A History of Niue

"In the beginning, this island now called Niue was nothing but coral rock (he punga)... There came a god, an aitu, from the south, a god sailed to and fro on the face of the waters. He looked down here and saw far below on the ocean the white punga rock. He let down his hook and hauled the punga up to the surface, and lo! there stood and island!" - John Lupo. The genesis of Niue remains conjectural. The Polynesian calls in a supernatural agency, an aitu from the south, to explain the emergence of the multiplication of corals and algae from the waters of the mid-Pacific to form an island two-hundred feet high, but the story of the god and his line and hook is a local adaptation of a very ancient and widespread fable, as are in varying degrees other Polynesian versions of the birth of the island, Cook advanced two further possibilities in 1777 when he speculated: "Has this Island been raised by an earthquake? Or has the sea receded from it?"