Hina

Hina (Hina-tu-na-one, 'Hina of the sand') is the wife of Tiki and, with him, the ancestress of the Marquesan people: Handy records that 'Tiki and his wife Hina-tu-na-one gave rise to the first Marquesans, whose descendants became the founding ancestors of each mata'eina'a.' Her name carries the element one ('sand/earth'), marking her as the sand-formed first woman of the human line — the Marquesan reflex of the widespread Polynesian Hina/Sina and of the sand-woman motif (cf. Maori Hine-ahu-one). In the sand-woman variant of the Tiki cycle she is shaped from sand by Tiki himself.

Domains

• first woman and ancestress of the marquesans

Powers

• Mothering of the human line

Relations

• spouse: Tiki
• equated with: Hina
• equated with: Sina
• equated with: Hina
• equated with: Hina
• equated with: Ina
• equated with: Hina
• equated with: Nuahine

Sources

• E. S. Craighill Handy, The Native Culture in the Marquesas (Bishop Museum Bulletin 9, 1923) — Hina-tu-na-one, wife of Tiki; cf. the pan-Polynesian Hina/Sina and the sand-formed first woman (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891).