(M159) But it is not merely between the mental and spiritual nature of man and the animals that the savage traces a close resemblance; even the distinction of their bodily form appears sometimes to elude his dull apprehension. An unusually intelligent Bushman questioned by a missionary “could not state any difference between a man and a brute—he did not know but a buffalo might shoot with bows and arrows as well as a man, if it had them.”(597) In the opinion of the Gilyak, “the form and size of an animal are merely a sort of appearance. Every animal is in point of fact a real being like man, nay a Gilyak such as himself, but endowed with reason and strength which often surpass those of mere men.”(598) Nor is it merely that in the mental fog the savage takes beasts for men; he seems to be nearly as ready to take himself and his fellows for beasts. When the Russians first landed on one of the Alaskan islands the people took them for cuttle-fish, “on account of the buttons on their clothes.”(599) We have seen how some savages identify themselves with animals of various sorts by eating the maggots bred in the rotting carcases of the beasts, and how thereafter, when occasion serves, they behave in their adopted characters by wriggling, roaring, barking, or grunting, according as they happen to be boa-constrictors, lions, jackals, or hippopotamuses.(600) In the island of Mabuiag men of the Sam, that is, the Cassowary, totem think that cassowaries are men or nearly so. “Sam he all same as relation, he belong same family,” is the account they give of their kinship with the creature. Conversely they hold that they themselves are cassowaries, or at all events that they possess some of the qualities of the long-legged bird. When a Cassowary man went forth to reap laurels on the field of battle, he used to reflect with satisfaction on the length of his lower limbs: “My leg is long and thin, I can run and not feel tired; my legs will go quickly and the grass will not entangle them.”(601) Omaha Indians believe that between a man and the creature which is his guardian spirit there subsists so close a bond that the man acquires the powers and qualities, the virtues and defects of the animal. Thus if a man has seen a bear in that vision at puberty which determines an Indian’s guardian spirit, he will be apt to be wounded in battle, because the bear is a slow and clumsy animal and easily trapped. If he has dreamed of an eagle, he will be able to see into the future and foretell coming events, because the eagle’s vision is keen and piercing.(602) Similarly, the Thompson Indians of British Columbia imagined that every man partook of the nature of the animal which was his guardian spirit; for example, a man who had the grisly bear for his protector would prove a much fiercer warrior than one who had only a crow, a coyote, or a fox for his guardian spirit. And before they set out on the war-path these Indians used to perform a mimic