Muslims were not the only people depicted as monsters. Exotic locales inspired treatments of the inhabitants that were more sensual than monstrous, such as Tahiti and Hawai'i, where frightening descriptions of the territories and peoples emerged. Europeans and Americans described the gods of Polynesia as monstrous characters, even demonic. The goddess Pele, from the perspective of indigenous Hawaiians, serves as the ruler of a dangerous environment. For haole (white) missionaries and scholars, however, she was often represented as a horrendous monster, a hideous old hag who murdered for pleasure.

XREF: Connects to broader Orientalism/colonial discourse studies — the demonization of Pele parallels how colonizers caricatured other indigenous belief systems as savagery.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 357