


Rachel Carrier
Born: 1798 - Senaca I, Cattaragus, New York
Married: Joseph Jacob Brown
Mother: Honor Hogins
Descendent of Seneca Indians
 
Dedication to Our American Indian Heritage



Rachel Carrier



Born:  19 June 1798  -  Died:  18 March 1847
Married: Joseph Jacob Brown



                    Dreamcatchers
 
  According to Indians of the eastern woodlands,
  The Dreamcatcher catches all dreams, both good
 and bad, and protect the dreamer from nightmares.
   The beads on the dreamcatcher web guide the
     good dreams through the web through the
 centerhole so that they may gently drift off the
feather into the life of the dream, and be dreamed
again, in an identical or similar form, on another
   night. The bad dreams, not knowing the way,
   become tangled in the web and perish at the
         light of the early morning sun.



IROQUOIS  DREAMWORK  and  SPIRITUALITY
 
   In past centuries, the Iroquois indians of the Great Lakes considered dreams to
be a guide to their lives, to dictate their choices in regard to fishing, hunting, war,
dancing, marriage and other significant life events.  The Iroquois especially listened
carefully to dreams their people had prior to war and hunting - a war party would
even turn back if one of its members dreamed of failure immediately before or
during the hunt.


   In The Shaman's Doorway, Stephen Larsen quotes the French missionary Ragueneau's
Jesuit Relations, (and material by Ragueneau originally appearing in the American
Anthropogist, April 1958) who carefully
documented the Iroquois approach to dreams :



   " The Iroquois believe that our souls have other desires, which are, as it were, inborn
and concealed.  These, they say, come from the depths of the soul, not through any
knowledge .... They have no divinity but the dream.  They submit themselves to it and
follow its order with the utmost exactness.  Whatever they see themselves doing in
dreams they believe they are absolutely obligated to execute at the earliest possible
moment. Iroquois would think themselves quilty of a great crime if they failed to
obey a single dream."






