Rata

Rata asked about his parents and heard a cruel story. He was told that his father had been eaten by a shark and that his mother's legs were being used as basket supports near a latrine. Furious, he forced his grandfather to tell him what had really happened. After hearing the account, Rata decided to avenge his parents. Kui told him that a large canoe was needed for a journey to the netherworld, where Rata could rescue them.

The next day Rata entered the forest. He found a suitable tree and felled it swiftly with Kui's magical axe. When he returned the following day to hollow the trunk, the tree was upright again. Rata cut it down a second time. He did not leave the forest to chance. That evening he laid a trap and waited for whoever was undoing his work.

Two elves, Tavaka and Togo-hiti, came back to raise the tree. Rata snared them. They pleaded for release and offered to finish his canoe in one night with Kui's help. Their intervention changed the tree from an obstacle into the beginning of the vessel Rata needed for his journey.

A related Māori account gives the same pressure in a different form. Rata learns that his father has been killed and that his remains were carried away towards the sunrise. His mother sends him to find a tree for a canoe and gives him stone axes. The tree he fells returns to its place, so Rata hides and catches the little people of the forest. They teach him to put an asplenium fern over the cut stump, and a canoe appears outside his door the next day.

The two accounts keep the same movement: Rata hears of a lost parent, seeks a tree for a rescue canoe, meets spirits who restore what he has cut and gains their help. The Handbook of Polynesian Mythology names his decision plainly. Rata decided to avenge his parents, then entered the forest and felled the tree.