The hero of a thousand tricks shared across Polynesia: fisher of islands, snarer of the sun, thief of fire.
Documented
One hero, a thousand islands
Maui traditions are documented from Hawai'i to Aotearoa to Tahiti, with matching episodes across vast ocean distances: the island-fishing hook, the slowed sun, the stolen fire, and the fatal attempt to win immortality through the goddess Hine-nui-te-pō.
Assessment: Documented across Polynesia in collections from Westervelt to Luomala. The distribution itself maps the voyaging.
Stories
Disney did not invent him
The 2016 film made Maui global property, with a Polynesian story trust consulted on the telling. The old stories are rougher: the same hero dies crushed inside the death goddess, and immortality dies with him.
Assessment: Both versions exist in the record. The gentler one has the marketing budget.
Interesting claims
Islands were really fished up
The reading: fishing-up-islands tales encode the discovery of new lands by navigators, each island 'hooked' out of the empty ocean by the crew that found it.
Assessment: Navigation memory as myth is plausible and argued. The sunset-slowing, however, resists cartography.