Native American Dreaming Lee Irwin

The diversity within the Native American community is tremendous. There are over 500 nations, with over 13 different language families and more than 70 languages. All native worldviews, thinking and cultural beliefs are embedded in the language of the people and the place. So in this talk, Im going to focus on the northeast and mid-atlantic states, on the Algonkian and Iroquois dreaming traditions, and use historical examples from the Lenape or Delaware Indians. The term Delaware comes from the lord De LaWare, who was given a land grant for the state, and the native people became known as Delwares. In their own language, of course, they are known as the Lenape -- the real people, the first people, the original people. One of the major problems in this area is the sources for this material. What are legitimate sources for the reconstruction of native dreaming and dreaming traditions? The ethnography of dreams is incredibly rich. Ive collected about 350-400 dreams out of the ethnography that range over a period of about 300 years, and they comes out of many different kinds of sources. The problem is, the lore is embedded in a rhetorical construction that is based upon conquest and religious intolerance. Missionaries record dreams, but in very negative way as being given by demons and evil spirits. Or you get other people recording material but at the same time trying to distance themselves from it and to undermine, as it were, the very thing that theyre recording. There is a lot of sifting and sorting to do in order to get to first hand reports on dreaming. But such reports are there, scattered in different kinds of sources. Everything Im going to say is

based on my primary research, and straight out of the historical ethnography, particularly during the 17th and 18th centuries. What Im saying is specifically for the Algonkian people, which is quite different from my book, The Dream-Seekers (1994) which is about Plains Indians and vision questing, based on work with 23 different groups. Another problem I want to mention is that Native people feel very reluctant to talk about dreaming. Its not considered appropriate to talk about dreams. So not only are the dreaming texts fragmentary, but dreaming is also couched within a particular cultural context where dreams are regarded as so sacred that you dont really talk about them, except to elders within your own kinship lines and usually of same gender. This is also problematic because dream lore has been recorded mostly by men and its about mens dreaming traditions. A have great ethnographic need for women to do more ethnography with other women of different ethnic and indigenous communities, because women will talk within the gender line. Native American people are not always willing to talk across the gender line about these things. So most of what I present will be about mens dreaming traditions and it is all from public records. With these comments as background, let me give a one sentence definition of what I think the role of dreaming is in native culture, as a general way of orienting everyone. In traditional native cultures, dreams are generally understood as: a means to develop a personal relationship with the animate powers of nature. Among the Algonkian Lenape and the Iroquois people, dreams are central to their cultural world and particularly to their religious world view. To state it simply, from the Lenape point of view and from the Algonkian traditions, you need to have powerful dreams to be successful in life. And not having big, powerful dreams will probably mean that you will

not attain a significant leadership role within the society. Im not saying there are no exceptions because there are always exceptions, but in general, leaders, particularly spiritual leaders, are people who have had very big dreams, very powerful dreams and more than one or two in a lifetime, usually, a whole series of such dreams. Thus dreaming is a primary form of empowerment within the native tradition. It is therefore a valid means for acquiring knowledge, a certain kind of knowledge that Ill call dream knowledge. That knowledge is considered to be the highest sort of knowledge. There is nothing more empowering in Algonkian culture than the kind of knowledge you can receive through dreams. Everything else is somewhat secondary to that kind of knowledge. So having big dreams, powerful dreams, is incredibly important. What is the authentic sources of knowledge that comes from dreams? I take the answer to this question straight out of the ethnography. This is an epistemological question that dreaming is thought to address. It is not one kind of knowledge, per se, but a range of perceptions communicated through the dream or visionary state. One type is an oracular knowledge that gives awareness of the outcome of actions that are being planned, for example, a hunting expedition. One of the first things they would do is to go to the leader of the hunting expedition and say, What do your dreams tell you about going on a hunting expedition? Should we do this? Should we not do this? How should we do this? Where should we go? What is the pattern here? And the answer is believed to come back through dreams. So they will query their dreaming, and come back with some response as to whether they should do it, how they should do it, what direction they should go. This was a constant within the activity of traditional people because its for

all types of events, not just hunting. They would ask concerning warfare, hunting, agricultural events, any events that are seen as important and ask: how should we deal with it? We will go to our dreams and see what they say. People who have big dreams that relate to problems and issues of the community move through those dreams into positions of leadership. Thus one of the main roots to the pattern of leadership is through what I call "oracular" dreams. Another aspect is that dreams are used diagnostically, particularly in healing, to diagnose illnesses. I cannot really go into the detail of that lore because its very complicated, but there is a whole pattern for analyzing dreams to determine the nature of illness, and to determine how those illnesses should be dealt with. How far back will they query the dreaming? They will go back years. The pattern is they keep going back: recent dreams, older dreams, long ago dreams, very long ago dreams, childhood dreams. Theyll analyze that whole pattern to come up with a diagnosis about what the particular illness is and how treat it. And they will dream what I like to call a "counter dream" -the diagnostician will dream about the dream of the other person, bring it into a focus that will result in an actual healing technique, that will then be applied and used. So it is really a dream based knowledge. And in the process they will also get information about how long the person will live, how healthy theyll be, and other aspects of the diagnosis for the overall pattern of the individuals health and well-being. There were specialists within the tribes, among the Lenape, that had that particular kind of ability to diagnose. And you had to go to that person to get this knowledge, the correct diagnosis. A third example is that dreaming is considered to be a type of ritual. Much of American Indian ritual, especially Algonkian / Lenape ritual, comes from dreams. A

person had a dream, a big dream. He learns prayers, songs, ritual actions. He learned the material to use, how to paint, how to dress. He learned the performative actions. He learned the consequences of the performative actions and when and how to do it, all from dreams. And then these dreams became assimilated into the performative genres of the group and part of the ongoing ritual traditions. But what many people dont realize is those traditions are all subject to modification based on additional or alternative dreams of the religious leaders. If they dream that a ceremony is not working or something needs to be adjusted, theyre going to make an adaptation for it. The old stereotyped view is that dreams were just pattern dreams -- that is, fixed, and the dreaming just kept reinforcing the patterns. Thats not at all true. The ethnography does not support it. Dreaming was an ongoing, transformative, creative process and dream-directed in terms of the development of ritual. It might be just a little part of it, or a certain object, just slowly mutating in terms of the dream life. These things have to do with rites for planting, hunting, many different kinds of activities. Another function that dreams have is what I call a "communicative" function. Dreams bring you into communication or dialogue with others. Very commonly, dreams were considered a source of communication with someone who had died. And those are taken to be true dreams of communication with those people. Also there was communication with animal spirits. If you want to communicate with animal spirits, then it was believed that that happened through dreaming processes. Other powers of nature might also communicate, organic or inorganic, because of dreams connected to certain things like minerals or certain kinds of rock, what we would call inorganic sources. Dreams also connected dreamers to what was known in Algonkian as the "great

beings." The word in Algonkian is Manitu (sg.) or Manituwok (pl.). And the Manituwok are a certain class of beings that you can only communicate with in your dreams. They are not visible in nature. There were probably only seven or eight major Manituwok recorded in the ethnography. The highest Manitu is known in Lenape translation as the Master of Life. You can have dreaming experiences that put you directly in communication with the Master of Life. So you are in dialogue with these various kinds of what I call dream spirits. And they are the primary sources of empowerment for all dreamers. Then there is another function, what I call enstatic dreaming. This refers to visionary dreams: out-of-body experiences, trance states, clairvoyant knowledge, mystical and cosmological visions. Theres a lot of this lore in the dreaming material. And the issue about these enstatic dreams is that they provide what is considered to be true knowledge about the nature and structure of the world. The dreamer comes back and narrates the communication to the community. And some people are believed to have certain kinds of powers as a result of these very special dreams. If, for example, you are looking for a lost object, you would go to a particular kind of dreamer who has a capacity to find lost objects. That is his or her dream specialty. There are many different sorts of abilities that come through this special dream based knowledge. You might be surprised to know that one of the forms of dream knowledge that is very common and highly pervasive throughout the North American continent is knowledge of past lives and future lives. Im talking now about 15th & 16th century narratives, during first contact. The Taino Indians talked to Columbus and to the Franciscan Padre, Fray Ramon, about knowledge of their past lives. And it was a

common knowledge. And also, this is interesting, knowledge of their future lives. Where they are, where theyve been, and where theyre going. Thats considered to be a normative aspect of dreaming, a special kind of knowledge. Another kind of knowledge is about the purpose and nature of spirits, the dream spirits. Who are they? How do they function? What do they want? How do you relate to them? Such knowledge came through dreams. How to respond to a crisis? That kind of knowledge came through dreams. Its knowledge in a sense of guidance that comes down through these various kinds of dream powers. The highest, most important aspect of the dreaming is something called maskan in Lenape. Maskan is a very difficult word to translate. Scholars translate it, rather vaguely, as "power." Maskan is an enhanced ability to do things. It is an ability to do things considered beyond the ordinary, normal ability. It could be manifested in all kinds of different ways. Its something that is exceptional, that really stands out. And the primary source of maskan, is dreams. But a dreamer had to remember the dream knowledge and to draw on it to be successful. The dream had to be brought into the world and manifested to others. The dreamer had to demonstrate his or her maskan. A dreamer could not just claim it by saying, "Hey, I had a really big dream last night. I feel like I got a lot of maskan! You couldnt do that! It wouldnt work. The dreamer had to take the ability that came through the dream and demonstrate it. If he or she could not demonstrate it, no verbal claim is going to make a difference. The attitude that is taken toward such dreams is that maskan is a gift. Thats the correct language to use. It is something that is given to be used in an appropriate manner, with reverence, with appreciation for the source from which it comes, and with a certain degree of

thankfulness. So the reverence, this attitude of appreciation for its source, is a very important part of actualizing the gift. I would say that the primary goal of traditional Algonkian dreaming practice is to acquire various degrees of maskan and then, to manifest that maskan in an appropriate setting, to others. I've given you some idea of the different kinds of dreaming functions that are a part of the tradition. Let me now move on to another issue. Obviously, it becomes important to acquire dreams, to have big dreams. So most native cultures have institutionalized the search for dreaming. An individual would set out to get a big dream. A person did not just sit and wait for it to happen, but went in search of it. And it was common for everyone to goes in search of such a dream. Not everyone was successful. There are plenty of records about people who didnt acquire this kind of knowledge. Each individual would go on what is called among the Algonkian people, a dream fast. A dream seeker would prepare in a special way to go out, to search for a certain kind of dream experience. Now this was usually done between the ages of 12 and 16. The ethnography, and I apologize to the women in the audience, is almost exclusively about the men. Because the records come from men, recorded by men. I do know men and women in their teenage years always went on dream fasts. And the male pattern was for young boys between the age of 12 and 16 to go on such a fast. Algonkians lived in a wigwams, like a long, semi-round hut, covered with birch bark, with an open slot at the top for smoke to escape and a door at the end, with many families inside. They would build a little enclosed structure inside the lodge. And a seeker would go into the structure, covered with earth like a little cave, for a sweat ceremony. Special people whose dreams empowered them to lead sweat lodge rites

would create a fire, heat up rocks, put the young boys into this enclosed structure, with a hole in the floor of it, and then these singers and ritual people would go in, place the hot rocks in the hole and pour an herbal mixture with water over the hot rocks which would create steam, and that steam would then purify them. This was the basic purification rite. And they would all sit in there, and sing the dream songs and pray for the young man. The leaders would sing and these songs were considered to invoke the maskan of the successful dreamer-singers and to help to transfer a receptivity to maskan to the young boys to prepare them to go out on a dream fast. Then they would leave the sweat and go out and spend up to ten days without food or water out it the woods. There are different ways to fast, Im not going to get into all the different ways. One was to climb a tree, and there would be something called a nest in the tree that they would have prepared in advance. The seeker would spend the whole time in the tree, and he didnt come down until he had a big dream or until the person who is supervising it said, Thats it. Youve gone as far as you can go, and would bring him back. There is no record of anyone ever dying on one of these fasts because people always ask about that. The fasters were very carefully monitored. If there is any sign of problems or anything, they would bring them right back. And they were also free to return at any time to the village. They might sneak back into the village and go back to their homes. Nobody said anything. Not a word. They came back, it didnt work -- fine. There was no need to talk about it. If a person went out and had a big dream, then he came back and went to the persons who was supervising the fast, and talked to them, and only to them, about his experience. And then the leaders will go through a process of interpreting it, helping the person to understand the experience. It might take years to

understand a visionary experience. It usually did take years. They usually say that if the dream is true, the experience will repeat itself, and youll have a series of dreams linked to a particular type of thematic experience. That sequence becomes a guiding template for the life and development of the dreamer. Once a person had one of these, he or she was on the way, so to speak, in terms of finding a place or role in the society or culture. About women--I dont know that much, but the record is clear that womens dreaming rites start at the onset of menstruation. There is special lodge for women that they went to during what they called their moon time, and during moon time, that was a time in which womens dreams were considered really powerful. Attending to your dreams during your moon time was considered one of those times when the dream spirits were really communicating with a woman. They would go into seclusion, into these little huts that they had specially made. And their grandmother or female relatives would take care of them and make sure they had food and anything else they needed. Theyd spend the whole time in seclusion for four or five days, then come out and have a purification rite and return to their village. Dreams during that time were considered to be very important. Womens dreaming traditions are much less structured because women in the cultural context tend to be spontaneous dreamers, much more likely to have spontaneous big dreams than men. The records cussgest that theres a more active womens dreaming tradition, but unfortunately its very poorly recorded. Whereas men actually had to create this rite to force it to happen, with women it was very much a spontaneous, creative action. A successful dreamer was one that came back with a big dream. And this brings us to another topic: dreams classification. There are ethno-classifications in almost every

native group and each has their own linguistic classifications for dreams. This is a subject that is very unfamiliar to people. Because these classifications are all in different languages, you have to know something about the language to understand them. Its not in English. Its in Lenape, Iroquois, and so on. However, Im going to give you a translation into English of four categories. These are common categories but theyre a bit generic because Im just trying to give you a feeling for it. The first big category is no-account-dreams. No-account-dreams are everyday dreams, and this is the huge category, consisting of about 85% of all dreams. These are not maskan dreams. They do not give you the help a maskan dream gives. If you come back and narrate a no-account-dream, its not going to help you acquire maskan. A dreamer has to come back with a valuable dream and the elders know the classifications. The young people who go out dont know about the classifications. When they come back from a dream fast, they talk about their dreams. Did it have maskan? No, that was not a successful dream. The dreamer has to try again. Then theres a type of dream that has some small degree of power. This is specific. There is a very particular Iroquois concept called ondinok. Ondinok means, roughly, a wish fulfillment dream. In Iroquois, the word ondinok means to wish or to desire, and relates to the concept of soul and multiple souls, unfortunately I dont have the time to go into soul concepts. However an ondinok is a deep desire thats not just physical but also expresses the deeper, soul-nature of the individual. Everyone has ondinok. And an ondinok dream is not a no-account dream. Its a dream that has a little bit of power (in Lenape maskan but in Iroquois, orenda). Not a lot of orenda but a certain degree of it. The Iroquois developed a ritual tradition around this.

A person would go to bed and wake up with an ondinok dream. The dreamer gets up in the morning. He or she tells people, "Last night I had a really interesting dream," and you dont say anything more about it. So this is a signal, a verbal signal, and it initiates a process in which, they, the members of the dreamers lodge, are supposed to guess what the dream was. Its actually a guessing game. Now heres the reason for the guessing game, a very intelligent reason. Lets suppose that the dreamer had a desire to sleep with his brothers wife. Thats not a really good thing to say! So if you have a subversive dream or a dream that cuts against the social fabric, you dont want to just say it. They transform the situation, and others will guess and if they are close, then the dreamer can signal a tentative affirmation. Its a sort of teasing situation. Theyll work their way toward it, and when they figure it out, finally, or when he or she acknowledges the ondinok, the members of the lodge have to satisfy it. You see the problem? What happens is that the elders will step in at that point, and they will decide how to respond. If a dreamer dreamt he got a beautiful deer skin robe last night, theres a very good chance the persons going to be given a beautiful deerskin robe. And thats because the basic belief is that the ondinok of the soul should always be satisfied. Youre not happy if your ondinok is not satisfied in some way. But lets go back to the example of the brothers wife. The elder steps in and says that has to be interpreted, and it has to be symbolized somehow. Hell come up with a symbolic interpretation, and, for example, the woman he dreamed of will give the dreamer a beautiful gift of some sort in the presence of everyone else. It helps to acknowledge the feelings within the relationship. It doesnt violate the social norms, but it enacts the exchange that comes out of the dream desire. And thats considered to be a

fulfillment of the ondinok. And they have people who are experts in interpretation of the ondinok and tracing it back through other dreams. There is a whole lore about the history of the ondinok and how it develops, how it should be played out in various situations. In fact, according to the old ethnography, once a year the entire village would go on an ondinok journey. They would journey as a group to different villages, and the people in the other villages would have to guess what the ondinok dreams are that these other people have come with. And then they had to satisfy those desires. And then those villagers get their turn. They're were all in motion, going around in big groups, going to various villages, trying to satisfy the ondinok that cuts across the entire nation of the Iroquois people. This was a big ceremony that lasted for about ten days. It was chaotic and fun and maybe a little frightening to the ethnographers who were recording it. So these dreams had some power. Then we come to categories where power or maskan is greater in the dreams. For lack of a better term, Im going to call the next category medicine-dreams because it works conceptually. These are dreams in which a person, as a result of his or her dreams, is given specific, very specific, medicine. Its not generic, its very specific. A person would have a dream where he or she was given knowledge of a plant, like the peppermint plant or the tobacco plant. The dreamer is given special knowledge of that plant, that this plant should be used in a certain way or in a certain ceremony, or for a certain kind of action, or with other various objects in nature. They can make a claim then that they have a special connection through their dreams for these specific practices. Those are medicine dreams.

Sometimes they come with songs. Thats a very common thing, to come with specific actions that are associated with the plant, for example. So you get a little complex ceremonial form that comes through dreams. Thats the dreamers medicine. And the dream determines what the dreamer can do with that medicine. But the dreamer wouldnt say, Now that I had this dream about peppermint, I know about all plants. No, he or she knows just about the peppermint plant. Thats all. So dreams are considered very specifically defined by their content. And yet, they are also diffused with a certain degree of maskan or power. Where does the maskan come from? It comes from the maskan of the plant itself. The dreamer is psychically making a link to the power, the maskan, of the plant, and what the plant can do for human beings. This was a special sort of knowledge, give by the plant spirit. And it was integrated into the knowledge and lore of the tribe. The dreamer became an expert in that specific knowledge. And then, it could be passed on, usually to one person, to a student or a relative who shows an interest and has the right kind of dreams. The knowledge moves down the line. And pretty soon, youve built up a very large body of medicine knowledge thats been tested and found to be successful. Now remember, the test is it must work. If a dreamer claims he or she can do something with a plant and prepares the medicine, sings the songs, and gives or administers it and it doesnt work -- thats it. The dreamer missed something. He or she didnt get the right step. The song was wrong. And that's it, you lost it. If you did it and it worked, then it becomes integral to the knowledge of the tribe and now it becomes part of the traditional lore and is passed on and developed. And maybe therell be more dreams that will be added to the knowledge of that plant and

develop into a more complex lore. So these are maskan medicine dreams. But thats not the highest category. There are a lot of different kinds and gradations of medicine dreams. Its far more complicated than what Im presenting here. Then there is something that is known as truly-seen dreams. What is truly seen -those are the big dreams. Those are the really powerful dreams. I might use the word revelation but I hesitate because it has monotheistic and theological associations so I dont prefer that term. I prefer true knowledge. Its a true seeing. And the person who had these kind of dreams is considered to have knowledge of the cosmological structures of the world, of powers of nature, and how they relate to each other. Thats because the dreamer has been given that knowledge in his dreams. These dreams connect directly to the great powers or manituwok of the world, to the stories of those powers, and to special abilities associated with those powers. However, there is no rigid system of associations; the dreaming power of these most powerful types are different for different individuals. If one person dreams of the Thunder Power, they might receive an ability that another dreamer of Thunder, doesnt have; the gift of power is given on an individual basis and not as a particular complex of predetermined abilities. If you happen to be one of the people who have truly-seen dreams, the spiritual teachers will know this right away. And that means the dreamer is going to receive special training. Such training puts the dreamer into a special role as a person who has powerful dreams. Then, over time, he or she will become a dream interpreter, and start working with other people's dreams. Such a dream is going to move the dreamer into the center of the dream knowledge and its cultural expressions. The dreamer will continue to study and to understand and to unpack the dreams. Thats because dreams carry various

degrees of maskan. The ideal here is to enhance maskan through dream knowledge. And to share that knowledge with the community, thats very important. The power of the dream is never assimilated for simply the dreamers own good. It is assimilated for the dreamers own good AND for the good of the community. It is something meant to enhance and empower the life of the community as well, not just the individual. Trulyseen dreams are rare. It is not as though everyone has them. And so its a special obligation if a person has such a big dream. They have an obligation to the community because of those dreams to really work within the context of the community. Native peoples have depended on dreams as a special form of guidance, as gifts. In the native context, many of these dreams of power are metonymic. They index the world around them. The dream has a part-for-whole relationship. The dream gives you a connection to the structure of the world. It is an image or part of the whole natural and cultural world. The dream is a connection to the holistic structure of the world. And theres another concept they have in anthropological theory, called "heralding events." An event that heralds or announces or tells that something is forthcoming. Maskan dreams are both holistic, because they connect the dreamer to other aspects of nature, culture, and cosmology. And they heralding events that foretell the dreamers potential, as well as the opening of the structures the world, an opening of what is not yet really known or recognized. So truly-seen or big dreams have this heralding effect that points towards the future and not so much to the past. They signal what is unfolding, what is forthcoming. This is where they use the term prophecy in dreams. Such dreams often had a certain prophetic quality, they gave empowerment through foreknowledge to the dreamer.

And now we have to make a step. We have to move out of dream classification and into the embodiment of the dream as an indexical sign within the physical world. So here is a red hawk tail feather that has been blessed. A dreamer who was a red hawk tail dreamer would come back from the dream and narrate the dream. The people would listen to it. The other truly-seen dreamers would listen, and they would say, Well, you should start by being given this feather, because the person had a red hawk dream. So theyd give him the feather, and theyd teach him how to use the feather doing a certain kind of healing (according to his dream or vision), or certain ceremonial and ritual actions to channel, to access the power of the dream, to direct it into the world around them, into the community. The dream doesnt stay in the psychic, subjective space of the individual. The dream is communicated. The dream is brought out into the social, semiotic context to be used and demonstrated. Now if a dreamer gets a red hawk feather, and goes out and uses it as a red hawk dreamer and nothing happens, then there is a problem. In some way, the dreamer didnt meet the test of power. The feather has to be used it in a way that will work. And so the dreamer doesnt use it that often. They are very careful about such use. I know people who have had dreams like this and they will wait twenty years, because theyll say the powers not mature. It's maturing. And theyre have a sense that its not ready. They are waiting for the dream sequence that tells them now they can use it. The dreamer got the object and only now can he or she use it, and maybe pray with it on a daily basis or do certain simple ceremonies. Then, when the time is right, he or she can step out and do it. And when he or she does it, it should demonstrate something evidential in the world, to

the community, because that demonstration is what ratifies the dream. Thats what makes it real. This is a hawk feather and it symbolizes sky power, its a metonym for a complex sets of beliefs connected to sky powers. It represents those powers above. This is an indexical object, a connection to a larger wholeness. And here is a healing rattle that represents the lower world powers. It has a horsetail top, which is because it was made by a dreamer in which a horse was part of that dreaming sequence. This is rabbit fur, and it had a rabbit in the dream. This is a gourd that had special stones inside of it that were found in a special place to empower the rattle. The beadwork on the handle represents special colors which represent specific powers in the world. And the person who holds this rattle understands the colors and the beadwork itself and how to use it and the songs that go with it. So the dreamer goes back to the dream state with the dream objects, cal;ling on the above and below powers of the dream. And from the dream objects, he or she goes into the action of the dream itself. And then enacts the exact actions of the dream and carries out the dreaming event, and manifests the maskan of the dream to the community. So this gives you brief overview of how the dreaming process works in many different native communities. And many of these practices are still active among native people today and there is a continuity in these practices that is hundreds of years old, at the very least.

ASD June 2002 Tuffts University