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 ...

, Toto was a chief in

Hawaiki (also rendered as in the Cook Islands, Hawaiki in Māori, in Samoan, in Tahitian, in Hawaiian) is, in Polynesian folklore, the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. It also features as the underworld in man ...

. He had two daughters, Kuramārōtini, the wife of Hoturapa, and

Rongorongo Rongorongo ( or ; Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that has the appearance of writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, but none have been successful. Although ...

, the wife of Turi. Toto felled a tree and made two canoes. One of these, the '' Aotea'', was given to Turi, and was sailed by him to New Zealand. The other canoe, the

Matahourua In Māori tradition, ''Matahourua'' was the canoe of the legendary hero Kupe, who, in some accounts, was the discoverer of Aotearoa (New Zealand) See also *List of Māori waka This is a list of Māori people, Māori (canoes). The informat ...

, was later commandeered by

Kupe Kupe was a legendary Polynesian explorer who, according to Māori oral history, was the first person to discover New Zealand. He is generally held to have been born to a father from Rarotonga and a mother from Raiatea, and probably spoke a ...

who sailed it to New Zealand with Kuramārōtini, Hoturapa's wife (Tregear 1891:527).

References

*E.R. Tregear, ''Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary'' (Lyon and Blair: Lambton Quay), 1891. Māori mythology Legendary Polynesian people {{Māori-myth-stub