There are apparently no dreamers among the Washo today, in the sense that the term was used in times past. That is, no one is especially singled out as having infallible dreams foretelling certain classes of events. It may be that the breakdown of the band structure, which was related to economic exploitative activity, in effect, forced everyone to dream for himself. In the past, dreamers were particularly important in setting the time and place for activities which were carried out by large groups, such as hunting, fishing, pine-nut gathering, and war. With the disappearance of the last seminomadic bands in the middle 1920’s, as well as with the reduced importance of hunting and fishing as group activities, persons having dreams which directed group actions were no longer useful. Today, dreams appear to occur to a number of individuals, and those felt to be of social significance usually deal with catastrophe or other foreboding subjects. The following stories were told to me by the widow under the shadow of witchcraft. When I asked her if she thought any of her friends would tell me their dreams, she replied: “No I don’t think no Washo would tell you their dreams. But I’m not superstitious about them things and I’ll tell you these two dreams I had.” “One summer I was up at the Lake [Tahoe] with my husband and I had a dream that the gambling house at Dresslerville [a structure known officially as the community center] was on fire. There was kids inside and they was screaming but there wasn’t no water. I saw the men all around with buckets but they couldn’t do nothing because there wasn’t no water. I told my husband about the dream the next morning and he said I should take a bath and pray. That’s what we do to keep a bad dream from happening.” The following winter the community center did in fact burn down. A young Indian in a rage after having an argument with his father hurled a bottle of kerosene against a wood stove. The resulting fire could not be extinguished because the Dresslerville pump was not working. Whether the dream was really a prophecy after the fact I do not know. It is significant in any case that the prophecy appeared in the form of a dream. My informant’s second dream foretold the violent death of a young Indian woman. The prophecy came true two years later. Her statement that other Washo would be reluctant to discuss their dreams was all too true, confirming the importance that dreams play in their daily lives. A number of tangential remarks suggest that the belief that dreams confer advance knowledge of the future and that they confer power is still common among the Washo. One informant said, in talking about “old-time dreamers”: “Today a lot of people will say they had a dream about something, and act real big. I just tell them they are crazy. They aren’t real dreamers. They couldn’t have a dream about their girl friend.”