Dreamcatchers

Ideas and Beliefs [|Making Dream-catchers] Dream-catchers

Lakota and Ojibwa were the tribes that originally used dream-catchers. During the Pan-Indian Movement which began in the 1960's the custom became more common among other tribes. One story of the origin is that the dream-catcher was a gift from Spiderwoman, one of the deities among some Native Americans. The dream-catcher was to protect children from bad dreams. Two different explanation exist on how this  works. One version is that the dream-catcher filters out all the bad dreams and only lets good one come to the dreamer. The other is that the dream-catcher catches the good dreams and they flow drown the feathers and reach the dreamer. The bad dreams are allowed to pass on by.