Maui is the most widely shared figure in Polynesian tradition, told of from Hawaii in the north to Aotearoa in the southwest to the Tuamotus in the east, and the core of his story is remarkably stable across distances of thousands of miles of open ocean. That stability is itself evidence, since it means the cycle was already formed before the great voyaging dispersals that peopled the eastern Pacific.
He is the youngest, and usually irregular in some way: born prematurely, wrapped in his mother's hair and thrown into the sea, raised by sea spirits, and returning to a family that does not recognise him. His brothers exclude him from the canoe and he stows away. The three great deeds follow from that character. He fishes up land, hiding in the canoe until they are far out, then producing a hook made from his grandmother's jawbone and hauling up a fish that becomes an island; Te Ika-a-Maui, the fish of Maui, is the Maori name for the North Island of New Zealand. He captures the sun, which crosses the sky too fast for work to be finished, by plaiting ropes from his sister's hair, snaring it at the pit where it rises and beating it until it agrees to go more slowly. And he takes fire, going down to the fire-keeper Mahuika and asking for a burning fingernail, then extinguishing it and returning until she has none left and, enraged, sets the world alight, so that he must call the rain; the last sparks lodge in certain trees, which is why fire can be drawn from wood.
The Maori account of his death completes the pattern. He goes to reverse mortality by passing through the body of Hine-nui-te-po, the great woman of night, and out again. He warns the birds not to laugh. A fantail cannot hold it in, she wakes, and he is crushed. He is the only one who tried, and because he failed, people die.