Dragonflies are found all over the world, but what they mean to the people in different parts of the world can be very different.
To some Native American peoples, dragonflies are associated with swiftness and activity. For others, dragonflies symbolize water and abundant food.
To the Dine, or Navajo,�dragonflies represent�pure water, a scarce and treasured resource in their desert lands.
Dragonflies are a common motif in Zuni pottery. The Zuni have a wonderful story about the origin of the dragonfly, which was beautifully retold by best-selling author Tony Hillerman in a children’s book called The Boy Who Made Dragonfly.
Stylized as a double-barred cross, dragonflies appear in Hopi rock drawings and on Pueblo jewelry.
In China and Japan, dragonflies were traditionally used for medicine.
People in some parts of the world eat dragonflies as adults or larvae, as in Indonesia, where dragonflies are fried in oil and eaten as a traditional delicacy.
Europeans and Americans traditionally had a quite different view of dragonflies, as I’ll explain in Part 2 of this series.
Related articles
- Some Interesting Facts about Dragonflies (brighthaven.wordpress.com)
- a brand-new dragonfly (rebeccainthewoods.wordpress.com)
- watch me geek out about dragonflies (rebeccainthewoods.wordpress.com)
