If you’re ever taking a stroll on a dirt path in Phoenix at night, if you pay close enough attention you can sometimes hear a faint twitchy scurrying sound around your footsteps. This is usually a lizard; one of the cold blooded creatures who adore the Southwest heat.
Although modern day Phoenix looks very different from what it looked like two hundred years ago, one thing that remains the same are the lizards in the area.
For many residents who now live in Phoenix, lizards seem like little backyard accessories, act as cat taunters, and sometimes spawn as shower annoyances. For the Navajo and other Native Southwest tribes, they have much more spiritual value.
2014-04 Seedpot with Lizard and Horned Toad Warriors Hunting Ants
In one story, Coyote encounters a group of lizards sledding down a rock with smaller, flat rocks. Coyote wanted to join in, but the lizards informed him that because he was not a lizard, he would probably get hurt trying to play the game. Coyote plays anyway, and on his second attempt, flips around and gets smashed by the rock. The lizards, in pity and in convenience, gather around him and revive him.
Being one of the rare land-bound animals that can regenerate cartilage, it’s not a surprise that lizards represent healing, survival, and rebirth. The Gila Monster, which unlike most lizards is venomous, has stories about resurrecting warriors who fell in battle.
Picture of a Gila monster
Though not in Arizona, the Pomo tribe tells another story about Lizard and Coyote, where the two had a throw down to decide whether humans should have fingers or paws, like Coyote. Thankfully, Lizard won, though I don’t think the furries are too happy about that.
One of the most important reptiles in Navajo culture is the Horned Toad, who is also called Grandfather (Cheii). One Navajo story shows that when Lightning challenged Horned Toad, boasting that he can kill him in four strikes, Horned Toad averted the attacks each time using songs. Afterward, he defeated Lightning with his spikes. Thus, his songs are used for protection.
If a horned toad allows you to pick it up, and you rub it on your chest, the horned toad allows you protection. Because of its array of spikes, the horned toad is a symbol of protection. This is not only protection of one’s physical body, but also one’s mind, spirit, and emotions, because the horned toad is also respected for its proximity to the ground.
Picture of a Horned lizard
Although for most Southwest residents, reptiles like the lizard are only remembered as little twigs scurrying around in your backyard, or the occasional “Guys look at that!” on a hike in Superstition Mountains, the respect due to lizards, Horned toads, and Gila monsters that Southwest tribes have is now more important than ever.
With temperatures in the Southwest rising, and Arizona’s pesticides, population, and asphalt, spreading, Gila monsters, lizards, and Horned toads have found their once bountiful population decreasing. The Horned lizards that old residents of Tucson and Catalina Foothills used to see out and about ‘essentially extinct in Phoenix, outside mountain parks’, according to Arizona Daily Star.
Even if we don’t have much place for lizards in our rapidly expanding society, that does not mean we should not respect them. I would dread the night I walk outside and find that I suddenly can’t seem to spot those familiar little twigs scurrying around in the crevices they used to.
By: Alyssa L
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