356 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. III. 



One of the first steps usually taken is to suck out the wound, which, 

 it is said, is more efficacious if done by a youth or unmarried man. 

 If the snake can be captured it is killed and cut open, in order to find 

 the blood which the reptile is supposed to have extracted from the 

 wound and which, it is said, may be found in the snake in the form of 

 a dark coagulated clot.' If found, it is not taken out, but the body 

 of the snake is pressed and stroked in such a manner that the clot is 

 worked upward and back through the mouth again. If that can be 

 done it greatly increases the chances of the patient to recover. 

 Another of the very first steps taken, especially if the bite occurs away 

 from the village, is to hunt some of the beetles already named, which 

 the victim eats raw. One of my Oraibi friends, who was bitten by a 

 rattlesnake when a young man, has told me repeatedly that others, 

 who happened to be close by, quickly gathered a number of these 

 beetles, which he ate, but he shudders when he speaks about it, and 

 says they tasted very bitter. Sometimes they are also cooked in water 

 and the liquid is drunk by the patient. 



At the very earliest moment the Snake chief is notified, or if he 

 be absent, one of the older men of the Snake Fraternity, who at once 

 either sends some one or goes himself after the snake medicine. The 

 patient is taken to an uninhabited house, or if such be not obtainable, 

 to some kiva, the kivas being mostly vacant during the season of the 

 year when snake bites are most likely to occur. Care is taken that 

 the sick person be seen by as few people as possible, and that he be 

 taken from the sunlight as quickly as it can be done. When once in 

 the kiva or house, the treatment begins in earnest. The Snake chief 

 takes care of him. Among other things, I believe, he chants the same 

 snake discharming song over him which is chanted at the conclusion 

 of the snake ceremony, and which he also sings over any case of swell- 

 ing which is believed to have been caused by the snake charm. As 

 soon as the herbs for the snake antidote arrive, they are turned over 

 to a woman of the Snake clan, who has either never had any or has 

 ceased to bear children. She prepares the decoction which the patient 

 has to drink, with which he is rubbed, and especially with which the 

 wound is washed out. For three days he is not allowed to drink any- 

 thing but this decoction, nor to eat any food except what has been 

 prepared with this medicine. Even the dough for the usual bread 

 (piki) is prepared with it. I have been told that this "diet" becomes 

 so obnoxious to the patient that frequent and profuse vomiting takes 

 place. And it is more than probable that the effiqacy of the medicine 



' An old German minister told me lately that in a certain part in Germany in case of a snake 

 bite the snake was killed, and the "heart" of it— as the popular belief was — taken out and laid on the 

 wound, which was then tied up. 



