SBWMOTOM] ETHNOZOOLOGY OF THE TEWA INDIANS 47 



of the New World appear to be the Gila monster and the Mexican 

 beaded lizard, neither of which occurs in northern New Mexico. 

 Among the snakes the only poisonous one known in the region is the ]/ 

 rattlesnake. The wound made by any reptile or other animal having 

 teeth capable of lacerating the epidermis or flesh may of course become 

 infected, just as a scratch produced by any inorganic substance may, 

 and thus create the impression that the poison was injected at the 

 time of the bite. Our Indian informants considered the swifts and &amp;lt; 

 horned lizards harmless, but declared that the Sonora skink, of 

 which a specimen was found by them, is poisonous. The Indians 

 have the same so-called instinctive dread for the larger reptiles, par- ^ 

 ticularly snakes, as the whites, being startled when suddenly they 

 come upon one, and disliking to handle them. They informed us 

 that neither snakes nor lizards are used as food at present by the 

 Tewa, but it is not unlikely that their ancestors used them, at least - 

 during times of famine. However, they could not have been at any 

 time more than an insignificant article of food. 



There appears to be a widespread belief that the Indians of the 

 Southwest generally are addicted to the use of reptiles for food. 

 Whatever may be true of the past, this is not the case now. Rus 

 sell s statement concerning the Pima Indians, 1 that &quot; snakes are not 

 eaten, even in times of famine, and the idea of eating lizards is 

 repudiated with scorn,&quot; is applicable to many other Southwestern 

 tribes. 



LIZARDS 



OrotapJiytus collaris baileyi (Stejneger). Bailey s Collared Lizard. 

 This fine lizard probably occurs throughout the region, though we 

 saw none. C. collaris was reported at Santa Fe and San Ildefonso 

 by Yarrow and Cope 2 long before the subspecies baileyi was de 

 scribed, but Stejneger 3 places our area within the range of baileyi 

 and represents collaris as occurring from Pecos Valley eastward. 



Holbrookia maculata maculata (Girard ) . Common Spotted Lizard . 



1 Russell, Frank, The Pima Indians, Twenty-sixth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amcr. Ethn., p. 83, 1908. 



2 Yarrow, II. C., Report upon the Collections of Batrachians and Reptiles made in Portions of Nevada, 

 Utah, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona during the years 1871, 1872, 1873 and 1874, U. S. 

 Geog. Explor. and Survey W. of 100th Meridian, v, p. 566, 1875; Check-List of North American Reptilia 

 and Batrachia, with Catalogue of Specimens in U. S. National Museum, Bull. U. S. Nat. Museum, no. 24, 

 p. 52, 1882. Cope, E. D., The Crocodilians, Lizards, and Snakes of North America, Ann. Rep. U. S. Nat. 

 Museum for 1898, pp. 248-53, 1900. 



s Stejneger, Leonhard, Annotated List of Reptiles and Batrachians Collected by Dr. C. HartMerriam and 

 Vernon Bailey on the San Francisco Mountain Plateau and Desert of the Little Colorado, Arizona, with 

 descriptions of New Species, North American Fauna, no. 3, U. S. Dept. Agr., pp. 103-05, pi. xra, 1890. 

 Ruthven, A. G., A Collection of Reptiles and Amphibians from Southern New Mexico and Arizona, 

 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., xxin, pp. 512-14, 1907. 



