Ngaru: A Culture Hero of Mangaia

Abstract

This study explores the story of Ngaru, a famous culture hero from Mangaia, as recorded in several 19th-century prose and song texts by a local scholar, Mamae, and his colleague, the missionary, William Wyatt Gill. Important themes are revealed, including Mangaian understandings of the concept, mana; the form and content of oral tradition; the important Polynesian number, eight; and, the parallels between Ngaru and the Greek hero, Heracles, who both beat the presiding spirit powers in the world of the dead.