I was going with another Navajo looking for a pair of mocassins on horseback. He was sitting in back of me. We were going up a little hill. About the middle of the hill wasa woman sitting there.

We tied the horse to a bush and went to look for the pair of mocassins that the other man lost. I went to one direction, the other man to the other, but we couldn't find the mocassins.

Before he knew it the other man got into a mud hole and went down to his waist. The man was going down in the mud and I tried to reach him and help him out, but before I was aware of it he was down to his armpits in mud. I tried my best to help the man out, but he disappeared into the mud, until I went back to where his horse was tied.

I got on the horse and started to go, to keep on looking for the pair of mocassins. As I was riding along, I felt sorry for this man and turned back before I got to the place where the shoes were supposed to be.

COMMENT

In reality the man that disappeared in the mud died two months later. That is all. The man was my cousin. This is a true dream.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Notice how Hosteen A. rides on at first, looking for shoes his dead cousin now can't use. He's in shock and doesn't know it. Takes a while to sink in. (Oops. Pun unconscious.) The cousin, though, didn't take a while to sink in. He sank in too fast to save.

I think the dream's more than foresight about the fact of his cousin's death; it warns that this death's abruptness will leave empty shoes, empty searches--relatives going through the motions in shock.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: The Dream in Primitive Cultures edited by Jackson Lincoln, 1935, pp 232 in 1970 reprint. Primary source: interviews by Lincoln through translators, May 1932. Many interviewees requested anonymity. The odd spelling of moccasins is Lincoln's. Account untitled; I added Mudhole to aid searches.

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