White Corn and Yellow Corn Navajo Creation Story The world as it exists today is not the first world, according to the Navajo story of creation. The first world was an island, and on it lived the insect people. The insect people were driven out of the first world because they quarreled with each other. They were forced up through the sky of the first world and entered the second world. But here, too, the insect people couldn’t get along, and in addition, they offended other inhabitants of the second world. Again, they were forced to flee, up to the third world. And yet again, they were driven out. Finally the insect people came up to the fourth world. The surface of this world was black and white, the sky was mostly blue and black, and there were snow-covered mountains in the directions of north, east, south, and west. After some time, four spirit beings came to visit the insect people. At first the insect people did not understand what they had to say, but eventually one of the spirits explained: they wished to make more people, people who would look like the spirits, with hands and feet. The spirits told the insect people that they would return in 12 days to do this. To prepare for the return of the spirits, the insect people cleaned themselves; the women scoured their skin with yellow corn meal, the men with white corn meal. The spirits came carrying two sacred buckskins and two ears of corn, one white and one yellow. They laid one buckskin on the ground, set the ears of corn on it, and covered them with the other buckskin. As the wind blew between the buckskins, they performed a ceremony. When the top buckskin was lifted the corn was gone—the white ear of corn had become First Man, and the yellow ear had become First Woman. The Navaho people descend from these two. Emmi Whitehorse, Navajo Emmi Whitehorse’s interpretation of the Navajo creation story makes reference to the first people—the insect people—and their emergence to the fourth world. She creates what she imagines it must have been like for the first people to emerge from simple life forms to more complex ones through four levels. Each level is marked by a change in color—red, blue, yellow, and finally black and white.