God of the Ocean
Tangaroa's name spans the Polynesian triangle: Tangaroa in Maori, Taaroa in Tahitian, Tagaloa in Samoan, Kanaloa in Hawaiian, one name with very different ranks. In Maori tradition he is a son of the sky father Rangi and earth mother Papa. When the storm god Tawhirimatea made war on his brothers after the separation of the parents, Tangaroa took refuge in the sea and became lord of the ocean and everything in it. Fishermen recited prayers to him before lowering nets, and returned the first fish of the catch as his portion.
A family rupture explains the enmity of sea and land: among Tangaroa's descendants, Ikatere, ancestor of fish, fled into the ocean, while Tu-te-wehiwehi, ancestor of reptiles, fled ashore to shelter with Tane, god of forests. Tangaroa never forgave it. Tane's children furnish people with canoes, spears and nets to hunt Tangaroa's children, and Tangaroa answers by swallowing canoes and gnawing away the land.
In the Society Islands, Taaroa stands far higher. The creation chant recorded in Teuira Henry's Ancient Tahiti (1928) begins with Taaroa alone in the immensity, curled inside a shell called Rumia. He cracked the shell and built the sky dome and rock foundation from it, making the world and the gods from his own body. Hawaiian Kanaloa, associated with the octopus and the deep sea, was invoked alongside the great god Kane by voyagers. The rise and fall of this one name from island group to island group shows how the Polynesian pantheon diverged as the voyagers spread.
