See the main entry under totem.

A totem myth is a legend or a story that describes a respected animal as being in some way related to a family or tribe. For example, during the Roman Lupercalia the wolf-men (luperci) celebrated the legend of a she-wolf raising the city's founders, Romulus and Remus. Other totem ancestors are the bear, the raven, the eagle, the frog, and others in the Pacific Northwest, the seal-mother folktale in Scotland and Ireland, and the otter in the Nibelungenlied.