Relations, not mascots
Animal relations in ethnographic accounts are specific, reciprocal, often dangerous and bound to place and species ecology. The commercial 'spirit animal' is a mid-twentieth-century Western invention layered over misread Plains material.
Transformation
Jaguar transformation in Amazonia, bear ceremonialism across the north, and co-essence beliefs in Mesoamerica describe shifts of body and viewpoint with real risk attached, including the risk of not returning.