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| Crow war shirt in Metropolitan Museum of Art |
I love to listen to how people talk about dreams in
different cultures. As explained by the great Tuscarora ethnographer
J.N.B.Hewitt, the old Iroquoian word katera’swas means “I
dream” but implies much more that we commonly mean when say that phrase in
English. Katera’swas means I dream as a habit, as a daily part
of my way of being in the world. The expression also carries the connotation
that I am lucky in a proactive way – that I bring myself luck because I am able
to manifest good fortune and prosperity through my dream. The related
term watera’swo not only means “dream”; it can also be
translated as “I bring myself good luck.” [1]
In a similar vein, I found a real
gem in the work of an anthropologist who paid close attention to his own dreams
and persuaded Crow Indians to talk with remarkable candor about theirs. Dreaming
can be getting something without having to work for it.
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Robert H. Lowie (1883-1957), an Austrian-born American anthropologist who became a leading expert on indigenous North American cultures, kept a dream journal for fifty years. He wrote that his dreams prevented him from becoming "the hardboiled rationalist that I certainly wanted to be when I was young...I could never quite believe that there were no psychic forces in the world because I could not shake free from the inexplicable in my own dreaming."[2]
He wrote that his dreams helped him greatly in understanding the visionary experiences of “primitive” peoples. “I too hear voices and see visions… The difference between me and an Eskimo shaman who has heard a meaningless jumble of sounds or a Crow visionary who has seen a strange apparition is that I do not regard such experiences as mystic revelations, whereas they do. But I can understand the underlying mental and emotional experiences a good deal better than most other ethnologists can, because I have identical episodes every night and almost every day of my life.” [3]
In his fieldwork, Lowie observed that the Crow people prized big dreams – medicine dreams – and had many painful ways of seeking one, from sun dance rituals to extreme self-inflicted dehydration to cutting off a toe or finger. However, the Crow recognized that the most fortunate and gifted dreamers were those for whom the gift came in less stressful ways.
"Some dreamed in their lodges," Lowie noted. "These usually became rich, acquiring plenty of horses...Men who received unsought supernatural communications of importance without being placed in conditions of stress were relatively few in number and were regarded as remarkably fortunate since they escaped the necessity of torturing themselves. In such cases the Crow use the expression bìwawa'tek (first person: bà-wawi'tawak'), he gets something without working." [4]
One of Lowie's Crow informants, a successful warrior and hunter named One-Blue-Bead, said that dreams were his “principal medicine." In a big dream he encountered a being painted red and dressed like a Crow for battle, who seemed to be both man and hawk . In other dreams a hawk appeared and shapeshifted in phases int a man. The dreamer received a song:
I am a bird
I am coming
One-Blue-Bead said he was poor before he met the hawk man but
“when I saw the vision I got what I longed for.” He tied a hawk feather to his
back when he rode into battle and claimed that his medicine helped him kill
eight enemies.
Possession of a medicine dream (baré
wact're, distinguished from a lesser dream, or baré rámmacīre)
was considered essential to health and success, to bringing soul into life.
Hence the willingness to invite stress, undergo thirst and hunger and perform
self-torture in the vision quests. One-Blue-Bead wore his dream medicine on his
back when he rode into battle. Later, when the war days were over, he gave his dream medicine to another member of the tribe so he would have good luck in
getting horses.
It was common practice among the Crow for
people who did not have a dream to pay a powerful dreamer to give them one.
One-Blue-Bead told Lowie, “I never had to ask anyone else for medicine like
other men. Many people had no vision. These gave lots of property to the
visionary and might get a vision through him."[5]
As he neared death Robert Lowie worked on an essay on his own dreams that
contains many excerpts from his journals. They are just-so stories; he does not
analyze, he simply shares his adventures, which often involve travel and
meeting famous people from the past - Voltaire, Samuel Johnson – and remarkably
precise descriptions of people and places he never encountered in ordinary
reality.
He concludes by saying that for him
dreams are a joy because "One shakes off the fetters of probability and
glides through the centuries as though astride a Wellsian time machine. Events
of the highest incredibility become commonplaces, and there seems to be no
limit to the bizarre juxtaposition of normally unrelated ideas. It is no wonder
that when I turn in at night, I feel that I may be launched upon the most
exciting part of my septuagenarian existence." [6]
References
[1]. J.N.B. Hewitt, “The Iroquoian Concept of the Soul” Journal
of American Folklore vol.18 no.29, Vol. 8, No. 29 (Apr. - Jun. 1895), p.
111
[2] Robert H. Lowie, “Scholars as People: Dreams, Idle
Dreams” Cultural Anthropology vol. 7 no. 3 (1966) p.379
[3] ibid
[4] Lowie, Robert H. The
Religion of the Crow Indians. New York: American Museum Press, 1922 p. 321,
[5] ibid, pp. 323-5
[6] Lowie, “Scholars as People: Dreams, Idle Dreams” p.382
