Creation (A Girl Named Tamira)

In a time long before mechanical contrivances washed clothes and milled wheat, a young girl named Tamira was sent to wash clothes beneath the streamside cottonwood trees. Though her name meant “magic,” Tamira was also mischievous. She quickly grew bored with dipping clothes in the chill water and began wandering along the edge of the stream. Finding a puff of dandelion parasols, she fashioned them into small winged insects, broadcast them to the wind, and watched them fly away. Discovering small twigs and stones, she shaped them into hard-shell insects and shellfish, and by releasing them into the water, they became the crawlies you find today. Finally, Tamira plucked leaves from the cottonwood and folded them into the shape of fish. When she tossed the folded leaves into the eddies of the water, they transformed into trout.

Tamira was a naughty girl. For this reason, some of the winged insects became biting things, some of the crawlies pinch, and the trout became shy.

—Mitchell Hegman