Myths of the Maori
A distinctive feature of Maori and other outer Polynesian mythology us the grouping of gods into something resembling a pantheon. At its head are the two supreme creator beings, Rangi, the male sky and Papa, the female earth, who in the beginning, according to Maori cosmology, were locked together in the primordial void in a static embrace. Between them were trapped their offspring, the gods Tane, Tangaroa, Tu, Rongo, Haumia and Tawhiri, who sought a means of escape and debated killing their parents to achieve this. But Tane, the god of the forests and trees, suggested that it was better to pull the sky and earth apart. Accodringly, each god tried but failed, as did Tangoroa, the god of the sea, fish and reptiles. Haumia, the god of wild vegetable and plants, Tu, the god of war, and Tawhiri, the god of the winds and other elements, also failed, until only Tane had yet to try. Putting his hea against the mother earth and his feet against the father sky, he strained and pshed and gradually separated the two, who assumed their present positions.
Tane's success cause jealousy and anger among his siblings. Tawhiri cause the winds to blow and created storms and hurricanes which brought down the trees of Tane's forest. The fish, who used to live not in the sea but in the forest, fled in confusion to the ocean of Tangaroa. Tane became angry at losing his progeny in this way. Tane and Tangaroa have continued to quarrel to this day - Tangaroa of the sea seeks to overwhelm the forests of the land, while Tane's trees prodive the canoes with which men can tame the sea and sail upon it.
Later, Tane sought a mate for himself. He first approached his mother, Papa, who refused him, and them mated with various beings to produce a diversity of offspring, such as animals, stones, grass and creeks. But tane desire a mate in human form, like himself, so he took Papa's advide and fashioned the first human, a woman, from the sand of Hawaiki island. He breathed life into her and she became Hine-hau-one, the"Earth-created maiden", who bore a daughter called Hine-titama, "Dawn maiden", whom he also took as a wide. Hine-titama did not know that Tane was her father, and when she discovered the truth she fled to the dark underworld realm. Tane pursued her, but she called out to him that he had severed the cord of the world. Henceforth, she would remain in the dark underworld and pull his children down to death: this I show humankind became mortal. Hine-hau-n thus has a dual nature as the source of the first human birth and the first human death.
creation 
the hero
goddesses
gods
tricksters
afterlife