Oral history · Light & dark
Snow fell so no one could track them
Great Lakes region · traditional (recorded c. 1820s–1850s)
When it was daylight, the leader took snow and made a ball of it; then tossing it into the air, he said, “It was in this way I saw snow fall in my dream, so that I could not be tracked.” And he told them to keep close to each other for fear of losing themselves, as the snow began to fall in very large flakes.
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- Source
- The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends — Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1856. Mishemokwa, an Ottawa legend
- Record type
- Oral history
- Place
- Great Lakes region · Native American, Odawa (Ottawa)
- Date
- traditional (recorded c. 1820s–1850s)
- Uncertainty
- High — An Indigenous oral story as recorded and edited by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1856 ed.); a colonial-era retelling, not a verbatim tribal narration.
- Imagery
- Snow & ice · Friend · War
- Feelings
- Calm · Wonder
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Snow & ice
Was the snow fresh or old? Did it make a sound underfoot? Did the cold hurt, or wake you up?
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis gives cold from disturbed bed covers as a common bodily source of dreams, with the case of a sleeper who dreamed of being surrounded by snow on a mountain and woke tangled in the sheets, partly uncovered, on a cold night.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IV, on tactile sensations
Chinese poetry Literature
Liu Zongyuan’s “River Snow” empties a whole landscape — no birds, no footprints — and leaves one old man fishing in the cold: snow as solitude.
Liu Zongyuan, “River Snow”
Friend
How long since you last saw this friend? What were you doing together in the dream — something you used to do?
Dream research Dream research
The “continuity” view in dream research finds that most dream characters are people we know, and that dreams tend to carry on our waking relationships and concerns.
G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)
Tang poetry Literature
Du Fu, not knowing whether his exiled friend Li Bai is alive, writes that “my old friend entered my dream, knowing how long I have thought of him”.
Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (759)
War
In the war, were you a soldier, someone fleeing, or watching from outside? Was there a particular enemy?
Homeric epic Classical text
Zeus sends Agamemnon a deliberately false dream promising that Troy will fall at once. The epic itself treats a war dream as something that can mislead.
Homer, Iliad II
Song-dynasty poetry Literature
Lu You and Xin Qiji, both kept from the frontier they longed to recover, kept dreaming of battle; their war dreams are read today as poems of unfulfilled duty.
Lu You; Xin Qiji
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- The acrobat who never touched the floor England · before 1911
- Carried up out of a well Chang’an, China · c. 750
- Would the fall never come to an end? Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)
- A sky like cracked ice England · before 1911
- Falling from the palace hall Chang’an, China · c. 750
- Thornfield Hall a dreary ruin England · 1847 (novel)