Dolphin Legend – The Rainbow Bridge
There are as many tales, legends and stories about dolphins as there are about any other animal. Why is that? I feel like it’s because dolphins seem as curious about us as we are about them. I think if we finally crack their code and really learn how to communicate with dolphins, we will hear a lot of stories and legends that they have about us, strange creatures that live on land and they put on fun looking fins and gills so we can swim. side of them. But until then, we will have to be satisfied with our stories that we have about dolphins.
One of my favorite stories comes from the Chumash people of Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California. Legend says that they were created when the Earth Goddess planted seeds to raise them. Her husband, the Sky Serpent, could spit lightning and decided to give the people of Chumash the gift of fire by spitting lightning on the island.
They were very happy because now they could keep warm and cook their food. In fact, living became so easy that its population grew and continued to grow. But, soon the island was full of people and the Goddess of the Earth began to notice the noise. He became so inharmonious that he couldn’t sleep and decided they had to move to the mainland more than 20 miles away.
All the people asked him how they were going to get to the mainland. After much thought, he decided to make a bridge out of a rainbow. It would stretch from the highest point of the island to the mountains of the great expanse.
People were worried and scared, but the Earth Goddess assured them that they would be fine. She told them to go to the other side and populate the world. So they climbed to the top of the rainbow on their island and started crossing. Many of them made it through for sure, but others got dizzy from being so high. They looked at the ocean so far below them and were scared. Then a mist came in and confused them further. While most made it across the bridge without a hitch, these others fell and fell far and far into the ocean. The Goddess of the Earth saw this and felt very bad because the bridge had been her idea and she had assured them that everything would be fine.
She wanted to show them that they hadn’t been wrong to trust her, so she turned everything that fell into dolphins. So even today, the Chumash people say that the dolphins are their brothers who fell off the rainbow bridge. Some even say they were the lucky ones.