Would you sacrifice yourself if you had a dream that told you to do so? Throughout the book Fools Crow, written by James Welch, many characters have visions and dreams. Though these dreams and visions don't necessarily tell them to sacrifice themselves, they do tell the characters something, and the characters take the "message" to heart. The dreams that they have are so realistic that they usually are a vision of what is going to happen in the future, which the characters realize later on. A lot of their visions and dreams become some type of a message or warning to the people of the tribe, which makes them more aware of things that could potentially happen. In the average American home today, visions and dreams usually don't mean anything to us and we disregard them. One would argue that these dreams and visions in the book really don't have any meaning. For the characters in Fools Crow, by James Welch, their visions and dreams are very important to them and they believe they have great meaning and many of the dreams that the characters have affect them either positively, or in a disastrous way that leads to misfortune. .
The first dream that causes disaster in the novel is a dream that White-Man's Dog, or later known as "Fools Crow," has while he is on the first raid against the Crows. In his dream, there is a lodge within an enemy camp containing young, pale, naked girls. When one of the girls approaches him, he wakes up. "He wanted to go to the white-faced girl but knew that there was danger in that direction"(18). After he had the dream, he kept thinking that it would be a good idea if he told Yellow Kidney, their leader, of this dream. The only problem he faced was that his father had told him that it was not wise to speak of your dreams to others. After this first raid on the Crows, Yellow Kidney does not return with the others. Several months later he returns to their camp and begins to tell of what had happened to him.
