The starting point of the whole superstition of the harmful werewolf is the disguising as some common animal by members of savage races when abroad as foragers or scouts, in order to escape detection by the enemy. Like wolves they roamed the land in search of food. As stated above,[103] later fabulous report would represent them as possessing in their disguise the attributes of the animal they impersonated,[104] and finally even of actually taking on animal form, either wholly or in part,[105] for longer or shorter periods of time. Some of the North American Indian transformation stories represent men as having only the head, hands and feet of a wolf.[106] The transformation into a werewolf in Germanic lands is caused merely by a shirt or girdle made of wolf-skin.[107] This shirt or girdle of wolf-skin of the Germanic werewolf is the survival of the robe or mantle originally disguising the entire body. It would be but a step further to represent a person as rendering himself invisible by putting on any other article of apparel, such as the Tarnkappe.[108] The stories especially in Europe were of the _were-wolf_ rather than _were-bear_ or other animal, because the wolf was the commonest of the larger wild animals.[109] It was the stories of the commonest animal, the wolf, which crystallized into the household werewolf or transformation tales.[110]
[106] Grinnell; and Ethn. Rep. 1888-89, p. 737.
[107] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, III. 1094, fol. says: Our oldest native notions make the assumption of wolf-shape depend on arraying oneself in a wolf-belt or wolf-shirt, as transformation into a swan does on putting on the swan-shirt or swan-ring. Page 1095: “The transformation need not be for a magical purpose at all: any one that puts on, or is conjured into, a wolf-shirt, will undergo metamorphosis.... With the appearance, he acquires also the fierceness and howling of the wolf; roaming the _woods_, he rends to pieces everything that comes in his way.” This is like the belief of the American Indian that the wearer of a mask becomes imbued with the spirit of the being which his mask represents (note 57); or that the shaman in full regalia becomes, or tries to make his followers believe that he has become, the power he represents (note 67).