The Siamese also entertain this opinion. Their gods speak through the mouth of some chosen woman. When she feels the visit of the spirit to be near, she arrays herself in a handsome red silk garment, and as the deity enters her, she discourses of the other world, tells where lost objects are to be found, and the like. The assembled company worship her, or rather the god in her. On recovering from her theopneustic trance, she professes entire unconsciousness of what has taken place.[270] The American Indians very generally concede to their women an exalted rank in their religious mysteries. The Algonquins had quite as famous “medicine-women” as medicine-men, and the same was true generally. Mr. Cushing tells me that there is only one person among the Zuñis who is a member of all the sacred societies and thus knows the secrets of all, and that person is a woman. When Votan, the legendary hero of the Tzentals of Chiapas, left them for his long journey, he placed his sacred apparatus and his magical scrolls in a cave under the charge of a high priestess, who was to appoint her successor of the same sex until his return. The secret was faithfully kept and the successors appointed for more than a hundred and fifty years after their conversion to Christianity; until, in 1692, on the occasion of the visit of the Bishop to the hamlet where the priestess lived, she disclosed the story, and the holy relics were burned.[271] Twenty years later, as if to avenge this, the Tzentals revolted in a body, their leader being an inspired prophetess of their tribe, a girl of twenty, fired with enthusiasm to drive the Spaniards from the land and restore the worship of the ancient gods.[272] It is quite usual to find in early religions many rites, such as dances and sacrifices, which women alone carry out, and to which it is _tabu_ for any man to be admitted. This naturally arises in those cults where the deities are divided sexually into male and female. Such in their origin were the Bacchanals of ancient Greece, participated in at first by women and girls only, celebrated in devotion to the productive powers of nature, which were held to belong more especially to the female sex.[273] The “wise women” of many primitive faiths formed a close caste by themselves, no male being admitted, in imitation of their mythological prototypes in the heavens. The “witches” of the Middle Ages were lineal successors of the Teutonic priestesses, who took as their model the “swan-maidens” or “wish-women” of Odin.[274] Another form of early institutions was that of the societies of virgins, such as that which from primitive Italic times kept alive the holy fire of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Extensive associations of a similar nature were found by the European explorers in Mexico, Yucatan, Peru, and elsewhere.