The Chinook medicine-men are possessed of the usual powers of converse and mediation with the spirits good and evil; there are two classes of them, employed in all cases of sickness--the _etaminuas_, or priests, who intercede for the soul of the patient, and, if necessary, for its safe passage to the land of spirits--and the _keelalles_, or doctors, sometimes women, whose duty it is to administer medical as well as spiritual aid.[V-13]
With the Cayuses and the Walla-Wallas any one may become a medicine-man; among the Nez Percés the office belongs to an hereditary order. Women are sometimes trained to the profession, but they are not believed to hold such extreme powers as the males, nor are they murdered on the supposed exercise of some fatal influence. For, as with the Chinooks[V-14] so here, the reputation of sorcerer is at once the most terrible to others and the most dangerous to one's self that one can have. His is a power of life, and death; his evil eye can wither and freeze a hated life if not as swiftly at least as surely as the stare of the Medusa; he is mortal, however--he can slay your friend or yourself, and death is bitter, but then how sweet an anodyne is revenge! There is no strong magic can avail when the heart's blood trickles down the avenger's shaft, no cunning enchantment that can keep the life in when his tomahawk crumbles the skull like a potsherd--and so it comes about that the conjurers walk everywhere with their life in their hand, and are constrained to be very wary in their exercise of their nefarious powers.[V-15]
The Shoshone legends people certain parts of the mountains of Montana with little imps or demons called _ninumbees_, who are about two feet long, perfectly naked, and provided each with a tail. These limbs of the evil one are accustomed to eat up any unguarded infant they may find, leaving in its stead one of their own baneful race. When the mother comes to suckle what she supposes to be her child, the fiendish changeling seizes her breast and begins to devour it; then, although her screams and the alarm thereby given soon force the malicious imp to make his escape, there is no hope further; she dies within the twenty-four hours, and if not well watched in the meantime, the little demon will even return and make an end of her by finishing his interrupted meal. There is another variety of these hobgoblins call _pahonahs_, 'water-infants,' who devour women and children as do their brother-fiends of the mountain, and complete the ring of ghoulish terror that closes round the Shoshone child and mother.[V-16]