The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1884-11-07
Dreams and Dre.merz.
From Harper's Weekly.

From Harper's Weekly. Il
Dreams are III the main referred bv
the savage either to the entrance into
him Of some outside spirit as among the
Feejeeans, who believe that the spirit
Of a living man will leave the body to
trouble sleeping folk-or to the real
doings 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 a low state of mental development,
the like belief exists. In MIR. Thurnim's
elaborate work Oh the Indians of Guiana
we have c%orroborative evidence the
more valuable because of its freshness.
He tells us that the dreams which come
to the Indian are to him as real as any
of the events of his waking life. To
him dream acts and waking acts differ
only in n 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 IN his sight ard notion
less throughout the time of supposed
action, because he never questions that
the spirits, leaving the sleepers, played
then part in dream adventures.
In the Scandinavian Vatnsdala Saga
there is a curious account OF three Films
who were shut up in a hut three nights,
and ordered by %IEgimund, 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 lngimund ulti-
mately dwelt. No wonder that in med
iaval times, when witches swept the all
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 o 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 c
the peril of the owner, and hence {
rough-and-neady theory of the cause o
disease is framed, for savages rarel,
die in their beds. That disease
is a arrangement of functions, in.
terrupting their natural action, and car
rying attendant pain as its indication
could not enter the head of the uncivil'
lied; and, indeed, among ourselves {
cold or fever is commonly thought of a
an entity in the body which has stole,
in, and, having been caught, must b
somehow expelled. With the universal
primitive belief in spiritual agencie
everywhere inhaled with the breath o
swallowed with The food or drink, al
diseases We're regarded rs their work
whether, as remarked above, through
undue absence Of the rightful spirit 0
subtle entrance of some hostile one
If these be the causes to which sickness
es are due, obviously the only cure is t
get rid of them, and hence the sorcere
of the m~edicine-man find their service
IN request in casting out the demon b,
, force. or enticing him by cajolery, or ii
bringing back the truant soul.