Pota worried that there would be no place for his family to live, for the available land was small and quite crowded. But he lacked the ability to move anywhere else, as his wife’s knitting was the family’s sole support. Desperate to contribute despite his infirmity, Pota began to pray to the earth, day and night, to provide for his family. In this way he hoped to repay his wife’s hard work and his own room and board with divine favor.

One night, he received an earthquake as if in response to his latest round of prayers. He soon noticed a column of steam rising from the nearby ocean, and within a few days a volcano had capped the waves, knitting new land out of lava floes just as Pota’s wife knit new clothes from fibers. He set out the very next day, and was the first person to step upon the land—it being uninhabited, this made it automatically his fief and he its chieftain.

Though it took the volcano many years to attain its full size, and many more for it to begin abounding with rich island life, Pota never forgot his claim, nor did his descendants and heirs. In time, they took possession of the island as their own, and raised a thousand generations of successors.

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