Lesson gives us a legend from Nukuhiva told him by the niece of a chief there. God [we are not told which god] lived in the sky, where also lived the
moi girl, alone and without a man.
One night a
puhi (sea-eel) came to her in the sky, glided unseen up to her, and forced her with its tail, after which it disappeared. This sea-eel had a long name (Great-world-root-or-foot), which Lesson translates into sea-eel, and which perhaps suggests that the animal was the root or origin of the world. Some time later the god, seeing that the girl had now been made a woman, expelled her from heaven, and she had to dwell on earth. Nine months later she gave birth to a son; and when he grew up he married his mother, and they had a number of children. One
of these was black, another white, another yellow—and so on, they all being different colours, and amongst them were a very beautiful boy and girl. The mother was apparently a great traveller, for her children were born in very different places, including Nukuhiva, Tahiti and Hawai‘i. All the Nukuhivans were descended from this girl.
Williamson, Robert Wood, 1856-1932,
Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia, 2 vols, Cambridge, England: At the University Press, 1933, vol. 1, pp. 67-68.
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