'Savage tribes knew the Pleiades familiarly, as well as did the people of ancient and modern civilization; and Ellis wrote of the natives of the Society and Tonga Islands, who called these stars Matarii, the Little Eyes: The two seasons of the year were divided by the Pleiades; the first, Matarii i nia, the Pleiades Above, commenced when, in the evening, those stars appeared on the horizon, and continued while, after sunset, they were above. The other season, Matarii i raro, the Pleiades Below, began when, at sunset, they ceased to be visible, and continued till, in the evening, they appeared again above the horizon.

Gill gives a similar story from the Hervey group, where the Little Eyes are Matariki, and at one time but a single star, so bright that their god Tane in envy got hold of Aumea, our Aldebaran, and, accompanied by Mere, our Sirius, chased the offender, who took refuge in a stream. Mere, however, drained off the water, and Tane hurled Aumea at the fugitive, breaking him into the six pieces that we now see, whence the native name for the fragments, Tauono, the Six, quoted by Flammarion as Tau, both titles singularly like the Latin Taurus. They were the favorite one of the various avelas, or guides at sea in night voyages from one island to another; and, as opening the year, objects of worship down to 1857, when Christianity prevailed throughout these islands.' (Allen)

Once upon a time, they said, there had been a single Pleiades star, so bright that Tane in envy had used Aldebaran (Aumea) and Sirius (Mere) to break him into 6 pieces (Tau-ono). Similarly the beautiful shining tooth of Seven-Macaw (alias Itzam-Yeh) was broken by the Hero Twins:

Seven-Macaw has a central great eye surrounded by a number of smaller 'eyes' (mata riki).

Matariki

Pleiades (group of stars in the constellation of Taurus). Vanaga.

In the Polynesian tongue Matariki, the name for the Pleiades, is contracted from Mata-ariki, high-born or regal stars. Makemson.

Maea matariki, stone used for the images T. Churchill.

Polynesia names the Pleiades thus: Samoa: matali'i. Futuna, Tonga: mataliki. Fotuna, Nuguria, Maori, Mangaia, Mangareva: matariki. Tahiti: matarii. Hawaii: makalii. Marquesas: mataiki. Micronesian names for the same constellation: Ponape: makeriker. Lamotrek: magarigar. Yap: magirigir. Mortlocks: marikir. Churchill 2.

I could have been mistaken by perceiving fire flowing out both above (i nika) and below (i raro) - in the latter case the intention could rather have been to illustrate a flow of water. We can compare with the deluge:

... It was 4 August 1968, and it was the feast day of Saint Dominic, patron of Santo Domingo Pueblo, southwest of Santa Fe. At one end of the hot, dusty plaza, a Dominican priest watched nervously as several hundred dancers arranged in two long rows pounded the earth with their moccasined feet as a mighty, collective prayer for rain, accompanied by the powerful baritone singing of a chorus and the beat of drums. As my family and I viewed this, the largest and in some ways the most impressive Native American public ceremony, a tiny cloud over the Jémez Mountains to the northwest got larger and larger, eventually filling up the sky; at last the storm broke, and the sky was crisscrossed by lightning and the pueblo resounded with peals of rolling thunder ...

Thunder incorporates both lightning above and rain below.