In the Hawaiian legends Maui is represented as greatly interested in making and flying kites. His favorite place for the sport was by the boiling pools of the Wailuku river near Hilo. He had the winds under his control and would call for them to push his kites in the direction he wished. His incantation calling up the winds is given in this Maui proverb--
White in his "Ancient History of the Maoris," relates some of Maui's experiences with the people whom he found on the islands brought up from the under-world. On one island he found a sand house with eight hundred gods living in it. Apparently Maui discovered islands with inhabitants, and was reported to have fished them up out of the depths of the ocean. Fishing was sailing over the ocean until distant lands were drawn near or "fished up."
Maui walked over the islands and found men living on them and fires burning near their homes. He evidently did not know much about fire, for he took it in his hands. He was badly burned and rushed into the sea. Down he dived under the cooling waters and came up with one of the New Zealand islands on his shoulders. But his hands were still burning, so wherever he held the island it was set on fire.
These fires are still burning in the secret recesses of the volcanoes, and sometimes burst out in flowing lava. Then Maui paid attention to the people whom he had fished up. He tried to teach them, but they did not learn as he thought they should. He quickly became angry and said, "It is a waste of light for the sun to shine on such stupid people." So he tried to hold his hands between them and the sun, but the rays of the sun were too many and too strong; therefore, he could not shut them out. Then he tried the moon and managed to make it dark a part of the time each month. In this way he made a little trouble for the stupid people.
There are other hints in the legends concerning Maui's desire to be revenged upon any one who incurred his displeasure. It was said that Maui for a time lived in the heavens above the earth. Here he had a foster brother Maru. The two were cultivating the fields. Maru sent a snowstorm over Maui's field. (It would seem as if this might be a Polynesian memory of a cold land where their ancestors knew the cold winter, or a lesson learned from the snow-caps of high mountains.) At any rate, the snow blighted Maui's crops. Maui retaliated by praying for rain to destroy Maru's fields. But Maru managed to save a part of his crops. Other legends make Maui the aggressor. At the last, however, Maui became very angry. The foster parents tried to soothe the two men by saying, "Live in peace with each other and do not destroy each other's food." But Maui was implacable and lay in wait for his foster brother, who was in the habit of carrying fruit and grass as an offering to the gods of a temple situated on the summit of a hill. Here Maui killed Maru and then went away to the earth.