A web woven on a willow hoop. The earliest record we found is an Ojibwe charm hung on a baby’s cradleboard, described in 1929. We show dreamcatchers only from named Ojibwe makers.
Record, Folk and Modern are kept apart, and each one carries its source.
Densmore’s Chippewa Customs (1929) describes a spider-web charm hung on an Ojibwe baby’s cradleboard, meant to keep harm from the child. It does not single out dreams.
To verify: Page reference and a library link for Densmore (1929)
In the 1960s and 70s the dreamcatcher became a pan-Indian symbol, shared well beyond the Ojibwe. From the mid-1980s it was made and sold in great numbers.
Many dreamcatchers sold today are mass-made. In the US, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (1990) bars selling goods in a way that suggests they are Native-made when they are not. We show dreamcatchers only from named Ojibwe makers, and never make them in our workshop in China.
It opens with the pencil construction, then follows the record, how people used it, and the piece we make today. Every fact in it comes from the sources on this page.
