Banks Islands are chiefly ancestor-worshippers, but they also believe in, and occasionally pray to, a being named I Qat, one of the prehuman race endowed with supernatural powers who here, as elsewhere, do duty as gods.
The myths of Qat's adventures, however, are very crude, though not so wild as some of the Scandinavian myths about Odin and Loki, while they are less immoral than the adventures of Indra and Zeus.
Qat was born in the isle of Vanua Levu; his mother was either a stone at the time of his birth, or was turned into a stone afterwards, like Niobe.
Qat had eleven brothers, not much more reputable than the Osbaldistones in Rob Roy.
The creative achievements of Qat must be treated of in the next section.