Tāwhaki

In general, Tāwhaki is a grandson of Whaitiri, a cannibalistic goddess who marries the mortal Kaitangata (man-eater), thinking that he shares her taste for human flesh.

[1] Tāwhaki grows up to be handsome, the envy of his cousins, who beat him up and leave him for dead.

While journeying to rescue his parents, Tāwhaki meets and marries Hinepiripiri, to whom is born their son, Wahieroa.

Tāwhaki and his brother Karihi rescue their enslaved mother, who tells them that light is fatal to the Ponaturi.

At the foot of the ascent they find their grandmother, Whaitiri, now blind, who sits continually counting the tubers of sweet potato or taro that are her only food.

Tāwhaki climbs by the aka matua, or parent vine, recites the right incantations, and reaches the highest of the 10 heavens.

To illustrate this variation in a small way, and to demonstrate that there is no one correct way to tell the story of Tāwhaki, two versions from different tribal groups are presented below.

Tāwhaki and the remaining slave go on, and meet Matakerepō, an old blind woman, guarding the vines (or ropes) that lead up into the heavens.

Matakerepō, aware that someone is deceiving her, begins to sniff the air, and her stomach distends, ready to swallow the stranger.

When she sniffs towards the west she catches Tāwhaki's scent and calls out 'Are you come with the wind that blows on my skin?'

When he reaches the heavens, Tāwhaki disguises himself as an old slave and assists his brothers-in-law to build a canoe.

Pretending to be unable to keep up, Tāwhaki lets the brothers-in-law go on ahead, and returns to work on the canoe, arriving at the village much later.

In a legend committed to manuscript by Mohi Ruatapu of Ngāti Porou in 1971 (Reedy 1993:25-33, 126–134), Tāwhaki is a descendant of Māui.

Tāwhaki removes the taro tubers one by one, until Whaitiri realises that it must be her grandson who she had foretold would come to find her.

Using his adze Te Rakuraku-o-te-rangi, Tama-i-waho cuts off one of the wings of the hawk, and Tāwhaki falls to his death.

Some versions of the Māori story of Tāwhaki contain episodes where the hero causes a flood to destroy the village of his two jealous brothers-in-law.

A comment in Grey's Polynesian Mythology may have given the Māori something they did not have before — as A.W Reed put it, "In Polynesian Mythology Grey said that when Tāwhaki's ancestors released the floods of heaven, the earth was overwhelmed and all human beings perished — thus providing the Māori with his own version of the universal flood" (Reed 1963:165, in a footnote).

Christian influence has led to the appearance of genealogies where Tawhaki's grandfather Hema is reinterpreted as Shem, son of Noah of the biblical deluge.

There they watched ten nights, till the sea ebbed, and they saw the little heads of the mountains appearing above the waves.

When the sea retired, the land remained without produce, without man, and the fish were putrid in the caves and holes of the rocks.

Then they crept into the hole, and sitting there they heard with terror the roar and crash of the stones falling down from the sky.