Manaiakalani
Said to be the fishhook of the demi-god Māui
Made of wood, bone, and olonā cordage
The demi-god Māui, son of Hina, is the subject of extraordinary stories throughout Polynesia. In many of the accounts he is a mischievous trickster, stealing the secret of fire, and helping his mother to dry kapa by lassoing the sun to slow its progression across the sky. Of all the themes associated with Māui, that of raising submerged land by fishing up parts of it, is the most widespread and enduring. Variant forms of Māuias the earth-fisher are also evident in Micronesia and Melanesia. Hawaiʻi's tradition of Māui, the earth-fisher, includes the sacred fishhook, Manaiakalani.
Queen Lili'uokalani, in a translation of the Kumulipo, Hawaiʻi's creation chant, speaks of Hina's advice to her son Māui:
Go hence to your father; 'Tis there you will find line and hook; That is the hook, 'tis called Manaiakalani. When the hook catches land 'twill bring the old seas together.
Māui then embarks on a fishing trip with his brothers in order to prove that he is as skilled as they are. He prepares the sacred hook, baiting it with the wing of the pet bird of the goddess Hina. Māui tells his brothers that once he starts to haul in the catch, not to look back until he is finished. Maui casts the hook into the water and catches the enormous ulua fish Pimoe.
The brothers strain against the fish and soon parts of Pimoe are above the surface of the water, immediately turning to stone. The brothers cannot resist any longer and turn around to see their catch, but when they do, the line breaks and rather than one enormous island, Maui, the earth-fisher, is only able to raise up the eight separate islands of Hawaiʻi Nei.
In frustration, Māui throws his hook into the sky where it becomes a constellation, still easy to see in the spring and summer months, known by Western astronomers as the tail of Scorpio.