Many dog owners are proud of their pets' pedigree. But the Koniagas, a tribe of North American Indians, trace their own pedigree back to a dog. And the legend of a breed of men with dogs' heads is a recurring one in many different civilizations. One of the best accounts is in the medieval writings of Sir John Mandeville. "Men go by the sea ocean, by many isles, unto an isle that is clept [called] Nacumera, that is a good isle and fair.
"And it is in compass about, more than a thousand miles. And all the men and women of that isle have hounds' heads, and they be clept Cynocephales [Greek for 'dog heads']."
Marco Polo said these people lived in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, but the whole idea of dog-men probably grew out of early sightings of baboons, which have projecting doglike muzzles.
Pictures of St. Christopher in Eastern art sometimes show him with a dog's head. According to legend, he was unusually handsome, and, because he was constantly pestered by women, he prayed to be given a dog's head as protection. It is possible that the tale originated in early Christian times, when the Egyptian cult of the dog-headed god Anubis may have been confused with stories of St. Christopher.
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