Kaitu'u is the great ancestral culture-hero of Rennell and Bellona, remembered as the leader of the migration that brought the Polynesian settlers from the homeland of 'Ubea in the two canoes from which the classic collection of oral traditions takes its name. On reaching the islands his people encountered and in time displaced the aboriginal hiti. As eponym of the senior Kaitu'u clan he stands at the head of the genealogies through which the islanders reckon their descent, and as a worshipped ancestor he held an honoured place in the pre-Christian cult alongside the gods.