Long ago when the world was young,
an old Lakota spiritual leader was on a
high mountain and had a vision.
In his vision, Iktomi, the great trickster
and teacher of wisdom, appeared in the
form of a spider.
Ikotomi spoke to him in a sacred language.
As he spoke, Iktomi, the spider, picked
up the elder's willow hoop which had
feathers, horsehair, beads and offerings on it,
and began to spin a web.
He spoke to the elder about the cycles
of life; how we begin our lives as infants,
move on through childhood,
and on to adulthood.
Finally we go to old age where we must be
taken care of as infants
completing the cycle.

"But, Iktomi said, as he continued to
spin his web,
"in each time of life, there are
many forces;some good and some bad.
If you listen to the good forces,
they will steer you in the right direction.
But if you listen to the bad forces,
they will steer you in the wrong direction
and may hurt you.
So these forces can help, or can interfere with
the harmony of Nature.
While the spider spoke, he continued
to weave his web.

When Iktomi finished speaking, he gave the
Elder the web and said,
"The web is a perfect circle with a
hole in the center.
Use the web to help your people reach
their goals, making good use of their ideas
dreams and visions.
If you believe in the Great Spirit
the web will catch your good ideas and the
bad ones will go through the hole."

The Elder passed on his vision
to the people and now many many
Native American people hang a dream catcher
above their bed to sift their
dreams and visions.
The good is captured in the web of life
and carried with the people,
but the evil in their dreams, drops
through the hole in the center of the web
and are no longer part of their lives.
It's said that the dream catch holds the
destiny of the future.

The Native American legend of the
dream catcher says that a dream catcher will
help a sleeper have only pleasant dreams.
The dream catcher captures the spirit
of all bad or unpleasant dreams and
holds them through the night.
It allows the good dreams to pass through the webbing.
It is said that to hasten dreams, you put
feathers on them for the good dreams
to slide down to the sleeper

As the sun comes up, Father Sun cleans all
the spirits out of the dream catcher
webbing and sends them back
where they came from.

It is not uncommon to see them hanging
over a crib or cradle, so that the
little ones have only pleasant dreams

The Old Ones tell that dreams do
hold the great powers
that drift about at night before coming
to the sleepings ones.
To keep the dreamer safe, the Old Ones created a special web,
The Dream Catcher
to hang over their sleeping places.
When dreams traveled the web paths,the bad dreams lost their way and were
entangled...disappearing with the first
rays of daybreak.

The good dreams, knowing their way,
passed through the center and were
guided gently to the sleeping one.

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