The .htaccess/WebDav feature of Dreamhost is what I want to use for one section (download) of my web site. I’m guessing Apache generates the page. It gives a list of files and sizes and such. It also has a description field with nothing in it. My question: Is there a way to edit this field?
Thanks
Well, you are not really “editing” that field, but you can control what is displayed as the “description”. 
The instruction for doing that can be found in the apache documentation for the “mod_atuoindex” module:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_autoindex.html#adddescription
You will probably want to read the rest of that page also, just so you understand what it is doing and how it works.
There are also many scripts around that are designed to help you manage index displays, and you may find dome of those easier to use than working directly with the .htaccess file. (just search any popular script archive, such as “hotscripts.com”).
–rlparker