The first Chumash
people were created on Santa Cruz Island. They made from seeds of a
Magic Plant by the Earth Goddess, whose name was Hutash.
Hutash was married to the Sky Snake (the Milky Way). He could make
lightning bolts with his tongue. One day, he decided to make a gift to the
Chumash people. He sent down a bolt of lightning, and this started a fire.
After this, people kept fires burning so that they could keep warm, and so
that they could cook their food.
In those days, the Condor was a white bird. But the Condor was very
curious about the fire he saw burning in the Chumash village.He wanted to
find out what it was. So he flew very low over the fire to get a better
look. But he flew too close; he got his feathers scorched and they turned
black. So now the Condor is a black bird, with just a little white left
under the wings where they didn't get burned.
After Sky Snake gave them fire, the Chumash people lived more comfortably.
More people were born each year, and their villages got bigger and bigger.
Santa Cruz Island was getting crowded. And the noise the people made was
starting to annoy Hutash. It kept her awake at night. So, finally, she
decided that some of the Chumash would have to move off the island. They
would have to go to the mainland, where there weren't any people living in
thos days.
But how were the people going to get across the water to the mainland?
Finally, Hutash had the idea of making a bridge out of a rainbow. She made
a very long, very high rainbow, which stretched from the tallest peak on
Santa Cruz Island all the way to the tall mountains near Carpinteria.
Hutash told the people to go across the Rainbow Bridge, and fill the whole
world with people. So the Chumash people started to go across the bridge.
Some of them got across safely, but some of them made the mistake of
looking down. It was a long way down to the water, and the fog was
swirling around. They got so dizzy that some of them fell off the Rainbow
Brodge, down, down, through the fog, into the ocean. Hutash felt very
badly about this, beacause she had told them to cross the bridge. She
didn't want them to drown. Instead, she turned them into dolphins. So the
Chumash always said that dolphins were their brothers.