Insect Life: Tiger Tales: Natural History of Native North American Swallowtails

Abstract

The first drawing of a North American butterfly was of a male tiger swallowtail, produced more than 400 years ago by John White in an area now called North Carolina. White was the commander of Sir Walter Raleigh's third expedition to the North American continent to an area generally referred to as Virginia. The stylized water color drawing was done by White in 1587, apparently after a Native American Indian boy presented him the specimen of this “manaanggwas” (=butterfly), and was later reproduced as a wood-cut in the very rare book Insectorium sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum (Holland 1931, Tyler et al. 1994).