Māori mythology Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori people, Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern tales of supernatural events relating to the origins of what was the ...

, Ikaroa is the long fish that gave birth to all the stars in the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

or the

Mother Goddess A mother goddess is a major goddess characterized as a mother or progenitor, either as an embodiment of motherhood and fertility or fulfilling the cosmological role of a creator- and/or destroyer-figure, typically associated the Earth, sky, ...

of all the stars – ornaments of the

Sky God The sky often has important religious significance. Many polytheism, polytheistic religions have deity, deities associated with the sky. The daytime sky deities are typically distinct from the nighttime ones. Stith Thompson's ''Motif-Index o ...

. Ika-Roa is also an alternative name for the Milky Way. Ika-roa was also called ''Mangōroa'' ("long

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

") or ''Mangōroa i ata'' ("long shark in the early

dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the diffuse sky radiation, appearance of indirect sunlight being Rayleigh scattering, scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc ha ...

").

Notes

References

* E. Shortland, ''Maori Religion and Mythology'' (Longmans: London), 1882. * E.R. Tregear, ''Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary'' (Lyon and Blair: Lambton Quay), 1891. {{Oceania-myth-stub Fish goddesses Māori goddesses Mother goddesses Stellar goddesses