How Māui brought fire to the world
One evening, after eating a hearty meal, Māui lay beside his fire staring into the flames. He watched the flames flicker and dance and thought to himself, "I wonder where fire comes from."
Māui, being the curious person that he was, decided that he needed to find out. In the middle of the night, while everyone was sleeping, Māui went from village to village and extinguished all the fires until not a single fire burned in the world. He then went back to his whare and waited.
The next morning there was an uproar in the village.
"How can we cook our breakfast, there's no fire!" called a worried mother.
"How will we keep warm at night?" cried another.
"We can't possibly live without fire!" the villagers said to one another.
The people of the village were very frightened. They asked Taranga, who was their rangatira, to help solve the problem.
"Someone will have to go and see the great goddess, Mahuika, and ask her for fire," said Taranga.
None of the villagers were eager to meet Mahuika, they had all heard of the scorching mountain where she lived. So Māui offered to set out in search of Mahuika, secretly glad that his plan had worked.
https://eng.mataurangamaori.tki.org.nz/Support-materials/Te-Reo-Maori/Maori-Myths-Legends-and-Contemporary-Stories/How-Maui-brought-fire-to-the-world