How The Rainbow Was Made

How The Rainbow Was Made

This is a Native American myth about the formation of the rainbow.

One day when the earth was new, Nanabozho looked out of his house beside the waterfall and realized that all the flowers in his meadow were pale. How boring! He gathered up his paints and his paintbrushes and went out.

Nanabozho sat down in the meadow. He arranged his paint pots neatly next to him: red, orange, blue, yellow and so many other colors. Then he began to paint the flowers. He painted the violets dark blue, the lilies orange, the roses red, the daffodils yellow and the pansies every color he could think of. Nanabozho was very happily humming to himself as the flowers looked very good in the bight glorious light provided by Brother Sun.

Up above in the sky, two little blue birds were playing with each other. The first little bluebird, named Zippity-zip, chased his friend named Zappity-zing across the meadow. Then Zappity-zing chased Zippity-zip the opposite way. In the brilliant sunshine, they presented a very happy, joyful picture.

Nanabozho looked up to see the two little birds playing. Then he went back to his work of painting the flowers. Just then, the birds decided to play another game. They decided to see how swiftly they could dive down to the meadow below them. First it was the turn of Zippity-zip. He sailed down and down, and then flew up again just before he touched the ground. As he did so, his right wing dipped into the red paint pot next to Nanbozho. When the second bluebird, Zappity-zing dove toward the grass, his left wing touched the orange paint pot.

Nanabozho scolded Zippity-zip and Zappity-zing, but they kept playing. Soon their whole body were covered with paints of all colors. Finally Nanabozho got angry and shooed the birds away.

The birds zoomed over the giant waterfall next to Nanabozho’s house. Zippity-zip and Zappity-zing flew back and forth through the misty spray of the waterfall and began to streak the sky in different colors.

Brother Sun shone and the brilliant colors formed a gorgeous arch of red and orange and yellow and green and blue and indigo and violet in the sky above the waterfall. Nanabozho smiled at the little birds and said, ‘You have made a rainbow!’

From that day to this, whenever Brother Sun shines his light on the rain or the mist, a beautiful rainbow forms, unfailingly.