Mendieta is authority for the statement that the Mexicans had both medicine-men and medicine-women. The former attended to the sick men and the latter to the sick women. "Á las mujeres siempre las curaban otras mujeres, y á los hombres otros hombres."[70] Some of the medicine-women seem to have made an illicit use of the knowledge they had acquired, in which case both the medicine-woman and the woman concerned were put to death. "La mujer preñada que tomaba con que abortar y echar la criatura, ella y la física que le habia dado con que la lanzase, ambas morian."[71] Gomara asserts that they were to be found among the Indians of Chicora (South Carolina).[72] He calls them "viejas" (old women). "Los Medicos eran Mugeres viejas, i no havia otras."[73] In Nicaragua, "Las Viejas curaban los Enfermos."[74] There were medicine-women in Goazacoalco: "Tienen Medicos para curar las enfermedades, i los mas eran Mugeres, grandes Herbolarias, que hacian todas las curas con Iervas."[75] Bernal Diaz, in 1568, speaks of having, on a certain occasion, at the summit of a high mountain, found "an Indian woman, very fat, and having with her a dog of that species, which they breed in order to eat, and which do not bark. This Indian was a witch; she was in the act of sacrificing the dog, which is a signal of hostility."[76] "The office of medicine-man though generally usurped by males does not appertain to them exclusively, and at the time of our visit the one most extensively known was a black (or meztizo) woman, who had acquired the most unbounded influence by shrewdness, joined to a hideous personal appearance, and a certain mystery with which she was invested."[77] Creeks have medicine-women as well as medicine-men. The Eskimo have medicine-men and medicine-women.[78] The medicine-men and women of the Dakota "can cause ghosts to appear on occasion."[79] Speaking of the Chippewa, Spencer says: "Women may practice soothsaying, but the higher religious functions are performed only by men."[80] The medicine-men of the Apache do not assume to live upon food different from that used by the laity. There are such things as sacred feasts among the tribes of North America--as, for example, the feast of stewed puppy at the sun dance of the Sioux--but in these all people share. In the mortuary ceremonies of the medicine-men there is a difference of degree, but not of kind. The Mohave, however, believe that the medicine-men go to a heaven of their own. They also believe vaguely in four different lives after this one. Cabeza de Vaca says that the Floridians buried their ordinary dead, but burned their medicine-men, whose incinerated bones they preserved and drank in water.[81] "After they [the medicine-men and women of the Dakota] have four times run their career in human shape they are annihilated."[82] Schultze says that the medicine-men of the Sioux and the medicine-women also, after death "may be transformed into wild beasts."[82]