The Dickinson press., 1884-11-01
Dreams and Dreamery.
From Harper's Weekly

| c1om dafper6 weekly
Dreams are in the main referred by
the savage either to the entrance into
dim of some outside spirit as among tba
Fee]eeans, who believe that the spirit
Of living man will leave the body to
trouble sleeping folk-or to the real
1olngs of himself. When the Green
lander dreams ofhunting, or fishing, or
counting, he believes that the soul quits
the body; the Dyaks of Borneo think
that during sleep the soul sometimes
remains in the body or travels far away.
being endowed, whether present or alb.
sent, with conditions which in walking
moments are lacking. Wherever we
find low statespf. mental deyelopment.
the like belief exists. In MIR. Thurpim's
elaoorate work onthe indians of Guiana
we have corrohOrative evidence the
more valuable because. of it's freshness.
He tells us that the dreams which come
TO the Indian are to him as. real as any
OF the events lof his waking life. To
nm dream acts and waking acts differ
only IN one respect. namely, that the for.
mer are done only by the spirit, the lat
ter are done by the spirit in its body.
Seeing other men asleep and afterward
hearing from them the things which
they suppose themselves to have done
when asleep, the Indian has no difficult
ty IN reconciling that which he hears
with the fact that the bodies of the
sleepers were N his sight, ard motion
less throughout the time. of supposed
action. because he never questions that
the spirits, leaving the sleepers, PLAYED
their part in dream adventures.
In the Scandinavian Vatnsd@la Saga
there is curious account of three Firms
who were shut up i'll q hut three nights.
and ordered by Ingimund, Norwegian
chief, to visit Iceland and inform him of
the line of the country where he was to
settle. Their bodies became rigid, and
they sent their; sons on their errand,
and on their awaking, at the end of
three days, gave an accurate account of
the Vatnsdal, in which Ingimund ulti-
'mately dwelt. No wonder that in med
leval times, when witches swept the air
and harried the cattle, swooning and
other forms of insenslbility were ad-
duced in support of the theory of soul
absence, or that we find among savages
as the, Tejads of the Luzon Islands
objections to waking sleeper, lest the
soul happens to be out of the body. As
a corollary to this belief in soul alb
sence, fear arises lest it be prolongedt to
the peril of the owner, and hence a
rough and-l eady theory of the cause of
disease is framed, for savages rarely
die in their beds. That disease
is arrangement of functions, in
terrupting their natural action, and car
rying attendant pain as, its. Indication,
could not enter the head of the uncivil-
ized; and, indeed, among ourselves
cold or feveris commonly thought of as
an entity in the body which has stolen
in, and, having been caught, must be
somehow expelled. With the universal
primitive belief in spiritual agencies
everywhere inhaled with the breath or
swallowed with t he food or drink, all
diseases were regarded as their work.
whether, as remarked above, through
undue absence of the rightful spirit or
subtle entrance of some. hostile one
If these be the causes to which sickness
es are due, obviously the only cure is to
get rid of them, and hence the sorcerer
of the medicine man find their services
IN request. in casting out the demon by
force, or enticing him by cajolery, or in
bringing back the truant soul.