lengthy history. Dreams then do not often create folk tales. A converse casual relation, that of folk-tale as cause and dream a consequence, can certainly be drawn. The evidence for it is insistent. The personality of the animal or other being dreamed, the characteristics of the animal or other curing power dreamed, are always reflections of the ancient folk tale characterizations of such beings. If a native dreams of and acquires a grizzly or fish hawk or wolf guardian "power," he dreams of a being that has just the same sort of personality as the same beings have in the ancient tales that tell about their adventures in the myth age of long, long ago. In this manner the folk literature must have exerted a constant and intimate stimulation and moulding of the dream life of each native. In short, the dreams of natives affected directly not their folk-tales but their song-poetry; and, on the other hand, their folktales determined to a considerable extent their dream life and the songs heard in the dreams.
I have no sharply drawn report of a spontaneous native Coos dream, dreamt recently. I have been able to secure only second-hand statements that so-and-so dreamt of surf and breakers, or of water-foam-bubbles, or if a violent wind storm. And I have the conventional interpretations applied to these dreams—long life, wealth, proximate death, or what not.
I secured a few semi-conventionalized dreams which all courageous natives hoped to experience in order to attain wealth. The following are such: two men are encountered, squatting, gambling, betting each other. Or a light or fire is seen near the village graveyard, it is approached in great fear, a person or body is observed there, its head is bowed; it is really a corpse; the one who approaches must take mucous from the nose of the corpse in order to become wealthy. Later the mucous will become a dentalium—the highly-prized sea shell used as tribal coin —which will multiply and give great wealth. To the native these dreams are not dreams in our sense, they are very real experiences that
