Huanaki
Niuean · deity · Niuean traditional religion; continuing · deity
Huanaki is the great completer among the tupua of Niue. In the Pulekula narrative he came up from Fonuagalo after Fao, found the island unfinished, and completed the making of the land, which was then named with the several old names of the island. With Fao he forms the canonical pair of island-creators who are said to have swum from the direction of Tonga; Huanaki is reckoned the ancestor of the northern division of Niue, Motu, as Fao is of the southern Tafiti. Loeb records that the Niueans made a stone image of Huanaki at the place Vaihoko, marking him as a focus of cult as well as an ancestor.
Domains
- island creation
- northern people motu
Powers
- to complete the making of the island of Niue
Epithets
- tupua
Relations
Sources
- Edwin M. Loeb, History and Traditions of Niue, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 32 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1926).
- Pulekula, 'Traditions of the Niue-Fekai,' trans. S. Percy Smith, Journal of the Polynesian Society 12, no. 1 (1903): 22–31.
- S. Percy Smith, Niuē-fekai (or Savage) Island and its People (Wellington: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1903).