Wohlers. — Mythology and Traditions of the Maori, 15 



Part II. — The Period of the Ancient Heroes. 



The following tales are so well connected with one another that they seem to 

 rest on an historical foundation. I am inclined to think that they refer to a 

 period when the ancestors of the Maori race were migrating among the East 

 Indian Islands, or thereabout, where they must have come in contact with 

 such different races as these tales show they have, and that the ugly people 

 spoken of as belonging to the whale kinds may have been tribes of the Nrgro 

 race. The dwellings in the sky, mentioned in these tales, will easily be 

 understood to mean islands lying beyond the visible horizon, where the sky 

 and ocean appear to meet. 



1. Kaitangata and Whaitiri. 



Kaitangata means a man-eater; but this formidable name had nothing to 

 do with his character: on the contrary, Kaitangata was a simple, harmless, 

 ; but there was a woman, named Whaitiri (Thunder), who dwelt in the 

 sky, and who was very fond of human flesh. "When she heard that there was 



ita, she believed him to be a real cannibal, and 

 therefore came down and took him to be her husband ; but was disappointed, 

 when she afterwards found that he was such a simple man. 



Kaitangata's time was mostly occupied in fishing, to provide for their daily- 

 food ; but he caught very little, and often came home without any fish because 

 his hooks were not barbed. He was either too simple to understand his wife, 

 who wanted to teach him better; or her designs were too wicked, and he was 

 too good, to adopt them. At last she made a net for hei-self ; and one day 

 while her husband was out fishing, she saw a canoe passing by, with two men 

 in it. Having armed herself with a stone weapon, and taking her net, she 

 went and swam toward the canoe, now diving, now coming to the surface 

 again. When the two men saw her they wondered if it were a bird or a human 

 being. She had now reached the canoe and was diving under it. One of the 

 men took a spear to have a thrust at her ; but while he was bending over she 

 came suddenly up and struck him with her weapon, ripping him quite open, 

 when he fell into the sea and she caught him in her net. Now the other man 

 tried to spear her, but met with the same fate as his companion. 

 Then Whaitiri swam back to the shore, dragging her net behind her. She left 

 the net in the water and went home and told the women there to go and fetch 

 home the fish she had caught. By this time her husband had also come home 

 and, as was often the case, without fish. So he assisted the women to draw up 

 his wife's net ; but they were horrified to find instead of fishes the net filled 

 with arms and legs and other mangled parts of human bodies, Whaitiri 

 insisted that they should be cooked. 



