How Butterflies Came To Be
Native American - Papago (Tohono O'odham) Story
retold by Sanjit

In Papago creation stories, Earth-Maker created the world and Elder Brother created people. Elder Brother is I’itoi, spirit of goodness. He watches over the Papago from his home on top of a cloud-covered mountain.

A long time ago, Elder Brother was out walking. The summer rains had finished and everywhere he saw the colours of autumn, brightly coloured flowers and trees and the blue sky.

He heard birds singing. He came to a village where young women were grinding corn and children were playing. They ran around, noisy and happy, and he felt happy too. “The world is beautiful,” he thought, and he sat down to enjoy it.

Suddenly he was sad. “It will be winter soon. The leaves will shrivel and fall and the flowers will fade. The beautiful colours will be gone and it will be cold.”

As he watched the children playing, he decided the summer colours should be kept somehow so that he and everyone else could enjoy them longer. He would make something to hold them.

Elder Brother always had a special bag with him, his creation bag. It was big enough to hold whatever he needed to carry.

He opened it up, looked around and began to collect colours from things: gold from a ray of sunlight, blue from the sky, shiny black from a woman’s hair, white from the cornmeal, green from pine needles, yellow from leaves, and purple, red and orange from flowers.

All the colours went into the bag.

He thought he was finished, but then he heard the birds singing again and he added their songs to the colours in the bag.

 Then Elder Brother called to the children. “Come here. I have something for you.” Several of the children ran over and he held out his large bag to them. “Take this and open it,” he said. “There’s a surprise in there for you all.”

The children took the bag and opened it.

Hundreds of coloured butterflies fluttered out. They flew up around the children’s heads, landing on their hair and arms.

The children laughed with joy. The women stopped grinding corn and came over and men joined their families from the fields.

Everyone watched the butterflies and stretched out their hands for them to land on. They had never seen such beautiful colours.

And then the butterflies began to sing as they flew around.

The people were very happy, but the birds were not.

One bird perched on Elder Brother’s shoulder and tapped him with its beak.

“You’ve given our songs to these new creatures and we don’t think that’s fair. When we were made, we were given a song each – our own song. Now you’ve given all our songs away. And to creatures that already have more beautiful colours than we do.”

“You’re right,” said Elder Brother. "The songs belonged to you and I shouldn’t have given them away. I’m sorry.” He reached out to the butterflies, took away the songs gently and gave them back to the birds. This made the birds happy again.

This is how butterflies came to be, and why they are silent.

Their colours are a gift of beauty for everyone to share, whenever they appear.

Just as Elder Brother wanted.

The End