon his brothers and slay them, because they had not assisted him or fought bravely when Tawhiri had attacked them to avenge the separation of their parents, and because they had left him alone to show his prowess in the fight.

Tu continued to reflect upon the cowardly manner in which his brothers had acted, in leaving him to show his courage alone, and he first sought some means of injuring Tane, because he had not come to aid him in his combat with Tawhiri, and partly because he was aware that Tane had had a numerous progeny, who were rapidly increasing, and might at last prove hostile to him, and injure him, so he began to collect leaves of the whanake tree, and twisted them into nooses, and when his work was ended, he went to the forest to put up his snares, and hung them up. The children of Tane fell before him, none of them could any longer fly or move in safety. This was the beginning of hunting.

Then he next determined to take revenge on his brother Tangaroa, who had also deserted him in the combat; so he sought for his offspring, and found them leaping or swimming in the water; then he cut many leaves from the flax-plant, and netted nets with the flax, and dragged these, and hauled the children of Tangaroa ashore. This was the beginning of fishing.

After that, he determined also to be revenged upon his brothers Rongo and Haumia; he soon found them by their peculiar leaves, and he scraped into shape a wooden hoe, and plaited a basket, and dug in the earth and pulled up all kinds of plants with edible roots, and the plants which had been dug up withered in the sun. This was the beginning of farming.

In this way Tu devoured all his brothers, and consumed the whole of them, in revenge for their having deserted him and left him to fight alone against Tawhiri and Father Rangi.

When his brothers had all thus been overcome by Tu, he assumed several names; he assumed one name for each of his attributes displayed in the victories over his brothers. Four of his brothers were entirely deposed by him, and became his food; but one of them, Tawhiri, he could not vanquish or make common, by eating him for food, so he, the last-born child of Heaven and Earth, was left as an enemy for man, and still, with a rage, this elder brother ever attacks him in storms and hurricanes, endeavoring to destroy him alike by sea and land.

Up to this time the vast Heaven has still ever remained separated from his spouse the Earth.
Yet their mutual love still continues — the soft warm sighs of her loving bosom still ever rise up to him, ascending from the woody mountains and valleys, and men call these mists ; and the vast Heaven, as he mourns through the long nights his separation from his beloved, drops frequent tears upon her bosom, and men seeing these, term them dew-drops.

To cite this reading, use the following format:

Grey, Sir George. Polynesian Mythology. WoodFall and kinder, 1855. Internet Archive, 17 Jan. 2017, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.219427/page/n17/mode/2up.