In the southwestern part of the United States of America, in northern Arizona, there rise three mesas – the First Mesa, the Second Mesa, and the Third Mesa. These mesas are home to the Hopi Indians. The Hopis have lived in this area for more than a thousand years. The village of Old Oraibi, mentioned in the story below, is located on the Third Mesa, and is probably the oldest continuously inhabited village in the USA.

The origin of the Hopis is unknown. Their own origin myths say that their ancestors climbed upward through four kivas – large underground chambers that were used  for ceremonial rituals, political meetings and social gatherings of Hopi men –  and lived in many places before their present location. The Hopi supported themselves by farming. Their chief crop was corn, but they also grew beans, squash, melons and other fruits and vegetables.

Today the Hopi are no longer as isolated as they used to be. Despite the onslaught of modern America, the Hopi still retain much of their own religion, beliefs, rituals and stories.  

A very long time ago, the people of Oraibi had nothing to eat because it had not rained for many years. The corn could not grow, and after a while the people had eaten all of the corn they had saved from previous years. People began to move away from Oraibi. Soon everyone had left the village, except for two little children, a little boy and his sister.

One day, the little boy made a little bird from the pith of a sunflower stalk, and gave it to his little sister to play with. The boy then went away to look for food for both of them.

His little sister played all day with the little bird, throwing it up into the air as though to make it fly. Suddenly the bird came to life, and becoming a real hummingbird, flew away.

A little later, the boy came back. He had found nothing to eat.

‘Where is the bird I made for you to play with?’ the boy asked his sister.

‘It flew away,’ said his sister.

The children slept hungry that night. There was nothing for them to eat. But in the morning, the little bird came back, and flew into an opening in one of the walls.

‘My little bird has come back!’ cried the girl in amazement.

‘Where is it?’ asked her brother, equally amazed.

‘It went into that opening, there,’ said the little girl pointing. Her brother carefully put his hand into the opening in the wall. The opening seemed very large inside. The boy felt around carefully, but he couldn’t find the bird. Instead, he found a little ear of corn.

The boy drew out the ear of corn, and the children broke in two, roasted it and ate it.

After a while, the bird hopped out of the opening and flew away again. The next day it returned with a larger ear of corn. This too the children broke in two, roasted and ate. Once again the little bird flew away, to return the following day with a still larger ear of corn for the children. It did this for four days. On the fifth day the bird came back as usual, but did not bring any corn with it. It flew into its opening in the wall and vanished.

The boy carefully put his hand into the opening, and this time drew out the little bird. But the bird was no longer a real hummingbird. It had turned back into the little toy he had made for his sister to play with.

The boy took the bird carefully in his hand and said, ‘You are a living bird. You must go and hunt for our parents. They have left us here, all alone, and perhaps you can find them for us. Bring us something to eat, because we are hungry and have no food. Fly south, and look for our mother and our father, and bring them back to us.’

But the boy could not make the bird fly. So he turned to his sister and asked her how she had made it fly. The little girl took the bird by the wings, and threw it up in the air. ‘This is how I did it,’ she said. At once the bird came alive again, and turning into a real hummingbird, flew away.

A little south of Oraibi, at a place called Tu’wanashabe, the bird saw growing a cactus plant with a single red flower. At once the bird flew to the cactus plant, and removing it, saw beneath it an opening. The bird entered the opening and found itself in a kiva. In this kiva there were herbs and grasses growing.

At the north end of this kiva was another opening. Flying through the opening the bird found itself in another kiva. Here, it found some corn, with pollen on it, and ate some of it.

At the north end of this second kiva was another opening. Flying through this the bird found itself in another kiva, which was full of grass and herbs and corn of all kinds. Here also lived Muyingwa, god of growth and germination.

This last kiva was also full of birds of various kinds, including hummingbirds. It was the hummingbirds who first noticed the little bird and told Muyingwa about it. ‘Somebody has come in,’ they said to Muyingwa.

‘Who is it?’ asked Muyingwa. ‘Where is he? Let him come here.’

So the little bird fluttered on to Muyingwa’s arm and waited for him to speak.

‘What are you doing here?’ Muyingwa asked the little bird.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked the little bird. ‘Why have you come down here, not bothering about the people up there? Your fields up there look very bad. It has not rained for five years and nothing is growing any more. All the people have left, except for two poor little children who are the only ones left in Oraibi. They have nothing to eat. You come back up there and make things better.’

‘All right,’ answered Muyingwa. ‘I will think about the matter.’

The little bird then asked for something to eat for itself, and something to take to the two little children. ‘They are hungry,’ said the little bird. ‘They have not eaten all day.’

Muyingwa told the bird to take anything it wanted for itself and the children. So the bird broke off a large ear of corn and flew back with it to the children and left the corn in the opening in the wall as before.

The children were very happy to see the little bird again. They drew out the ear of corn and shared it between them as before. The children turned to the bird, which still sat in the opening, and thanked it for its kindness. ‘We can still live here because of you,’ they said to the bird. ‘You bring us food, so we stay alive. You must never go away.’

The bird promised to stay close by. ‘I will stay at Tu’wanashabe,’ it said.

The children then asked the bird to find their parents, and the birds flew off to hunt for them. It flew over the fields of Oraibi, and finally it came to a place called Toho. There it found the mother and father of the two little children. The father and mother had found some cactus plants to eat, and that is what they were living on. They were thin and weak without proper food.

The children’s hummingbird flew past them so quickly that they could not see it. The father felt something and said, ‘Something passed by here.’ But when the parents looked around, they could not see anything. The hummingbird flew back, and this time the parents of the children saw it. ‘Who are you, flying about here?’ the man asked the bird. The bird stopped flying about, though it kept its wings beating and hovered in the air, listening to what the children’s father had to say. The father told the bird how the people had nothing to eat, and how they were starving, and begged the bird to show them where to find food.

But the bird flew away to the children. ‘Did you find our parents?’ asked the children.

‘Yes,’ replied the bird. ‘I found them near Toho.’ And the bird flew away again to find the children something to eat.

Meanwhile Muyingwa had been thinking about what the children’s bird had said to him. At last he had decided to go back up into the world and set things right there. He moved  up into the first kiva above him – it rained a little in Oraibi then. He then moved up into the next kiva, and it rained a little more – and when he finally came out of the last kiva, he found the herbs and grasses were growing nicely.

The children’s parents had seen the clouds over Oraibi from a distance, and seen the rain. They decided to return to their village, not even hoping to find their children alive. Slowly, the other people of Oraibi who had left, but had not yet died from hunger, also saw the rain over Oraibi and returned to their village. The children found their parents again, and when they grew up, they, and then their descendants, became chiefs and important people in the village of Oraibi.

This story is still told among the Hopi Indians, of the two children, and their hummingbird and Muyingwa. Some of the details have been forgotten over the centuries – so perhaps the story used to be longer.