Dream Catchers; Their History and the Craft

Waldrop, L. (2012). Photo from home.

        Dream catchers were items that many Native Americans had for their children, their sole purpose were to prevent bad dreams from entering the dreamer. In the center of the dream catcher there is a hole where the good dreams enter and are caught by the dreamer and the web catches all or most of the bad dreams.  Different items on the dream catcher were to symbolize different things such as one bead on the web could symbolize a spider on the web catching the bad dreams, many beads were the good dreams that were sent in the night, and a feather was for the air and breathing in sleep (2004, History).

The Ojibwe, or Chippewa Tribe, were the first to create the dream catcher (2004, History). They spanned from Canada down through the states. They created the dream catcher to help their babies sleep through the night peacefully. The belief was that the bad dreams will die in the light of the morning sun and the next night the dream catcher would catch bad dreams again (2004, History). Originally the dream catcher was used with a purpose but later also became more for decoration.

The dream catcher consists of a ring made of sticks or vines that could be covered in leather strips, a string to tie the webbing in the middle and beads, feathers and decoration. You basically take the sticks or vines and form a circle and tie them together, I use a leather strip to tie them, after that you can wrap the leather strip around the circle and tie it off at the end, then you take the string and tie it to the circle anywhere and loop it around and bring the string through the loop and pull then repeat that step over and over and loop the string through the strings in the next layer until you get to the middle and tie it off. As you are looping the “web” you can add beads and charms and once you are done you can add strings or leather strips at the bottom and tie feathers to it.

Waldrop, L. (2012). Drawing

(2004) History of the Dream Catcher. The Wolfs Den Creations. Retrieved November10, 2012, from

www.thewolfsdencreations.com/

Oberholtzer, C. (1995). The re-invention of tradition and the marketing of cultural values Anthropologica , Vol. 37, No. 2 (1995), pp. 141-153 Retrieved  December 12, 2012, from the JSTOR database.

Introduction:

I have been doing crafts inspired by Native American art for years. Beadwork is one of my favorites but I also do a lot of dream catchers, leather shoes and jewelry.  The crafts are not too hard to do but had a lot mean of meaning in the culture of the American Indians.

I have Native American heritage in my bloodline and this has made me turn to the crafts of their past. My grandmother wore a lot of turquoise jewelry and I never saw her wear any other shoes but moccasins. All my life I have been surrounded by the art and history of the Native Americans and I very much love their culture, crafts and art.

The histories of the crafts are interesting, like most art crafts, and are still practiced today by many people. In this blog I will be sharing the history and meaning of the projects along with some details of how to do the crafts yourself at home.

Waldrop, L. (2012). Photo from Auction