native american folk lore art specifically dreamcatchers

Have you ever a nightmare? Are you a victim of night terrors? The American Indian people
believe that the dream catchers can cure all of your nightmares, bad dreams, or night terrors.
A dream catcher is a tool that the American Indians use to get rid of the bad dreams and to keep
the good ones around. It is said to move freely in the night air and catch the dreams that float by it.
The good dreams are the ones that slip through the hole in the center. It is believed that they then
slide down to the feathers and are released into the night air to be dreamed another night. The bad
dreams become tangled up in the webbing and are killed by the first light of the sun.
Many people use them to rid bad dreams. They are also used for decorative purposes. Dream
catchers are beautiful things. Some common materials that are used in a dream catcher are yarn,
hemp, beads, polished stones, leather, animal fur, arrowheads, sharks teeth, wood, and other
natural materials (or materials that are made naturally I.E. without unnatural dies or chemicals).
This is the story of the dream catcher. One day a single spider was spinning a web in a corner. The
spider was doing so beside the space of Nokomis the grandmother. Each day she came in to watch
the spider at work. One day the grandson of Nokomis came in to hit the spider with a shoe. She
told him to leave it alone. The grandson named No-keewga could not understand why his
grandmother protected the spider. The old woman just smiled at her grandson but did not answer
him. Her grandson left as she continued to watch the spider at work. When the boy left, the spider
went to the old woman and thanked her for saving his life. The spider told her that he knew for
many days that she was watching him work. He told her he was going to give her a gift in return
for having her grandson spare his life. The spider then continued spinning his web. Soon the moon
was high in the sky and its rays began to glisten on a magical web moving in the wind. He said to
the woman "see the web that I spin?" he told the woman that all of the webs that he weaved would
catch the bad dreams and that only the good ones would be released into the night air through the
hole in the center of the web. This is my gift to you the spider told the old woman. Use it so that
only good dreams will be remembered. The bad dreams will become hopelessly entangled in the
web. This is how the dream catcher was formed.
I have used a dream catcher all of my life. I can say that I have never had a bad dream when a
dream catcher was in my room. However when I was not in a room with one I had many
nightmares. I believe in the folklore of the Native American Indians. I have Native American in
my bloodline. Things like this have come naturally to me. That story was handed down to me from
a woman many generations before me. Dreams have been important to the Native American

Indians for as long as the beginning of time and they always will.