Kupe the Navigator - Legendary Hero

archeowiesci.pl

A very long time ago, so say the people of Aoteoroa, the great sea was not so deep, and the land was mostly on two very big islands, like two giant turtles floating in the water. One of these was high up on the earth's shoulders in cold water, and the other island was in the warmth of the sun at the belt of the earth.

Then one morning a terrible thing happened!

princeton.edu

The ancestors of the Maori were fishing people and farmers who made their way from Southeast Asia to islands just north of New Guinea, moved on eventually to Fiji and then sometime before 1000 BCE, sailed across the wide ocean to Tonga, Samoa and islands nearby.

Twelve hundred years ago, one or more of these migratory expeditions reached Aotearoa in the far south of the Pacific.

In Hawaiiki lived a canoe maker by the name of Toto.

One of these canoes, which he named Matahorua, he gave to his daughter, Kura, and it so happened that Kupe desired Kura very much, even though she was already the wife of his cousin Hoturapa.

One fateful day when Hoturapa and Kupe were out fishing, Kupe ordered Hoturapa to dive down and free a tangled fishing line. When Hoturapa dived into the sea, Kupe sliced through the anchor rope of the canoe and began to row furiously back to shore. Hoturapa drowned, but his family were suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his death. It was, in fact, a plan on Kupe's part to take Hoturapa's wife Kura.

To avoid vengeance from Hoturapa's family, Kupe left Hawaiiki in Kura's canoe Matahorua.

After many weeks they sighted the islands of New Zealand, which appeared as land lying beneath a cloud. Because of this, they named the islands Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud.

eske-style

Ka Roimata O Hinehukatere, the Franz Josef Glacier.

Kupe had the sure and safe knowledge of the migratory birds, such as the kuaka, to guide him or perhaps he followed the migratory whales to guide them, his heart full of faith in his fellow creatures.

Traditions tell of journeys with the kuaka as a guide on the bird's annual migrations between Aotearoa and Alaska.

Another tradition tells us that the ancestor, Paikea, came on the back of a whale. While this may seem too fabulous to be believed, the legendary journey replicates exactly the annual migration of the whale from out in the Pacific Ocean to the breeding and feeding grounds of Aotearoa.

There is no question that massive migrations of merging cultures actually occurred, mostly from west to east, across the Pacific Ocean.

However, pin-pointing exactly who came from where, and who came first, is a jig-saw puzzle that may never be solved.

I'll take the word of the people who live there. Kupe carved the landscape and the people followed the whales.

Maori.org.nz
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