In Māori mythology

Maori mythology

Māori mythology and Māori traditions are the two major categories into which the legends of the Māori of New Zealand may usefully be divided...

, Kaitangata is a mortal son of Maui

Maui

The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...

 and an industrious man who married the female supernatural being Whaitiri

Whaitiri

In Māori mythology, Whaitiri is a female deity, a personification of thunder, and the grandmother of Tāwhaki and Karihi. Whaitiri is the granddaughter of Te Kanapu, and the great-granddaughter of Te Uira, both of whom are personified forms of lightning...

, or a son of star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

-god

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

 Rehua

Rehua

In Māori mythology, Rehua is a very sacred personage, who lives in Te Putahi-nui-o-Rehua in Rangi-tuarea, the tenth and highest of the heavens in some versions of Māori lore. Rehua is identified with certain stars. To the Tūhoe people of the North Island he is Antares. Others say he is Betelgeuse,...

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Due to his name; Kaitangata means man

Man

The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...

-eater; Whaitiri believed him to be a cannibal as she was however this proved to be incorrect and she eventually left him because he offended her. Before she returned to heaven as a cloud

Cloud

A cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water and/or various chemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body. They are also known as aerosols. Clouds in Earth's atmosphere are studied in the cloud physics branch of meteorology...

, she taught Kaitangata how to fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

. With Whaitiri, he was the father of Hemā

Hema (mythology)

-Māori:In Māori mythology, hema is a son of Whaitiri and Kaitangata and the father of Tāwhaki and Karihi. In North Island stories, he was killed by the Ponaturi, evil creatures who live by day in the water. Tāwhaki, Karihi and their mother trick the Ponaturi into entering a house, and then locked...

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