Even though Ma-ui had done amazing things, he wasn't very appreciated at home. His brothers complained that when he went fishing with them, he never caught any fish, or if he did, it was a fish that had been caught on one of their hooks, and Ma-ui just got it tangled onto his own line. Yet, Ma-ui had invented many things his brothers used. At first, their spears had smooth heads: if they hit a bird, the bird often flew away, pulling the spearhead out of its wing. And if they speared a fish, the fish often wriggled free. Then Ma-ui added barbs to his spear, and his spearhead held onto the birds and fish. His brothers copied the spearhead he made, and after that, they were able to catch more birds and fish than ever before. He made many things they copied, yet his brothers thought he was lazy and careless, and they made their mother think the same about him.
They were better fishermen—that was true; indeed, if only Ma-ui went fishing, Hina-of-the-Fire, his mother, and Hina-of-the-Sea, his sister, would often go hungry. Finally, Ma-ui decided to do some extraordinary fishing; he might not be able to catch the fine fish his brothers wanted—the u-lua and the pi-mo-e—but he would bring up something from the sea's bottom that would make his brothers forget he was the lazy and careless one. He had to make many plans and go on many adventures before he was ready for this great fishing. First, he needed a fishhook different from any fishhook ever made. In those days, fishhooks were made out of bones—there was nothing else to make fishhooks from—and Ma-ui needed a special bone to make a hook.
He went down into the underworld to get that bone. He went to where his ancestress was. On one side, she was dead, and on the other side, she was alive. From the side that was dead, Ma-ui took a bone—her jawbone—and from this bone, he made his fishhook. There was never a fishhook like it before, and it was called “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” meaning “Made fast to the heavens.”
He told no one about the special fishhook he made. He needed a different bait from any bait ever used before. His mother had sacred birds, the alae, and he asked her for one to use as bait. She gave him one of her birds. Then Ma-ui, with his bait and hook hidden, and with a line he made from the strongest olona vines, went down to his brothers’ canoe. “Here is Ma-ui,” they said when they saw him, “here is Ma-ui, the lazy and careless, and we have sworn never to let him come with us in our canoe again.”
