The most frequent metamorphoses of human beings into animals for the purpose of practising witchcraft are into the owl (_tecolete_) or the fox. The hoot of the owl is therefore a portent of evil, and brings a shudder to every Indian. In New Mexico one of many ways of discovering a witch is to plant a broom at the door surmounted by a small cross made from straws of the same broom; or the broom may be put behind a door with a cross formed of two needles. “If a woman is a witch she will not leave the house till broom and cross are removed.”[221] Witches are the cause of all illness. For instance, all skin diseases are attributed to the “angry ants,” and toothache is especially dreaded as a sign of the displeasure of the gods. To counteract these malevolent powers, the Shamans or medicine men are sought in times of distress because they are the workers in “good magic,” and hence are healers. Consequently the _materia medica_ of the Indian is fetishistic, and even when ‘real medicine’ is taken by a sick person, magic and fetish medicine are invariably added. Mrs. Stevenson[222] says that only upon acquaintance with secret cult societies can one glean something of the Indian’s conception of disease, its cause and cure. Sometimes the Shamans inherit their office but usually it was because of their having acquired supernatural powers after a long process of self isolation till a supreme gift was bestowed in a vision of greater import than that vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. Training in use of medicine or surgery is no part of their novitiate. The distinction between religion and magic is a very subtle one, and one not always easy to determine, because there may be wide divergence between the common belief of the “lay Indian” and that of the Shaman who is “possessed” by his conviction of supernatural experience and powers.[223] While animism, in the broadest sense of that term, was universal in the beliefs of the New World, and to this day the greater part of their religious culture bequeathed to them from dim prehistoric time is preserved and accepted as the rule of daily life, there is nevertheless something so abstract, so lofty and poetic in the Indian absorption in pure spirit that his religion becomes elusive and must be sympathetically felt by us rather than arbitrarily expressed. Religion has never been separated in primitive civilizations from the corporate life of the community, and the most essential and uninterrupted element in life values is the association of those values with spirits. Hence the religion of such a primitive people as the North American Indian has sprung from the relation of the spirits to the life values of man, and not from man’s relation to the outer world.[224]