Dec, 1910.] Skinner : The Use of Insncts as Food. 267 



they were helpless, and were thus collected by, the bushel. They 

 were then dried as they were. Thus prepared, they were kept for 

 winter food, and were eaten either dry and uncooked, or slightly 

 roasted." 



Of the Shasta, a California tribe of Shastan stock, Dixon* also 

 remarks : " Angle worms, grasshoppers, and locusts, do not seem to 

 have been eaten to any extent." 



In regard to the Pimaf (Piman) of southern Arizona we note 

 under the head of "Ma'kijm": "These unidentified worms (?) are 

 plentiful when a rainy season insures a heavy crop of desert plants. 

 They are gathered in large quantities, their heads pulled off, and 

 intestines removed. The women declare that their hands swell and 

 become sore if they come in contact with the skin of the worms. 

 The worms are then put into cooking pots lined with branches of 

 salt-bush and boiled. The skins are braided together while yet soft 

 and dried a day or two in the sun. The dry and brittle sticks are 

 eaten at any time without further preparation." 



It would appear from the foregoing accounts that the use of 

 insects as food by the North American aborigines was restricted 

 to that portion west of the Mississippi and was in vogue particularly 

 among the Indians towards the Pacific slope. It is possible that the 

 eastern Cree, Naskapi and Montagnais, who like the northern Atha- 

 bascans belong to the sub-arctic culture, also eat the Cuterehra grubs 

 which are found in the caribou, but no notes seem to have been 

 obtained by the writer or others on the subject. The eastern Cree and 

 Ojibway often kill lice, caught on their persons, by cracking them 

 with their teeth, but I have never observed that they ate them after- 

 wards, although I have been assured that this was the case, 



*Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 24s. 



t Frank Russell, The Pima Indians, 26th Annual Report of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology, p. 81. 



