Mickey Free has assured me that he has seen an Apache medicine-man light a pipe without doing anything but hold his hands up toward the sun. This story is credible enough if we could aver that the medicine-man was supplied, as I suspect he was, with a burning glass.
That the medicine-man has the faculty of transforming himself into a coyote and other animals at pleasure and then resuming the human form is as implicitly believed in by the American Indians as it was by our own forefathers in Europe. This former prevalence of lycanthropy all over Europe can be indicated in no more forcible manner than by stating that until the reign of Louis XIV, in France, the fact of being a were-wolf was a crime upon which one could be arraigned before a court; but with the discontinuance of the crime the were-wolves themselves seem to have retired from business.[26] In Abyssinia, at the present day, blacksmiths are considered to be were-wolves, according to Winstanley. The Apache look upon blacksmiths as being allied to the spirits and call them "pesh-chidin"--the witch, spirit, or ghost, of the iron. The priestly powers conceded to the blacksmith of Gretna Green need no allusion here.
According to Sir Walter Scott,[27] trials for lycanthropy were abolished in France by an edict of Louis XIV.
Parkman[28] describes, from the Relations of Pére Le Jeune, how the Algonkin medicine-man announced that he was going to kill a rival medicine-man who lived at Gaspé, 100 leagues distant.
The Abipones of Paraguay, according to Father Dobrizhoffer, "credit their medicine-men with power to inflict disease and death, to cure all disorders, to make known distant and future events; to cause rain, hail, and tempest; to call up the shades of the dead and consult them concerning hidden matters; to put on the form of a tiger; to handle every kind of serpent without danger, etc.; which powers they imagine are not obtained by art, but imparted to certain persons by their grandfather, the devil."
The medicine-men of Honduras claimed the power of turning themselves into lions and tigers and of wandering in the mountains.[29]
"Grandes Hechiceros i Bruxos, porque se hacian Perros, Puercos i Ximios."[30]
Gomara also calls attention to the fact that the medicine-men, "hechiceros" and "brujos," as he calls them, of the Nicaraguans, possessed the power of lycanthropy; "segun ellos mismos decian, se hacen perros, puercos y gimias."[31]