SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION—BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY.

J.W. POWELL, DIRECTOR.

SIGN LANGUAGE

AMONG

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

COMPARED WITH THAT AMONG OTHER PEOPLES AND DEAF-MUTES.

BY

GARRICK MALLERY.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SIGN LANGUAGE

AMONG

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

COMPARED WITH THAT AMONG OTHER PEOPLES AND DEAF-MUTES.

BY GARRICK MALLERY.

INTRODUCTORY.

During the past two years the present writer has devoted the intervals
between official duties to collecting and collating materials for the
study of sign language. As the few publications on the general subject,
possessing more than historic interest, are meager in details and vague
in expression, original investigation has been necessary. The high
development of communication by gesture among the tribes of North
America, and its continued extensive use by many of them, naturally
directed the first researches to that continent, with the result that a
large body of facts procured from collaborators and by personal examination
has now been gathered and classified. A correspondence has also been
established with many persons in other parts of the world whose character
and situation rendered it probable that they would contribute valuable
information. The success of that correspondence has been as great as
could have been expected, considering that most of the persons addressed
were at distant points sometimes not easily accessible by mail. As the
collection of facts is still successfully proceeding, not only with
reference to foreign peoples and to deaf-mutes everywhere, but also among
some American tribes not yet thoroughly examined in this respect, no
exposition of the subject pretending to be complete can yet be made.
In complying, therefore, with the request to prepare the present paper,
it is necessary to explain to correspondents and collaborators whom it
may reach, that this is not the comprehensive publication by the Bureau
of Ethnology for which their assistance has been solicited. With this
explanation some of those who have already forwarded contributions
will not be surprised at their omission, and others will not desist from
the work in which they are still kindly engaged, under the impression
that its results will not be received in time to meet with welcome and
credit. On the contrary, the urgent appeal for aid before addressed to
[pg 270]
officers of the Army and Navy of this and other nations, to missionaries,
travelers, teachers of deaf-mutes, and philologists generally, is now with
equal urgency repeated. It is, indeed, hoped that the continued
presentation
of the subject to persons either having opportunity for observation
or the power to favor with suggestions may, by awakening some
additional interest in it, secure new collaboration from localities still
unrepresented.

It will be readily understood by other readers that, as the limits
assigned to this paper permit the insertion of but a small part of the
material already collected and of the notes of study made upon that
accumulation,
it can only show the general scope of the work undertaken,
and not its accomplishment. Such extracts from the collection have
been selected as were regarded as most illustrative, and they are preceded
by a discussion perhaps sufficient to be suggestive, though by no
means exhaustive, and designed to be for popular, rather than for
scientific
use. In short, the direction to submit a progress-report and not a
monograph has been complied with.

DIVISIONS OF GESTURE SPEECH.

These are corporeal motion and facial expression. An attempt has
been made by some writers to discuss these general divisions separately,
and its success would be practically convenient if it were always
understood that their connection is so intimate that they can never be
altogether severed. A play of feature, whether instinctive or voluntary,
accentuates and qualifies all motions intended to serve as signs, and
strong instinctive facial expression is generally accompanied by action
of the body or some of its members. But, so far as a distinction can
be made, expressions of the features are the result of emotional, and
corporeal gestures, of intellectual action. The former in general and
the small number of the latter that are distinctively emotional are
nearly identical among men from physiological causes which do not affect
with the same similarity the processes of thought. The large number
of corporeal gestures expressing intellectual operations require and admit
of more variety and conventionality. Thus the features and the
body among all mankind act almost uniformly in exhibiting fear, grief,
surprise, and shame, but all objective conceptions are varied and variously
portrayed. Even such simple indications as those for “no” and
“yes” appear in several differing motions. While, therefore, the terms
sign language and gesture speech necessarily include and suppose facial
expression when emotions are in question, they refer more particularly
to corporeal motions and attitudes. For this reason much of the valuable
contribution of Darwin in his Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals is not directly applicable to sign language. His analysis
[pg 271]
of emotional gestures into those explained on the principles of serviceable
associated habits, of antithesis, and of the constitution of the nervous
system, should, nevertheless, always be remembered. Even if it
does not strictly embrace the class of gestures which form the subject
of this paper, and which often have an immediate pantomimic origin, the
earliest gestures were doubtless instinctive and generally emotional,
preceding
pictorial, metaphoric, and, still subsequent, conventional gestures
even, as, according to Darwin‘s cogent reasoning, they preceded articulate
speech.

While the distinction above made between the realm of facial play
and that of motions of the body, especially those of the arms and hands,
is sufficiently correct for use in discussion, it must be admitted that the
features do express intellect as well as emotion. The well-known saying
of Charles Lamb that “jokes came in with the candles” is in point, but
the most remarkable example of conveying detailed information without
the use of sounds, hands, or arms, is given by the late President T.H.
Gallaudet, the distinguished instructor of deaf-mutes, which, to be
intelligible, requires to be quoted at length:

“One day, our distinguished and lamented historical painter, Col.
John Trumbull, was in my school-room during the hours of instruction,
and, on my alluding to the tact which the pupil referred to had of reading
my face, he expressed a wish to see it tried. I requested him to select
any event in Greek, Roman, English, or American history of a scenic
character, which would make a striking picture on canvas, and said I
would endeavor to communicate it to the lad. ‘Tell him,’ said he, ‘that
Brutus (Lucius Junius) condemned his two sons to death for resisting his
authority and violating his orders.’

“I folded my arms in front of me, and kept them in that position, to
preclude the possibility of making any signs or gestures, or of spelling
any words on my fingers, and proceeded, as best I could, by the expression
of my countenance, and a few motions of my head and attitudes of
the body, to convey the picture in my own mind to the mind of my pupil.

“It ought to be stated that he was already acquainted with the fact,
being familiar with the leading events in Roman history. But when I
began, he knew not from what portion of history, sacred or profane,
ancient or modern, the fact was selected. From this wide range, my
delineation on the one hand and his ingenuity on the other had to
bring it within the division of Roman history, and, still more minutely,
to the particular individual and transaction designated by Colonel
Trumbull.
In carrying on the process, I made no use whatever of any arbitrary,
conventional look, motion, or attitude, before settled between us,
by which to let him understand what I wished to communicate, with the
exception of a single one, if, indeed, it ought to be considered such.

“The usual sign, at that time, among the teachers and pupils, for a
Roman, was portraying an aquiline nose by placing the forefinger,
[pg 272]
crooked, in front of the nose. As I was prevented from using my finger
in this way, and having considerable command over the muscles of my
face, I endeavored to give my nose as much of the aquiline form as
possible, and succeeded well enough for my purpose….

“The outlines of the process were the following:

“A stretching and stretching gaze eastward, with an undulating
motion of the head, as if looking across and beyond the Atlantic Ocean,
to denote that the event happened, not on the western, but eastern
continent. This was making a little progress, as it took the subject out
of the range of American history.

“A turning of the eyes upward and backward, with frequently-repeated
motions of the head backward, as if looking a great way back in past
time, to denote that the event was one of ancient date.

“The aquiline shape of the nose, already referred to, indicating that
a Roman was the person concerned. It was, of course, an old Roman.

“Portraying, as well as I could, by my countenance, attitude, and
manner an individual high in authority, and commanding others, as if he
expected to be obeyed.

“Looking and acting as if I were giving out a specific order to many
persons, and threatening punishment on those who should resist my
authority, even the punishment of death.

“Here was a pause in the progress of events, which I denoted by
sleeping as it were during the night and awakening in the morning,
and doing this several times, to signify that several days had elapsed.

“Looking with deep interest and surprise, as if at a single person
brought and standing before me, with an expression of countenance
indicating
that he had violated the order which I had given, and that I
knew it. Then looking in the same way at another person near him as
also guilty. Two offending persons were thus denoted.

“Exhibiting serious deliberation, then hesitation, accompanied with
strong conflicting emotions, producing perturbation, as if I knew not how
to feel or what to do.

“Looking first at one of the persons before me, and then at the other,
and then at both together, as a father would look, indicating his
distressful parental feelings under such afflicting circumstances.

“Composing my feelings, showing that a change was coming over
me, and exhibiting towards the imaginary persons before me the decided
look of the inflexible commander, who was determined and ready to
order them away to execution. Looking and acting as if the tender and
forgiving feelings of the father had again got the ascendency, and
as if I was about to relent and pardon them.

“These alternating states of mind I portrayed several times, to make
my representations the more graphic and impressive.

“At length the father yields, and the stern principle of justice, as
expressed in my countenance and manners, prevails. My look and action
[pg 273]
denote the passing of the sentence of death on the offenders, and the
ordering them away to execution.

“He quickly turned round to his slate and wrote a correct and complete
account of this story of Brutus and his two sons.”

While it appears that the expressions of the features are not confined
to the emotions or to distinguishing synonyms, it must be remembered that
the meaning of the same motion of hands, arms, and fingers is often
modified, individualized, or accentuated by associated facial changes
and postures of the body not essential to the sign, which emotional
changes and postures are at once the most difficult to describe and the
most interesting when intelligently reported, not only because they infuse
life into the skeleton sign, but because they may belong to the class
of innate expressions.

THE ORIGIN OF SIGN LANGUAGE.

In observing the maxim that nothing can be thoroughly understood unless
its beginning is known, it becomes necessary to examine into the origin
of sign language through its connection with that of oral speech. In
this examination it is essential to be free from the vague popular
impression
that some oral language, of the general character of that now
used among mankind, is “natural” to mankind. It will be admitted on
reflection that all oral languages were at some past time far less
serviceable
to those using them than they are now, and as each particular language
has been thoroughly studied it has become evident that it grew
out of some other and less advanced form. In the investigation of these
old forms it has been so difficult to ascertain how any of them first
became a useful instrument of inter-communication that many conflicting
theories on this subject have been advocated.

Oral language consists of variations and mutations of vocal sounds
produced as signs of thought and emotion. But it is not enough that
those signs should be available as the vehicle of the producer’s own
thoughts. They must be also efficient for the communication of such
thoughts to others. It has been, until of late years, generally held that
thought was not possible without oral language, and that, as man was
supposed to have possessed from the first the power of thought, he also
from the first possessed and used oral language substantially as at
present. That the latter, as a special faculty, formed the main distinction
between man and the brutes has been and still is the prevailing
doctrine. In a lecture delivered before the British Association in 1878 it
was declared that “animal intelligence is unable to elaborate that class of
abstract ideas, the formation of which depends upon the faculty of
speech.” If instead of “speech” the word “utterance” had been used,
[pg 274]
as including all possible modes of intelligent communication, the statement
might pass without criticism. But it may be doubted if there is
any more necessary connection between abstract ideas and sounds, the
mere signs of thought, that strike the ear, than there is between the same
ideas and signs addressed only to the eye.

The point most debated for centuries has been, not whether there was
any primitive oral language, but what that language was. Some literalists
have indeed argued from the Mosaic narrative that because the
Creator, by one supernatural act, with the express purpose to form separate
peoples, had divided all tongues into their present varieties, and
could, by another similar exercise of power, obliterate all but one which
should be universal, the fact that he had not exercised that power showed
it not to be his will that any man to whom a particular speech had been
given should hold intercourse with another miraculously set apart from
him by a different speech. By this reasoning, if the study of a foreign
tongue was not impious, it was at least clear that the primitive language
had been taken away as a disciplinary punishment, as the Paradisiac Eden
had been earlier lost, and that, therefore, the search for it was as
fruitless as to attempt the passage of the flaming sword. More liberal Christians
have been disposed to regard the Babel story as allegorical, if not
mythical, and have considered it to represent the disintegration of tongues
out of one which was primitive. In accordance with the advance of
linguistic science they have successively shifted back the postulated
primitive tongue from Hebrew to Sanscrit, then to Aryan, and now seek
to evoke from the vasty deeps of antiquity the ghosts of other rival
claimants for precedence in dissolution. As, however, the languages of
man are now recognized as extremely numerous, and as the very sounds
of which these several languages are composed are so different that the
speakers of some are unable to distinguish with the ear certain sounds in
others, still less able to reproduce them, the search for one common parent
language is more difficult than was supposed by mediæval ignorance.

The discussion is now, however, varied by the suggested possibility
that man at some time may have existed without any oral language.
It is conceded by some writers that mental images or representations
can be formed without any connection with sound, and may at least
serve for thought, though not for expression. It is certain that concepts,
however formed, can be expressed by other means than sound.
One mode of this expression is by gesture, and there is less reason to
believe
that gestures commenced as the interpretation of, or substitute for words
than that the latter originated in, and served to translate gestures. Many
arguments have been advanced to prove that gesture language preceded
articulate speech and formed the earliest attempt at communication,
resulting from the interacting subjective and objective conditions to which
primitive man was exposed. Some of the facts on which deductions have
been based, made in accordance with well-established modes of scientific
research from study of the lower animals, children, idiots, the lower types
of mankind, and deaf-mutes, will be briefly mentioned.

GESTURES OF THE LOWER ANIMALS.

Emotional expression in the features of man is to be considered in
reference to the fact that the special senses either have their seat in, or
are in close relation to the face, and that so large a number of nerves
pass to it from the brain. The same is true of the lower animals, so that
it would be inferred, as is the case, that the faces of those animals are
also expressive of emotion. There is also noticed among them an exhibition
of emotion by corporeal action. This is the class of gestures common
to them with the earliest made by man, as above mentioned, and it
is reasonable to suppose that those were made by man at the time when,
if ever, he was, like the animals, destitute of articulate speech. The
articulate cries uttered by some animals, especially some birds, are
interesting
as connected with the principle of imitation to which languages in
part owe their origin, but in the cases of forced imitation, the mere
acquisition
of a vocal trick, they only serve to illustrate that power of imitation,
and are without significance. Sterne’s starling, after his cage had
been opened, would have continued to complain that he could not get out.
If the bird had uttered an instinctive cry of distress when in confinement
and a note of joy on release, there would have been a nearer approach
to language than if it had clearly pronounced many sentences. Such
notes and cries of animals, many of which are connected with reproduction
and nutrition, are well worth more consideration than can now be
given, but regarding them generally it is to be questioned if they are so
expressive as the gestures of the same animals. It is contended that
the bark of a dog is distinguishable into fear, defiance, invitation, and
a note of warning, but it also appears that those notes have been known
only since the animal has been domesticated. The gestures of the dog
are far more readily distinguished than his bark, as in his preparing
for attack, or caressing his master, resenting an injury, begging for food,
or simply soliciting attention. The chief modern use of his tail appears
to be to express his ideas and sensations. But some recent experiments
of Prof. A. Graham Bell, no less eminent from his work in artificial
speech than in telephones, shows that animals are more physically capable
of pronouncing articulate sounds than has been supposed. He informed
the writer that he recently succeeded by manipulation in causing
an English terrier to form a number of the sounds of our letters, and
particularly brought out from it the words “How are you, Grandmamma?”
with distinctness. This tends to prove that only absence of
brain power has kept animals from acquiring true speech. The remarkable
vocal instrument of the parrot could be used in significance as well
as in imitation, if its brain had been developed beyond the point of
expression by gesture, in which latter the bird is expert.

The gestures of monkeys, whose hands and arms can be used, are nearly
akin to ours. Insects communicate with each other almost entirely by
means of the antennæ. Animals in general which, though not deaf, can
[pg 276]
not be taught by sound, frequently have been by signs, and probably
all of them understand man’s gestures better than his speech. They
exhibit signs to one another with obvious intention, and they also have
often invented them as a means of obtaining their wants from man.

GESTURES OF YOUNG CHILDREN.

The wishes and emotions of very young children are conveyed in a
small number of sounds, but in a great variety of gestures and facial
expressions. A child’s gestures are intelligent long in advance of speech;
although very early and persistent attempts are made to give it instruction
in the latter but none in the former, from the time when it begins
risu cognoscere matrem. It learns words only as they are taught, and
learns them through the medium of signs which are not expressly taught.
Long after familiarity with speech, it consults the gestures and facial
expressions of its parents and nurses as if seeking thus to translate or
explain their words. These facts are important in reference to the
biologic law that the order of development of the individual is the same
as that of the species.

Among the instances of gestures common to children throughout the
world is that of protruding the lips, or pouting, when somewhat angry
or sulky. The same gesture is now made by the anthropoid apes and is
found strongly marked in the savage tribes of man. It is noticed by
evolutionists that animals retain during early youth, and subsequently
lose, characters once possessed by their progenitors when adult, and still
retained by distinct species nearly related to them.

The fact is not, however, to be ignored that children invent words as
well as signs with as natural an origin for the one as for the other. An
interesting case was furnished to the writer by Prof. Bell of an infant
boy who used a combination of sounds given as “nyum-nyum,” an evident
onomatope of gustation, to mean “good,” and not only in reference to
articles of food relished but as applied to persons of whom the child was
fond, rather in the abstract idea of “niceness” in general. It is a
singular
coincidence that a bright young girl, a friend of the writer, in a letter
describing a juvenile feast, invented the same expression, with nearly the
same spelling, as characteristic of her sensations regarding the delicacies
provided. The Papuans met by Dr. Comrie also called “eating” nam-nam.
But the evidence of all such cases of the voluntary use of articulate
speech by young children is qualified by the fact that it has been
inherited from very many generations, if not quite so long as the faculty
of gesture.

GESTURES IN MENTAL DISORDER.

The insane understand and obey gestures when they have no knowledge
whatever of words. It is also found that semi-idiotic children who
cannot be taught more than the merest rudiments of speech, can receive
a considerable amount of information through signs, and can express
themselves by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use
[pg 277]
appropriate gestures after their words have become uncontrollable. It is
further noticeable in them that mere ejaculations, or sounds which are only
the result of a state of feeling, instead of a desire to express thought,
are generally articulated with accuracy. Patients who have been in
the habit of swearing preserve their fluency in that division of their
vocabulary.

UNINSTRUCTED DEAF-MUTES.

The signs made by congenital and uninstructed deaf-mutes to be now
considered are either strictly natural signs, invented by themselves, or
those of a colloquial character used by such mutes where associated.
The accidental or merely suggestive signs peculiar to families, one member
of which happens to be a mute, are too much affected by the other
members of the family to be of certain value. Those, again, which are
taught in institutions have become conventional and designedly adapted
to translation into oral speech, although founded by the abbé de l’Épée,
followed by the abbé Sicard, in the natural signs first above mentioned.

A great change has doubtless occurred in the estimation of congenital
deaf-mutes since the Justinian Code, which consigned them forever
to legal infancy, as incapable of intelligence, and classed them with the
insane. Yet most modern writers, for instance Archbishop Whately and
Max Müller, have declared that deaf-mutes could not think until after
having been instructed. It cannot be denied that the deaf-mute thinks
after his instruction either in the ordinary gesture signs or in the finger
alphabet, or more lately in artificial speech. By this instruction he has
become master of a highly-developed language, such as English or
French, which he can read, write, and actually talk, but that foreign
language he has obtained through the medium of signs. This is a conclusive
proof that signs constitute a real language and one which admits
of thought, for no one can learn a foreign language unless he had
some language of his own, whether by descent or acquisition, by which
it could be translated, and such translation into the new language could
not even be commenced unless the mind had been already in action and
intelligently using the original language for that purpose. In fact the
use by deaf-mutes of signs originating in themselves exhibits a creative
action of mind and innate faculty of expression beyond that of ordinary
speakers who acquired language without conscious effort. The thanks
of students, both of philology and psychology, are due to Prof. Samuel
Porter, of the National Deaf Mute College, for his response to the
question, “Is thought possible without language?” published in the
Princeton Review for January, 1880.

With regard to the sounds uttered by deaf-mutes, the same explanation
of heredity may be made as above, regarding the words invented
by young children. Congenital deaf-mutes at first make the same
sounds as hearing children of the same age, and, often being susceptible
to vibrations of the air, are not suspected of being deaf. When that
affliction is ascertained to exist, all oral utterances from the deaf-mute
are habitually repressed by the parents.

GESTURES OF THE BLIND.

The facial expressions and gestures of the congenitally blind are
worthy of attention. The most interesting and conclusive examples
come from the case of Laura Bridgman, who, being also deaf, could not
possibly have derived them by imitation. When a letter from a beloved
friend was communicated to her by gesture-language, she laughed and
clapped her hands. A roguish expression was given to her face, concomitant
with the emotion, by her holding the lower lip by the teeth.
She blushed, shrugged her shoulders, turned in her elbows, and raised
her eye-brows under the same circumstances as other people. In amazement,
she rounded and protruded the lips, opened them, and breathed
strongly. It is remarkable that she constantly accompanied her “yes”
with the common affirmative nod, and her “no” with our negative shake
of the head, as these gestures are by no means universal and do not
seem clearly connected with emotion. This, possibly, may be explained
by the fact that her ancestors for many generations had used
these gestures. A similar curious instance is mentioned by Cardinal
Wiseman (Essays, III, 547, London, 1853) of an Italian blind
man, the
appearance of whose eyes indicated that he had never enjoyed sight,
and who yet made the same elaborate gestures made by the people with
whom he lived, but which had been used by them immemorially, as
correctly as if he had learned them by observation.

LOSS OF SPEECH BY ISOLATION.

When human beings have been long in solitary confinement, been
abandoned, or otherwise have become isolated from their fellows, they
have lost speech either partially or entirely, and required to have it
renewed
through gestures. There are also several recorded cases of children,
born with all their faculties, who, after having been lost or abandoned,
have been afterwards found to have grown up possessed of acute hearing,
but without anything like human speech. One of these was
Peter, “the Wild Boy,” who was found in the woods of Hanover in
1726, and taken to England, where vain attempts were made to teach
him language, though he lived to the age of seventy. Another was a
boy of twelve, found in the forest of Aveyron, in France, about the
beginning
of this century, who was destitute of speech, and all efforts to
teach him failed. Some of these cases are to be considered in connection
with the general law of evolution, that in degeneration the last and
highest acquirements are lost first. When in these the effort at acquiring
or re-acquiring speech has been successful, it has been through gestures,
in the same manner as missionaries, explorers, and shipwrecked
mariners have become acquainted with tongues before unknown to themselves
and sometimes to civilization. All persons in such circumstances
are obliged to proceed by pointing to objects and making gesticulations,
[pg 279]
at the same time observing what articulate sounds were associated with
those motions by the persons addressed, and thus vocabularies and lists of
phrases were formed.

LOW TRIBES OF MAN.

Apart from the establishment of a systematic language of signs under
special circumstances which have occasioned its development, the gestures
of the lower tribes of men may be generally classed under the emotional or
instinctive division, which can be correlated with those of the lower
animals. This may be illustrated by the modes adopted to show friendship
in salutation, taking the place of our shaking hands. Some Pacific
Islanders used to show their joy at meeting friends by sniffing at them,
after the style of well-disposed dogs. The Fuegians pat and slap each
other, and some Polynesians stroke their own faces with the hand or foot of
the friend. The practice of rubbing or pressing noses is very common. It
has been noticed in the Lapland Alps, often in Africa, and in Australia the
tips of the noses are pressed a long time, accompanied
with grunts of satisfaction. Patting and stroking different parts of the
body are still more frequent, and prevailed among the North American
Indians, though with the latter the most common expression was hugging. In
general, the civilities exchanged are similar to those of many animals.

GESTURES AS AN OCCASIONAL RESOURCE.

Persons of limited vocabulary, whether foreigners to the tongue employed or
native, but not accomplished in its use, even in the midst of a
civilization where gestures are deprecated, when at fault for words resort
instinctively to physical motions that are not wild nor meaningless, but
picturesque and significant, though perhaps made by the gesturer for the
first time. An
uneducated laborer, if good-natured enough to be really desirous of
responding to a request for information, when he has exhausted his scanty
stock of words will eke them out by original gestures. While fully
admitting the advice to Coriolanus—

it may be paraphrased to read that the hands of the ignorant are more
learned than their tongues. A stammerer, too, works his arms and features
as if determined to get his thoughts out, in a manner not only suggestive
of the physical struggle, but of the use of gestures as a hereditary
expedient.

GESTURES OF FLUENT TALKERS.

The same is true of the most fluent talkers on occasions when the exact
vocal formula desired does not at once suggest itself, or is unsatisfactory
without assistance from the physical machinery not embraced in the oral
apparatus. The command of a copious vocabulary common
[pg 280]
to both speaker and hearer undoubtedly tends to a phlegmatic delivery
and disdain of subsidiary aid. An excited speaker will, however, generally
make a free use of his hands without regard to any effect of that use
upon auditors. Even among the gesture-hating English, when they are
aroused from torpidity of manner, the hands are involuntarily clapped
in approbation, rubbed with delight, wrung in distress, raised in
astonishment,
and waved in triumph. The fingers are snapped for contempt,
the forefinger is vibrated to reprove or threaten, and the fist shaken in
defiance. The brow is contracted with displeasure, and the eyes winked
to show connivance. The shoulders are shrugged to express disbelief
or repugnance, the eyebrows elevated with surprise, the lips bitten in
vexation and thrust out in sullenness or displeasure, while a higher degree
of anger is shown by a stamp of the foot. Quintilian, regarding
the subject, however, not as involuntary exhibition of feeling and
intellect,
but for illustration and enforcement, becomes eloquent on the variety
of motions of which the hands alone are capable, as follows:

“The action of the other parts of the body assists the speaker, but
the hands (I could almost say) speak themselves. By them do we not
demand, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express abhorrence
and terror, question and deny? Do we not by them express joy and
sorrow, doubt, confession, repentance, measure, quantity, number, and
time? Do they not also encourage, supplicate, restrain, convict, admire,
respect? and in pointing out places and persons do they not discharge
the office of adverbs and of pronouns?”

Voss adopts almost the words of Quintilian, “Manus non modo loquentem
adjuvant, sed ipsæ pene loqui videntur,” while Cresollius calls the
hand “the minister of reason and wisdom … without it there is
no eloquence.”

INVOLUNTARY RESPONSE TO GESTURES.

Further evidence of the unconscious survival of gesture language is
afforded by the ready and involuntary response made in signs to signs
when a man with the speech and habits of civilization is brought into
close contact with Indians or deaf-mutes. Without having ever before
seen or made one of their signs, he will soon not only catch the meaning
of theirs, but produce his own, which they will likewise comprehend,
the power seemingly remaining latent in him until called forth by
necessity.

NATURAL PANTOMIME.

In the earliest part of man’s history the subjects of his discourse must
have been almost wholly sensuous, and therefore readily expressed in
pantomime.
Not only was pantomime sufficient for all the actual needs of
his existence, but it is not easy to imagine how he could have used
language
such as is now known to us. If the best English dictionary and
grammar had been miraculously furnished to him, together with the art
of reading with proper pronunciation, the gift would have been valueless,
because the ideas expressed by the words had not yet been formed.

That the early concepts were of a direct and material character is
shown by what has been ascertained of the roots of language, and there
does not appear to be much difficulty in expressing by other than vocal
instrumentality all that could have been expressed by those roots.
Even now, with our vastly increased belongings of external life,
avocations,
and habits, nearly all that is absolutely necessary for our physical
needs can be expressed in pantomime. Far beyond the mere signs for
eating, drinking, sleeping, and the like, any one will understand a
skillful
representation in signs of a tailor, shoemaker, blacksmith, weaver,
sailor, farmer, or doctor. So of washing, dressing, shaving, walking,
driving, writing, reading, churning, milking, boiling, roasting or frying,
making bread or preparing coffee, shooting, fishing, rowing, sailing,
sawing, planing, boring, and, in short, an endless list.

Max Müller properly calls touch, scent, and taste the palaioteric, and
sight and hearing the neoteric senses, the latter of which often require
to be verified by the former. Touch is the lowest in specialization and
development, and is considered to be the oldest of the senses, the others
indeed being held by some writers to be only its modifications. Scent, of
essential importance to many animals, has with man almost ceased to be
of any, except in connection with taste, which he has developed to a high
degree. Whether or not sight preceded hearing in order of development,
it is difficult, in conjecturing the first attempts of man or his
hypothetical
ancestor at the expression either of percepts or concepts, to connect
vocal sounds with any large number of objects, but it is readily
conceivable
that the characteristics of their forms and movements should have
been suggested to the eye—fully exercised before the tongue—so soon
as the arms and fingers became free for the requisite simulation or
portrayal.
There is little distinction between pantomime and a developed
sign language, in which thought is transmitted rapidly and certainly
from hand to eye as it is in oral speech from lips to ear; the former is,
however, the parent of the latter, which is more abbreviated and less
obvious. Pantomime acts movements, reproduces forms and positions,
presents pictures, and manifests emotions with greater realization than
any other mode of utterance. It may readily be supposed that a troglodyte
man would desire to communicate the finding of a cave in the
vicinity of a pure pool, circled with soft grass, and shaded by trees
bearing
edible fruit. No sound of nature is connected with any of those
objects, but the position and size of the cave, its distance and direction,
the water, its quality, and amount, the verdant circling carpet, and the
kind and height of the trees could have been made known by pantomime
in the days of the mammoth, if articulate speech had not then been
established,
as Indians or deaf-mutes now communicate similar information
by the same agency.

The proof of this fact, as regards deaf-mutes, will hardly be demanded,
as their expressive pantomime has been so often witnessed. That of
[pg 282]
the North American Indians, as distinct from the signs which are generally
its abbreviations, has been frequently described in general terms,
but it may be interesting to present two instances from remote localities.

A Maricopa Indian, in the present limits of Arizona, was offered an
advantageous trade for his horse, whereupon he stretched himself on
his horse’s neck, caressed it tenderly, at the same time shutting his
eyes, meaning thereby that no offer could tempt him to part with his
charger.

An A-tco-mâ-wi or Pit River Indian, in Northeastern California, to
explain the cause of his cheeks and forehead being covered with tar,
represented
a man falling, and, despite his efforts to save him, trembling,
growing pale (pointing from his face to that of a white man), and sinking
to sleep, his spirit winging its way to the skies, which he indicated by
imitating with his hands the flight of a bird upwards, his body sleeping
still upon the river bank, to which he pointed. The tar upon his face
was thus shown to be his dress of mourning for a friend who had fallen
and died.

Several descriptions of pure pantomime, intermixed with the more
conventionalized signs, will be found in the present paper. In especial,
reference is made to the Address of Kin Chē-ĕss, Nátci’s
Narrative, the Dialogue between Alaskan Indians, and Na-wa-gi-jig’s Story.

SOME THEORIES UPON PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE.

Cresollius, writing in 1620, was strongly in favor of giving precedence
to gesture. He says, “Man, full of wisdom and divinity, could have
appeared nothing superior to a naked trunk or block had he not been
adorned with the hand as the interpreter and messenger of his thoughts.”
He quotes with approval the brother of St. Basil in declaring that had
men been formed without hands they would never have been endowed
with an articulate voice, and concludes: “Since, then, nature has furnished
us with two instruments for the purpose of bringing into light
and expressing the silent affections of the mind, language and the hand,
it has been the opinion of learned and intelligent men that the former
would be maimed and nearly useless without the latter; whereas the
hand, without the aid of language, has produced many and wonderful effects.”

Rabelais, who incorporated into his satirical work much true learning
and philosophy, makes his hero announce the following opinion:

“Nothing less, quoth Pantagruel [Book iii, ch. xix], do I believe
than that it is a mere abusing of our understandings to give credit to
the words of those who say that there is any such thing as a natural
language. All speeches have had their primary origin from the arbitrary
institutions, accords, and agreements of nations in their respective
[pg 283]
condescendments to what should be noted and betokened by them. An articulate
voice, according to the dialecticians, hath naturally no signification
at all; for that the sense and meaning thereof did totally depend
upon the good will and pleasure of the first deviser and imposer of it.”

Max Müller, following Professor Heyse, of Berlin, published an ingenious
theory of primitive speech, to the effect that man had a creative
faculty giving to each conception, as it thrilled through his brain for the
first time, a special phonetic expression, which faculty became extinct
when its necessity ceased. This theory, which makes each radical of
language to be a phonetic type rung out from the organism of the first
man or men when struck by an idea, has been happily named the “ding-dong”
theory. It has been abandoned mainly through the destructive
criticisms of Prof. W.D. Whitney, of Yale College. One lucid explanation
by the latter should be specially noted: “A word is a combination
of sounds which by a series of historical reasons has come to be accepted
and understood in a certain community as the sign of a certain
idea. As long as they so accept and understand it, it has existence;
when everyone ceases to use and understand it, it ceases to exist.”

Several authors, among them Kaltschmidt, contend that there was but
one primitive language, which was purely onomatopœic, that is, imitative
of natural sounds. This has been stigmatized as the “bow-wow”
theory, but its advocates might derive an argument from the epithet
itself, as not only our children, but the natives of Papua, call the dog a
“bow-wow.” They have, however, gone too far in attempting to trace
back words in their shape as now existing to any natural sounds instead
of confining that work to the roots from which the words have sprung.

Another attempt has been made, represented by Professor Noiré,
to account for language by means of interjectional cries. This Max
Müller revengefully styled the “pooh-pooh” theory. In it is included
the rhythmical sounds which a body of men make seemingly by a common
impulse when engaged in a common work, such as the cries of
sailors when hauling on a rope or pulling an oar, or the yell of savages
in an attack. It also derives an argument from the impulse of life by
which the child shouts and the bird sings. There are, however, very few
either words or roots of words which can be proved to have that derivation.

Professor Sayce, in his late work, Introduction to the Science of
Language, London, 1880, gives the origin of language in gestures, in
onomatopœia, and to a limited extent in interjectional cries. He concludes
it to be the ordinary theory of modern comparative philologists that all
languages are traced back to a certain number of abstract roots, each of
which was a sort of sentence in embryo, and while he does not admit
this as usually presented, he believes that there was a time in the history
[pg 284]
of speech, when the articulate or semi-articulate sounds uttered by
primitive men were made the significant representations of thought by the
gestures with which they were accompanied. This statement is specially
gratifying to the present writer as he had advanced much the same
views in his first publication on the subject in the following paragraph,
now reproduced with greater confidence:

“From their own failures and discordancies, linguistic scholars have
recently decided that both the ‘bow-wow’ and the ‘ding-dong’ theories
are unsatisfactory; that the search for imitative, onomatopœic, and
directly expressive sounds to explain the origin of human speech has been
too exclusive, and that many primordial roots of language have been
founded in the involuntary sounds accompanying certain actions. As,
however, the action was the essential, and the consequent or concomitant
sound the accident, it would be expected that a representation or
feigned reproduction of the action would have been used to express
the idea before the sound associated with that action could have been
separated from it. The visual onomatopœia of gestures, which even
yet have been subjected to but slight artificial corruption, would
therefore serve as a key to the audible. It is also contended that in the
pristine days, when the sounds of the only words yet formed had close
connection with objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs
were as much more copious for communication than speech, as the sight
embraces more and more distinct characteristics of objects than does the
sense of hearing.”

CONCLUSIONS.

The preponderance of authority is in favor of the view that man, when
in the possession of all his faculties, did not choose between voice and
gesture, both being originally instinctive, as they both are now, and
never, with those faculties, was in a state where the one was used to the
absolute exclusion of the other. The long neglected work of Dalgarno,
published in 1661, is now admitted to show wisdom when he says: “non
minus naturale fit homini communicare in Figuris quam Sonis:
quorum
utrumque dico homini naturale.” With the voice man at first imitated
the few sounds of nature, while with gesture he exhibited actions, motions,
positions, forms, dimensions, directions, and distances, and their
derivatives. It would appear from this unequal division of capacity
that oral speech remained rudimentary long after gesture had become
an art. With the concession of all purely imitative sounds and of the
spontaneous action of the vocal organs under excitement, it is still true
that the connection between ideas and words generally depended upon
a compact between the speaker and hearer which presupposes the existence
of a prior mode of communication. That was probably by gesture,
which, in the apposite phrase of Professor Sayce, “like the rope-bridges
of the Himalayas or the Andes, formed the first rude means of
communication between man and man.” At the very least it may be
[pg 285]
gladly accepted provisionally as a clue leading out of the labyrinth of
philologic confusion.

For the purpose of the present paper there is, however, no need of an
absolute decision upon the priority between communication of ideas by
bodily motion and by vocal articulation. It is enough to admit that the
connection between them was so early and intimate that gestures, in
the wide sense indicated of presenting ideas under physical forms,
had a direct formative effect upon many words; that they exhibit the
earliest condition of the human mind; are traced from the remotest
antiquity among all peoples possessing records; are generally prevalent
in the savage stage of social evolution; survive agreeably in the scenic
pantomime, and still adhere to the ordinary speech of civilized man by
motions of the face, hands, head, and body, often involuntary, often
purposely in illustration or for emphasis.

It may be unnecessary to explain that none of the signs to be described,
even those of present world-wide prevalence, are presented as
precisely those of primitive man. Signs as well as words, animals,
and plants have had their growth, development, and change, their births
and deaths, and their struggle for existence with survival of the fittest.
It is, however, thought probable from reasons hereinafter mentioned that
their radicals can be ascertained with more precision than those of
words.

HISTORY OF GESTURE LANGUAGE.

There is ample evidence of record, besides that derived from other
sources, that the systematic use of gesture speech was of great antiquity.
Livy so declares, and Quintilian specifies that the “lex gestus … ab
illis temporibus heroicis orta est.” Plato classed its practice
among
civil virtues, and Chrysippus gave it place among the proper education
of freemen. Athenæus tells that gestures were even reduced to distinct
classification with appropriate terminology. The class suited to comedy
was called Cordax, that to tragedy Eumelia, and that for satire Sicinnis,
from the inventor Sicinnus. Bathyllus from these formed a fourth
class, adapted to pantomime. This system appears to have been particularly
applicable to theatrical performances. Quintilian, later, gave
most elaborate rules for gestures in oratory, which are specially
noticeable
from the importance attached to the manner of disposing the
fingers. He attributed to each particular disposition a significance or
suitableness which are not now obvious. Some of them are retained by
modern orators, but without the same, or indeed any, intentional meaning,
and others are wholly disused.

Fig. 61.

Fig. 62.

Fig. 63.

The value of these digital arrangements is, however, shown by their
use among the modern Italians, to whom they have directly descended.
[pg 286]
From many illustrations of this fact the following is selected. Fig. 61
is copied from Austin’s Chironomia as his graphic execution of the
gesture described by Quintilian: “The fore
finger of the right hand joining the middle
of its nail to the extremity of its own
thumb, and moderately extending the
rest of the fingers, is graceful in approving.”
Fig. 62 is taken from De Jorio’s
plates and descriptions of the gestures
among modern Neapolitans, with the same idea of approbation—”good.”
Both of these may be compared with Fig. 63, a common sign among the
North American Indians to express affirmation and approbation. With
the knowledge of these details it is possible to
believe the story of Macrobius that Cicero used
to vie with Roscius, the celebrated actor, as to
which of them could express a sentiment in the
greater variety of ways, the one by gesture and
the other by speech, with the apparent result of
victory to the actor who was so satisfied with the
superiority of his art that he wrote a book on the subject.

Gestures were treated of with still more distinction as connected with
pantomimic dances and representations. Æschylus appears to have
brought theatrical gesture to a high degree of perfection, but Telestes, a
dancer employed by him, introduced the dumb
show, a dance without marked dancing steps, and
subordinated to motions of the hands, arms, and
body, which is dramatic pantomime. He was so
great an artist, says Athenæus, that when he represented
the Seven before Thebes he rendered every
circumstance manifest by his gestures alone. From
Greece, or rather from Egypt, the art was brought to
Rome, and in the reign of Augustus was the great
delight of that Emperor and his friend Mæcenas.
Bathyllus, of Alexandria, was the first to introduce
it to the Roman public, but he had a dangerous rival in Pylades. The latter
was magnificent, pathetic, and affecting, while Bathyllus was gay and
sportive. All Rome was split into factions about their respective merits.
Athenæus speaks of a distinguished performer of his own time (he
died A.D. 194) named Memphis, whom he calls the “dancing philosopher,”
because he showed what the Pythagorean philosophy could do by
exhibiting in silence everything with stronger evidence than they could
who professed to teach the arts of language. In the reign of Nero, a
celebrated
pantomimist who had heard that the cynic philosopher Demetrius
spoke of the art with contempt, prevailed upon him to witness
his performance, with the result that the cynic, more and more astonished,
[pg 287]
at last cried out aloud, “Man, I not only see, but I hear what you
do, for to me you appear to speak with your hands!”

Lucian, who narrates this in his work De Saltatione, gives another
tribute to the talent of, perhaps, the same performer. A barbarian
prince of Pontus (the story is told elsewhere of Tyridates, King of
Armenia), having come to Rome to do homage to the Emperor Nero,
and been taken to see the pantomimes, was asked on his departure by the
Emperor what present he would have as a mark of his favor. The
barbarian begged that he might have the principal pantomimist, and upon
being asked why he made such an odd request, replied that he had
many neighbors who spoke such various and discordant languages that
he found it difficult to obtain any interpreter who could understand
them or explain his commands; but if he had the dancer he could by
his assistance easily make himself intelligible to all.

While the general effect of these pantomimes is often mentioned,
there remain but few detailed descriptions of them. Apuleius, however,
in the tenth book of his Metamorphosis or “Golden Ass,” gives
sufficient
details of the performance of the Judgment of Paris to show that it
strongly resembled the best form of ballet opera known in modern times.
These exhibitions were so greatly in favor that, according to Ammianus
Marcellinus, there were in Rome in the year 190 six thousand persons
devoted
to the art, and that when a famine raged they were all kept in the
city, though besides all the strangers all the philosophers were forced
to leave. Their popularity continued until the sixth century, and it is
evident from a decree of Charlemagne that they were not lost, or at least,
had been revived in his time. Those of us who have enjoyed the performance
of the original Ravel troupe will admit that the art still survives,
though not with the magnificence or perfection, especially with
reference to serious subjects, which it exhibited in the age of imperial
Rome.

Early and prominent among the post-classic works upon gesture is
that of the venerable Bede (who flourished A.D. 672-735) De Loquelâ
per Gestum Digitorum, sive de Indigitatione. So much discussion had
indeed been carried on in reference to the use of signs for the desideratum
of a universal mode of communication, which also was designed
to be occult and mystic, that Rabelais, in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, who, however satirical, never spent his force upon matters of
little importance, devotes much attention to it. He makes his English
philosopher, Thaumast “The Wonderful” declare, “I will dispute by
signs only, without speaking, for the matters are so abstruse, hard, and
arduous, that words proceeding from the mouth of man will never be
sufficient for unfolding of them to my liking.”

The earliest contributions of practical value connected with the subject
were made by George Dalgarno, of Aberdeen, in two works, one
published in London, 1661, entitled Ars Signorum, vulgo character
universalis et lingua philosophica, and the other printed at Oxford,
[pg 288]
1680, entitled, Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man’s Tutor.
He spent his life in obscurity, and his works, though he was incidentally
mentioned by Leibnitz under the name of “M. Dalgarus,” passed into
oblivion. Yet he undoubtedly was the precursor of Bishop Wilkins in
his Essay toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language,
published in London, 1668, though indeed the first idea was far older, it
having been, as reported by Piso, the wish of Galen that some way
might be found out to represent things by such peculiar signs and names
as should express their natures. Dalgarno’s ideas respecting the education
of the dumb were also of the highest value, and though they were too
refined and enlightened to be appreciated at the period when he wrote,
they probably were used by Dr. Wallis if not by Sicard. Some of his
thoughts should be quoted: “As I think the eye to be as docile as the ear;
so neither see I any reason but the hand might be made as tractable an
organ as the tongue; and as soon brought to form, if not fair, at least
legible characters, as the tongue to imitate and echo back articulate
sounds.” A paragraph prophetic of the late success in educating blind
deaf-mutes is as follows: “The soul can exert her powers by the ministry
of any of the senses: and, therefore, when she is deprived of her
principal secretaries, the eye and the ear, then she must be contented
with the service of her lackeys and scullions, the other senses; which are
no less true and faithful to their mistress than the eye and the ear; but
not so quick for dispatch.”

In his division of the modes of “expressing the inward emotions by
outward and sensible signs” he relegates to physiology cases “when
the internal passions are expressed by such external signs as have a
natural connection, by way of cause and effect, with the passion they
discover, as laughing, weeping, frowning, &c., and this way of
interpretation
being common to the brute with man belongs to natural philosophy.
And because this goes not far enough to serve the rational soul,
therefore, man has invented Sematology.” This he divides into Pneumatology,
interpretation by sounds conveyed through the ear; Schematology,
by figures to the eye, and Haptology, by mutual contact, skin
to skin. Schematology is itself divided into Typology or Grammatology,
and Cheirology or Dactylology. The latter embraces “the transient
motions of the fingers, which of all other ways of interpretation comes
nearest to that of the tongue.”

As a phase in the practice of gestures in lieu of speech must be mentioned
the code of the Cistercian monks, who were vowed to silence except
in religious exercises. That they might literally observe their vows
they were obliged to invent a system of communication by signs, a list
of which is given by Leibnitz, but does not show much ingenuity.

A curious description of the speech of the early inhabitants of the
world, given by Swedenborg in his Arcana Cœlestia, published
1749-1756,
may be compared with the present exhibitions of deaf-mutes in institutions
for their instruction. He says it was not articulate like the
vocal speech of our time, but was tacit, being produced not by external
respiration, but by internal. They were able to express their meaning
by slight motions of the lips and corresponding changes of the face.

Austin’s comprehensive work, Chironomia, or a Treatise on Rhetorical
Delivery, London, 1806, is a repertory of information for all writers
on gesture, who have not always given credit to it, as well as on all
branches of oratory. This has been freely used by the present writer, as
has also the volume by the canon Andrea de Jorio, La Mimica degli
Antichi investigata nel Gestire Napoletano, Napoli, 1832. The canon’s
chief object was to interpret the gestures of the ancients as shown in
their works of art and described in their writings, by the modern
gesticulations of the Neapolitans, and he has proved that the general
system
of gesture once prevailing in ancient Italy is substantially the same as
now observed. With an understanding of the existing language of
gesture the scenes on the most ancient Greek vases and reliefs obtain a
new and interesting significance and form a connecting link between the
present and prehistoric times. Two of De Jorio’s plates are here
reproduced,
Figs. 64 and 67, with such explanation and further illustration
as is required for the present subject.

Fig. 64.—Group from an ancient Greek vase.

The spirited figures upon the ancient vase, Fig. 64, are red upon a
black ground and are described in the published account in French of
the collection of Sir John Coghill, Bart., of which the following is a free
translation:

Dionysos or Bacchus is represented with a strong beard, his head girt
with the credemnon, clothed in a long folded tunic, above which is an
ample cloak, and holding a thyrsus. Under the form of a satyr, Comus,
or the genius of the table, plays on the double flute and tries to excite
to the dance two nymphs, the companions of Bacchus—Galené, Tranquility,
and Eudia, Serenity. The first of them is dressed in a tunic, above which
is a fawn skin, holding a tympanum or classic drum on which she is
about to strike, while her companion marks the time by a snapping of
the fingers, which custom the author of the catalogue wisely states is
still kept up in Italy in the dance of the tarantella. The composition
is said to express allegorically that pure and serene pleasures are
benefits derived from the god of wine.

Fig. 65.

Fig. 66.

This is a fair example of the critical acumen of art-commentators.
The gestures of the two nymphs are interesting, but on very slight
examination it appears that those of Galené have nothing to do with
beat of drum, nor have those of Eudia any connection with music,
though it is not so clear what is the true subject under discussion.
Aided, however, by the light of the modern sign language of Naples,
there seems to be by no means serenity prevailing, but a quarrel between
the ladies, on a special subject which is not necessarily pure. The
nymph at the reader’s left fixes her eyes upon her companion with her
index in the same direction, clearly indicating, thou. That the
address
is reproachful is shown from her countenance, but with greater certainty
from her attitude and the corresponding one of her companion, who raises
[pg 290]
both her hands in surprise accompanied with negation. The latter is
expressed
by the right hand raised toward the shoulder, with the palm opposed
to the person to whom response is made. This is the rejection of the
idea presented, and is expressed by some of our Indians, as shown in Fig.
65. A sign of the Dakota tribe of Indians with the same signification is given
in Fig. 270, page 441, infra. At the same
time the upper part of the nymph’s body is
drawn backward as far as the preservation of
equilibrium permits. So a reproach or accusation
is made on the one part, and denied,
whether truthfully or not, on the other. Its
subject also may be ascertained. The left
hand of Eudia is not mute; it is held towards
her rival with the balls of the index and
thumb united, the modern Neapolitan sign for love, which is drawn
more clearly in Fig. 66. It is called the kissing of the thumb and finger, and
there is ample authority to show that among the ancient classics it was
a sign of marriage. St. Jerome, quoted by Vincenzo Requena, says:
“Nam et ipsa digitorum conjunctio, et quasi molli
osculo se complectans et fœderans, maritum pingit
et conjugem;” and Apuleius clearly alludes to
the same gesture as used in the adoration of Venus,
by the words “primore digito in erectum pollicem
residente.” The gesture is one of the few
out of the large number described in various parts
of Rabelais’ great work, the significance of which
is explained. It is made by Naz-de-cabre or Goat’s
Nose (Pantagruel, Book III, Ch. XX), who lifted
up into the air his left hand, the whole fingers
whereof he retained fistways closed together, except the thumb and the
forefinger, whose nails he softly joined and coupled to one another.
“I understand, quoth Pantagruel, what he meaneth by that sign. It
denotes marriage.” The quarrel is thus established to be about love;
and the fluting satyr seated between the two nymphs, behind whose back
the accusation is furtively made by the jealous one, may well be the object
concerning whom jealousy is manifested. Eudia therefore, instead of
“serenely” marking time for a “tranquil” tympanist, appears to be crying,
“Galené! you bad thing! you are having, or trying to have, an affair
with my Comus!”—an accusation which this writer verily believes to
have been just. The lady’s attitude in affectation of surprised denial is
not that of injured innocence.

Fig. 67.—Group from a vase in the Homeric Gallery.

Fig. 68.

Fig. 69.

Fig. 67, taken from a vase in the Homeric Gallery, is rich in natural
gestures. Without them, from the costumes and attitudes it is easy to
recognize the protagonist or principal actor in the group, and its general
subject. The warrior goddess Athené stands forth in the midst of what
appears to be a council of war. After the study of modern gesture
speech, the votes of each member of the council, with the degree of
positiveness
or interest felt by each, can be ascertained. Athené in animated
motion turns her eyes to the right, and extends her left arm and
hand to the left, with her right hand brandishing a lance in the same
direction, in which her feet show her to be ready to spring. She is urging
the figures on her right to follow her at once to attempt
some dangerous enterprise. Of these the elderly man, who is calmly seated,
holds his right hand flat and reversed, and suspended slightly above his
knee.
This probably is the ending of the modern Neapolitan gesture, Fig. 68,
which signifies hesitation, advice to pause
before hasty action, “go slowly,” and commences higher with a
gentle wavering movement downward. This can be compared with
the sign of some of our Indians, Fig. 69, for wait! slowly! The
female figure at the left of the group, standing firmly and decidedly,
raises her left hand directed to the goddess with the palm vertical. If
this is supposed to be a stationary gesture it means, “wait! stop!”
It may, however,
be the commencement of the last mentioned gesture, “go slow.”

Fig. 70.

Both of these members of the council advise delay and express doubt of the
propriety of immediate action.

Fig. 71.

Fig. 72.

The sitting warrior on the left of Athené presents his left hand flat
and carried well up. This position, supposed to be stationary, now
means to ask, inquire, and it may be that he inquires of the other
veteran what reasons he can produce
for his temporizing policy. This may be collated with the modern Neapolitan
sign for ask, Fig. 70, and the common Indian sign for “tell
me!” Fig. 71. In connection
with this it is also interesting to compare the Australian sign for
interrogation, Fig. 72, and also the Comanche Indian sign for give
me, Fig. 301, page 480, infra. If, however, the artist had
the intention to represent the flat hand as in motion
from below upward, as is probable from the connection,
the meaning is much, greatly. He strongly disapproves
the counsel of the opposite side. Our Indians
often express the idea of quantity, much, with
the same conception of comparative height, by an upward motion of
the extended palm, but with them the palm is held downward. The
last figure to the right, by the action of his whole body, shows his rejection
[pg 292]
of the proposed delay, and his right hand gives the modern sign of
combined surprise and reproof.

Fig. 73.

It is interesting to note the similarity of the merely emotional gestures
and attitudes of modern Italy with those of the classics. The Pulcinella,
Fig. 73, for instance, drawn from life in the streets of Naples, has the
same pliancy and abandon of the limbs as appears in the supposed
foolish slaves of the Vatican Terence.

In close connection with this branch of the study reference must be made
to the gestures exhibited in the works of Italian art only modern
in comparison with the high antiquity of their predecessors. A
good instance is in the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, painted
toward the close of the fifteenth century, and to the figure of Judas
as there portrayed. The gospel denounces him as a thief, which
is expressed in the painting by the hand extended and slightly
curved; imitative of the pilferer’s act in clutching and drawing toward
him furtively the stolen object, and is the same gesture that
now indicates theft in Naples, Fig. 74, and among some of the North
American Indians, Fig. 75. The pictorial propriety of the sign is
preserved by the apparent desire of the traitor to obtain the one
white loaf of bread on the table
(the remainder being of coarser quality) which lies near where his hand
is tending. Raffaelle was equally particular in his exhibition of gesture
language, even unto the minutest detail of the
arrangement of the fingers. It is traditional
that he sketched the Madonna’s hands for the
Spasimo di Sicilia in eleven different positions before he was satisfied.

Fig. 74.

No allusion to the bibliography of gesture
speech, however slight, should close without
including the works of Mgr. D. De Haerne, who
has, as a member of the Belgian Chamber of
Representatives, in addition to his rank in the Roman Catholic Church,
been active in promoting the cause of education in general, and especially
that of the deaf and dumb. His admirable treatise The Natural
Language of Signs has been translated and is accessible to American
[pg 293]
readers in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, 1875. In that
valuable serial, conducted by Prof. E.A. Fay, of the National Deaf
Mute College at Washington, and now in its twenty-sixth volume, a
large amount of the current literature on the subject indicated by its
title can be found.

Fig. 75.

MODERN USE OF GESTURE SPEECH.

Dr. Tylor says (Early History of Mankind, 44): “We cannot lay down
as a rule that gesticulation decreases as civilization advances, and say,
for instance, that a Southern Frenchman, because his talk is illustrated
with gestures as a book with pictures, is less civilized than a German
or Englishman.” This is true, and yet it is almost impossible for persons
not accustomed to gestures to observe them without associating
the idea of low culture. Thus in Mr. Darwin’s summing up of those
characteristics of the natives of Tierra del Fuego, which rendered it
difficult to believe them to be fellow-creatures, he classes their “violent
gestures” with their filthy and greasy skins, discordant voices, and
hideous faces bedaubed with paint. This description is quoted by the Duke
of Argyle in his Unity of Nature in approval of those
characteristics as evidence, of the lowest condition of humanity.

Whether or not the power of the visible gesture relative to, and its
influence upon the words of modern oral speech are in inverse proportion
to the general culture, it seems established that they do not bear that or
any constant proportion to the development of the several languages
with which gesture is still more or less associated. The statement has
frequently been made that gesture is yet to some highly-advanced languages
a necessary modifying factor, and that only when a language has
become so artificial as to be completely expressible in written
signs—indeed,
has been remodeled through their long familiar use—can the bodily
signs be wholly dispensed with. The evidence for this statement is now
doubted, and it is safer to affirm that a common use of gesture depends
more upon the sociologic conditions of the speakers than upon the degree
of copiousness of their oral speech.

USE BY OTHER PEOPLES THAN NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

The nearest approach to a general rule which it is now proposed to
hazard is that where people speaking precisely the same dialect are
not numerous, and are thrown into constant contact on equal terms
with others of differing dialects and languages, gesture is necessarily
resorted to for converse with the latter, and remains for an indefinite
time
as a habit or accomplishment among themselves, while large bodies enjoying
common speech, and either isolated from foreigners, or, when in contact
with them, so dominant as to compel the learning and adoption of
their own tongue, become impassive in its delivery. The ungesturing
English, long insular, and now rulers when spread over continents, may
be compared with the profusely gesticulating Italians dwelling in a maze
of dialects and subject for centuries either to foreign rule or to the
influx
of strangers on whom they depended. So common is the use of
gestures in Italy, especially among the lower and uneducated classes,
that utterance without them seems to be nearly impossible. The driver
or boatman will often, on being addressed, involuntarily drop the reins
or oars, at the risk of a serious accident, to respond with his arms and
fingers in accompaniment of his tongue. Nor is the habit confined to
the uneducated. King Ferdinand returning to Naples after the revolt
of 1821, and finding that the boisterous multitude would not allow his
voice to be heard, resorted successfully to a royal address in signs,
giving
reproaches, threats, admonitions, pardon, and dismissal, to the entire
satisfaction of the assembled lazzaroni. The medium, though probably
not the precise manner of its employment, recalls Lucan’s account of
the quieting of an older tumult—

This rivalry of Punch would, in London, have occasioned measureless
ridicule and disgust. The difference in what is vaguely styled temperament
does not wholly explain the contrast between the two peoples, for
the performance was creditable both to the readiness of the King in an
emergency and to the aptness of his people, the main distinction being
that in Italy there was in 1821, and still is, a recognized and cultivated
language of signs long disused in Great Britain. In seeking to account
for this it will be remembered that the Italians have a more direct descent
from the people who, as has been above shown, in classic times so long and
lovingly cultivated gesture as a system. They have also had more generally
before their eyes the artistic relics in which gestures have been preserved.

It is a curious fact that some English writers, notably Addison
(Spectator,
407), have contended that it does not suit the genius of that nation
to use gestures even in public speaking, against which doctrine Austin
vigorously remonstrates. He says: “There may possibly be nations
whose livelier feelings incline them more to gesticulation than is common
among us, as there are also countries in which plants of excellent use
[pg 295]
to man grow spontaneously; these, by care and culture, are found to thrive
also in colder countries.”

It is in general to be remarked that as the number of dialects in any
district decreases so will the gestures, though doubtless there is also
weight in the fact not merely that a language has been reduced to
and modified by writing, but that people who are accustomed generally
to read and write, as are the English and Germans, will after a time
think and talk as they write, and without the accompaniments still
persistent
among Hindus, Arabs, and the less literate of European nations.

The fact that in the comparatively small island of Sicily gesture language
has been maintained until the present time in a perfection not
observed elsewhere in Europe must be considered in connection with the
above remark on England’s insularity, and it must also be admitted that
several languages have prevailed in the latter, still leaving dialects.
This
apparent similarity of conditions renders the contrast as regards use of
gestures more remarkable, yet there are some reasons for their persistence
in Sicily which apply with greater force than to Great Britain. The
explanation, through mere tradition, is that the common usage of signs
dates from the time of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, who prohibited
meetings and conversation among his subjects, under the direst penalties,
so that they adopted that expedient to hold communication. It would be
more useful to consider the peculiar history of the island. The Sicanians
being its aborigines it was colonized by Greeks, who, as the Romans
asserted, were still more apt at gesture than themselves. This colonization
was also by separate bands of adventurers from several different states of
Greece, so that they started with dialects and did not unite in a common
or national organization, the separate cities and their territories being
governed
by oligarchies or tyrants frequently at war with each other, until, in
the fifth century B.C., the Carthaginians began to contribute a new
admixture
of language and blood, followed by Roman, Vandal, Gothic, Herulian,
Arab, and Norman subjugation. Thus some of the conditions above suggested
have existed in this case, but, whatever the explanation, the accounts
given by travelers of the extent to which the language of signs has
been used even during the present generation are so marvelous as to deserve
quotation. The one selected is from the pen of Alexandre Dumas,
who, it is to be hoped, did not carry his genius for romance into a
professedly
sober account of travel:

“In the intervals of the acts of the opera I saw lively conversations
carried on between the orchestra and the boxes. Arami, in particular,
recognized a friend whom he had not seen for three years, and who related
to him, by means of his eyes and his hands, what, to judge by the
eager gestures of my companion, must have been matters of great interest.
The conversation ended, I asked him if I might know without impropriety
what was the intelligence which had seemed to interest him so
deeply. ‘O, yes,’ he replied, ‘that person is one of my good friends, who
has been away from Palermo for three years, and he has been telling
me that he was married at Naples; then traveled with his wife in
[pg 296]
Austria and in France; there his wife gave birth to a daughter, whom
he had the misfortune to lose; he arrived by steamboat yesterday, but
his wife had suffered so much from sea-sickness that she kept her bed,
and he came alone to the play.’ ‘My dear friend,’ said I to Arami, ‘if
you would have me believe you, you must grant me a favor.’ ‘What is
it?’ said he. ‘It is, that you do not leave me during the evening, so
that I may be sure you give no instructions to your friend, and when
we join him, that you ask him to repeat aloud what he said to you by
signs.’ ‘That I will,’ said Arami. The curtain then rose; the second
act of Norma was played; the curtain falling, and the actors being
recalled, as usual, we went to the side-room, where we met the traveler.
‘My dear friend,’ said Arami, ‘I did not perfectly comprehend what you
wanted to tell me; be so good as to repeat it.’ The traveler repeated
the story word for word, and without varying a syllable from the
translation, which Arami had made of his signs; it was marvelous indeed.

“Six weeks after this, I saw a second example of this faculty of mute
communication. This was at Naples. I was walking with a young
man of Syracuse. We passed by a sentinel. The soldier and my companion
exchanged two or three grimaces, which at another time I should
not even have noticed, but the instances I had before seen led me to
give attention. ‘Poor fellow,’ sighed my companion. ‘What did he
say to you?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I thought that I recognized him
as a Sicilian, and I learned from him, as we passed, from what place he
came; he said he was from Syracuse, and that he knew me well. Then I
asked him how he liked the Neapolitan service; he said he did not like it
at all, and if his officers did not treat him better he should certainly
finish by
deserting. I then signified to him that if he ever should be reduced to
that extremity, he might rely upon me, and that I would aid him all in
my power. The poor fellow thanked me with all his heart, and I have
no doubt that one day or other I shall see him come.’ Three days after,
I was at the quarters of my Syracusan friend, when he was told that a
man asked to see him who would not give his name; he went out and
left me nearly ten minutes. ‘Well,’ said he, on returning, ‘just as I
said.’ ‘What?’ said I. ‘That the poor fellow would desert.'”

After this there is an excuse for believing the tradition that the
revolt called “the Sicilian Vespers,” in 1282, was arranged throughout
the island without the use of a syllable, and even the day and hour for
the massacre of the obnoxious foreigners fixed upon by signs only. Indeed,
the popular story goes so far as to assert that all this was done by
facial expression, without even manual signs.

NEAPOLITAN SIGNS.

It is fortunately possible to produce some illustrations of the modern
Neapolitan sign language traced from the plates of De Jorio, with
translations, somewhat condensed, of his descriptions and remarks.

Fig. 76.—Neapolitan public letter-writer and clients.

Fig. 77.

In Fig. 76 an ambulant secretary or public writer is seated at his
[pg 297]
little table, on which are the meager tools of his trade. He wears
spectacles in token that he has read and written much, and has one seat at
his side to accommodate his customers. On this is seated a married
woman who asks him to write a letter to her absent husband. The
secretary, not being told what to write about, without surprise, but somewhat
amused, raises his left hand with the ends of the thumb and finger
joined, the other fingers naturally open, a common sign for inquiry.
“What shall the letter be about?” The wife, not being ready of speech,
to rid herself of the embarrassment, resorts to the mimic art, and, without
opening her mouth, tells with simple gestures all that is in her mind.
Bringing her right hand to her heart, with a corresponding glance of the
eyes she shows that the theme is to be love. For emphasis also she
curves the whole upper part of her body towards him, to exhibit the
intensity
of her passion. To complete the mimic story, she makes with her
left hand the sign of asking for something, which has been above
described
(see page 291). The letter, then, is to assure her husband of her
love and to beg him to return it with corresponding affection. The other
woman, perhaps her sister, who has understood the whole direction, regards
the request as silly and fruitless and is much disgusted. Being
on her feet, she takes a step toward the wife, who she thinks is unadvised,
and raises her left hand with a sign of disapprobation. This position of
the hand is described in full as open, raised high, and oscillated from
right to left. Several of the Indian signs have the
same idea of oscillation of the hand raised,
often near the head, to express folly, fool.
She clearly says, “What a thing to ask!
what a fool you are!” and at the same time
makes with the right hand the sign of money.
This is made by the extremities of the thumb
and index rapidly rubbed against each other,
and is shown more clearly in Fig. 77. It is taken from the handling and
counting of coin. This may be compared with an Indian sign, see Fig.
115, page 344.

So the sister is clearly disapproving with her left hand and with her
right giving good counsel, as if to say, in the combination, “What a
fool you are to ask for his love; you had better ask him to send you
some money.”

Fig. 78.—Neapolitan hot-corn vender.

Fig. 79.

Fig. 80.

In Naples, as in American cities, boiled ears of green corn are vended
with much outcry. Fig. 78 shows a boy who is attracted by the local
cry “Pollanchelle tenerelle!” and seeing the sweet golden ears still
boiling in the kettle from which steams forth fragrance, has an ardent desire
to taste the same, but is without a soldo. He tries begging. His
right open hand is advanced toward the desired object with the sign of
asking
or begging, and he also raises his left forefinger to indicate the
number one—”Pretty girl, please only give me one!” The pretty girl is by no
means cajoled, and while her left hand holds the ladle ready to use if he
[pg 298]
dares to touch her merchandise, she replies by gesture “Te voglio dà no
cuorno!” freely translated, “I’ll give you one in a horn!” This
gesture is drawn, with clearer outline in Fig. 79, and has many
significations, according to the subject-matter and context, and also as
applied to different parts of the body. Applied to the head it has
allusion, descending from high antiquity, to a marital misfortune
which was probably common in prehistoric
times as well as the present. It is also
often used as an amulet against the jettatura
or evil eye, and misfortune in general, and directed toward another person
is a prayerful wish for his or her preservation from evil. This use
is ancient, as is shown on medals and statues, and is supposed by some
to refer to the horns of animals slaughtered in sacrifice. The position
of the fingers, Fig. 80, is also given as
one of Quintilian’s oratorical gestures
by the words “Duo quoque medii sub
pollicem veniunt,” and is said by him to
be vehement and connected with reproach
or argument. In the present case, as a response to an impertinent
or disagreeable petition, it simply means, “instead of giving what you
ask, I will give you nothing but what is vile and useless, as horns are.”

Fig. 81 tells a story which is substantially the foundation of the slender
plot of most modern scenic pantomimes preliminary to the bursting
forth from their chrysalides of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, and
company. A young girl, with the consent of her parents, has for some
time promised her hand to an honest youth. The old mother, in despite
of her word, has taken a caprice to give her daughter to another suitor.
The father, though much under the sway of his spouse, is in his heart
desirous to keep his engagement, and has called in the notary to draw
the contract. At this moment the scene begins, the actors of which, for
greater perspicuity and brevity, may be provided with stage names as
follows:

Fig. 81.—Disturbance at signing of Neapolitan marriage contract.

Fig. 82.

Cecca tries to pick a quarrel with Peppino, and declares that the contract
shall not be signed. He reminds her of her promise, and accuses
her of breach of faith. In her passion she calls on her daughter to
repudiate
her lover, and casting her arms around her, commands her to
make the sign of breaking off friendship—”scocchiare“—which, she
has herself made to Peppino, and which consists in extending the hand
[pg 299]
with the joined ends of finger and thumb before described, see Fig. 66,
and then separating them, thus breaking the union. This the latter
reluctantly
pretends to do with one hand, yet with the other, which is concealed
from her irate mother’s sight, shows her constancy by continuing
with emphatic pressure the sign of love. According to the gesture
vocabulary,
on the sign scocchiare being made to a person who is willing to
accept the breach of former affection, he replies in the same manner, or
still more forcibly by inserting the index of the other hand between
the index and thumb of the first, thus showing the separation by the
presence of a material obstacle. Simply refraining from holding out the
hand in any responsive gesture is sufficient to indicate that the breach
is not accepted, but that the party addressed desires to continue in
friendship instead of resolving into enmity. This weak and inactive
negative, however, does not suit Peppino’s vivacity, who, placing his
left hand on his bosom, makes, with his right, one of the signs for
emphatic
negation. This consists of the palm turned to the person addressed
with the index somewhat extended and separated from the other
fingers, the whole hand being oscillated from right to left.
This gesture appears on ancient Greek vases, and is compound,
the index being demonstrative and the negation
shown by the horizontal oscillation, the whole being translatable
as, “That thing I want not, won’t have, reject.”
The sign is virtually the same as that made by Arapaho
and Cheyenne Indians (see Extracts from Dictionary,
page 440, infra.). The conception of oscillation to
show negation also appears with different execution in the
sign of the Jicarilla Apaches and the Pai-Utes, Fig. 82.
The same sign is reported from Japan, in the same sense.

Tonno, in hopes that the quarrel is definitive, to do his part in stopping
the ceremony, proceeds to blow out the three lighted candles, which
are an important traditional feature of the rite. The good old man
Pasquale,
with his hands extended, raised in surprised displeasure and
directed toward the insolent youth, stops his attempt. The veteran
notary, familiar with such quarrels in his experience, smiles at this one,
and, continuing in his quiet attitude, extends his right hand placidly to
Peppino with the sign of adagio, before described, see Fig. 68,
advising
him not to get excited, but to persist quietly, and all would be well.

Fig. 83.—Coming home of Neapolitan bride.

Fig. 83 portrays the first entrance of a bride to her husband’s house.
She comes in with a tender and languid mien, her pendent arms indicating
soft yielding, and the right hand loosely holds a handkerchief, ready
to apply in case of overpowering emotion. She is, or feigns to be, so
timid and embarrassed as to require support by the arm of a friend who
introduces her. She is followed by a male friend of the family, whose
joyful face is turned toward supposed by-standers, right hand pointing
to the new acquisition, while with his left he makes the sign of horns
before described, see Fig. 79, which in this connection is to wish
[pg 300]
prosperity and avert misfortune, and is equivalent to the words in the
Neapolitan
dialect, “Mal’uocchie non nce pozzano“—may evil eyes never have
power over her.

Fig. 84.

The female confidant, who supports and guides her embarrassed friend
with her right arm, brings her left hand into the sign of
beautiful—”See
what a beauty she is!” This sign is made by the thumb and index open
and severally lightly touching each side of the lower cheek, the other
fingers open. It is given on a larger scale and slightly varied in Fig. 84,
evidently referring to a fat and rounded visage. Almost
the same sign is made by the Ojibwas of Lake Superior,
and a mere variant of it is made by the Dakotas—stroking
the cheeks alternately down to the tip
of the chin with the palm or surface of the extended fingers.

Fig. 85.

The mother-in-law greets the bride by making the
sign mano in fica with her right hand. This sign, made
with the hand clenched and the point of the thumb between
and projecting beyond the fore and middle fingers,
is more distinctly shown in Fig. 85. It has a very
ancient origin, being found on Greek antiques that have escaped the
destruction of time, more particularly in bronzes, and undoubtedly refers
to the pudendum muliebre. It is used offensively and ironically, but
also—which is doubtless the case in this instance—as
an invocation or prayer against evil, being more
forcible than the horn-shaped gesture before described.
With this sign the Indian sign for female,
see Fig. 132, page 357, infra, may be compared.

The mother-in-law also places her left hand hollowed
in front of her abdomen, drawing with it her
gown slightly forward, thereby making a pantomimic
representation of the state in which “women wish to be who love
their lords”; the idea being plainly an expressed hope that the household
will be blessed with a new generation.

Fig. 86.

Fig. 87.

Next to her is a hunchback, who is present as a familiar clown or
merrymaker, and dances and laughs to please the company,
at the same time snapping his fingers. Two other
illustrations of this action, the middle finger in one leaving
and in the other having left the thumb and passed to its
base, are seen in Figs. 86, 87. This gesture by itself has,
like others mentioned, a great variety of significations,
but here means joy and acclamation. It is
frequently used among us for subdued applause,
less violent than clapping the two
hands, but still oftener to express negation
with disdain, and also carelessness. Both these
uses of it are common in Naples, and appear in Etruscan vases and
[pg 301]
Pompeian paintings, as well as in the classic authors. The significance of
the action in the hand of the contemporary statue of Sardanapalus at
Anchiale
is clearly worthlessness, as shown by the inscription in Assyrian,
“Sardanapalus, the son of Anacyndaraxes, built in one day Anchiale
and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play; the rest is not worth that!”

Fig. 88.

The bridegroom has left his mother to do the honors to the bride, and
himself attends to the rest of the company, inviting one of them to
drink some wine by a sign, enlarged in Fig. 88, which is not merely
pointing to the mouth with the thumb, but the hand with
the incurved fingers represents the body of the common
glass flask which the Neapolitans use, the extended
thumb being its neck; the invitation is therefore
specially to drink wine. The guest, however,
responds by a very obvious gesture that he don’t wish
anything to drink, but he would like to eat some
macaroni, the fingers being disposed as if handling
that comestible in the fashion of vulgar Italians. If
the idea were only to eat generally, it would have
been expressed by the fingers and thumb united in a point and moved
several times near and toward the mouth, not raised above it, as is
necessary for suspending the strings of macaroni.

Fig. 89.—Quarrel between Neapolitan women.

In Fig. 89 the female in the left of the group is much disgusted at
seeing one of her former acquaintances, who has met with good fortune,
promenade in a fine costume with her husband. Overcome with jealousy,
she spreads out her dress derisively on both sides, in imitation of the
hoop-skirts once worn by women of rank, as if to say “So you are playing
the great lady!” The insulted woman, in resentment, makes with both
hands, for double effect, the sign of horns, before described, which in
this
case is done obviously in menace and imprecation. The husband is a
pacific fellow who is not willing to get into a woman’s quarrel, and is
very
easily held back by a woman and small boy who happen to join the group.
He contents himself with pretending to be in a great passion and biting
his finger, which gesture may be collated with the emotional clinching
of the teeth and biting the lips in anger, common to all mankind.

Fig. 90.—The cheating Neapolitan chestnut huckster.

Fig. 91.

In Fig. 90 a contadina, or woman from the country, who has come to
the city to sell eggs (shown to be such by her head-dress, and the form
of the basket which she has deposited on the ground), accosts a vender
of roast chestnuts and asks for a measure of them. The chestnut
huckster says they are very fine and asks a price beyond that of the
market; but a boy sees that the rustic woman is not sharp in worldly
matters
and desires to warn her against the cheat. He therefore, at the moment
when he can catch her eye, pretending to lean upon his basket, and
moving thus a little behind the huckster, so as not to be seen, points him
out with his index finger, and lays his left forefinger under his eye,
pulling
down the skin slightly, so as to deform the regularity of the lower
[pg 302]
eyelid. This is a warning against a cheat, shown more clearly in
Fig. 91.
This sign primarily indicates a squinting person, and metaphorically one
whose looks cannot be trusted, even as in a squinting
person you cannot be certain in which direction he is looking.

Fig. 92.

Fig. 92 shows the extremities of the index and thumb
closely joined in form of a cone, and turned down, the
other fingers held at pleasure, and the hand and arm
advanced to the point and held steady. This signifies
justice, a just person, that which is just and right. The
same sign may denote friendship, a menace, which specifically is that of
being brought to justice, and snuff, i.e. powdered tobacco; but the
expression of the countenance and the circumstance of
the use of the sign determine these distinctions.
Its origin is clearly the balance or emblem of
justice, the office of which consists in ascertaining
physical weight, and thence comes the moral
idea of distinguishing clearly what is just and
accurate and what is not. The hand is presented in the usual manner
of holding the balance to weigh articles.

Fig. 93.

Fig. 94.

Fig. 95.

Fig. 93 signifies little, small, both as regards the size of physical
objects or figuratively, as of a small degree of talent, affection, or the
like. It is made either by the point of
the thumb placed under the end
of the index (a), or vice versa (b),
and the other fingers held at will,
but separated from those mentioned. The intention is to exhibit a small
portion either of the thumb
or index separated from the rest of the hand. The gesture is found
in Herculanean bronzes, with obviously the same signification.
The signs made by some tribes of Indians for the
same conception are very similar, as is seen by Figs. 94 and 95.

Fig. 96.

Fig. 96 is simply the index extended by itself. The other
fingers are generally bent inwards and pressed down by the
thumb, as mentioned by Quintilian, but that is not necessary
to the gesture if the forefinger is distinctly separated
from the rest. It is most commonly used for indication,
pointing out, as it is over all the world, from which comes the
name index, applied by the Romans as also by us, to the
forefinger. In different relations to the several parts of
the body and arm positions it has many significations, e.g.,
attention, meditation, derision, silence, number, and demonstration in
general.

Fig. 97.

Fig. 97 represents the head of a jackass, the thumbs being the ears,
and the separation of the little from the third fingers showing the jaws.

Fig. 98.

Fig. 98 is intended to portray the head of the same animal in a front
view, the hands being laid upon each other, with thumbs extending
on each side to represent the ears. In each case the thumbs are
generally moved forward and back, in the manner of the quadruped, which,
without
much apparent reason, has been selected as the
emblem of stupidity. The sign, therefore, means stupid, fool.
Another mode of executing the same conception—the ears of an ass—is shown
in Fig. 99, where the end of the thumb is applied to the ear or temple and
the hand is wagged up and down. Whether the ancient
Greeks had the same low opinion of the ass as is now entertained is not
clear, but they regarded long ears with derision, and Apollo,
as a punishment to Midas for his foolish decision, bestowed on him the
lengthy ornaments of the patient beast.

Fig. 99.

Fig. 100.

Fig. 100 is the fingers elongated and united in a point, turned upwards.
The hand is raised slightly toward the face of the gesturer and shaken a
few times in the direction of the person conversed with. This is
inquiry, not a mere interrogative, but to express that the person
addressed has not been clearly understood, perhaps
from the vagueness or diffusiveness of his expressions.
The idea appears to suggest the
gathering of his thoughts together into one
distinct expression, or to be pointed in what he wishes to say.

Fig. 101.

Crafty, deceitful, Fig. 101. The little fingers
of both reversed hands are hooked together,
the others open but slightly curved,
and, with the hands, moved several times to the right and left. The gesture
is intended to represent a crab and the tortuous movements of the
crustacean, which are likened to those of a man who cannot be depended
on in his walk through life. He is not straight.

Fig. 102.

Fig. 103.

Figs. 102 and 103 are different positions of the hand in which the
approximating
thumb and forefinger form a circle. This is the direst insult
that can be given. The amiable canon De Jorio only hints at its
special significance, but it may be evident to persons aware of a practice
disgraceful to Italy. It is very ancient.

Fig. 104.

Fig. 104 is easily recognized as a request or command to be silent,
either on the occasion or on the subject. The mouth, supposed to be
forcibly closed, prevents speaking, and the natural gesture, as might be
supposed, is historically ancient, but the instance, frequently adduced
from the attitude of the god Harpokrates, whose finger is on his lips, is
an error. The Egyptian hieroglyphists, notably in the designation of
Horus, their dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for “child.” It
has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture
implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but
inability to speak—in-fans. This conjecture, however,
was only made to explain the blunder of the Greeks,
who saw in the hand placed connected with the mouth in the hieroglyph
of Horus (the) son, “Hor-(p)-chrot,” the gesture familiar to
themselves of a finger on the lips to express “silence,” and so, mistaking
both the name and the characterization, invented the God of
Silence, Harpokrates. A careful examination of all the linear hieroglyphs
given by Champollion (Dictionnaire Egyptien) shows that the
finger or the hand to the mouth of an adult (whose posture is always
distinct from that of a child) is always in connection with the positive
ideas of voice, mouth, speech, writing, eating, drinking, &c., and never
with the negative idea of silence. The special character for child,
Fig. 105, always has the above-mentioned part of the sign
with reference to nourishment from the breast.

Fig. 105.

Fig. 106 is a forcible negation. The outer ends of
the fingers united in a point under the chin
are violently thrust forward. This is the rejection
of an idea or proposition, the same conception being executed in several
different modes by the North American Indians.

Fig. 106.

Fig. 107 signifies hunger, and is made by extending the thumb and
index under the open mouth and turning them horizontally and vertically
several times. The idea is emptiness and desire to be filled. It is
also expressed by beating the ribs with the flat hands, to show that the
sides meet or are weak for the want of something between them.

Fig. 107.

Fig. 108 is made in mocking and ridicule. The open and oscillating
[pg 305]
hand touches the point of the nose with that of the thumb. It has the
particular sense of stigmatizing the person addressed or in question as a
dupe. A credulous person is generally imagined with a gaping mouth and
staring eyes, and as thrusting forward his face, with pendant chin, so that
the nose is well advanced and therefore most prominent in the profile. A
dupe is therefore called naso lungo or long-nose, and with Italian
writers “restare con
un palmo di naso“—to be left with a palm’s length of nose—means
to have met with loss, injury, or disappointment.

Fig. 108.

The thumb stroking the forehead from one side to the other, Fig. 109,
is a natural sign of fatigue, and of the physical toil that produces
fatigue. The wiping off of perspiration is obviously
indicated. This gesture is often used ironically.

Fig. 109.

As a dupe was shown above, now the duper is signified, by
Fig. 110. The gesture is to
place the fingers between the
cravat and the neck and rub
the latter with the back of the hand. The idea is that the deceit
is put within the cravat, taken in and down, similar to our phrase to
“swallow” a false and deceitful story, and a “cram” is also an English
slang word for an incredible lie. The conception of the slang term is
nearly related to that of the Neapolitan sign, viz., the artificial
enlargement of the œsophagus of the person victimized or on whom imposition
is attempted to be practiced, which is necessary to take it down.

Fig. 110.

Fig. 111 shows the ends of the index and
thumb stroking the two sides of the nose from
base to point. This means astute, attentive, ready.
Sharpness of the nasal organ is popularly associated
with subtlety and finesse. The old Romans
by homo emunctæ naris meant an acute
man attentive to his interests. The sign is often
used in a bad sense, then signifying too sharp to
be trusted.

Fig. 111.

This somewhat lengthy but yet only partial list of Neapolitan gesture-signs
must conclude with one common throughout Italy, and also among us with a
somewhat different signification, yet perhaps also derived from classic
times. To
[pg 306]
express suspicion of a person the forefinger of the right hand is placed
upon the side of the nose. It means tainted, not sound. It is used to
give an unfavorable report of a person inquired of and to warn against such.

The Chinese, though ready in gesticulation and divided by dialects,
do not appear to make general use of a systematic sign language, but
they adopt an expedient rendered possible by the peculiarity of their
written characters, with which a large proportion of their adults are
acquainted, and which are common in form to the whole empire. The inhabitants
of different provinces when meeting, and being unable to converse
orally, do not try to do so, but write the characters of the words
upon the ground or trace them on the palm of the hand or in the air.
Those written characters each represent words in the same manner as
do the Arabic or Roman numerals, which are the same to Italians, Germans,
French, and English, and therefore intelligible, but if expressed
in sound or written in full by the alphabet, would not be mutually
understood. This device of the Chinese was with less apparent necessity
resorted to in the writer’s personal knowledge between a Hungarian
who could talk Latin, and a then recent graduate from college who could
also do so to some extent, but their pronunciation was so different as to
occasion constant difficulty, so they both wrote the words on paper,
instead of attempting to speak them.

The efforts at intercommunication of all savage and barbarian tribes,
when brought into contact with other bodies of men not speaking an
oral language common to both, and especially when uncivilized inhabitants
of the same territory are separated by many linguistic divisions,
should in theory resemble the devices of the North American Indians.
They are not shown by published works to prevail in the Eastern hemisphere
to the same extent and in the same manner as in North America.
It is, however, probable that they exist in many localities, though not
reported, and also that some of them survive after partial or even high
civilization has been attained, and after changed environment has rendered
their systematic employment unnecessary. Such signs may be,
first, unconnected with existing oral language, and used in place of it;
second, used to explain or accentuate the words of ordinary speech, or
third, they may consist of gestures, emotional or not, which are only
noticed in oratory or impassioned conversation, being, possibly, survivals
of a former gesture language.

From correspondence instituted it may be expected that a considerable
collection of signs will be obtained from West and South Africa,
India, Arabia, Turkey, the Fiji Islands, Sumatra, Madagascar, Ceylon,
and especially from Australia, where the conditions are similar in many
respects to those prevailing in North America prior to the Columbian
discovery.
In the Aborigines of Victoria, Melbourne, 1878, by R. Brough
Smythe, the author makes the following curious remarks: “It is believed
that they have several signs, known only to themselves, or to those
[pg 307]
among the whites who have had intercourse with them for lengthened
periods, which convey information readily and accurately. Indeed, because
of their use of signs, it is the firm belief of many (some uneducated
and some educated) that the natives of Australia are acquainted with
the secrets of Freemasonry.”

In the Report of the cruise of the United States Revenue steamer
Corwin in the Arctic Ocean, Washington, 1881, it appears that the
Innuits
of the northwestern extremity of America use signs continually.
Captain Hooper, commanding that steamer, is reported by Mr. Petroff
to have found that the natives of Nunivak Island, on the American side,
below Behring Strait, trade by signs with those of the Asiatic coast,
whose language is different. Humboldt in his journeyings among the
Indians of the Orinoco, where many small isolated tribes spoke languages
not understood by any other, found the language of signs in full operation.
Spix and Martius give a similar account of the Puris and Coroados of Brazil.

It is not necessary to enlarge under the present heading upon the
signs of deaf-mutes, except to show the intimate relation between sign
language as practiced by them and the gesture signs, which, even if not
“natural,” are intelligible to the most widely separated of mankind. A
Sandwich Islander, a Chinese, and the Africans from the slaver Amistad
have, in published instances, visited our deaf-mute institutions
with the same result of free and pleasurable intercourse; and an English
deaf-mute had no difficulty in conversing with Laplanders. It appears,
also, on the authority of Sibscota, whose treatise was published
in 1670, that Cornelius Haga, ambassador of the United Provinces to
the Sublime Porte, found the Sultan’s mutes to have established a language
among themselves in which they could discourse with a speaking
interpreter, a degree of ingenuity interfering with the object of their
selection as slaves unable to repeat conversation. A curious instance has
also been reported to the writer of operatives in a large mill where the
constant rattling of the machinery rendered them practically deaf during
the hours of work and where an original system of gestures was adopted.

In connection with the late international convention, at Milan, of persons
interested in the instruction of deaf-mutes which, in the enthusiasm
of the members for the new system of artificial articulate speech, made
war upon all gesture-signs, it is curious that such prohibition of gesture
should be urged regarding mutes when it was prevalent to so great an
extent among the speaking people of the country where the convention
was held, and when the advocates of it were themselves so dependent
on gestures to assist their own oratory if not their ordinary conversation.
Artificial articulation surely needs the aid of significant gestures
more, when in the highest perfection to which it can attain, than does oral
speech in its own high development. The use of artificial speech is also
necessarily confined to the oral language acquired by the interlocutors
and throws away the advantage of universality possessed by signs.

USE BY MODERN ACTORS AND ORATORS.

Less of practical value can be learned of sign language, considered as
a system, from the study of gestures of actors and orators than would
appear without reflection. The pantomimist who uses no words whatever
is obliged to avail himself of every natural or imagined connection
between thought and gesture, and, depending wholly on the latter,
makes himself intelligible. On the stage and the rostrum words are
the main reliance, and gestures generally serve for rhythmic movement
and to display personal grace. At the most they give the appropriate
representation of the general idea expressed by the words, but do not
attempt to indicate the idea itself. An instance is recorded of the
addition
of significance to gesture when it is employed by the gesturer,
himself silent, to accompany words used by another. Livius Andronicus,
being hoarse, obtained permission to have his part sung by
another actor while he continued to make the gestures, and he did so
with much greater effect than before, as Livy, the historian, explains,
because he was not impeded by the exertion of the voice; but the correct
explanation probably is, because his attention was directed to ideas,
not mere words.

GESTURES OF ACTORS.

To look at the performance of a play through thick glass or with closed
ears has much the same absurd effect that is produced by also stopping
the ears while at a ball and watching the apparently objectless capering
of the dancers, without the aid of musical accompaniment. Diderot,
in his Lettre sur les sourds muets, gives his experience as follows:

“I used frequently to attend the theater and I knew by heart most
of our good plays. Whenever I wished to criticise the movements and
gestures of the actors I went to the third tier of boxes, for the further
I was from them the better I was situated for this purpose. As soon
as the curtain rose, and the moment came when the other spectators
disposed themselves to listen, I put my fingers into my ears, not without
causing some surprise among those who surrounded me, who, not
understanding, almost regarded me as a crazy man who had come to
the play only not to hear it. I was very little embarrassed by their
comments, however, and obstinately kept my ears closed as long as the
action and gestures of the players seemed to me to accord with the discourse
which I recollected. I listened only when I failed to see the
appropriateness of the gestures.. There are few actors capable
of sustaining such a test, and the details into which I could enter
would be mortifying to most of them.”

It will be noticed that Diderot made this test with regard to the
appropriate gestural representation of plays that he knew by heart, but if
he had been entirely without any knowledge of the plot, the difficulty in
his comprehending it from gestures alone would have been enormously
increased. When many admirers of Ristori, who were wholly
[pg 309]
unacquainted with the language in which her words were delivered, declared
that her gesture and expression were so perfect that they understood
every sentence, it is to be doubted if they would have been so delighted
if they had not been thoroughly familiar with the plots of Queen Elizabeth
and Mary Stuart. This view is confirmed by the case of a deaf-mute,
told to the writer by Professor Fay, who had prepared to enjoy
Ristori’s acting by reading in advance the advertised play, but on his
reaching the theater another play was substituted and he could derive no
idea from its presentation. The experience of the present writer is that
he could gain very little meaning in detail out of the performance at a
Chinese theater, where there is much more true pantomime than in the
European, without a general notion of the subject as conveyed from
time to time by an interpreter. A crucial test on this subject was made
at the representation at Washington, in April, 1881, of Frou-Frou by
Sarah Bernhardt and the excellent French company supporting her.
Several persons of special intelligence and familiar with theatrical
performances, but who did not understand spoken French, and had not heard
or read the play before or even seen an abstract of it, paid close
attention to ascertain what they could learn of the plot and incidents from
the gestures alone. This could be determined in the special play the
more certainly as it is not founded on historic events or any known
facts. The result was that from the entrance of the heroine during the
first scene in a peacock-blue riding habit to her death in a black
walking-suit,
three hours or five acts later, none of the students formed any distinct
conception of the plot. This want of apprehension extended even
to uncertainty whether Gilberte was married or not; that is, whether
her adventures were those of a disobedient daughter or a faithless wife,
and, if married, which of the half dozen male personages was her husband.
There were gestures enough, indeed rather a profusion of them,
and they were thoroughly appropriate to the words (when those were
understood) in which fun, distress, rage, and other emotions were
expressed, but in no cases did they interpret the motive for those
emotions.
They were the dressing for the words of the actors as the superb
millinery was that of their persons, and perhaps acted as varnish to
bring out dialogues and soliloquies in heightened effect. But though
varnish can bring into plainer view dull or faded characters, it cannot
introduce into them significance where none before existed. The simple
fact was that the gestures of the most famed histrionic school, the
Comédie Française, were not significant, far less self-interpreting, and
though praised as the perfection of art, have diverged widely from
nature. It thus appears that the absence of absolute self-interpretation
by gesture is by no means confined to the lower grade of actors, such as
are criticised in the old lines:

Without relying wholly upon the facts above mentioned, it will be
admitted upon reflection that however numerous and correct may be
the actually significant gestures made by a great actor in the
representation
of his part, they must be in small proportion to the number of
gestures not at all significant, and which are no less necessary to give
to his declamation precision, grace, and force. Significant gestures on
the stage may be regarded in the nature of high seasoning and
ornamentation, which by undue use defeat their object and create disgust.
Histrionic perfection is, indeed, more shown in the slight shades of
movement of the head, glances of the eye, and poises of the body than
in violent attitudes; but these slight movements are wholly unintelligible
without the words uttered with them. Even in the expression of
strong emotion the same gesture will apply to many and utterly diverse
conditions of fact. The greatest actor in telling that his father was
dead can convey his grief with a shade of difference from that which
he would use if saying that his wife had run away, his son been arrested
for murder, or his house burned down; but that shade would not without
words inform any person, ignorant of the supposed event, which of
the four misfortunes had occurred. A true sign language, however,
would fully express the exact circumstances, either with or without any
exhibition of the general emotion appropriate to them.

Even among the best sign-talkers, whether Indian or deaf-mute, it is
necessary to establish some rapport relating to theme or
subject-matter,
since many gestures, as indeed is the case in a less degree with spoken
words, have widely different significations, according to the object of
their exhibition, as well as the context. Panurge (Pantagruel, Book
III, ch. xix) hits the truth upon this point, however ungallant in his
application of it to the fair sex. He is desirous to consult a dumb man,
but says it would be useless to apply to a woman, for “whatever it be
that they see they do always represent unto their fancies, and imagine
that it hath some relation to love. Whatever signs, shows, or gestures
we shall make, or whatever our behavior, carriage, or demeanor
shall happen to be in their view and presence, they will interpret the
whole in reference to androgynation.” A story is told to the same point
by Guevara, in his fabulous life of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. A
young Roman gentleman encountering at the foot of Mount Celion a
beautiful Latin lady, who from her very cradle had been deaf and dumb,
asked her in gesture what senators in her descent from the top of the
hill she had met with, going up thither. She straightway imagined that
he had fallen in love with her and was eloquently proposing marriage,
whereupon she at once threw herself into his arms in acceptance. The
experience of travelers on the Plains is to the same general effect, that
signs commonly used to men are understood by women in a sense so
different as to occasion embarrassment. So necessary was it to strike
the mental key-note of the spectators by adapting their minds to time,
place, and circumstance, that even in the palmiest days of pantomime
[pg 311]
it was customary for the crier to give some short preliminary explanation
of what was to be acted, which advantage is now retained by our
play-bills, always more specific when the performance is in a foreign
language, unless, indeed, the management is interested in the sale of
librettos.

GESTURES OF OUR PUBLIC SPEAKERS.

If the scenic gestures are so seldom significant, those appropriate to
oratory are of course still less so. They require energy, variety, and
precision,
but also a degree of simplicity which is incompatible with the needs
of sign language. As regards imitation, they are restrained within narrow
bounds and are equally suited to a great variety of sentiments. Among the
admirable illustrations in Austin’s Chironomia of gestures
applicable to
the several passages in Gay’s “Miser and Plutus” one is given for “But
virtue’s sold” which is perfectly appropriate, but is not in the slightest
degree suggestive either of virtue or of the transaction of sale. It could
be used for an indefinite number of thoughts or objects which properly
excited abhorrence, and therefore without the words gives no special
interpretation.
Oratorical delivery demands general grace—cannot rely
upon the emotions of the moment for spontaneous appropriateness, and
therefore requires preliminary study and practice, such as are applied to
dancing and fencing with a similar object; indeed, accomplishment in
both dancing and fencing has been recommended as of use to all orators.
In reference to this subject a quotation from Lord Chesterfield’s letters
is in place: “I knew a young man, who, being just elected a member of
Parliament, was laughed at for being discovered, through the key-hole
of his chamber door, speaking to himself in the glass and forming his
looks and gestures. I could not join in that laugh, but, on the contrary,
thought him much wiser than those that laughed at him, for he knew
the importance of those little graces in a public assembly and they did not.”

OUR INDIAN CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO SIGN LANGUAGE.

In no other thoroughly explored part of the world has there been
found spread over so large a space so small a number of individuals
divided by so many linguistic and dialectic boundaries as in North
America. Many wholly distinct tongues have for an indefinitely long time
been confined to a few scores of speakers, verbally incomprehensible to
all others on the face of the earth who did not, from some rarely operating
motive, laboriously acquire their language. Even when the American
race, so styled, flourished in the greatest population of which we
have any evidence (at least according to the published views of the
present writer, which seem to have been generally accepted), the immense
number of languages and dialects still preserved, or known by
[pg 312]
early recorded fragments to have once existed, so subdivided it that
only the dwellers in a very few villages could talk together with ease.
They were all interdistributed among unresponsive vernaculars, each to
the other being bar-bar-ous in every meaning of the term. The number
of known stocks or families of Indian languages within the territory of
the United States amounts now to sixty-five, and these differ among
themselves as radically as each differs from the Hebrew, Chinese, or
English. In each of these linguistic families there are several, sometimes
as many as twenty, separate languages, which also differ from
each other as much as do the English, French, German, and Persian
divisions of the Aryan linguistic stock.

The use of gesture-signs, continued, if not originating, in necessity
for communication with the outer world, became entribally convenient
from the habits of hunters, the main occupation of all savages, depending
largely upon stealthy approach to game, and from the sole form of
their military tactics—to surprise an enemy. In the still expanse of
virgin forests, and especially in the boundless solitudes of the great
plains, a slight sound can be heard over a large area, that of the human
voice being from its rarity the most startling, so that it is now, as
it probably has been for centuries, a common precaution for members of a
hunting or war party not to speak together when on such expeditions,
communicating exclusively by signs. The acquired habit also exhibits
itself not only in formal oratory and in impassioned or emphatic
conversation, but also as a picturesque accompaniment to ordinary social
talk. Hon. Lewis H. Morgan mentions in a letter to this writer that he
found a silent but happy family composed of an Atsina (commonly
called Gros Ventre of the Prairie) woman, who had been married two
years to a Frenchman, during which time they had neither of them attempted
to learn each other’s language; but the husband having taken
kindly to the language of signs, they conversed together by that means
with great contentment. It is also often resorted to in mere laziness,
one gesture saving many words. The gracefulness, ingenuity, and apparent
spontaneity of the greater part of the signs can never be realized
until actually witnessed, and their beauty is much heightened by the
free play to which the arms of these people are accustomed, and the small
and well-shaped hands for which they are remarkable. Among them
can seldom be noticed in literal fact—

which the Bastard metaphorically condemns in King John.

The conditions upon which the survival of sign language among the
Indians has depended is well shown by those attending its discontinuance
among certain tribes.

Many instances are known of the discontinuance of gesture speech
with no development in the native language of the gesturers, but from
the invention for intercommunication of one used in common. The
[pg 313]
Kalapuyas of Southern Oregon until recently used a sign language, but
have gradually adopted for foreign intercourse the composite tongue,
commonly called the Tsinuk or Chinook jargon, which probably arose
for trade purposes on the Columbia River before the advent of Europeans,
founded on the Tsinuk, Tsihali, Nutka, &c., but now enriched by
English and French terms, and have nearly forgotten their old signs.
The prevalence of this mongrel speech, originating in the same causes
that produced the pigeon-English or lingua-franca of the Orient,
explains the marked scantiness of sign language among the tribes of the
Northwest coast.

Where the Chinook jargon has not extended on the coast to the North,
the Russian language commences, used in the same manner, but it has not
reached so deeply into the interior of the continent as the Chinook, which
has been largely adopted within the region bounded by the eastern line
of Oregon and Washington, and has become known even to the Pai-Utes
of Nevada. The latter, however, while using it with the Oregonian
tribes to their west and north, still keep up sign language for
communication with the Banaks, who have not become so familiar with the
Chinook. The Alaskan tribes on the coast also used signs not more than
a generation ago, as is proved by the fact that some of the older men
can yet converse by this means with the natives of the interior, whom
they occasionally meet. Before the advent of the Russians the coast
tribes traded their dried fish and oil for the skins and paints of the
eastern tribes by visiting the latter, whom they did not allow to come to the
coast, and this trade was conducted mainly in sign language. The
Russians brought a better market, so the travel to the interior ceased,
and with it the necessity for the signs, which therefore gradually died
out, and are little known to the present generation on the coast, though
still continuing in the interior, where the inhabitants are divided by
dialects.

No explanation is needed for the disuse of a language of signs for the
special purpose now in question when the speech of surrounding civilization
is recognized as necessary or important to be acquired, and
gradually becomes known as the best common medium, even before it is
actually spoken by many individuals of the several tribes. When it
has become general, signs, as systematically employed before, gradually
fade away.

THEORIES ENTERTAINED RESPECTING INDIAN SIGNS.

In this paper it is not designed to pronounce upon theories, and certainly
none will be advocated in a spirit of dogmatism. The writer recognizes
that the subject in its novelty specially requires an objective
and not a subjective consideration. His duty is to collect the facts as
they are, and this as soon as possible, since every year will add to the
[pg 314]
confusion and difficulty. After the facts are established the theories
will take care of themselves, and their final enunciation will be in the
hands of men more competent than the writer will ever pretend to be,
although his knowledge, after careful study of all data attainable, may
be considerably increased. The mere collection of facts, however, cannot be
prosecuted to advantage without predetermined rules of judgment,
nor can they be classified at all without the adoption of some principle
which involves a tentative theory. More than a generation ago Baader
noticed that scientific observers only accumulated great masses of separate
facts without establishing more connection between them than an
arbitrary and imperfect classification; and before him Goethe complained
of the indisposition of students of nature to look upon the universe
as a whole. But since the great theory of evolution has been
brought to general notice no one will be satisfied at knowing a fact
without also trying to establish its relation to other facts. Therefore a
working hypothesis, which shall not be held to with tenacity, is not only
allowable but necessary. It is also important to examine with proper
respect the theories advanced by others. Some of these, suggested in
the few publications on the subject and also by correspondents, will be
mentioned.

NOT CORRELATED WITH MEAGERNESS OF LANGUAGE.

The story has been told by travelers in many parts of the world that
various languages cannot be clearly understood in the dark by their
possessors, using their mother tongue between themselves. The evidence
for this anywhere is suspicious; and when it is asserted, as it often has
been, in reference to some of the tribes of North American Indians, it
is absolutely false, and must be attributed to the error of travelers who,
ignorant of the dialect, never see the natives except when trying to
make themselves intelligible to their visitors by a practice which they
have found by experience to have been successful with strangers to
their tongue, or perhaps when they are guarding against being overheard by
others. Captain Burton, in his City of the Saints, specially
states that the Arapahos possess a very scanty vocabulary, pronounced
in a quasi-unintelligible way, and can hardly converse with one another
in the dark. The truth is that their vocabulary is by no means scanty,
and they do converse with each other with perfect freedom without any
gestures when they so please. The difficulty in speaking or understanding
their language is in the large number of guttural and interrupted
sounds which are not helped by external motions of the mouth and lips
in articulation, and the light gives little advantage to its comprehension
so far as concerns the vocal apparatus, which, in many languages,
can be seen as well as heard, as is proved by the modern deaf-mute
practice of artificial speech. The corresponding story that no white
man ever learned Arapaho is also false. A member of Frémont’s party
so long ago as 1842 spoke the language. Burton in the same connection
[pg 315]
gives a story “of a man who, being sent among the Cheyennes to qualify
himself for interpreting, returned in a week and proved his competency;
all he did, however, was to go through the usual pantomime with
a running accompaniment of grunts.” And he might as well have
omitted the grunts, for he obviously only used sign language. Lieutenant
Abert, in 1846-’47, made much more sensible remarks from his
actual observation than Captain Burton repeated at second-hand from
a Mormon met by him at Salt Lake. He said: “Some persons think
that it [the Cheyenne language] would be incomplete without gesture,
because the Indians use gestures constantly. But I have been assured
that the language is in itself capable of bodying forth any idea to which
one may wish to give utterance.”

In fact, individuals of those American tribes specially instanced in
these reports as unable to converse without gesture, often, in their
domestic abandon, wrap themselves up in robes or blankets with only
breathing holes before the nose, so that no part of the body is seen, and
chatter away for hours, telling long stories. If in daylight they thus
voluntarily deprive themselves of the possibility of making signs, it is
clear that their preference for talks around the fire at night is
explicable
by very natural reasons wholly distinct from the one attributed. The
inference, once carelessly made from the free use of gesture by some of
the Shoshonian stock, that their tongue was too meager for use without
signs, is refuted by the now ascertained fact that their vocabulary is
remarkably copious and their parts of speech better differentiated than
those of many people on whom no such stigma has been affixed. The
proof of this was seen in the writer’s experience, when Ouray, the head
chief of the Utes, was at Washington, in the early part of 1880, and
after an interview with the Secretary of the Interior made report of it
to the rest of the delegation who had not been present. He spoke without
pause in his own language for nearly an hour, in a monotone and
without a single gesture. The reason for this depressed manner was
undoubtedly because he was very sad at the result, involving loss of
land and change of home; but the fact remains that full information
was communicated on a complicated subject without the aid of a manual
sign, and also without even such change of inflection of voice as is
common among Europeans. All theories based upon the supposed poverty
of American languages must be abandoned.

The grievous accusation against foreign people that they have no
intelligible language is venerable and general. With the Greeks the
term αγλωσσος,
“tongueless,” was used synonymous with
βαρβαρος,
“barbarian” of all who were not Greek. The name “Slav,” assumed by a
grand division of the Aryan family, means “the speaker,” and is
contradistinguished from the other peoples of the world, such as the Germans,
who are called in Russian “Njemez,” that is, “speechless.” In
Isaiah (xxxiii, 19) the Assyrians are called a people “of a stammering
tongue, that one cannot understand.” The common use of the expression
[pg 316]
“tongueless” and “speechless,” so applied, has probably given rise,
as Tylor suggests, to the mythical stories of actually speechless tribes of
savages, and the considerations and instances above presented tend
to discredit the many other accounts of languages which are incomplete
without the help of gesture. The theory that sign language was in
whole or in chief the original utterance of mankind would be strongly
supported by conclusive evidence to the truth of such travelers’ tales,
but does not depend upon them. Nor, considering the immeasurable
period during which, in accordance with modern geologic views, man
has been on the earth, is it probable that any existing races can be found
in which speech has not obviated the absolute necessity for gesture in
communication among themselves. The signs survive for convenience,
used together with oral language, and for special employment when
language is unavailable.

A comparison sometimes drawn between sign language and that of
our Indians, founded on the statement of their common poverty in abstract
expressions, is not just to either. This paper will be written in
vain if it shall not suggest the capacities of gesture speech in that
regard, and a deeper study into Indian tongues has shown that they are by no
means so confined to the concrete as was once believed.

ITS ORIGIN FROM ONE TRIBE OR REGION.

Col. Richard I. Dodge, United States Army, whose long experience
among the Indians entitles his opinion to great respect, says in a letter:

“The embodiment of signs into a systematic language is, I believe,
confined to the Indians of the Plains. Contiguous tribes gain, here and
there, a greater or less knowledge of this language; these again extend
the knowledge, diminished and probably perverted, to their neighbors,
until almost all the Indian tribes of the United States east of the Sierras
have some little smattering of it. The Plains Indians believe the
Kiowas to have invented the sign language, and that by them its use was
communicated to other Plains tribes. If this is correct, analogy would
lead us to believe that those tribes most nearly in contact with the
Kiowas would use it most fluently and correctly, the knowledge becoming
less as the contact diminishes. Thus the Utes, though nearly contiguous
(in territory) to the Plains Indians, have only the merest ‘picked
up’ knowledge of this language, and never use it among themselves,
simply because, they and the Plains tribes having been, since the memory
of their oldest men, in a chronic state of war, there has been no social
contact.”

In another communication Colonel Dodge is still more definite:

“The Plains Indians themselves believe the sign language was invented
by the Kiowas, who holding an intermediate position between the
Comanches, Tonkaways, Lipans, and other inhabitants of the vast plains
of Texas, and the Pawnees, Sioux, Blackfeet, and other northern tribes,
were the general go-betweens, trading with all, making peace or war
[pg 317]
with or for any or all. It is certain that the Kiowas are at present
more universally proficient in this language than any other Plains tribe.
It is also certain that the tribes farthest away from them and with
whom they have least intercourse use it with least facility.”

Dr. William H. Corbusier, assistant surgeon United States Army, a
valued contributor, gives information as follows:

“The traditions of the Indians point toward the south as the direction
from which the sign language came. They refer to the time when
they did not use it; and each tribe say they learned it from those south
of them. The Comanches, who acquired it in Mexico, taught it to the
Arapahoes and Kiowas, and from these the Cheyennes learned it. The
Sioux say that they had no knowledge of it before they crossed the Missouri
River and came in contact with the Cheyennes, but have quite
recently learned it from them. It would thus appear that the Plains Indians
did not invent it, but finding it adapted to their wants adopted it
as a convenient means of communicating with those whose language
they did not understand, and it rapidly spread from tribe to tribe over
the Plains. As the sign language came from Mexico, the Spaniards
suggest themselves as the introducers of it on this continent. They are
adepts in the use of signs. Cortez as he marched through Mexico
would naturally have resorted to signs in communicating with the numerous
tribes with which he came in contract. Finding them very necessary,
one sign after another would suggest itself and be adopted by
Spaniards and Indians, and, as the former advanced, one tribe after
another would learn to use them. The Indians on the Plains, finding
them so useful, preserved them and each tribe modified them to suit
their convenience, but the signs remained essentially the same. The
Shoshones took the sign language with them as they moved northwest,
and a few of the Piutes may have learned it from them, but the Piutes
as a tribe do not use it.”

Mr. Ben. Clarke, the respected and skillful interpreter at Fort Reno
writes to the same general effect:

“The Cheyennes think that the sign language used by the Cheyennes,
Arapahoes, Ogallala and Brulé Sioux, Kiowas, and Comanches
originated with the Kiowas. It is a tradition that, many years ago,
when the Northern Indians were still without horses, the Kiowas
often raided among the Mexican Indians and captured droves of horses
on these trips. The Northern Plains Indians used to journey to them
and trade for horses. The Kiowas were already proficient in signs, and
the others learned from them. It was the journeying to the South that
finally divided the Cheyennes, making the Northern and Southern
Cheyennes. The same may be said of the Arapahoes. That the Kiowas
were the first sign talkers is only a tradition, but as a tribe they
are now considered to be the best or most thorough of the Plains Indians.”

Without engaging in any controversy on this subject it may be noticed
that the theory advanced supposes a comparatively recent origin of sign
[pg 318]
language from one tribe and one region, whereas, so far as can be traced,
the conditions favorable to a sign language existed very long ago and
were co-extensive with the territory of North America occupied by any
of the tribes. To avoid repetition reference is made to the discussion
below under the heads of universality, antiquity, identity, and permanence.
At this point it is only desired to call attention to the ancient
prevalence of signs among tribes such as the Iroquois, Wyandot, Ojibwa,
and at least three generations back among the Crees beyond our northern
boundary and the Mandans and other far-northern Dakotas, not
likely at that time to have had communication, even through intertribal
channels, with the Kaiowas. It is also difficult to understand how
their signs would have in that manner reached the Kutchin of Eastern
Alaska and the Kutine and Selish of British Columbia, who use signs
now. At the same time due consideration must be given to the great
change in the intercommunication of tribes, produced by the importation
of the horse, by which the habits of those Indians now, but not very
anciently, inhabiting the Plains were entirely changed. It is probable
that a sign language before existing became, contemporaneously with
nomadic life, cultivated and enriched.

As regards the Spanish origin suggested, there is ample evidence that
the Spaniards met signs in their early explorations north of and in the
northern parts of Mexico, and availed themselves of them but did not
introduce them. It is believed also that the elaborate picture writing
of Mexico was founded on gesture signs.

With reference to the statement that the Kaiowas are the most expert
sign talkers of the Plains, a number of authorities and correspondents
give the precedence to the Cheyennes, and an equal number to the
Arapahos. Probably the accident of meeting specially skillful talkers
in the several tribes visited influences such opinions.

The writer’s experience, both of the Utes and Pai-Utes, is different from
the above statement respecting the absence of signs among them. They
not only use their own signs but fully understand the difference between
the signs regarded as their own and those of the Kaiowas. On
special examination they understood some of the latter only as words
of a foreign language interpolated in an oral conversation would be
comprehended from the context, and others they would recognize as
having seen before among other tribes without adoption. The same is
true regarding the Brulé Sioux, as was clearly expressed by Medicine
Bull, their chief. The Pimas, Papagos, and Maricopas examined had a
copious sign language, yet were not familiar with many Kaiowa signs
presented to them.

Instead of referring to a time past when they did not use signs, the
Indians examined by the writer and by most of his correspondents
speak of a time when they and their fathers used it more freely and
copiously than at present, its disuse being from causes before mentioned.
It, however, may be true in some cases that a tribe, having been for a
long time in contact only with others the dialect of which was so nearly
[pg 319]
akin as to be comprehensible, or from any reason being separated from
those of a strange speech, discontinued sign language for a time, and then
upon migration or forced removal came into circumstances where it was
useful, and revived it. It is asserted that some of the Muskoki and the
Ponkas now in the Indian Territory never saw sign language until they
arrived there. Yet there is some evidence that the Muskoki did use
signs a century ago, and some of the Ponkas still remaining on their old
homes on the Missouri remember it and have given their knowledge to
an accurate correspondent, Rev. J.O. Dorsey, though for many years
they have not been in circumstances to require its employment.

Perhaps the most salutary criticism to be offered regarding the theory
would
be in the form of a query whether sign language has ever been invented
by any one body of people at any one time, and whether it is not
simply a phase in evolution, surviving and reviving when needed. Criticism
on this subject is made reluctantly, as it would be highly interesting
to determine that sign language on this continent came from a particular
stock, and to ascertain that stock. Such research would be similar
to that into the Aryan and Semitic sources to which many modern
languages have been traced backwards from existing varieties, and if
there appear to be existing varieties in signs their roots may still be
found to be sui generis. The possibility that the discrepancy
between
signs was formerly greater than at present will receive attention in
discussing
the distinction between the identity of signs and their common
use as an art. It is sufficient to add now that not only does the burden
of proof rest unfavorably upon the attempt to establish one parent
stock for sign language in North America, but it also comes under the
stigma now fastened upon the immemorial effort to name and locate the
original oral speech of man. It is only next in difficulty to the old
persistent
determination to decide upon the origin of the whole Indian
“race,” in which most peoples of antiquity in the eastern hemisphere,
including
the lost tribes of Israel, the Gipsies, and the Welsh, have figured
conspicuously as putative parents.

IS THE INDIAN SYSTEM SPECIAL AND PECULIAR?

This inquiry is closely connected with the last. If the system of signs
was invented here in the correct sense of that term, and by a known and
existing tribe, it is probable that it would not be found prevailing in
any important degree where the influence of the inventors could not
readily have penetrated. An affirmative answer to the question also
presupposes
the same answer to another question, viz, whether there is any
one uniform system among the North American Indians which can therefore
be compared with any other system. This last inquiry will be considered
in its order. In comparing the system as a whole with others,
the latter are naturally divided into signs of speaking men foreign to
America and those of deaf-mutes.

COMPARISONS WITH FOREIGN SIGNS.

The generalization of Tylor that “gesture language is substantially
the same among savage tribes all over the world,” interpreted by his
remarks in another connection, is understood as referring to their common
use of signs, and of signs formed on the same principles, but not
of precisely the same signs to express the same ideas. In this sense of
the generalization the result of the writer’s study not only sustains it,
but shows a surprising number of signs for the same idea which are
substantially
identical, not only among savage tribes, but among all peoples
that use gesture signs with any freedom. Men, in groping for a
mode of communication with each other, and using the same general
methods, have been under many varying conditions and circumstances
which have determined differently many conceptions and their semiotic
execution, but there have also been many of both which were similar.
Our Indians have no special superstition concerning the evil-eye like
the Italians, nor have they been long familiar with the jackass so as to
make him emblematical of stupidity; therefore signs for these concepts
are not cisatlantic, but even in this paper many are shown which are
substantially in common between our Indians and Italians. The large
collection already obtained, but not now published, shows many others
identical, not only with those of the Italians and the classic Greeks and
Romans, but of other peoples of the Old World, both savage and civilized.
The generic uniformity is obvious, while the occasion of specific
varieties can be readily understood.

COMPARISON WITH DEAF-MUTE SIGNS.

The Indians who have been shown over the civilized East have often
succeeded in holding intercourse, by means of their invention and
application
of principles in what may be called the voiceless mother utterance,
with white deaf-mutes, who surely have no semiotic code more
nearly connected with that attributed to the plain-roamers than is derived
from their common humanity. They showed the greatest pleasure
in meeting deaf-mutes, precisely as travelers in a foreign country are
rejoiced to meet persons speaking their language, with whom they can
hold direct communication without the tiresome and often suspected
medium of an interpreter. When they met together they were found to
pursue the same course as that noticed at the meeting of deaf-mutes
who were either not instructed in any methodical dialect or who had
received such instruction by different methods. They often disagreed
in the signs at first presented, but soon understood them, and finished
by adopting some in mutual compromise, which proved to be those most
strikingly appropriate, graceful, and convenient; but there still remained
in some cases a plurality of fitting signs for the same idea or
object. On one of the most interesting of these occasions, at the
Pennsylvania
Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, in 1873, it was remarked
that the signs of the deaf-mutes were much more readily understood
[pg 321]
by the Indians, who were Absaroka or Crows, Arapahos, and Cheyennes,
than were theirs by the deaf-mutes, and that the latter greatly excelled
in pantomimic effect. This need not be surprising when it is considered
that what is to the Indian a mere adjunct or accomplishment is to the
deaf-mute the natural mode of utterance, and that there is still greater
freedom from the trammel of translating words into action—instead of
acting the ideas themselves—when, the sound of words being unknown,
they remain still as they originated, but another kind of sign, even
after the art of reading is acquired, and do not become entities as with
us. The “action, action, action,” of Demosthenes is their only oratory,
not the mere heightening of it, however valuable.

On March 6, 1880, the writer had an interesting experience in taking
to the National Deaf-Mute College at Washington seven Utes (which
tribe, according to report, is unacquainted with sign language), among whom
were Augustin, Alejandro, Jakonik, Severio, and Wash. By the kind attention
of President Gallaudet a thorough test was given,
an equal number of deaf-mute pupils being placed in communication
with the Indians, alternating with them both in making individual signs
and in telling narratives in gesture, which were afterwards interpreted
in speech by the Ute interpreter and the officers of the college. Notes of
a few of them were taken, as follows:

Among the signs was that for squirrel, given by a deaf-mute. The
right hand was placed over and facing the left, and about four inches
above the latter, to show the height of the animal; then the two hands were
held edgewise and horizontally in front, about eight inches apart (showing
length); then imitating the grasping of a small object and
biting it rapidly with the incisors, the extended index was pointed
upward and forward (in a tree).

This was not understood, as the Utes have no sign for the tree squirrel,
the arboreal animal not being now found in their region.

Deaf-mute sign for jack-rabbit: The first two fingers of each hand
extended (the remaining fingers and thumbs closed) were placed on either
side of the head, pointing upward; then arching the hands, palm down,
quick, interrupted, jumping movements forward were made.

This was readily understood.

The signs for the following narrative were given by a deaf-mute:
When he was a boy he mounted a horse without either bridle or saddle,
and as the horse began to go he grasped him by the neck for support; a dog
flew at the horse, began to bark, when the rider was thrown off and
considerably hurt.

In this the sign for dog was as follows: Pass the arched hand
forward from the lower part of the face, to illustrate elongated nose and
mouth, then with both forefingers extended, remaining fingers and thumbs
closed, place them upon either side of the lower jaw, pointing upward,
to show lower canines, at the same time accompanying the gesture with
an expression of withdrawing the lips so as to show the teeth snarling;
[pg 322]
then, with the fingers of the right hand extended and separated throw
them quickly forward and slightly upward (voice or talking).

This sign was understood to mean bear, as that for dog is
different
among the Utes, i.e., by merely showing the height of the dog and
pushing the flat hand forward, finger-tips first.

Another deaf-mute gestured to tell that when he was a boy he went
to a melon-field, tapped several melons, finding them to be green or
unripe;
finally reaching a good one he took his knife, cut a slice, and ate
it. A man made his appearance on horseback, entered the patch on
foot, found the cut melon, and detecting the thief, threw the melon towards
him, hitting him in the back, whereupon he ran away crying. The
man mounted and rode off in an opposite direction.

All of these signs were readily comprehended, although some of the
Indians varied very slightly in their translation.

When the Indians were asked whether, if they (the deaf-mutes) were
to come to the Ute country they would be scalped, the answer was given,
“Nothing would be done to you; but we would be friends,” as follows:

The palm of the right hand was brushed toward the right over that
of the left (nothing), and the right hand made to grasp the palm of
the left,
thumbs extended over and lying upon the back of the opposing hand.

This was readily understood by the deaf-mutes.

Deaf-mute sign of milking a cow and drinking the milk was fully and
quickly understood.

The narrative of a boy going to an apple-tree, hunting for ripe fruit
and filling his pockets, being surprised by the owner and hit upon the
head with a stone, was much appreciated by the Indians and completely
understood.

A deaf-mute asked Alejandro how long it took him to come to Washington
from his country. He replied by placing the index and second
finger of the right hand astride the extended forefinger (others closed)
of the left; then elevating the fingers of the left hand (except thumb
and forefinger) back forward (three); then extending the fingers of
both
hands and bringing them to a point, thumbs resting on palmar sides and
extended, placing the hands in front of the body, the tips opposite the
opposing wrist, and about four inches apart; then, revolving them in
imitation of wheels, he elevated the extended forefinger of the left
hand (one); then placing the extended flat hands, thumbs touching,
the backs sloping downward towards the respective right and left
sides, like the roof of a house; then repeating the sign of wheels as in
the preceding, after which the left hand was extended before the body,
fingers toward the right, horizontal, palm down and slightly arched,
the right wrist held under it, the fingers extending upward beyond it,
and quickly and repeatedly snapped upward (smoke); the last three
signs
being covered—wagon—smoke, i.e., cars; then elevating four fingers
of the left hand (four).

Translation.—Traveled three days on horseback, one in a wagon, and
four in the cars.

The deaf-mutes understood all but the sign for wheel, which they
make as a large circle, with one hand.

Another example: A deaf-mute pretended to hunt something; found
birds, took his bow and arrows and killed several.

This was fully understood.

A narrative given by Alejandro was also understood by the deaf-mutes,
to the effect that he made search for deer, shot one with a gun,
killed and skinned it, and packed it up.

It will be observed that many of the above signs admitted of and were
expressed by pantomime, yet that was not the case with all that were
made. President Gallaudet made also some remarks in gesture which
were understood by the Indians, yet were not strictly pantomimic.

The opinion of all present at the test was that two intelligent mimes
would seldom fail of mutual understanding, their attention being
exclusively directed to the expression of thoughts by the means of
comprehension and reply equally possessed by both, without the mental
confusion of conventional sounds only intelligible to one.

A large collection has been made of natural deaf-mute signs, and also
of those more conventional, which have been collated with those of the
several tribes of Indians. Many of them show marked similarity, not
only in principle but often in detail.

The result of the studies so far as prosecuted is that what is called
the sign language of Indians is not, properly speaking, one
language,
but that it and the gesture systems of deaf-mutes and of all peoples
constitute together one language—the gesture speech of mankind—of
which each system is a dialect.

TO WHAT EXTENT PREVALENT AS A SYSTEM.

The assertion has been made by many writers, and is currently repeated
by Indian traders and some Army officers, that all the tribes of
North America have long had and still use a common and
identical sign
language, in which they can communicate freely without oral assistance.
Although this remarkable statement is at variance with some of the
principles of the formation and use of signs set forth by Dr. E.B. Tylor,
whose admirable chapters on gesture speech in his Researches into the
Early History of Mankind have in a great degree prompted the
present inquiries, that eminent authority did not see fit to discredit it.
He repeats the report as he received it, in the words that “the same
signs serve as a medium of converse from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of
Mexico.” Its truth or falsity can only be established by careful comparison
of lists or vocabularies of signs taken under test conditions at
widely different times and places. For this purpose lists have been
collated by the writer, taken in different parts of the country at several
dates, from the last century to the last month, comprising together several
thousand signs, many of them, however, being mere variants or
[pg 324]
synonyms for the same object or quality, some being repetitions of
others and some of small value from uncertainty in description or
authority, or both.

ONCE PROBABLY UNIVERSAL IN NORTH AMERICA.

The conclusion reached from the researches made is to the effect that
before the changes wrought by the Columbian discovery the use of gesture
illustrated the remark of Quintilian upon the same subject (l. xi, c. 3)
that “In tanta per omnes gentes nationesque linguæ diversitate hic mihi
omnium hominum communis sermo videatur.”

Quotations may be taken from some old authorities referring to widely
separated regions. The Indians of Tampa Bay, identified with the Timucua,
met by Cabeça de Vaca in 1528, were active in the use of signs,
and in his journeying for eight subsequent years, probably through
Texas and Mexico, he remarks that he passed through many dissimilar
tongues, but that he questioned and received the answers of the Indians by
signs “just as if they spoke our language and we theirs.” Michaëlius,
writing in 1628, says of the Algonkins on or near the Hudson River: “For
purposes of trading as much was done by signs with the thumb and fingers as
by speaking.” In Bossu’s Travels through that part of North America
formerly called Louisiana, London, 1771 (Forster’s translation),
an account is given of Monsieur de Belle-Isle some years previously
captured by the
Atak-apa, who remained with them two years and “conversed in their
pantomimes with them.” He was rescued by Governor Bienville and was
sufficiently expert in the sign language to interpret between Bienville and
the tribe. In Bushmann’s Spuren, p. 424,
there is a reference to the “Accocessaws on the west side of the Colorado,
two hundred miles southwest of Nacogdoches,” who use thumb signs which they
understand: “Theilen sich aber auch durch
Daum-Zeichen mit, die sie alle verstehen.“

Omitting many authorities, and for brevity allowing a break in the
continuity
of time, reference may be made to the statement in Major Long’s
expedition of 1819, concerning the Arapahos, Kaiowas, Ietans, and
Cheyennes, to the effect that, being ignorant of each other’s languages,
many of them when they met would communicate by means of signs,
and would thus maintain a conversation without the least difficulty or
interruption. A list of the tribes reported upon by Prince Maximilian
von Wied-Neuweid, in 1832-’34, appears elsewhere in this paper. In
Frémont’s expedition of 1844 special and repeated allusion is made to
the expertness of the Pai-Utes in signs, which is contradictory to the
statement above made by correspondents. The same is mentioned regarding a
band of Shoshonis met near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, and one of
“Diggers,” probably Chemehuevas, encountered on a tributary of the Rio
Virgen.

Ruxton, in his Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, New
York, 1848, p. 278, sums up his experience with regard to the Western
[pg 325]
tribes so well as to require quotation: “The language of signs is so
perfectly understood in the Western country, and the Indians themselves
are such admirable pantomimists, that, after a little use, no difficulty
whatever exists in carrying on a conversation by such a channel; and
there are few mountain men who are at a loss in thoroughly understanding
and making themselves intelligible by signs alone, although they
neither speak nor understand a word of the Indian tongue.”

Passing to the correspondents of the writer from remote parts of
North America, it is important to notice that Mr. J.W. Powell, Indian
superintendent, reports the use of sign language among the Kutine, and
Mr. James Lenihan, Indian agent, among the Selish, both tribes of
British Columbia. The Very Rev. Edward Jacker, while contributing
information
upon the present use of gesture language among the Ojibwas of
Lake Superior, mentions that it has fallen into comparative neglect because
for three generations they had not been in contact with tribes of a
different
speech. Dr. Francis H. Atkins, acting assistant surgeon, United
States Army, in forwarding a contribution of signs of the Mescalero
Apaches remarks: “I think it probable that they have used sign language
rather less than many other Indians. They do not seem to use
it to any extent at home, and abroad the only tribes they were likely
to come into contact with were the Navajos, the Lipans of old Mexico,
and the Comanches. Probably the last have been almost alone their
visiting neighbors. They have also seen the Pueblos a little, these
appearing
to be, like the Phœnicians of old, the traders of this region.” He also
alludes to the effect of the Spanish, or rather lingua Mexicana,
upon all the Southern tribes and, indeed, upon those as far north as
the Utes, by which recourse to signs is now rendered less necessary.

Before leaving this particular topic it is proper to admit that, while
there is not only recorded testimony to the past use of gesture signs by
several tribes of the Iroquoian and Algonkian families, but evidence
that it still remains, it is, however, noticeable that these families when
met by their first visitors do not appear to have often impressed the
latter with their reliance upon gesture language to the same extent as
has always been reported of the tribes now and formerly found farther
inland. An explanation may be suggested from the fact that among
those families there were more people dwelling near together in communities
speaking the same language, though with dialectic peculiarities, than
became known later in the farther West, and not being nomadic their
intercourse with strange tribes was less individual and conversational.
Some of the tribes, in especial the Iroquois proper, were in a
comparatively
advanced social condition. A Mohawk or Seneca would probably have
repeated the arrogance of the old Romans, whom in other respects they
resembled, and compelled persons of inferior tribes to learn his language
if they desired to converse with him, instead of resorting to the
compromise
of gesture speech, which he had practiced before the prowess and policy of
the confederated Five Nations had gained supremacy and which
was still used for special purposes between the members of his own tribe.
[pg 326]
The studies thus far pursued lead to the conclusion that at the time
of the discovery of North America all its inhabitants practiced sign
language, though with different degrees of expertness, and that while
under changed circumstances it was disused by some, others, in especial
those who after the acquisition of horses became nomads of the Great
Plains, retained and cultivated it to the high development now attained,
from which it will surely and speedily decay.

MISTAKEN DENIAL THAT SIGN LANGUAGE EXISTS.

The most useful suggestion to persons interested in the collection
of signs is that they shall not too readily abandon the attempt to discover
recollections of them even among tribes long exposed to European
influence and officially segregated from others. The instances where
their existence, at first denied, has been ascertained are important with
reference to the theories advanced.

Rev. J. Owen Dorsey has furnished a considerable vocabulary of signs
finally procured from the Poncas, although, after residing among them
for years, with thorough familiarity with their language, and after special
and intelligent exertion to obtain some of their disused gesture language,
he had before reported it to be entirely forgotten. A similar report was
made by two missionaries among the Ojibwas, though other trustworthy
authorities have furnished a copious list of signs obtained from that
tribe. This is no imputation against the missionaries, as in October,
1880, five intelligent Ojibwas from Petoskey, Mich., told the writer that
they had never heard of gesture language. An interesting letter from
Mr. B.O. Williams, sr., of Owasso, Mich., explains the gradual decadence
of signs used by the Ojibwas in his recollection, embracing sixty years,
as chiefly arising from general acquaintance with the English language.
Further discouragement came from an Indian agent giving the decided
statement, after four years of intercourse with the Pai-Utes, that no
such thing as a communication by signs was known or even remembered
by them, which, however, was less difficult to bear because on the day of
the receipt of that well-intentioned missive some officers of the Bureau
of Ethnology were actually talking in signs with a delegation of that
very tribe of Indians then in Washington, from one of whom, Nátci, a
narrative printed in this paper (page 500), was received.

The report from missionaries, army officers, and travelers in Alaska
was unanimous against the existence of a sign language there until Mr.
Ivan Petroff, whose explorations had been more extensive, gave the
excellent exposition and dialogue now produced (see page 492). Collections
were also obtained from the Apaches and Zuñi, Pimas, Papagos,
and Maricopas, after agents and travelers had denied them to be possessed
of any knowledge on the subject.

For the reasons mentioned under the last heading, little hope was
entertained of procuring a collection from any of the Iroquoian stock, but
[pg 327]
the intelligent and respectable chief of the Wyandots, Hénto (Gray Eyes),
came to the rescue. His tribe was moved from Ohio in July, 1843, to
the territory now occupied by the State of Kansas, and then again
moved to Indian Territory, in 1870. He asserts that about one-third of the
tribe, the older portion, know many signs, a partial list of which he gave
with their descriptions. He was sure that those signs were used before the
removal from Ohio, and he saw them used also by Shawnees, Delawares, and
Senecas there.

Unanimous denial of any existence of sign language came from the
British provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and was followed by the collection
obtained by the Hon. Horatio Hale. His statement of the time
and manner of its being procured by him is not only interesting but
highly instructive:

“The aged Mohawk chief, from whom the information on this subject
has been obtained, is commonly known by his English name of John
Smoke Johnson. ‘Smoke’ is a rude version of his Indian name,
Sakayenkwaraton, which may be rendered ‘Disappearing Mist.’ It is
the term applied to the haze which rises in the morning of an autumn day,
and gradually passes away. Chief Johnson has been for many years ‘speaker’
of the great council of the Six Nations. In former times he was noted as a
warrior, and later has been esteemed one of the most eloquent orators of
his race. At the age of eighty-eight years he retains much of his original
energy. He is considered to have a better knowledge of the traditions and
ancient customs of his people than any other person now living. This
superior knowledge was strikingly apparent in the course of the
investigations which were made respecting the sign language. Two other
members of his tribe, well-educated and
very intelligent men of middle age, the one a chief and government
interpreter,
the other a clergyman now settled over a white congregation,
had both been consulted on the subject and both expressed the opinion
that nothing of the sign language, properly speaking, was known among
the Six Nations. They were alike surprised and interested when the old
chief, in their presence, after much consideration, gradually drew forth
from the stores of his memory the proofs of an accomplishment which
had probably lain unused for more than half a century.”

One of the most conclusive instances of the general knowledge of sign
language, even when seldom used, was shown in the visit of five Jicarilla
Apaches to Washington in April, 1880, under the charge of Dr. Benjamin
Thomas, their agent. The latter said he had never heard of any
use of signs among them. But it happened that there was a delegation
of Absaroka (Crows) at the same hotel, and the two parties from
such widely separated regions, not knowing a word of each other’s language,
immediately began to converse in signs, resulting in a decided sensation.
One of the Crows asked the Apaches whether they ate horses, and it
happening that the sign for eating was misapprehended for that known
by the Apaches for many, the question was supposed
[pg 328]
to be whether the latter had many horses, which was answered in the
affirmative. Thence ensued a misunderstanding on the subject of hippophagy,
which was curious both as showing the general use of signs as a practice
and the diversity in special signs for particular meanings. The surprise of
the agent at the unsuspected accomplishment of his charges was not unlike
that of a hen who, having hatched a number of duck eggs, is perplexed at
the instinct with which the brood takes to the water.

The denial of the use of signs is often faithfully though erroneously
reported from the distinct statements of Indians to that effect. In that,
as in other matters, they are often provokingly reticent about their old
habits and traditions. Chief Ouray asserted to the writer, as he also did
to Colonel Dodge, that his people, the Utes, had not the practice of sign
talk, and had no use for it. This was much in the proud spirit in
which an Englishman would have made the same statement, as the idea
involved an accusation against the civilization of his people, which he
wished to appear highly advanced. Still more frequently the Indians do not
distinctly comprehend what is sought to be obtained. Sometimes, also, the
art, abandoned in general, only remains in the memories of a few persons
influenced by special circumstances or individual fancy.

In this latter regard a comparison may be made with the old science
of heraldry, once of practical use and a necessary part of a liberal
education,
of which hardly a score of persons in the United States have
any but the vague knowledge that it once existed; yet the united memories
of those persons could, in the absence of records, reproduce all
essential points on the subject.

Another cause for the mistaken denial in question must be mentioned.
When travelers or sojourners have become acquainted with signs in any
one place they may assume that those signs constitute the sign
language,
and if they afterwards meet tribes not at once recognizing those signs,
they remove all difficulty about the theory of a “one and indivisible”
sign language by simply asserting that the tribes so met do not understand
the sign language, or perhaps that they do not use signs at all.
This precise assertion has, as above mentioned, been made regarding the
Utes and Apaches. Of course, also, Indians who have not been
brought into sufficient contact with certain tribes using different signs,
for the actual trial which would probably result in mutual comprehension,
tell the travelers the same story. It is the venerable one of
“αγλωσσος,”
“Njemez,” “barbarian,” and “stammering,” above noted,
applied to the hands instead of the tongue. Thus an observer possessed
by a restrictive theory will find no signs where they are in plenty, while
another determined on the universality and identity of sign language
can, as elsewhere explained, produce, from perhaps the same individuals,
evidence in his favor from the apparently conclusive result of
successful communication.

PERMANENCE OF SIGNS.

In connection with any theory it is important to inquire into the
permanence
of particular gesture signs to express a special idea or object
when the system has been long continued. Many examples have been
given above showing that the gestures of classic times are still in use
by the modern Italians with the same signification; indeed that the
former on Greek vases or reliefs or in Herculanean bronzes can only be
interpreted by the latter. In regard to the signs of instructed deaf-mutes
in this country there appears to be a permanence beyond expectation.
Mr. Edmund Booth, a pupil of the Hartford Institute half a century
ago, and afterwards a teacher, says in the “Annals” for April,
1880, that the signs used by teachers and pupils at Hartford, Philadelphia,
Washington, Council Bluffs, and Omaha were nearly the same as
he had learned. “We still adhere to the old sign for President from
Monroe’s three-cornered hat, and for governor we designate the cockade
worn by that dignitary on grand occasions three generations ago.”

The specific comparisons made, especially by Dr. Washington Matthews
and Dr. W.O. Boteler, of the signs reported by the Prince of Wied in
1832 with those now used by the same tribes from whom he obtained
them, show a remarkable degree of permanency in many of those that
were so clearly described by the Prince as to be proper subjects of any
comparison. If they have persisted for half a century their age is probably
much greater. In general it is believed that signs, constituting as
they do a natural mode of expression, though enlarging in scope as new
ideas and new objects require to be included and though abbreviated as
hereinafter explained, do not readily change in their essentials.

The writer has before been careful to explain that he does not present
any signs as precisely those of primitive man, not being so carried away
by enthusiasm as to suppose them possessed of immutability and immortality
not found in any other mode of human utterance. Yet such signs
as are generally prevalent among Indian tribes, and also in other parts
of the world, must be of great antiquity. The use of derivative meanings
to a sign only enhances this presumption. At first there might
not appear to be any connection between the ideas of same and
wife,
expressed by the sign of horizontally extending the two forefingers side
by side. The original idea was doubtless that given by the Welsh captain
in Shakspere’s Henry V: “‘Tis so like as my fingers is to my
fingers,” and from this similarity comes “equal,” “companion,” and
subsequently the close life-companion “wife.” The sign is used in each
of these senses by different Indian tribes, and sometimes the same tribe
applies it in all of the senses as the context determines. It appears also
in many lands with all the significations except that of “wife.” It is
proper here to mention that the suggestion of several correspondents
that the Indian sign as applied to “wife” refers to “lying together” is
rendered improbable by the fact that when the same tribes desire to
express the sexual relation of marriage it is gestured otherwise.
[pg 330]
Many signs but little differentiated were unstable, while others that
have proved the best modes of expression have survived as definite and
established. Their prevalence and permanence being mainly determined by the
experience of their utility, it would be highly interesting to ascertain
how long a time was required for a distinctly new conception or
execution to gain currency, become “the fashion,” so to speak, over a
large part of the continent, and to be supplanted by a new “mode.” A
note may be made in this connection of the large number of diverse
signs for horse, all of which must have been invented within a
comparatively
recent period, and the small variation in the signs for dog,
which are probably ancient.

SURVIVAL IN GESTURE.

Even when the specific practice of sign language has been generally
discontinued for more than one generation, either from the adoption
of a jargon or from the common use of the tongue of the conquering
English, French, or Spanish, some of the gestures formerly employed as
substitutes for words may survive as a customary accompaniment to oratory
or impassioned conversation, and, when ascertained, should be carefully
noted. An example, among many, may be found in the fact that
the now civilized Muskoki or Creeks, as mentioned by Rev. H.F. Buckner,
when speaking of the height of children or women, illustrate their
words by holding their hands at the proper elevation, palm up; but
when describing the height of “soulless” animals or inanimate objects,
they hold the palm downward. This, when correlated with the distinctive
signs of other Indians, is an interesting case of the survival of a
practice which, so far as yet reported, the oldest men of the tribe, now
living only remember to have once existed. It is probable that a collection
of such distinctive gestures among the most civilized Indians
would reproduce enough of their ancient system to be valuable, while
possibly the persistent inquirer might in his search discover some of its
surviving custodians even among Chabta or Cheroki, Innuit or Abnaki,
Klamath or Nutka.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN IDENTITY OF SIGNS AND THEIR USE AS AN ART.

The general report that there is but one sign language in North America,
any deviation from which is either blunder, corruption, or a dialect in
the nature of provincialism, may be examined in reference to some of the
misconceived facts which gave it origin and credence. It may not appear
to be necessary that such examination should be directed to any mode of
collecting and comparing signs which would amount to their distortion.
It is useful, however, to explain that distortion would result from
following
the views of a recent essayist, who takes the ground that the description
of signs should be made according to a “mean” or average. There can be no
philosophic consideration of signs according to a “mean” of observations.
The proper object is to ascertain the radical or essential part
[pg 331]
as distinct from any individual flourish or mannerism on the one hand, and
from a conventional or accidental abbreviation on the other; but
a mere average will not accomplish that object. If the hand, being
in any position whatever, is, according to five observations, moved
horizontally one foot to the right, and, according to five other
observations,
moved one foot horizontally to the left, the “mean” or resultant
will be that it is stationary, which sign does not correspond
with any of the ten observations. So if six observations give it a
rapid motion of one foot to the right and five a rapid motion of the
same distance to the left, the mean or resultant would be somewhat
difficult to express, but perhaps would be a slow movement to the right
for an inch or two, having certainly no resemblance either in essentials
or accidents to any of the signs actually observed. In like manner
the tail of the written letter “y” (which, regarding its mere
formation,
might be a graphic sign) may have in the chirography of several
persons various degrees of slope, may be a straight line, or looped, and
may be curved on either side; but a “mean” taken from the several
manuscripts would leave the unfortunate letter without any tail whatever,
or travestied as a “u” with an amorphous flourish. A definition
of the radical form of the letter or sign by which it can be distinguished
from any other letter or sign is a very different proceeding. Therefore,
if a “mean” or resultant of any number of radically different signs to
express the same object or idea, observed either among several individuals
of the same tribe or among different tribes, is made to represent
those signs, they are all mutilated and ignored as distinctive
signs, though the result may possibly be made intelligible in practice,
according to principles mentioned in the present paper. The expedient
of a “mean” may be practically useful in the formation of a mere
interpreter’s
jargon, but it elucidates no principle. It is also convenient
for any one determined to argue for the uniformity of sign language
as against the variety in unity apparent in all the realms of nature.
On the “mean” principle, he only needs to take his two-foot rule and
arithmetical tables and make all signs his signs and his signs all signs.
Of course they are uniform, because he has made them so after the
brutal example of Procrustes.

In this connection it is proper to urge a warning that a mere sign
talker is often a bad authority upon principles and theories. He may
not be liable to the satirical compliment of Dickens’s “brave courier,”
who “understood all languages indifferently ill”; but many men speak
some one language fluently, and yet are wholly unable to explain or
analyze its words and forms so as to teach it to another person, or even
to give an intelligent summary or classification of their own knowledge.
What such a sign talker has learned is by memorizing, as a child may
learn English, and though both the sign talker and the child may be able
to give some separate items useful to a philologist or foreigner, such
items are spoiled when colored by the attempt of ignorance to theorize.
[pg 332]
A German who has studied English to thorough mastery, except in the
mere facility of speech, may in a discussion upon some of its principles
be contradicted by any mere English speaker, who insists upon his
superior knowledge because he actually speaks the language and his
antagonist does not, but the student will probably be correct and the
talker wrong. It is an old adage about oral speech that a man who
understands but one language understands none. The science of a
sign talker possessed by a restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau,
who was greater as an orator than as a philologist, and who on a visit
to England gravely argued that there was something seriously wrong
in the British mind because the people would persist in saying “give
me some bread” instead of “donnez-moi du pain,” which was so much
easier and more natural. A designedly ludicrous instance to the same
effect was Hood’s arraignment of the French because they called their
mothers “mares” and their daughters “fillies.” It is necessary to take
with caution any statement from a person who, having memorized or
hashed up any number of signs, large or small, has decided in his conceit
that those he uses are the only genuine Simon Pure, to be exclusively
employed according to his direction, all others being counterfeits
or blunders. His vocabulary has ceased to give the signs of any Indian
or body of Indians whatever, but becomes his own, the proprietorship
of which he fights for as if secured by letters-patent. When a
sign is contributed by one of the present collaborators, which such a
sign talker has not before seen or heard of, he will at once condemn it
as bad, just as a United States Minister to Vienna, who had been nursed
in the mongrel Dutch of Berks County, Pennsylvania, declared that the
people of Germany spoke very bad German.

An argument for the uniformity of the signs of our Indians is derived
from the fact that those used by any of them are generally understood by
others. But signs may be understood without being identical with any
before seen. The entribal as well as intertribal exercise of Indians for
generations in gesture language has naturally produced great skill both
in expression and reception, so as to render them measurably independent
of any prior mutual understanding, or what in a system of signals is called
preconcert. Two accomplished army signalists can, after sufficient trial,
communicate without having any code in common between them, one
being mutually devised, and those specially designed for secrecy are
often deciphered. So, if any one of the more conventional signs is
not quickly comprehended, an Indian skilled in the principle of signs
resorts to another expression of his flexible art, perhaps reproducing
the gesture unabbreviated and made more graphic, perhaps presenting
either the same or another conception or quality of the same object or
idea by an original portraiture.

An impression of the community of signs is the more readily made
because explorers and officials are naturally brought into contact more
closely with those individuals of the tribes visited who are experts in
[pg 333]
sign language than with their other members, and those experts, on
account of their skill as interpreters, are selected as guides to accompany
the visitors. The latter also seek occasion to be present when
signs are used, whether with or without words, in intertribal councils,
and then the same class of experts comprises the orators, for long exercise
in gesture speech has made the Indian politicians, with no special
effort, masters of the art acquired by our public speakers only after
laborious apprenticeship. The whole theory and practice of sign language
being that all who understand its principles can make themselves
mutually intelligible, the fact of the ready comprehension and response
among all the skilled gesturers gives the impression of a common code.
Furthermore, if the explorer learn to employ with ingenuity the signs used
by any of the tribes, he will probably be understood in any other by the
same class of persons who will surround him in the latter, thereby
confirming him in the “common” theory. Those of the tribe who are less
skilled, but who are not noticed, might be unable to catch the meaning
of signs which have not been actually taught to them, just as ignorant
persons among us cannot derive any sense from newly-coined words or
those strange to their habitual vocabulary, which, though never before
heard, linguistic scholars would instantly understand and might afterward
adopt.

It is also common experience that when Indians find that a sign which
has become conventional among their tribe is not understood by an
interlocutor,
a self-expressive sign is substituted for it, from which a visitor may
form the impression that there are no conventional signs. It may likewise
occur that the self-expressive sign substituted will be met with by
a visitor in several localities, different Indians, in their ingenuity,
taking the best and the same means of reaching the exotic intelligence.

There is some evidence that where sign language is now found among
Indian tribes it has become more uniform than ever before, simply because
many tribes have for some time past been forced to dwell near together
at peace. A collection was obtained in the spring of 1880, at Washington,
from a united delegation of the Kaiowa, Comanche, Apache, and
Wichita tribes, which was nearly uniform, but the individuals who gave
the signs had actually lived together at or near Anadarko, Indian
Territory,
for a considerable time, and the resulting uniformity of their signs
might either be considered as a jargon or as the natural tendency to
a compromise for mutual understanding—the unification so often observed
in oral speech, coming under many circumstances out of former
heterogeneity. The rule is that dialects precede languages and that out
of many dialects comes one language. It may be found that other individuals
of those same tribes who have from any cause not lived in the
union explained may have signs for the same ideas different from those
in the collection above mentioned. This is probable, because some signs
of other representatives of one of the component bodies—Apache—have
actually been reported differing from those for the same ideas given by
[pg 334]
the Anadarko group. The uniformity of the signs of those Arapahos,
Cheyennes, and Sioux who have been secluded for years at one particular
reservation, so far as could be done by governmental power, from the
outer world, was used in argument by a correspondent; but some collected
signs of other Cheyennes and Sioux differ, not only from those on
the reservation, but among each other. Therefore the signs used in
common by the tribes at the reservation seem to have been modified
and to a certain extent unified.

The result of the collation and analysis of the large number of signs
collected is that in numerous instances there is an entire discrepancy
between the signs made by different bodies of Indians to express the
same idea, and that if any of these are regarded as rigidly determinate,
or even conventional with a limited range, and used without further
devices, they will fail in conveying the desired impression to any one
unskilled in gesture as an art, who had not formed the same precise
conception or been instructed in the arbitrary motion. Few of the gestures
that are found in current use are, in their origin, conventional.
They are only portions, more or less elaborate, of obvious natural
pantomime, and those proving efficient to convey most successfully at any
time the several ideas became the most widely adopted, liable, however,
to be superseded by more appropriate conceptions and delineations. The
skill of any tribe and the copiousness of its signs are proportioned first
to the necessity for their use, and secondly to the accidental ability of
the individuals in it who act as custodians and teachers, so that the
several tribes at different times vary in their degree of proficiency, and
therefore both the precise mode of semiotic expression and the amount
of its general use are always fluctuating. Sign language as a product
of evolution has been developed rather than invented, and yet it seems
probable that each of the separate signs, like the several steps that lead
to any true invention, had a definite origin arising out of some
appropriate occasion, and the same sign may in this manner have had many
independent origins due to identity in the circumstances, or if lost, may
have been reproduced.

The process is precisely the same as that observed among deaf-mutes.
One of those unfortunate persons, living with his speaking relatives, may
invent signs which the latter are taught to understand, though strangers
sometimes will not, because they may be by no means the fittest
expressions. Should a dozen or more deaf-mutes, possessed only of such crude
signs, come together, they will be able at first to communicate only on
a few common subjects, but the number of those and the general scope
of expression will be continually enlarged. Each one commences with
his own conception and his own presentment of it, but the universality
of the medium used makes it sooner or later understood. This independent
development, thus creating diversity, often renders the first interchange
of thought between strangers slow, for the signs must be self-interpreting.
There can be no natural universal language which is absolute
and arbitrary. When used without convention, as sign language
[pg 335]
alone of all modes of utterance can be, it must be tentative, experimental,
and flexible. The mutes will also resort to the invention of new signs
for new ideas as they arise, which will be made intelligible, if necessary,
through the illustration and definition given by signs formerly adopted,
so that the fittest signs will be evolved, after rivalry and trial, and
will survive. But there may not always be such a preponderance of fitness
that all but one of the rival signs shall die out, and some, being equal in
value to express the same idea or object, will continue to be used
indifferently,
or as a matter of individual taste, without confusion. A multiplication
of the numbers confined together, either of deaf-mutes or of Indians
whose speech is diverse, will not decrease the resulting uniformity,
though it will increase both the copiousness and the precision of the
vocabulary. The Indian use of signs, though maintained by linguistic
diversities, is not coincident with any linguistic boundaries. The tendency
is to their uniformity among groups of people who from any cause
are brought into contact with each other while still speaking different
languages. The longer and closer such contact, while no common tongue
is adopted, the greater will be the uniformity of signs.

Colonel Dodge takes a middle ground with regard to the identity of
the signs used by our Indians, comparing it with the dialects and
provincialisms
of the English language, as spoken in England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales. But those dialects are the remains of actually
diverse languages, which to some speakers have not become integrated.
In England alone the provincial dialects are traceable as the legacies of
Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Danes, with a varying amount of Norman
influence. A thorough scholar in the composite tongue, now called English,
will be able to understand all the dialects and provincialisms of
English in the British Isles, but the uneducated man of Yorkshire is not
able to communicate readily with the equally uneducated man of
Somersetshire.
This is the true distinction to be made. A thorough sign talker
would be able to talk with several Indians who have no signs in common,
and who, if their knowledge of signs were only memorized, could not
communicate together. So also, as an educated Englishman will understand
the attempts of a foreigner to speak in very imperfect and broken English,
a good Indian sign expert will apprehend the feeble efforts of a tyro in
gestures. But Colonel Dodge’s conclusion that there is but one true Indian
sign language, just as there is but one true English language, is not
proved unless it can be shown that a much larger proportion of the Indians
who use signs at all, than present researches show to be the case, use
identically the same signs to express the same ideas. It would also seem
necessary to the parallel that the signs so used should be absolute, if not
arbitrary, as are the words of an oral language, and not independent of
preconcert and self-interpreting at the instant of their invention or first
exhibition, as all true signs must originally have been and still
measurably
remain. All Indians, as all gesturing men, have many natural signs in
common and many others which are now conventional. The conventions
[pg 336]
by which the latter were established occurred during long periods, when
the tribes forming them were so separated as to have established altogether
diverse customs and mythologies, and when the several tribes were
with such different environment as to have formed varying conceptions
needing appropriate sign expression. The old error that the North
American Indians constitute one homogeneous race is now abandoned.
Nearly all the characteristics once alleged as segregating them from the
rest of mankind have proved not to belong to the whole of the
pre-Columbian population, but only to those portions of it first explored.
The practice of scalping is not now universal, even among the tribes least
influenced by civilization, if it ever was, and therefore the cultivation
of the scalp-lock separated from the rest of the hair of the head, or with
the removal of all other hair, is not a general feature of their
appearance. The arrangement of the hair is so different among tribes as to
be one of the most convenient modes for their pictorial distinction. The
war paint, red in some tribes, was black in others; the mystic rites of
the calumet were in many regions unknown, and the use of wampum
was by no means extensive. The wigwam is not the type of native
dwellings, which show as many differing forms as those of Europe. In
color there is great variety, and even admitting that the term “race”
is properly applied, no competent observer would characterize it as red,
still less copper-colored. Some tribes differ from each other in all
respects
nearly as much as either of them do from the lazzaroni of Naples,
and more than either do from certain tribes of Australia. It would
therefore be expected, as appears to be the case, that the conventional
signs of different stocks and regions differ as do the words of English,
French, and German, which, nevertheless, have sprung from the same
linguistic roots. No one of those languages is a dialect of any of the
others; and although the sign systems of the several tribes have greater
generic unity with less specific variety than oral languages, no one of
them is necessarily the dialect of any other.

Instead, therefore, of admitting, with present knowledge, that the
signs of our Indians are “identical” and “universal,” it is the more
accurate
statement that the systematic attempt to convey meaning by
signs is universal among the Indians of the Plains, and those still
comparatively
unchanged by civilization. Its successful execution is by an
art, which, however it may have commenced as an instinctive mental
process, has been cultivated, and consists in actually pointing out objects
in sight not only for designation, but for application and predication, and
in suggesting others to the mind by action and the airy forms produced by
action. To insist that sign language is uniform were to assert that it is
perfect—”That faultless monster that the world ne’er saw.”

FORCED AND MISTAKEN SIGNS.

Examination into the identity of signs is complicated by the fact that in
the collection and description of Indian signs there is danger lest the
[pg 337]
civilized understanding of them may be mistaken or forced. The liability
to those errors is much increased when the collections are not taken
directly from the Indians themselves, but are given as obtained at
second-hand
from white traders, trappers, and interpreters, who, through
misconception in the beginning and their own introduction or modification
of gestures, have produced a jargon in the sign, as well as in the
oral intercourse. An Indian talking in signs, either to a white man or
to another Indian using signs which he never saw before, catches the
meaning of that which is presented and adapts himself to it, at least
for the occasion. Even when he finds that his interlocutor insists upon
understanding and presenting a certain sign in a manner and with a
significance
widely different from those to which he has been accustomed,
it is within the very nature, tentative and elastic, of the gesture
art—both performers being on an equality—that he should adopt the
one that seems to be recognized or that is pressed upon him, as with
much greater difficulty he has learned and adopted many foreign terms
used with whites before attempting to acquire their language, but never
with his own race. Thus there is now, and perhaps always has been,
what may be called a lingua-franca, in the sign vocabulary. It is
well known that all the tribes of the Plains having learned by experience
that white visitors expect to receive certain signs really originating with
the latter, use them in their intercourse just as they sometimes do the
words “squaw” and “papoose,” corruptions of the Algonkian, and once
as meaningless in the present West as the English terms “woman” and
“child,” but which the first pioneers, having learned them on the Atlantic
coast, insisted upon treating as generally intelligible.

The perversity in attaching through preconceived views a wrong significance
to signs is illustrated by an anecdote found in several versions
and in several languages, but repeated as a veritable Scotch legend by
Duncan Anderson, esq., Principal of the Glasgow Institution for the Deaf
and Dumb, when he visited Washington in 1853.

King James I. of England, desiring to play a trick upon the Spanish
ambassador, a man of great erudition, but who had a crotchet in his
head upon sign language, informed him that there was a distinguished
professor of that science in the university at Aberdeen. The ambassador
set out for that place, preceded by a letter from the King with
instructions to make the best of him. There was in the town one Geordy,
a butcher, blind of one eye, a fellow of much wit and drollery. Geordy
is told to play the part of a professor, with the warning not to speak a
word; is gowned, wigged, and placed in a chair of state, when the
ambassador is shown in and they are left alone together. Presently the
nobleman came out greatly pleased with the experiment, claiming that
his theory was demonstrated. He said: “When I entered the room I
raised one finger to signify there is one God. He replied by raising two
fingers to signify that this Being rules over two worlds, the material
and the spiritual. Then I raised three fingers, to say there are three
[pg 338]
persons in the Godhead. He then closed his fingers, evidently to say
these three are one.” After this explanation on the part of the nobleman
the professors sent for the butcher and asked him what took place
in the recitation room. He appeared very angry and said: “When the
crazy man entered the room where I was he raised one finger, as much
as to say I had but one eye, and I raised two fingers to signify that I
could see out of my one eye as well as he could out of both of his.
When he raised three fingers, as much as to say there were but three
eyes between us, I doubled up my fist, and if he had not gone out of
that room in a hurry I would have knocked him down.”

The readiness with which a significance may be found in signs when
none whatever exists is also shown in the great contest narrated by
Rabelais between Panurge and the English philosopher, Thaumast, commencing
as follows:

“Everybody then taking heed in great silence, the Englishman lifted
his two hands separately, clinching the ends of his fingers in the form
that at Chion they call the fowl’s tail. Then he struck them, together
by the nails four times. Then he opened them and struck one flat upon
the other with a clash once; after which, joining them as above, he
struck twice, and four times afterwards, on opening them. Then he
placed them, joined and extended the one above the other, seeming to
pray God devoutly.

“Panurge suddenly moved his right hand in the air, placed the
right-hand thumb at the right-hand nostril, holding the four fingers
stretched out and arrayed in parallel lines with the point of the nose;
shutting the left eye entirely, and winking with the right, making a
profound depression with eyebrow and eyelid. Next he raised aloft the left
with a strong clinching and extension of the four fingers and elevation of
the thumb, and held it in line directly corresponding with the position of
the right, the distance between the two being a cubit and a half. This
done, in the like manner he lowered towards the ground both hands, and
finally held them in the midst as if aiming straight at the Englishman’s
nose.”

And so on at great length. The whole performance of Panurge was
to save the credit of Pantagruel by making fantastic and mystic motions
in pretended disputation with the signs given by Thaumast in good
faith. Yet the latter confessed himself conquered, and declared that he
had derived inestimable information from the purposely meaningless
gestures. The satire upon the diverse interpretations of the gestures
of Naz-de-cabre (Pantagruel, Book III, chap. xx) is to the same
effect, showing it to have been a favorite theme with Rabelais.

ABBREVIATIONS.

A lesson was learned by the writer as to the abbreviation of signs,
and the possibility of discovering the original meaning of those most
obscure, from the attempts of a Cheyenne to convey the idea of old man.
[pg 339]
He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb closed
sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick, bent his
back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held, as
was before only imagined. Here at once was decrepit age dependent
on a staff. The principle of abbreviation or reduction may be illustrated
by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the
voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird on a tree, and
failing
to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs are resorted to, perhaps
suggesting the bill and wings of the bird, its manner of clinging to the
twig with its feet, its size by seeming to hold it between the hands, its
color by pointing to objects of the same hue; perhaps by the action of
shooting into a tree, picking up the supposed fallen game, and plucking
feathers. These are continued until understood, and if one sign or
combination of signs proves to be successful it will be repeated on the
next occasion by both persons engaged, and after becoming familiar between
them and others will be more and more abbreviated. Conventionality
in signs largely consists in the form of abbreviation which is agreed upon.
When the signs of the Indians have from ideographic form thus become
demotic, they may be called conventional, but still not arbitrary. In
them, as in all his actions, man had at the first a definite meaning or
purpose, together with method in their subsequent changes or modifications.

Colonel Dodge gives a clear account of the manner in which an established
sign is abbreviated in practice, as follows: “There are an almost
infinite number and variety of abbreviations. For instance, to tell a
man to ‘talk,’ the most common formal sign is made thus: Hold the
right hand in front of, the back near, the mouth, end of thumb and
index-finger joined into an ‘O,’ the outer fingers closed on the palm;
throw the hand forward sharply by a quick motion of the wrist, and
at the same time flip forward the index-finger. This may be done once
or several times.

“The formal sign to ‘cease’ or ‘stop doing’ anything is made by bringing
the two hands open and held vertically in front of the body, one
behind the other, then quickly pass one upward, the other downward,
simulating somewhat the motion of the limbs of a pair of scissors,
meaning ‘cut it off.’ The latter sign is made in conversation in a variety
of ways, but habitually with one hand only.

“The formal sign to ‘stop talking’ is first to make the formal sign for
‘talk,’ then the formal sign for ‘cut;’ but this is commonly abbreviated
by first making the formal sign for ‘talk’ with the right hand, and then
immediately passing the same hand, open, fingers extended, downward
across and in front of the mouth, ‘talk, cut.’

“But though the Plains Indian, if asked for the sign to ‘stop talking,’
will properly give the sign either in its extended or abbreviated
form as above, he in conversation abbreviates it so much further that
the sign loses almost all resemblance to its former self. Whatever the
position of the hand, a turn of the wrist, a flip of the forefinger, and a
[pg 340]
turn, of the wrist back to its original position is fully equivalent to the
elaborate signs.”

It may be added that nearly every sign which to be intelligibly described
and as exhibited in full requires the use of both hands, is outlined,
with one hand only, by skillful Indians gesturing between themselves,
so as to be clearly understood between them. Two Indians, whose
blankets are closely held to their bodies by the left hand, which is
necessarily
rendered unavailable for gesture, will severally thrust the right
from beneath the protecting folds and converse freely. The same is true
when one hand of each holds the bridle of a horse.

The Italian signs are also made in such abbreviated forms as to be
little more than hinted at, requiring a perfect knowledge of the full and
original form before the slight and often furtive suggestion of it can be
understood. Deaf-mutes continually seek by tacit agreement to shorten
their signs more and more. While the original of each may be preserved
in root or stem, it is only known to the proficient, as the root
or stem of a plant enables botanists, but no others, to distinguish it.
Thus the natural character of signs, the universal significance which is
their peculiarly distinctive feature, may and often does become lost.
From the operation of the principle of independent and individual
abbreviation
inherent in all sign language, without any other cause, that of
the Indians must in one or two generations have become diverse, even
if it had in fact originated from one tribe in which all conceptions and
executions were absolute.

ARE SIGNS CONVENTIONAL OR INSTINCTIVE?

There has been much discussion on the question whether gesture signs
were originally invented, in the strict sense of that term, or whether they
result from a natural connection between them and the ideas represented
by them, that is whether they are conventional or instinctive.
Cardinal Wiseman (Essays, III, 537) thinks that they are of both
characters;
but referring particularly to the Italian signs and the proper
mode of discovering their meaning, observes that they are used primarily
with words and from the usual accompaniment of certain phrases.
“For these the gestures become substitutes, and then by association
express all their meaning, even when used alone.” This would be the
process only where systematic gestures had never prevailed or had been
so disused as to be forgotten, and were adopted after elaborate oral
phrases and traditional oral expressions had become common. In other
parts of this paper it is suggested that conventionality chiefly consists
in abbreviation, and that signs are originally self-interpreting,
independent
of words, and therefore in a certain sense instinctive.

Another form of the above query, having the same intent, is whether
signs are arbitrary or natural. The answer will depend upon what the
observer considers to be natural to himself. A common sign among
both deaf-mutes and Indians for woman consists in designating the
[pg 341]
arrangement of the hair, but such a represented arrangement of hair
familiar to the gesturer as had never been seen by the person addressed
would not seem “natural” to the latter. It would be classed as arbitrary,
and could not be understood without context or explanation,
indeed without translation such as is required from foreign oral speech.
Signs most naturally, that is, appropriately, expressing a conception of
the thing signified, are first adopted and afterwards modified by
circumstances
of environment, so as to appear, without full understanding,
conventional and arbitrary, yet they are as truly “natural” as the signs
for
hearing, seeing, eating, and drinking, which continue all over the world
as they were first formed because there is no change in those operations.

CLASSES OF DIVERSITIES IN SIGNS.

While there is not sufficient evidence that any exhibition of sign
language in any tribe is a dialect derived or corrupted from an ascertained
language in any other tribe, it still is convenient to consider the
different forms appearing in different tribes as several dialects (in the
usual mode of using that term) of a common language. Every sign
talker necessarily has, to some extent, a dialect of his own. No one
can use sign language without original invention and without modification
of the inventions of others; and all such new inventions and modifications
have a tendency to spread and influence the production of other
variations. The diversities thus occasioned are more distinct than that
mere individuality of style or expression which may be likened to the
differing chirography of men who write, although such individual
characteristics
also constitute an important element of confusion to the
inexperienced observer. In differing handwriting there is always an
attempt or desire to represent an alphabet which is essentially
determinate,
but no such fixedness or limited condition of form restricts
gesture speech.

Those variations and diversities of form and connected significance
specially calling for notice may be: 1st. In the nature of synonyms.
2d. Substantially the same form with such different signification as not
to be synonymous. 3d. Difference in significance produced by such
slight variation in form as to be, to a careless observer, symmorphic.

SYNONYMS.

In this division are placed signs of differing forms which are used in
senses so nearly the same as to have only a slight shade of distinction,
or sometimes to be practically interchangeable. The comprehensive
and metaphorical character of signs renders more of them interchangeable
than is the case with words; still, like words, some signs with
essential resemblance of meaning have partial and subordinate differences
made by etymology or usage. Doubtless signs are purposely
selected as delineating the most striking outlines of an object, or the
most characteristic features of an action; but different individuals, and
[pg 342]
likewise different bodies of people, would not always agree in the
selection of those outlines and features. Taking the illustration of the
attempt to invent a sign for bird, before used, any one of a dozen,
signs might have been agreed upon with equal appropriateness, and, in
fact, a number have been so selected by several individuals and tribes,
each one, therefore, being a synonym of the other. Another example of
this is in the signs for deer, designated by various modes of
expressing
fleetness, by his gait when not in rapid motion, by the shape of his horns,
by the color of his tail, and sometimes by combinations of several of
those characteristics. Each of these signs may be indefinitely abbreviated,
and therefore create indefinite diversity. Another illustration, in
which an association of ideas is apparent, is in the upward raising of
the index in front of and above the head, which means above
(sometimes containing the religious conception of heaven, great
spirit, &c.), and also now, to-day. Not unfrequently these
several signs to express the
same ideas are used interchangeably by the same people, and some one
of the duplicates or triplicates may have been noticed by separate
observers to the exclusion of the others. On the other hand, they might
all have been noticed, but each one among different bodies. Thus confusing
reports would be received, which might either be erroneous in
deducing the prevalence of particular signs or the opposite. Sometimes
the synonym may be recognized as an imported sign, used with another
tribe known to affect it. Sometimes the diverse signs to express the
same thing are only different trials at reaching the intelligence of the
person addressed. An account is given by Lieut. Heber M. Creel, Seventh
Cavalry, U.S.A., of an old Cheyenne squaw, who made about
twenty successive and original signs to a recruit of the Fourth Cavalry
to let him know that she wanted to obtain out of a wagon a piece of
cloth belonging to her, to wipe out an oven preparatory to baking bread.
Thus by tradition, importation, recent invention, or from all these causes
together, several signs entirely distinct are produced for the same object
or action.

This class is not intended to embrace the cases common both to sign and
oral language where the same sign has several meanings, according to the
expression, whether facial or vocal, and the general manner accompanying
its delivery. The sign given, for “stop talking” on page 339 may be
used in simple acquiescence, “very well,” “all right!” or for
comprehension,
“I understand;” or in impatience, “you have talked enough!” which
may be carried further to express actual anger in the violent “shut up!”
But all these grades of thought accompany the idea of a cessation of
talk. In like manner an acquaintance of the writer asking the same
favor (a permission to go through their camp) of two chiefs, was answered
by both with the sign generally used for repletion after eating, viz., the
index and thumb turned toward the body, passed up from the abdomen
to the throat; but in the one case, being made with a gentle motion and
[pg 343]
pleasant look, it meant, “I am satisfied,” and granted the request; in the
other, made violently, with the accompaniment of a truculent frown, it
read, “I have had enough of that!” But these two meanings might also have
been expressed by different intonations of the English word “enough.” The
class of signs now in view is better exemplified by the French word
souris, which is spelled and pronounced precisely the same with the
two wholly distinct and independent significations of smile and
mouse. From many examples may be selected the Omaha sign for
think,
guess, which is precisely the same as that of the Absaroka, Shoshoni
and Banak for brave, see page 414. The context alone, both of the
sign and the word, determines in what one of its senses it is at the time
used, but it is not discriminated merely by a difference in expression.

It would have been very remarkable if precisely the same sign were not
used by different or even the same persons or bodies of people with wholly
distinct significations. The graphic forms for objects and ideas are much
more likely to be coincident than sound is for similar expressions, yet in
all
oral languages the same precise sound is used for utterly diverse meanings.
The first conception of many different objects must have been the
same. It has been found; indeed, that the homophony of words and the
homomorphy of ideographic pictures is noticeable in opposite
significations,
the conceptions arising from the opposition itself. The differentiation
in portraiture or accent is a subsequent and remedial step not
taken until after the confusion has been observed and become inconvenient.
Such confusion and contradiction would only be eliminated if
sign language were absolutely perfect as well as absolutely universal.

SYMMORPHS.

In this class are included those signs conveying different ideas, and
really different in form of execution as well as in conception, yet in
which the difference in form is so slight as practically
to require attention and discrimination. An example
from oral speech may be found in the English word
“desert,” which, as pronounced “des’-ert” or “desert’,”
and in a slightly changed form, “dessert,” has such
widely varying significations. These distinctions relating
to signs require graphic illustration.

Fig. 112.

Fig. 113.

The sign made by the Dakota, Hidatsa,
and several other tribes, for tree is made
by holding the right hand before the body,
back forward, fingers and thumb separated,
then pushing it slightly upward,
Fig. 112. That for grass is the same made
near the ground; that for grow is made
like grass, though instead of holding the back of the hand near the
ground the hand is pushed upward in an interrupted manner, Fig. 113. For
smoke, the hand (with the back down, fingers pointing upward as
[pg 344]
in grow) is thrown upward several times from the same place instead
of continuing the whole motion upward. Frequently the fingers are
thrown forward from under the thumb with each successive upward
motion. For fire, the hand is employed as in the gesture for
smoke, but
the motion is frequently more waving, and in other cases made higher
from the ground.

Fig. 114.

The sign for rain, made by the Shoshoni, Apache, and other Indians,
is by holding the hand (or hands) at
the height of and before the shoulder,
fingers pendent, palm down, then
pushing it downward a short distance,
Fig. 114. That for heat is the
same, with the difference that the
hand is held above the head and
thrust downward toward the forehead;
that for to weep is made by
holding the hand as in rain, and the
gesture made from the eye downward
over the cheek, back of the
fingers nearly touching the face.

Fig. 115.

The common sign for sun is made
by bringing the tips of the thumb and index together so as to form a
circle; remaining fingers closed. The hand is then held toward the sky,
Fig. 115. The motion with the same circular position of index and
thumb is for want, by bringing the hand backward toward the mouth,
in a curve forming a short arch between the origin and termination
of the gesture.

For drink the gesture by several tribes is the same as for
want, with the slight difference in the position of the last
three fingers, which are not so tightly clinched, forming
somewhat the shape of a cup; and that for money is made by
holding out the hand with the same arrangement of fingers
in front of the hips, at a distance of about twelve or fifteen inches.

Fig. 116.

Another sign for sun, made by the Cheyennes, is by placing the tips
of the partly separated thumb and index of one hand against those of
the other, approximating a circle, and
holding them toward the sky, Fig. 116,
and that for various things, observed
among the Brulé Sioux with the same
position of the hands, is made by placing
the circle horizontal, and moving it interruptedly
toward the right side, each
movement forming a short arch. Compare also the sign for village,
described
on page 386.

The Arikara sign for soldier is by placing the clinched hands
together
before the breast, thumbs touching, then drawing them horizontally outward
toward their respective sides, Fig. 117. That for done, made by
[pg 345]
the Hidatsa, is shown below in this paper, see Fig. 334, page 528. That
for much (Cheyenne I, Comanche III), see Fig. 274, page 447,
is to be correlated
with the above.

Fig. 117.

The sign for to be told or talked to, and for the reception
of speech, by the tribes generally, is made by placing the
flat right hand, palm upward,
about fifteen inches in front of the right side of the face or breast,
fingers pointing to the left, then drawing the hand toward the bottom
of the chin, and is illustrated in Fig. 71, page 291. The Comanche sign
for give or asking is shown in Fig. 301, page 480
(Comanche III), and is
made by bringing the hand toward the body but a short distance, and the
motion repeated, the tips of the fingers indicating the outline of a circle.

The tribal sign for Kaiowa, illustrated in its place among the
Tribal Signs, is made by holding the hand with extended and separated fingers
and thumb near the side of the head, back outward, and giving it a
rotary motion. This gesture is made in front of the face by many tribes.
The generic sign for deer, made by the Dakota and some others, is by
holding
the hand motionless at the side of the head, with extended and separated
thumb and fingers, representing the branched antlers. That for
fool, reported from the same Indians, is the same as above described
for Kaiowa, which it also signifies, though frequently only one or
two fingers are used.

The tribal sign both for the Sahaptin or Nez Percés and for
Caddo (see
Tribal Signs) is made by passing the extended index, pointing under
the nose from right to left. When the second finger is not tightly closed
it strongly resembles the sign often made for lie, falsehood, by
passing
the extended index and second fingers separated toward the left, over
the mouth.

The tribal sign for Cheyenne (see Tribal Signs) differs from the sign
for spotted only in the finger (or hand) in the latter being
alternately passed across the upper and lower sides of the left forearm.

The sign for steal, theft, see Fig. 75, page 293, is but slightly
different
from that for bear, see Fig. 239, page 413, especially when the
latter is
made with one hand only. The distinction, however, is that the grasping
in the latter sign is not followed by the idea of concealment in the
former, which is executed by the right hand, after the motion of grasping,
being brought toward and sometimes under the left armpit.

Cold and winter, see Tendoy-Huerito Dialogue, page 486, may
be compared
with love, see Kin Chē-ĕss’ speech, page 521, and with
prisoner. In
these the difference consists in that cold and winter are
represented by
crossing the arms with clinched hands before the breast; love by
crossing
the arms so as to bring the fists more under the chin, and prisoner
by holding the crossed wrists a foot in front of the breast.

Melon, squash, muskmelon, used by the Utes and Apaches, is made by
[pg 346]
holding the hand arched, fingers separated and pointing forward, and
pushing the hand forward over a slight curve near the ground, and the
generic sign for animals by the Apaches is made in the same manner
at the height intended to represent the object.

The sign for where?, and to search, to seek for, made
by the Dakota (IV),
is by holding the back of the hand upward, index pointing forward,
and carrying it from left to right about eight inches, raising and lowering
it several times while so doing, as if quickly pointing at different
objects. That for some of them, a part of a number of things or
persons, made by the Kaiowa, Comanche, Wichita, and Apache Indians is nearly
identical, the gesture being made less rapidly.

RESULTS SOUGHT IN THE STUDY OF SIGN LANGUAGE.

These may be divided into (1) its practical application, (2) its aid to
philologic researches in general with (3) particular reference to the
grammatic machinery of language, and (4) its archæologic relations.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION.

The most obvious application of Indian sign language will for its
practical utility depend, to a large extent, upon the correctness of the
view submitted by the present writer that it is not a mere semaphoric
repetition of motions to be memorized from a limited traditional list,
but is a cultivated art, founded upon principles which can be readily
applied by travelers and officials, so as to give them much independence
of professional interpreters—as a class dangerously deceitful and tricky.
This advantage is not merely theoretical, but has been demonstrated to
be practical by a professor in a deaf mute college who, lately visiting
several of the wild tribes of the plains, made himself understood among
all of them without knowing a word of any of their languages; nor
would it only be experienced in connection with American tribes, being
applicable to intercourse with savages in Africa and Asia, though it is
not pretended to fulfill by this agency the schoolmen’s dream of an
ecumenical mode of communication between all peoples in spite of their
dialectic divisions.

It must be admitted that the practical value of signs for intercourse
with the American Indians will not long continue, their general progress
in the acquisition of English or of Spanish being so rapid that those
languages are becoming, to a surprising extent, the common medium,
and signs are proportionally disused. Nor is a systematic use of signs
of so great assistance in communicating with foreigners, whose speech is
not understood, as might at first be supposed, unless indeed both parties
agree to cease all attempt at oral language, relying wholly upon
gestures. So long as words are used at all, signs will be made only as
their accompaniment, and they will not always be ideographic.
[pg 347]
An amusing instance in which savages showed their preference to
signs instead of even an onomatope may be quoted from Wilfred Powell’s
Observations on New Britain and neighboring Islands during Six
Years’ Exploration, in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc., vol. iii, No. 2
(new
monthly series), February, 1881, p. 89, 90: “On one occasion, wishing
to purchase a pig, and not knowing very well how to set about it, being
ignorant of the dialect, which is totally different from that of the
natives
in the north, I asked Mr. Brown how I should manage, or what he
thought would be the best way of making them understand. He said,
‘Why don’t you try granting?’ whereupon I began to grunt most vociferously.
The effect was magical. Some of them jumped back, holding
their spears in readiness to throw; others ran away, covering their eyes
with their hands, and all exhibited the utmost astonishment and alarm.
In fact, it was so evident that they expected me to turn into a pig, and
their alarm was so irresistibly comic, that Mr. Brown and I both burst
out laughing, on which they gradually became more reassured, and
those that had run away came back, and seeing us so heartily amused,
and that I had not undergone any metamorphosis, began to laugh too;
but when I drew a pig on the sand with a piece of stick, and made motions
of eating, it suddenly seemed to strike them what was the matter,
for they all burst out laughing, nodding their heads, and several of
them ran off, evidently in quest of the pig that was required.”

POWERS OF SIGNS COMPARED WITH SPEECH.

Sign language, being the mother utterance of nature, poetically styled
by Lamartine the visible attitudes of the soul, is superior to all others
in that it permits every one to find in nature an image to express his
thoughts on the most needful matters intelligently to any other person.
The direct or substantial natural analogy peculiar to it prevents a
confusion
of ideas. It is to some extent possible to use words without understanding
them which yet may be understood by those addressed,
but it is hardly possible to use signs without full comprehension of them.
Separate words may also be comprehended by persons hearing them
without the whole connected sense of the words taken together being
caught, but signs are more intimately connected. Even those most
appropriate will not be understood if the subject is beyond the
comprehension
of their beholders. They would be as unintelligible as the wild
clicks of his instrument, in an electric storm, would be to the
telegrapher,
or as the semaphore, driven by wind, to the signalist. In oral speech
even onomatopes are arbitrary, the most strictly natural sounds striking
the ear of different individuals and nations in a manner wholly diverse.
The instances given by Sayce are in point. Exactly the same sound
was intended to be reproduced in the “bilbit amphora” of Nævius,
the
“glut glut murmurat unda sonans” of the Latin Anthology, and the
“puls”
of Varro. The Persian “bulbul,” the “jugjug” of Gascoigne,
and the
“whitwhit” of others are all attempts at imitating the note of the
[pg 348]
nightingale. Successful signs must have a much closer analogy and establish,
a consensus between the talkers far beyond that produced by the mere
sound of words.

Gestures, in the degree of their pantomimic character, excel in graphic
and dramatic effect applied to narrative and to rhetorical exhibition, and
beyond any other mode of description give the force of reality. Speech,
when highly cultivated, is better adapted to generalization and
abstraction;
therefore to logic and metaphysics. The latter must ever henceforth,
be the superior in formulating thoughts. Some of the enthusiasts
in signs have contended that this unfavorable distinction is not from
any inherent incapability, but because their employment has not been
continued unto perfection, and that if they had been elaborated by the
secular labor devoted to spoken language they might in resources and
distinctiveness have exceeded many forms of the latter. Gallaudet, Peet,
and others maybe right in asserting that man could by his arms, hands,
and fingers, with facial and bodily accentuation, express any idea that
could be conveyed by words.

The combinations which can be made with corporeal signs are infinite.
It has been before argued that a high degree of culture might have
been attained by man without articulate speech and it is but a further step
in the reasoning to conclude that if articulate speech had not been
possessed
or acquired, necessity would have developed gesture language
to a degree far beyond any known exhibition of it. The continually
advancing civilization and continually increasing intercourse of countless
ages has perfected oral speech, and as both, civilization and intercourse
were possible with signs alone it is to be supposed that they
would have advanced in some corresponding manner. But as sign language
has been chiefly used during historic time either as a scaffolding
around a more valuable structure to be thrown aside when the latter was
completed, or as an occasional substitute, such development was not to
be expected.

The process of forming signs to express abstract ideas is only a variant
from that of oral speech, in which the words for the most abstract ideas,
such as law, virtue, infinitude, and immortality, are shown by Max Müller
to have been derived and deduced, that is, abstracted, from sensuous
impressions. In the use of signs the countenance and manner as well as
the tenor decide whether objects themselves are intended, or the forms,
positions, qualities, and motions of other objects which are suggested,
and signs for moral and intellectual ideas, founded on analogies, are
common all over the world as well as among deaf-mutes. Concepts of
the intangible and invisible are only learned through percepts of tangible
and visible objects, whether finally expressed to the eye or to the
ear, in terms of sight or of sound.

Sign language is so faithful to nature, and so essentially living in its
expression, that it is not probable that it will ever die. It may become
disused, but will revert. Its elements are ever natural and universal, by
recurring to which the less natural signs adopted dialectically or for
[pg 349]
expedition can always, with, some circumlocution, be explained. This
power of interpreting itself is a peculiar advantage, for spoken languages,
unless explained by gestures or indications, can only be interpreted by
means of some other spoken language. When highly cultivated, its
rapidity on familiar subjects exceeds that of speech and approaches to
that of thought itself. This statement may be startling to those who
only notice that a selected spoken word may convey in an instant a
meaning for which the motions of even an expert in signs may require
a much longer time, but it must be considered that oral speech is now
wholly conventional, and that with the similar development of sign language
conventional expressions with hands and body could be made
more quickly than with the vocal organs, because more organs could be
worked at once. Without such supposed development the habitual
communication between deaf-mutes and among Indians using signs is
perhaps as rapid as between the ignorant class of speakers upon the
same subjects, and in many instances the signs would win at a trial of
speed. At the same time it must be admitted that great increase in
rapidity is chiefly obtained by the system of preconcerted abbreviations,
before explained, and by the adoption of arbitrary forms, in which
naturalness
is sacrificed and conventionality established, as has been the
case with all spoken languages in the degree in which they have become
copious and convenient.

There is another characteristic of the gesture speech that, though it
cannot be resorted to in the dark, nor where the attention of the person
addressed has not been otherwise attracted, it has the countervailing
benefit of use when the voice could not be employed. This may be an
advantage
at a distance which the eye can reach, but not the ear, and still
more frequently when silence or secrecy is desired. Dalgarno recommends
it for use in the presence of great people, who ought not to
be disturbed, and curiously enough “Disappearing Mist,” the Iroquois
chief, speaks of the former extensive use of signs in his tribe by women
and boys as a mark of respect to warriors and elders, their voices, in
the good old days, not being uplifted in the presence of the latter. The
decay of that wholesome state of discipline, he thinks, accounts partly
for the disappearance of the use of signs among the modern impudent
youth and the dusky claimants of woman’s rights.

An instance of the additional power gained to a speaker of ordinary
language by the use of signs, impressed the writer while dictating to
two amanuenses at the same moment, to the one by signs and the other
by words, on different subjects, a practice which would have enabled
Cæsar to surpass his celebrated feat. It would also be easy to talk to
a deaf and blind man at once, the latter being addressed by the voice
and the former in signs.

RELATIONS TO PHILOLOGY.

The aid to be derived from the study of sign language in prosecuting
researches into the science of language was pointed out by Leibnitz, in
[pg 350]
his Collectanea Etymologica, without hitherto exciting any thorough
or
scientific work in that direction, the obstacle to it probably being that
scholars competent in other respects had no adequate data of the gesture
speech of man to be used in comparison. The latter will, it is hoped, be
supplied by the work now undertaken.

In the first part of this paper it was suggested that signs played an
important part in giving meaning to spoken words. Philology, comparing
the languages of earth in their radicals, must therefore include
the graphic or manual presentation of thought, and compare the elements
of ideography with those of phonics. Etymology now examines
the ultimate roots, not the fanciful resemblances between oral forms,
in the different tongues; the internal, not the mere external parts of
language. A marked peculiarity of sign language consists in its limited
number of radicals and the infinite combinations into which those
radicals enter while still remaining distinctive. It is therefore a proper
field for etymologic study.

From these and other considerations it is supposed that an analysis
of the original conceptions of gestures, studied together with the
holophrastic
roots in the speech of the gesturers, may aid in the ascertainment
of some relation between concrete ideas and words. Meaning does not
adhere to the phonic presentation of thought, while it does to signs. The
latter are doubtless more flexible and in that sense more mutable than
words, but the ideas attached to them are persistent, and therefore there
is not much greater metamorphosis in the signs than in the cognitions.
The further a language has been developed from its primordial roots,
which have been twisted into forms no longer suggesting any reason for
their original selection, and the more the primitive significance of its
words has disappeared, the fewer points of contact can it retain with
signs. The higher languages are more precise because the consciousness
of the derivation of most of their words is lost, so that they have
become counters, good for any sense agreed upon and for no other.

It is, however, possible to ascertain the included gesture even in many
English words. The class represented by the word supercilious will
occur
to all readers, but one or two examples may be given not so obvious and
more immediately connected with the gestures of our Indians.
Imbecile,
generally applied to the weakness of old age, is derived from the Latin
in, in the sense of on, and bacillum, a staff, which at once
recalls the Cheyenne
sign for old man, mentioned above, page 339. So time appears
more nearly connected with τεινω, to stretch, when
information is given
of the sign for long time, in the Speech of Kin
Chē-ĕss, in this paper, viz.,
placing the thumbs and forefingers in such a position as if a small thread
was held between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, the hands first
touching each other, and then moving slowly from each other, as if
stretching a piece of gum-elastic.

In the languages of North America, which have not become arbitrary
to the degree exhibited by those of civilized man, the connection
[pg 351]
between the idea and the word is only less obvious than, that still unbroken
between the idea and the sign, and they remain strongly affected by the
concepts of outline, form, place, position, and feature on which gesture
is founded, while they are similar in their fertile combination of
radicals.

Indian language consists of a series of words that are but slightly
differentiated parts of speech following each other in the order suggested
in the mind of the speaker without absolute laws of arrangement,
as its sentences are not completely integrated. The sentence
necessitates parts of speech, and parts of speech are possible only when
a language has reached that stage where sentences are logically
constructed.
The words of an Indian tongue, being synthetic or undifferentiated
parts of speech, are in this respect strictly analogous to the
gesture elements which enter into a sign language. The study of the
latter is therefore valuable for comparison with the words of the former.
The one language throws much light upon the other, and neither can be
studied to the best advantage without a knowledge of the other.

Some special resemblances between the language of signs and the character
of the oral languages found on this continent may be mentioned.
Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull remarks of the composition of their
words that they were “so constructed as to be thoroughly self-defining
and immediately intelligible to the hearer.” In another connection the
remark is further enforced: “Indeed, it is a requirement of the Indian
languages that every word shall be so framed as to admit of immediate
resolution to its significant elements by the hearer. It must be thoroughly
self-defining, for (as Max Müller has expressed it) ‘it requires
tradition, society, and literature to maintain words which can no longer be
analyzed at once.’… In the ever-shifting state of a nomadic
society no debased coin can be tolerated in language, no obscure legend
accepted on trust. The metal must be pure and the legend distinct.”

Indian languages, like those of higher development, sometimes exhibit
changes of form by the permutation of vowels, but often an incorporated
particle, whether suffix, affix, or infix, shows the etymology which often,
also, exhibits the same objective conception that would be executed in
gesture. There are, for instance, different forms for standing, sitting,
lying, falling, &c., and for standing, sitting, lying on or falling from
the same level or a higher or lower level. This resembles the pictorial
conception and execution of signs.

Major J.W. Powell, with particular reference to the disadvantages of
the multiplied inflections in Indian languages, alike with the Greek and
Latin, when the speaker is compelled, in the choice of a word to express
his idea, to think of a great multiplicity of things, gives the following
instance:

“A Ponca Indian in saying that a man killed a rabbit, would have to
say: the man, he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case, purposely
killed, by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one, animate,
sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to kill would have
[pg 352]
to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and
incorporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as animate or
inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and case; and the
form of the verb would also express whether the killing was done
accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or by some other
process, and, if by shooting, whether by bow and arrow, or with a gun;
and the form of the verb would in like manner have to express all of
these things relating to the object; that is, the person, number, gender,
and case of the object; and from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms
of the verb to kill, this particular one would have to be selected.” This
is substantially the mode in which an Indian sign talker would find it
necessary to tell the story, as is shown by several examples given below
in narratives, speeches, and dialogues.

Indian languages exhibit the same fondness for demonstration which
is necessary in sign language. The two forms of utterance are alike in
their want of power to express certain words, such as the verb “to be,”
and in the criterion of organization, so far as concerns a high degree of
synthesis and imperfect differentiation, they bear substantially the same
relation to the English language.

It may finally be added that as not only proper names but nouns, generally
in Indian languages are connotive, predicating some attribute of
the object, they can readily be expressed by gesture signs, and therefore
among them, if anywhere, it is to be expected that relations may be
established between the words and the signs.

ETYMOLOGY OF WORDS FROM GESTURES.

There can be no attempt in the present limits to trace the etymology
of any large number of words in the several Indian languages to a gestural
origin, nor, if the space allowed, would it be satisfactory. The
signs have scarcely yet been collected, verified, and collated in
sufficient
numbers for such comparison, even with the few of the Indian languages
the radicals of which have been scientifically studied. The signs will,
in a future work, be frequently presented in connection with the
corresponding
words of the gesturers, as is done now in a few instances in
another part of this paper. For the present the subject is only indicated
by the following examples, introduced to suggest the character of the
study in which the students of American linguistics are urgently requested
to assist:

The Dakota word Shaⁿte-suta—from shaⁿte, heart, and
suta, strong—brave,
not cowardly, literally strong-hearted, is made by several tribes of
that stock, and particularly by the Brulé Sioux, in gestures by collecting
the tips of the fingers and thumb of the right hand to a point, and
then placing the radial side of the hand over the heart, finger tips
pointing
downward—heart; then place the left fist, palm inward, horizontally
before the lower portion of the breast, the right fist back of the
[pg 353]
left, then raise the right and throw it forcibly over and downward in
front of the left—brave, strong. See Fig. 242, page 415.

The Arikaras make the sign for brave by striking the clinched fist
forcibly toward the ground in front of and near the breast.

Brave, or “strong-hearted,” is made by the Absaroka, Shoshoni, and
Banak Indians by merely placing the clinched fist to the breast, the
latter having allusion to the heart, the clinching of the hand to strength,
vigor, or force.

An Ojibwa sign for death, to die, is as follows:

Place the palm of the hand at a short distance from the side of the
head, then withdraw it gently in an oblique downward direction, inclining
the head and upper part of the body in the same direction.

The same authority, The Very Rev. E. Jacker, who contributes it,
notes that there is an apparent connection between this conception and
execution and the etymology of the corresponding terms in Ojibwa.
“He dies,” is nibo; “he sleeps,” is niba. The common idea
expressed
by the gesture is a sinking to rest. The original significance of the root
nib seems to be “leaning;” anibeia, “it is leaning”;
anibekweni, “he inclines
the head sidewards.” The word niba or nibe (only in
compounds)
conveys the idea of “night,” perhaps as the falling over, the going to
rest, or the death of the day.

Ogima, the Ojibwa term for chief, is derived from a root
which signifies
“above” (Ogidjaii, upon; ogidjina, above; ogidaki, on
a hill or mountain,
etc.). Ogitchida, a brave, a hero (Otawa, ogida), is probably
from the same root.

Sagima, the Ojibwa form of sachem, is from the root sag,
which implies
a coming forth, or stretching out. These roots are to be considered in
connection with several gestures described under the head of Chief,
in Extracts from Dictionary, infra.

Onijishin, it is good (Ojibwa), originally signifies
“it lies level.” This
may be compared with the sign for good, in the Tendoy-Huerito
Dialogue,
Fig. 309, page 487, and also that for happy, contentment, in
the Speech
of Kin Chē-ĕss, page 523.

In Klamath the radix lam designates a whirling motion, and appears
in the word láma, “to be crazy, mad,” readily correlated with the
common
gesture for madman and fool, in which the hand is rotated
above
and near the head.

Evening, in Klamath, is litkhí, from luta, to hang
down, meaning the
time when the sun hangs down, the gesture for which, described elsewhere
in this paper (see Nátci’s Narrative, page 503), is executive of the
same conception, which is allied to the etymology usually given for
eve,
even, “the decline of the day.” These Klamath etymologies have been
kindly contributed by Mr. A.S. Gatschet.

The Very Rev. E. Jacker also communicates a suggestive excursus
exegeticus upon the probable gestural origin of the Ojibwa word
tibishko, “opposite in space; just so; likewise:”

“The adverb tibishko (or dibishko) is an offshoot of the root
tib (or dib),
[pg 354]
which in most cases conveys the idea of measuring or weighing, as appears
from the following samples: dibaige, he measures; dibowe, he
settles
matters by his speech or word, e.g., as a juryman; dibaamage, he
pays out; dibakonige, he judges; dibabishkodjige, he weighs;
dibamenimo,
he restricts himself, e.g., to a certain quantity of food;
dibissitchige, he
fulfills a promise; dibijigan, a pattern for cutting clothes.

“The original, meaning of tib, however, must be supposed to have
been more comprehensive, if we would explain other (apparent) derivatives,
such as: tibi, ‘I don’t know where, where to, where from,’ &c.;
tibik, night; dibendjige, he is master or owner;
titibisse, it rolls (as a ball),
it turns (as a wheel); dibaboweigan, the cover of a kettle. The
notion
of measuring does not very naturally enter into the ideas expressed
by these terms.

“The difficulty disappears if we assume the root tib or dib
to have
been originally the phonetic equivalent of a gesture expressive of
the notion of covering as well as of that of measuring. This gesture would
seem to be the holding of one hand above the other, horizontally, at
some distance, palms opposite or both downwards. This, or some similar
gesture would most naturally accompany the above terms. As for
tibik, night, compare (Dunbar): ‘The two hands open and
extended,
crossing one another horizontally.’ The idea of covering evidently enters
into this conception. The strange adverb tibi (‘I don’t know
where,’ &c., or ‘in a place unknown to me’), if derived from the same
root, would originally signify ‘covered.’ In titibisse, or
didibisse (it rolls,
it turns), the reduplication of the radical syllable indicates the
repetition
of the gesture, by holding the hands alternately above one another,
palms downwards, and thus producing a rotary motion.

“In German, the clasping of the hands in a horizontal position, expressive
of a promise or the conclusion of a bargain, is frequently
accompanied by the interjection top! the same radical consonants as
in tib. Compare also the English tap, the French tape,
the Greek, τυπτω the Sanscrit tup and tub, &c.”

GESTURES CONNECTED WITH THE ORIGIN OF WRITING.

Though written characters are generally associated with speech, they
are shown, by successful employment in hieroglyphs and by educated
deaf-mutes to be representative of ideas without the intervention of
sounds, and so also are the outlines of signs. This will be more apparent
if the motions expressing the most prominent feature, attribute,
or function of an object are made, or supposed to be made, so as to
leave a luminous track impressible upon the eye separate from the members
producing it. The actual result is an immateriate graphic representation
of visible objects and qualities which, invested with substance,
has become familiar to us as the rebus, and also appears in the
form of heraldic blazonry styled punning or “canting.”

Gesture language is, in fact, not only a picture language, but is actual
writing, though dissolving and sympathetic, and neither alphabetic nor
phonetic.

Dalgarno aptly says: “Qui enim caput nutat, oculo connivet, digitum
movet in aëre, &c., (ad mentis cogitata exprimendum); is non minus vere
scribit, quam qui Literas pingit in Charta, Marmore, vel ære.“

It is neither necessary nor proper to enter now upon any prolonged
account of the origin, of alphabetic writing. There is, however, propriety,
if not necessity, for the present writer, when making any remarks
under this heading and under some others in this paper indicating special
lines of research, to disclaim all pretension to being a Sinologue or
Egyptologist, or even profoundly versed in Mexican antiquities. His
partial and recently commenced studies only enable him to present
suggestions
for the examination of scholars. These suggestions may safely
be introduced by the statement that the common modern alphabetic
characters, coming directly from the Romans, were obtained by them
from the Greeks, and by the latter from the Phœnicians, whose alphabet
was connected with that of the old Hebrew. It has also been of
late the general opinion that the whole family of alphabets to which
the Greek, Latin, Gothic, Runic, and others belong, appearing earlier in
the Phœnician, Moabite, and Hebrew, had its beginning in the ideographic
pictures of the Egyptians, afterwards used by them to express
sounds. That the Chinese, though in a different manner from the
Egyptians, passed from picture writing to phonetic writing, is established
by delineations still extant among them, called ku-wăn, or “ancient
pictures,”
with which some of the modern written characters can be identified.
The ancient Mexicans also, to some extent, developed phonetic
expressions out of a very elaborate system of ideographic picture writing.
Assuming that ideographic pictures made by ancient peoples would be
likely to contain representations of gesture signs, which subject is
treated
of below, it is proper to examine if traces of such gesture signs may not
be found in the Egyptian, Chinese, and Aztec characters. Only a few
presumptive examples, selected from a considerable number, are now
presented in which the signs of the North American Indians appear to
be included, with the hope that further investigation by collaborators will
establish many more instances not confined to Indian signs.

A typical sign made by the Indians for no, negation, is as
follows:
The hand extended or slightly curved is held in front of the body, a
little to the right of the median line; it is then carried with a rapid
sweep a foot or more farther to the right. (Mandan and Hidatsa I.)

One for none, nothing, sometimes used for simple negation, is
also
given: Throw both hands outward toward their respective
sides from the breast. (Wyandot I.)

Fig. 118.

With these compare the two forms of the Egyptian
character for no, negation, Fig. 118, taken from Champollion,
Grammaire Égyptienne, Paris, 1836, p. 519.

No vivid fancy is needed to see the hands indicated at the extremities
of arms extended symmetrically from the body on each side.

Fig. 119.

Also compare the Maya character for the same idea of negation,
Fig. 119, found in Landa, Relation des Choses de Yucatan, Paris,
1864, 316.
The Maya word for negation is “ma,” and the word “mak,” a
six-foot
measuring rod, given by Brasseur de Bourbourg in his
dictionary, apparently having connection with this character,
would in use separate the hands as illustrated, giving the
same form as the gesture made without the rod.

Another sign for nothing, none, made by the Comanches, is:
Flat hand
thrown forward, back to the ground, fingers pointing forward and downward.
Frequently the right hand is brushed over the left thus thrown
out.

Fig. 120.

Compare the Chinese character for the same meaning, Fig. 120.
This will not be recognized as a hand without study of similar
characters, which generally have a cross-line cutting off the
wrist. Here the wrist bones follow under the cross cut, then
the metacarpal bones, and last the fingers, pointing
forward and downward.

Fig. 121.

Fig. 122.

Fig. 123.

The Arapaho sign for child, baby, is the forefinger
in the mouth, i.e., a nursing child, and a natural sign
of a deaf-mute is the same. The Egyptian figurative character for the
same is seen in Fig. 121. Its linear form is Fig. 122, and its hieratic is
Fig. 123 (Champollion, Dictionnaire Egyptien, Paris,
1841, p. 31.)

Fig. 126.

Fig. 125.

Fig. 124.

Fig. 127.

These afford an interpretation to the ancient Chinese
form for son, Fig. 124, given in Journ. Royal Asiatic
Society, I, 1834, p. 219, as belonging to the Shang dynasty,
1756, 1112 B.C., and the modern Chinese form, Fig. 125, which,
without the comparison, would not be supposed to have any pictured
reference to an infant with hand or finger at or
approaching the mouth, denoting the taking of
nourishment. Having now suggested this, the
Chinese character for birth, Fig. 126, is understood
as the expression of a common gesture among the Indians, particularly
reported from the Dakota, for born, to be born, viz: Place
the left hand
in front of the body, a little to the
right, the palm downward and slightly
arched, then pass the extended right
hand downward, forward, and upward,
forming a short curve underneath the
left, as in Fig. 127 (Dakota V). This
is based upon the curve followed by
the head of the child during birth,
and is used generically. The same
curve, when made with one hand, appears
in Fig. 128.

Fig. 128.

It may be of interest to compare with the Chinese child the Mexican
[pg 357]
abbreviated character for man, Fig. 129, found in Pipart in
Compte Rendu
Cong. Inter. des Américanistes, 2^me
Session, Luxembourg, 1877, 1878,
II, 359. The figure on the right is called the abbreviated form of that
by its side, yet its origin may be different.

Fig. 129.

Fig. 130.

Fig. 131.

The Chinese character for man, is Fig. 130, and may have the same
obvious conception as a Dakota
sign for the same signification:
“Place the extended index, pointing
upward and forward before the
lower portion of the abdomen.”

Fig. 132.

The Chinese specific character for woman
is Fig. 131, the cross mark denoting
the wrist, and if the remainder
be considered the hand,
the fingers may be imagined in the
position made by many tribes, and especially
the Utes, as depicting the
pudendum muliebre, Fig. 132.

The Egyptian generic character
for female is (Champollion, Dict.,) believed
to represent the curve of
the mammæ supposed to be cut off or separated from the chest, and
the gesture with the same meaning was made by the Cheyenne
Titchkematski, and photographed, as in Fig. 133. It forms
the same figure as the Egyptian character as well as can be
done by a position of the human hand.

Fig. 133.

Fig. 134.

The Chinese character for to give water
is Fig. 134, which may be compared with
the common Indian gesture to drink, to give
water, viz: “Hand held with tips of fingers
brought together and passed to the mouth,
as if scooping up water”, Fig. 135, obviously from the primitive custom,
as with Mojaves, who still drink with scooped hands.

Fig. 135.

Another common Indian gesture sign for water to drink, I want to
drink,
is: “Hand brought downward past the mouth with loosely extended
fingers, palm toward the face.” This appears in the Mexican character
for drink, Fig. 136, taken from Pipart, loc. cit., p. 351.
Water, i.e., the pouring out of water with the drops falling
or about to fall, is shown in Fig. 137, taken from the
same author (p. 349), being the same arrangement of
them as in the sign for rain, Fig. 114, p. 344, the hand, however,
being inverted. Rain in the Mexican
picture writing is shown by small circles
inclosing a dot, as in the last two figures,
but not connected together, each having
a short line upward marking the line of descent.

Fig. 136.

Fig. 137.

With the gesture for drink may be compared Fig. 138, the Egyptian
Goddess Nu in the sacred sycamore tree, pouring out the water of life
to the Osirian and his soul, represented as a bird, in Amenti (Sharpe,
from a funereal stele in the British Museum,
in Cooper’s Serpent Myths, p. 43).

Fig. 138.

The common Indian gesture for river
or stream, water, is made by passing the
horizontal flat hand, palm down, forward
and to the left from the right side in a
serpentine manner.

Fig. 139.

Fig. 140.

Fig. 141.

The Egyptian character for the same
is Fig. 139 (Champollion, Dict., p. 429).
The broken line is held to represent the
movement of the water on the surface of
the stream. When made with one line less angular and more waving
it means water. It is interesting to compare with this the identical
character in the syllabary invented by a West African negro,
Mormoru Doalu Bukere, for water, , mentioned
by Tylor in his Early History of Mankind, p. 103.

The abbreviated Egyptian sign for water as a stream
is Fig. 140 (Champollion, loc. cit.), and the Chinese for the same
is as in Fig. 141.

In the picture-writing of the Ojibwa the Egyptian abbreviated character,
with two lines instead of three, appears with the same signification.

The Egyptian character for weep, Fig. 142, an eye,
with tears falling, is also found in the pictographs of
the Ojibwa (Schoolcraft, I, pl. 54, Fig. 27), and is also
made by the Indian gesture of drawing lines by the index repeatedly
downward from the eye, though perhaps more frequently made by
the full sign for rain, described on page 344, made with the
back of the hand downward from the eye—”eye rain.”

Fig. 142.

Fig. 143.

The Egyptian character for to be strong is Fig. 143 (Champollion,
Dict., p. 91), which is sufficiently
obvious, but may be compared with the sign for strong, made by some
tribes as follows: Hold the clinched fist in front of the right side, a
little
higher than the elbow, then throw it forcibly about six inches toward
the ground.

A typical gesture for night is as follows: Place the flat hands,
horizontally,
about two feet apart, move them quickly in an upward curve
toward one another until the right lies across the left. “Darkness covers
all.” See Fig. 312, page 489.

Fig. 144.

The conception of covering executed by delineating
the object covered beneath the middle
point of an arch or curve, appears also clearly in
the Egyptian characters for night, Fig. 144 (Champollion,
Dict., p. 3).

The upper part of the character is taken separately to form that for
sky (see page 372, infra).

Fig. 145.

Fig. 146.

The Egyptian figurative and linear characters, Figs. 145 and 146
(Champollion, Dict., p. 28), for calling upon and
invocation, also
used as an interjection, scarcely require the quotation of an Indian
sign, being common all over the world.

Fig. 147.

The gesture sign made by several tribes for many
is as follows: Both hands, with spread and slightly
curved fingers, are held pendent about two feet apart
before the thighs; then bring them toward one another,
horizontally, drawing them upward as they come together. (Absaroka
I; Shoshoni and Banak I; Kaiowa I; Comanche III;
Apache II; Wichita
II.) “An accumulation of objects.” This may be the same motion indicated by
the Egyptian character, Fig. 147, meaning to gather together
(Champollion, Dict., p. 459).

Fig. 148.

Fig. 149.

The Egyptian character, Fig. 148, which in its linear
form is represented in Fig. 149, and meaning to go, to come,
locomotion, is presented to show readers unfamiliar with
hieroglyphics
how a corporeal action may be included in a linear character without
being obvious or at least certain, unless it should be made clear by
comparison
with the full figurative form or by other means. This
linear form might be noticed many times without certainty or
perhaps suspicion that it represented the human legs and feet in the
act of walking. The same difficulty, of course, as also the same prospect
of success by careful research, attends the tracing of other corporeal
motions which more properly come under the head of gesture signs.

SIGN LANGUAGE WITH REFERENCE TO GRAMMAR.

Apart from the more material and substantive relations between signs
and language, it is to be expected that analogies can by proper research
be ascertained between their several developments in the manner of
their use, that is, in their grammatic mechanism, and in the genesis of
the sentence. The science of language, ever henceforward to be studied
historically, must take account of the similar early mental processes in
which the phrase or sentence originated, both in sign and oral utterance.
In this respect, as in many others, the North American Indians may be
considered to be living representatives of prehistoric man.

SYNTAX.

The reader will understand without explanation that there is in the
gesture speech no organized sentence such as is integrated in the languages
of civilization, and that he must not look for articles or particles
or passive voice or case or grammatic gender, or even what appears in
those languages as a substantive or a verb, as a subject or a predicate,
or as qualifiers or inflexions. The sign radicals, without being
specifically
any of our parts of speech, may be all of them in turn. There is,
[pg 360]
however, a grouping and sequence of the ideographic pictures, an
arrangement
of signs in connected succession, which may be classed under the
scholastic head of syntax. This subject, with special reference to the
order of deaf-mute signs as compared with oral speech, has been the
theme of much discussion, some notes of which, condensed from the
speculations of M. Rémi Valade and others, follow in the next paragraph
without further comment than may invite attention to the profound
remark of Leibnitz.

In mimic construction there are to be considered both the order in
which the signs succeed one another and the relative positions in which
they are made, the latter remaining longer in the memory than the
former, and spoken language may sometimes in its early infancy have
reproduced the ideas of a sign picture without commencing from the
same point. So the order, as in Greek and Latin, is very variable. In
nations among whom the alphabet was introduced without the intermediary
to any impressive degree of picture-writing, the order being (1)
language of signs, almost superseded by (2) spoken language, and (3)
alphabetic writing, men would write in the order in which they had
been accustomed to speak. But if at a time when spoken language
was still rudimentary, intercourse being mainly carried on by signs,
figurative writing had been invented, the order of the figures would be
the order of the signs, and the same order would pass into the spoken
language. Hence Leibnitz says truly that “the writing of the Chinese
might seem to have been invented by a deaf person.” The oral language
has not known the phases which have given to the Indo-European
tongues their formation and grammatical parts. In the latter, signs
were conquered by speech, while in the former, speech received the yoke.

Sign language cannot show by inflection the reciprocal dependence of
words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal intonation
are only used rhetorically or for degrees of comparison. The
relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by placement, and
their connection is established when necessary by the abstraction of
ideas. The sign talker is an artist, grouping persons and things so as
to show the relations between them, and the effect is that which is seen
in a picture. But though the artist has the advantage in presenting in
a permanent connected scene the result of several transient signs, he can
only present it as it appears at a single moment. The sign talker has
the succession of time at his disposal, and his scenes move and act, are
localized and animated, and their arrangement is therefore more varied
and significant.

It is not satisfactory to give the order of equivalent words as
representative
of the order of signs, because the pictorial arrangement is
wholly lost; but adopting this expedient as a mere illustration of the
sequence in the presentation of signs by deaf-mutes, the following is
quoted from an essay by Rev. J.R. Keep, in American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb,
[pg 361]
vol. xvi, p. 223, as the order in which the parable
of the Prodigal Son is translated into signs:

“Once, man one, sons two. Son younger say, Father property your
divide: part my, me give. Father so.—Son each, part his give. Days
few after, son younger money all take, country far go, money spend,
wine drink, food nice eat. Money by and by gone all. Country everywhere
food little: son hungry very. Go seek man any, me hire. Gentleman
meet. Gentleman son send field swine feed. Son swine husks
eat, see—self husks eat want—cannot—husks him give nobody. Son
thinks, say, father my, servants many, bread enough, part give away
can—I none—starve, die. I decide: Father I go to, say I bad, God disobey,
you disobey—name my hereafter son, no—I unworthy. You me
work give servant like. So son begin go. Father far look: son see,
pity, run, meet, embrace. Son father say, I bad, you disobey, God
disobey—name
my hereafter son, no—I unworthy. But father servants call,
command robe best bring, son put on, ring finger put on, shoes feet put
on, calf fat bring, kill. We all eat, merry. Why? Son this my formerly
dead, now alive: formerly lost, now found: rejoice.”

It may be remarked, not only from this example, but from general
study, that the verb “to be” as a copula or predicant does not have any
place in sign language. It is shown, however, among deaf-mutes as
an assertion of presence or existence by a sign of stretching the arms
and hands forward and then adding the sign of affirmation. Time as
referred to in the conjunctions when and then is not
gestured. Instead of
the form, “When I have had a sleep I will go to the river,” or “After
sleeping I will go to the river,” both deaf-mutes and Indians would express
the intention by “Sleep done, I river go.” Though time present,
past, and future is readily expressed in signs (see page 366), it is done
once for all in the connection to which it belongs, and once established
is not repeated by any subsequent intimation, as is commonly the case
in oral speech. Inversion, by which the object is placed before the action,
is a striking feature of the language of deaf-mutes, and it appears
to follow the natural method by which objects and actions enter into
the mental conception. In striking a rock the natural conception is
not first of the abstract idea of striking or of sending a stroke into
vacancy, seeing nothing and having no intention of striking anything
in particular, when suddenly a rock rises up to the mental vision and
receives the blow; the order is that the man sees the rock, has the
intention
to strike it, and does so; therefore he gestures, “I rock strike.” For
further illustration of this subject, a deaf-mute boy, giving in signs the
compound action of a man shooting a bird from a tree, first represented
the tree, then the bird as alighting upon it, then a hunter coming toward
and looking at it, taking aim with a gun, then the report of the latter
and the falling and the dying gasps of the bird. These are undoubtedly
the successive steps that an artist would have taken in drawing the
picture,
or rather successive pictures, to illustrate the story. It is,
[pg 362]
however, urged that this pictorial order natural to deaf-mutes is not
natural
to the congenitally blind who are not deaf-mute, among whom it is found
to be rhythmical. It is asserted that blind persons not carefully educated
usually converse in a metrical cadence, the action usually coming first
in the structure of the sentence. The deduction is that all the senses
when intact enter into the mode of intellectual conception in proportion
to their relative sensitiveness and intensity, and hence no one mode of
ideation can be insisted on as normal to the exclusion of others.

Whether or not the above statement concerning the blind is true, the
conceptions and presentations of deaf-mutes and of Indians using sign
language because they cannot communicate by speech, are confined to
optic and, therefore, to pictorial arrangement.

The abbé Sicard, dissatisfied with the want of tenses and conjunctions,
indeed of most of the modern parts of speech, in the natural signs,
and with their inverted order, attempted to construct a new language
of signs, in which the words should be given in the order of the French
or other spoken language adopted, which of course required him to supply
a sign for every word of spoken language. Signs, whatever their
character, could not become associated with words, or suggest them,
until words had been learned. The first step, therefore, was to explain
by means of natural signs, as distinct from the new signs styled
methodical,
the meaning of a passage of verbal language. Then each word was
taken separately and a sign affixed to it, which was to be learned by the
pupil. If the word represented a physical object, the sign would be the
same as the natural sign, and would be already understood, provided
the object had been seen and was familiar; and in all cases the endeavor
was to have the sign convey as strong a suggestion of the meaning
of the word as was possible. The final step was to gesticulate these
signs, thus associated with words, in the exact order in which the words
were to stand in a sentence. Then the pupil would write the very
words desired in the exact order desired. If the previous explanation
in natural signs had not been sufficiently full and careful, he would not
understand the passage. The methodical signs did not profess to give
him the ideas, except in a very limited degree, but only to show him
how to express ideas according to the order and methods of spoken language.
As there were no repetitions of time in narratives in the sign
language, it became necessary to unite with the word-sign for verbs
others, to indicate the different tenses of the verbs, and so by degrees
the methodical signs not only were required to comprise signs for
every word, but also, with every such sign, a grammatical sign to indicate
what part of speech the word was, and, in the case of verbs, still
other signs to show their tenses and corresponding inflections. It was,
as Dr. Peet remarks, a cumbrous and unwieldly vehicle, ready at every
step to break down under the weight of its own machinery. Nevertheless,
it was industriously taught in all our schools from the date of the
[pg 363]
founding of the American Asylum in 1817 down to about the year 1835, when
it was abandoned.

The collection of narratives, speeches, and dialogues of our Indians in
sign language, first systematically commenced by the present writer,
several examples of which are in this paper, has not yet been sufficiently
complete and exact to establish conclusions on the subject of the syntactic
arrangement of their signs. So far as studied it seems to be similar to
that of deaf-mutes and to retain the characteristic of pantomimes in
figuring first the principal idea and adding the accessories successively
in the order of importance, the ideographic expressions being in the
ideologic
order. If the examples given are not enough to establish general
rules of construction, they at least show the natural order of ideas in
the minds of the gesturers and the several modes of inversion by which
they pass from the known to the unknown, beginning with the dominant
idea or that supposed to be best known. Some special instances of
expedients other than strictly syntactic coming under the machinery
broadly designated as grammar may be mentioned.

DEGREES OF COMPARISON.

Degrees of comparison are frequently expressed, both by deaf-mutes
and by Indians, by adding to the generic or descriptive sign that for
“big” or “little.” Damp would be “wet—little”; cool,
“cold—little”; hot,
“warm—much.” The amount or force of motion also often indicates
corresponding
diminution or augmentation, but sometimes expresses a different
shade of meaning, as is reported by Dr. Matthews with reference
to the sign for bad and contempt, see page 411. This change
in degree of
motion is, however, often used for emphasis only, as is the raising of the
voice in speech or italicizing and capitalizing in print. The Prince of
Wied gives an instance of a comparison in his sign for excessively
hard,
first giving that for hard, viz: Open the left hand, and strike
against it
several times with the right (with the backs of the fingers). Afterwards
he gives hard, excessively, as follows: Sign for hard, then
place the
left index-finger upon the right shoulder, at the same time extend and
raise the right arm high, extending the index-finger upward,
perpendicularly.

Rev. G.L. Deffenbaugh describes what may perhaps be regarded as
an intensive sign among the Sahaptins in connection with the sign for
good; i.e., very good. “Place the left hand in position in
front of the body
with all fingers closed except first, thumb lying on second, then with
forefinger of right hand extended in same way point to end of forefinger
of left hand, move it up the arm till near the body and then to a
point in front of breast to make the sign good.” For the latter see
Extracts from Dictionary page 487, infra. The same special motion
is prefixed to the sign for bad as an intensive.

Another intensive is reported by Mr. Benjamin Clark, interpreter at
the Kaiowa, Comanche, and Wichita agency, Indian Territory, in which
after the sign for bad is made, that for strong is used by
the Comanches
[pg 364]
as follows: Place the clinched left fist horizontally in front of the
breast,
back forward, then pass the palmar side of the right fist downward in
front of the knuckles of the left.

Dr. W.H. Corbusier, assistant surgeon U.S.A., writes as follows
in response to a special inquiry on the subject: “By carrying the right
fist from behind forward over the left, instead of beginning the motion
six inches above it, the Arapaho sign for strong is made. For
brave,
first strike the chest over the heart with the right fist two or three
times, and then make the sign for strong.

“The sign for strong expresses the superlative when used with other
signs; with coward it denotes a base coward; with hunger, starvation;
and with sorrow, bitter sorrow. I have not seen it used with the sign for
pleasure or that of hunger, nor can I learn that it is ever used with them.”

OPPOSITION.

The principle of opposition, as between the right and left hands, and
between the thumb and forefinger and the little finger, appears among
Indians in some expressions for “above,” “below,” “forward,” “back,”
but is not so common as among the methodical, distinguished from the
natural, signs of deaf-mutes. It is also connected with the attempt to
express degrees of comparison. Above is sometimes expressed by
holding the left hand horizontal, and in front of the body, fingers open,
but joined together, palm upward. The right hand is then placed horizontal,
fingers open but joined, palm downward, an inch or more above
the left, and raised and lowered a few inches several times, the left hand
being perfectly still. If the thing indicated as “above” is only a
little
above, this concludes the sign, but if it be considerably above, the
right
hand is raised higher and higher as the height to be expressed is greater,
until, if enormously above, the Indian will raise his right hand as
high
as possible, and, fixing his eyes on the zenith, emit a duplicate grunt,
the more prolonged as he desires to express the greater height. All
this time the left hand is held perfectly motionless. Below is
gestured
in a corresponding manner, all movement being made by the left or
lower hand, the right being held motionless, palm downward, and the
eyes looking down.

The code of the Cistercian monks was based in large part on a system
of opposition which seems to have been wrought out by an elaborate process
of invention rather than by spontaneous figuration, and is more of
mnemonic than suggestive value. They made two fingers at the right
side of the nose stand for “friend,” and the same at the left side for
“enemy,” by some fanciful connection with right and wrong, and placed
the little finger on the tip of the nose for “fool” merely because it had
been decided to put the forefinger there for “wise man.”

PROPER NAMES.

It is well known that the names of Indians are almost always connotive,
and particularly that they generally refer to some animal, predicating
[pg 365]
often some attribute or position of that animal. Such names readily admit
of being expressed in sign language, but there may be sometimes a
confusion between the sign expressing the animal which is taken as a
name-totem, and the sign used, not to designate that animal, but as a
proper name. A curious device to differentiate proper names was observed
as resorted to by a Brulé Dakota. After making the sign of the
animal he passed his index forward from the mouth in a direct line,
and explained it orally as “that is his name,” i.e., the name of the person
referred to. This approach to a grammatic division of substantives
maybe correlated with the mode in which many tribes, especially the
Dakotas, designate names in their pictographs, i.e., by a line from the
mouth of the figure drawn representing a man to the animal, also drawn
with proper color or position. Fig. 150 thus shows the name of
Shun-ka Luta, Red Dog, an Ogallalla chief, drawn by himself.
The shading of the dog by vertical lines is designed
to represent red, or gules, according to the heraldic
scheme of colors, which is used in other parts
of this paper where it seemed useful to designate
particular colors. The writer possesses in painted robes many examples
in which lines are drawn from the mouth to a name-totem.

Fig. 150.

It would be interesting to dwell more than is now allowed upon the
peculiar objectiveness of Indian proper names with the result, if not
the intention, that they can all be signified in gesture, whereas the
best sign-talker among deaf-mutes is unable to translate the proper
names occurring in his speech or narrative and, necessarily ceasing
signs, resorts to the dactylic alphabet. Indians are generally named
at first according to a clan or totemic system, but later in life often
acquire
a new name or perhaps several names in succession from some exploit
or adventure. Frequently a sobriquet is given by no means complimentary.
All of the subsequently acquired, as well as the original
names, are connected with material objects or with substantive actions
so as to be expressible in a graphic picture, and, therefore, in a
pictorial
sign. The determination to use names of this connotive character is
shown by the objective translation, whenever possible, of those European
names which it became necessary to introduce into their speech. William
Penn was called “Onas,” that being the word for feather-quill in the
Mohawk dialect. The name of the second French governor of Canada
was “Montmagny” which was translated by the Iroquois “Onontio”—”Great
Mountain,” and becoming associated with the title, has been
applied to all successive Canadian governors, though the origin being
[pg 366]
generally forgotten, it has been considered as a metaphorical compliment.
It is also said that Governor Fletcher was not named by the
Iroquois “Cajenquiragoe,” “the great swift arrow,” because of his speedy
arrival at a critical time, but because they had somehow been informed
of the etymology of his name—”arrow maker” (Fr. fléchier).

GENDER.

This is sometimes expressed by different signs to distinguish the sex of
animals, when the difference in appearance allows of such varied
portraiture.
An example is in the signs for the male and female buffalo, given by
the Prince of Wied. The former is, “Place the tightly closed hands on
both sides of the head, with the fingers forward;” the latter is,
“Curve the
two forefingers, place them on the sides of the head and move them several
times.” The short stubby horns of the bull appear to be indicated, and
the cow’s ears are seen moving, not being covered by the bull’s shock
mane. Tribes in which the hair of the women is differently arranged
from that of men often denote their females by corresponding gesture.
In many cases the sex of animals is indicated by the addition of a generic
sign for male or female.

TENSE.

While it has been mentioned that there is no inflection of signs to
express
tense, yet the conception of present, past, and future is gestured
without difficulty. A common mode of indicating the present time is
by the use of signs for to-day, one of which is, “(1) both hands
extended,
palms outward; (2) swept slowly forward and to each side, to convey
the idea of openness.” (Cheyenne II.) This may combine the idea of
now with openness, the first part of it resembling the
general deaf-mute
sign for here or now.

Two signs nearly related together are also reported as expressing the
meaning now, at once, viz.: “Forefinger of the right hand extended,
upright,
&c. (J), is carried upward in front of the right side of the body
and above the head so that the extended finger points toward the center
of the heavens, and then carried downward in front of the right breast,
forefinger still pointing upright.” (Dakota I.) “Place the extended
index, pointing upward, palm to the left, as high as and before the top
of the head; push the hand up and down a slight distance several times,
the eyes being directed upward at the time.” (Hidatsa I;
Kaiowa I;
Arikara I; Comanche III; Apache II; Wichita
II.)

Time past is not only expressed, but some tribes give a distinct
modification
to show a short or long time past. The following are examples:

Lately, recently.—Hold the left hand at arm’s length, closed, with
forefinger
only extended and pointing in the direction of the place where
the event occurred; then hold the right hand against the right shoulder,
closed, but with index extended and pointing in the direction of the left.
The hands may be exchanged, the right extended and the left retained,
[pg 367]
as the case may require for ease in description. (Absaroka I; Shoshoni
and Banak I.)

Long ago.—Both hands closed, forefingers extended and straight;
pass
one hand slowly at arm’s length, pointing horizontally, the other against
the shoulder or near it, pointing in the same direction as the opposite
one. Frequently the tips of the forefingers are placed together, and the
hands drawn apart, until they reach the positions described.
(Absaroka I; Shoshoni and Banak I.)

The Comanche, Wichita, and other Indians designate a short time
ago by placing the tips of the forefinger and thumb of the left hand
together, the remaining fingers closed, and holding the hand before the
body with forefinger and thumb pointing toward the right shoulder; the
index and thumb of the right hand are then similarly held and placed
against those of the left, when the hands are slowly drawn apart a short
distance. For a long time ago the hands are similarly held, but
drawn
farther apart. Either of these signs may be and frequently is preceded
by those for day, month, or year, when it is desired to
convey a definite
idea of the time past.

A sign is reported with the abstract idea of future, as follows:
“The
arms are flexed and hands brought together in front of the body as in
type-position (W). The hands are made to move in wave-like motions
up and down together and from side to side.” (Oto I.) The authority
gives the poetical conception of “Floating on the tide of time.”

The ordinary mode of expressing future time is, however, by some
figurative reference, as the following: Count off fingers, then shut all
the fingers of both hands several times, and touch the hair and tent or
other white object. (Apache III.) “Many years; when I am old
(whitehaired).”

CONJUNCTIONS.

An interesting instance where the rapid connection of signs has the
effect of the conjunction and is shown in Nátci’s Narrative,
infra.

PREPOSITIONS.

In the Tendoy-Huerito Dialogue (page 489) the combination of
gestures supplies the want of the proposition to.

PUNCTUATION.

While this is generally accompanied by facial expression, manner of
action, or pause, instances have been noticed suggesting the device of
interrogation points and periods.

Mark of interrogation.

The Shoshoni, Absaroka, Dakota, Comanche, and other Indians, when
desiring to ask a question, precede the gestures constituting the
information
desired by a sign intended to attract attention and “asking for,”
viz., by holding the flat right hand, with the palm down, directed, to the
[pg 368]
individual interrogated, with or without lateral oscillating motion; the
gestural sentence, when completed, being closed by the same sign and
a look of inquiry. This recalls the Spanish use of the interrogation
points before and after the question.

Period.

A Hidatsa, after concluding a short statement, indicated its conclusion
by placing the inner edges of the clinched hands together before the
breast, and passing them outward and downward to their respective
sides in an emphatic manner, Fig. 334, page 528. This sign is also used
in other connections to express done.

The same mode of indicating the close of a narrative or statement is
made by the Wichitas, by holding the extended left hand horizontally
before the body, fingers pointing to the right, palm either toward the
body or downward, and cutting edgewise downward past the tips of the
left with the extended right hand. This is the same sign given in the
Address of Kin Chē-ĕss as cut off, and is illustrated in Fig. 324,
page
522. This is more ideographic and convenient than the device of the
Abyssinian Galla, reported by M.A. d’Abbadie, who denoted a comma
by a slight stroke of a leather whip, a semicolon by a harder one, and
a full stop by one still harder.

GESTURES AIDING ARCHÆOLOGIC RESEARCH.

The most interesting light in which the Indians of North America
can be regarded is in their present representation of a stage of evolution
once passed through by our own ancestors. Their signs, as well as
their myths and customs, form a part of the paleontology of humanity to
be studied in the history of the latter as the geologist, with similar
object,
studies all the strata of the physical world. At this time it is only
possible to suggest the application of gesture signs to elucidate
pictographs,
and also their examination to discover religious, sociologic, and
historic ideas preserved in them, as has been done with great success in
the radicals of oral speech.

SIGNS CONNECTED WITH PICTOGRAPHS.

The picture writing of Indians is the sole form in which they recorded
events and ideas that can ever be interpreted without the aid of a
traditional
key, such as is required for the signification of the wampum
belts of the Northeastern tribes and the quippus of Peru. Strips of
bark, tablets of wood, dressed skins of animals, and the smooth surfaces
of rock have been and still are used for such records, those most
ancient, and therefore most interesting, being of course the rock etchings;
but they can only be deciphered, if at all, by the ascertained
principles on which the more modern and the more obvious are made.
Many of the numerous and widespread rock carvings are mere idle
sketches—of natural objects, mainly animals, and others are as
exclusively
[pg 369]
mnemonic as the wampum above mentioned. Even since the
Columbian discovery some tribes have employed devices yet ruder than
the rudest pictorial attempt as markers for the memory. An account
of one of these is given in E. Winslow’s Relation (A.D. 1624), Col.
Mass.
Hist. Soc., 2d series, ix, 1822, p. 99, as follows:

“Instead of records and chronicles they take this course: Where any
remarkable act is done, in memory of it, either in the place or by some
pathway near adjoining, they make a round hole in the ground about a
foot deep, and as much over, which, when others passing by behold,
they inquire the cause and occasion of the same, which being once
known, they are careful to acquaint all men as occasion serveth therewith.
And lest such holes should be filled or grown over by any accident,
as men pass by they will often renew the same; by which means
many things of great antiquity are fresh in memory. So that as a man
traveleth, if he can understand his guide, his journey will be the less
tedious, by reason of the many historical discourses which will be related
unto him.”

Gregg, in Commerce of the Prairies, New York, 1844, II, 286, says of
the
Plains tribes: “When traveling, they will also pile heaps of stones upon
mounds or conspicuous points, so arranged as to be understood by their
passing comrades; and sometimes they set up the bleached buffalo
heads, which are everywhere scattered over those plains, to indicate the
direction of their march, and many other facts which may be communicated
by those simple signs.”

Fig. 151.

Fig. 152.

A more ingenious but still arbitrary mode of giving intelligence is
practiced at this day by the Abnaki,
as reported by H.L. Masta,
chief of that tribe, now living at
Pierreville, Quebec. When they
are in the woods, to say “I am
going to the east,” a stick is stuck
in the ground pointing to that
direction, Fig. 151. “Am not gone
far,” another stick is stuck across
the former, close to the ground,
Fig. 152. “Gone far” is the reverse, Fig. 153. The number of days
journey of proposed absence is
shown by the same number of
sticks across the first; thus Fig.
154 signifies five days’ journey.
Cutting the bark off from a tree
on one, two, three or four sides
near the butt means “Have had
poor, poorer, poorest luck.”
Cutting it off all around the tree
means “I am starving.” Smoking
a piece of birch bark and hanging it on a tree means “I am sick.”

Fig. 153.

Fig. 154.

Where there has existed any form of artistic representation, however
rude, and at the same time a system of ideographic gesture signs prevailed,
it would be expected that the form of the latter would appear in
the former. The sign of river and
water mentioned on page 358 being
established, when it became necessary
or desirable to draw a character
or design to convey the same idea,
nothing would be more natural than
to use the graphic form of delineation
which is also above described.
It was but one more and an easy step
to fasten upon bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures that still
in pigments or carvings preserve their skeleton outline, and in their
ideography
approach, as has been shown
above, the rudiments of the phonetic
alphabets that have been constructed
by other peoples. A transition
stage between gestures and
pictographs, in which the left hand is
used as a supposed drafting surface
upon which the index draws lines,
is exhibited in the Dialogue between Alaskan Indians, infra, page
498. This device is common among deaf-mutes, without equal archæologic
importance, as it may have been suggested by the art of writing,
with which they are generally acquainted, even if not instructed in it.

The reproduction of apparent gesture lines in the pictographs made
by our Indians has, for obvious reasons, been most frequent in the attempt
to convey those subjective ideas which were beyond the range of
an artistic skill limited to the direct representation of objects, so that
the part of the pictographs which is still the most difficult of
interpretation
is precisely the one which the study of sign language is likely to
elucidate. The following examples of pictographs of the Indians, in
some cases compared with those from foreign sources, have been selected
because their interpretation is definitely known and the gestures
corresponding with or suggested by them are well determined.

Fig. 155.

Fig. 156.

Fig. 157.

Fig. 159.

Fig. 158.

The common Indian gesture sign for sun is: “Right hand
closed, the index and thumb curved, with tips touching, thus
approximating a circle, and held toward the
sky,” the position of the fingers of the hand
forming a circle being shown in Fig. 155. Two
of the Egyptian characters for sun, Figs. 156 and 157, are plainly the
universal
conception of the disk. The latter, together with indications of
rays, Fig. 158, and in its linear form, Fig. 159, (Champollion,
Dict., 9),
[pg 371]
constitutes the Egyptian character for light. The rays emanating
from
the whole disk appear in Figs. 160 and 161, taken from a MS. contributed
by Mr. G.K. Gilbert of the United States Geological
Survey, from the rock etchings
of the Moqui pueblos in Arizona. The
same authority gives from the same
locality Figs. 162 and 163 for sun,
which may be distinguished from several other similar etchings for
star
also given by him, Figs. 164, 165, 166, 167, by always showing some
indication
of a face, the latter being absent in the characters denoting star.

Fig. 160.

Fig. 161.

Fig. 163.

Fig. 162.

With the above characters for sun compare
Fig. 168, found at Cuzco, Peru, and
taken from Wiener’s Pérou et Bolivie,
Paris, 1880, p. 706.

Fig. 164.

Fig. 165.

Fig. 166.

Fig. 167.

The Ojibwa pictograph for sun is seen
in Fig. 169, taken from Schoolcraft, loc.
cit., v. 1, pl. 56, Fig. 67.

Fig. 168.

Fig. 169.

Fig. 171.

Fig. 170.

Fig. 172.

A gesture sign for sunrise, morning, is: Forefinger of right hand
crooked to represent half of the sun’s disk and pointed or extended to the
left, then slightly elevated.
(Cheyenne II.) In this connection
it may be noted that when
the gesture is carefully
made in open
country the pointing
would generally be
to the east, and the body turned so that its left would be in that
direction.
In a room in a city, or under circumstances where the points of
the compass are not specially attended to, the left side supposes
the east, and the gestures relating to sun, day, &c., are
made with such reference. The half only of the disk
represented in the above gesture appears in the following
Moqui pueblo etchings for morning and sunrise,
Figs. 170, 171, and 172. (Gilbert, MS.)

Fig. 173.

A common gesture for day is when the index and thumb form a circle
(remaining fingers closed) and are passed from east to west.

Fig. 173 shows a pictograph found in Owen’s Valley, California, a similar
one being reported in the Ann. Rep. Geog. Survey west of the 100th
Meridian for 1876, Washington, 1876, pl. opp. p. 326, in which the
circle
may indicate either day or month (both these gestures having
the same
execution), the course of the sun or moon being represented perhaps in
mere contradistinction to the vertical line, or perhaps the latter
signifies one.

Fig. 174.

Fig. 175.

Fig. 174 is a pictograph of the Coyotero Apaches, found at Camp
Apache, in Arizona, reported in the Tenth Ann. Rep. U.S. Geolog. and
Geograph. Survey of the Territories for 1876, Washington, 1878,
pl. lxxvii.
The sun and the ten spots of approximately the same shape represent
the days, eleven, which the
party with five pack mules
passed in traveling through
the country. The separating
lines are the nights, and may
include the conception of covering
over and consequent obscurity above referred to (page 354).

Fig. 177.

Fig. 176.

A common sign for moon, month, is the right
hand closed, leaving the thumb and index extended,
but curved to form a half circle and the
hand held toward the sky, in a position which is
illustrated in Fig. 175, to which curve the Moqui
etching, Fig. 176, and the identical form in the
ancient Chinese has an obvious resemblance.

Fig. 179.

Fig. 178.

The crescent, as we commonly figure the satellite,
appears also in the Ojibwa pictograph, Fig.
177 (Schoolcraft, I, pl. 58), which is the same,
with a slight addition, as the
Egyptian figurative character.

The sign for sky, also heaven,
is generally made by passing the index from east to west across the
zenith. This curve is apparent in the Ojibwa pictograph Fig. 178,
reported in Schoolcraft, I, pl. 18, Fig. 21, and is abbreviated
in the Egyptian character with the same
meaning, Fig. 179 (Champollion, Dict., p. 1).

Fig. 182.

Fig. 181.

Fig. 180.

A sign for cloud is as follows: (1) Both hands partially closed,
palms facing and near each other, brought up to
level with or slightly above, but in front of the head; (2) suddenly
separated sidewise, describing
a curve like a scallop;
this scallop motion
is repeated for “many
clouds.” (Cheyenne II.) The same conception is in the Moqui
etchings,
Figs. 180, 181, and 182 (Gilbert MS.)

Fig. 183.

The Ojibwa pictograph for cloud is more elaborate, Fig. 183,
reported
in Schoolcraft, I, pl. 58. It is composed of the sign for
sky, to which that for clouds is added, the latter being
reversed
as compared with the Moqui etchings, and picturesquely
hanging from the sky.

Fig. 184.

Fig. 185.

The gesture sign for rain is described and illustrated on
page 344. The pictograph, Fig. 184, reported as found in New Mexico by
[pg 373]
Lieutenant Simpson (Ex. Doc. No. 64, Thirty-first Congress, first
session,
1850, pl. 9) is said to represent Montezuma’s adjutants sounding a blast
to him for rain. The small character inside the curve
which represents the sky, corresponds with the gesturing
hand. The Moqui etching (Gilbert MS.) for rain, i.e.,
a cloud from which the drops are falling, is given in Fig. 185.

Fig. 187.

Fig. 186.

The same authority gives
two signs for lightning, Figs.
186 and 187. In the latter the sky is shown, the changing
direction of the streak, and clouds with rain falling.
The part relating specially to the streak is portrayed
in a sign as follows: Right hand elevated before
and above the head, forefinger pointing upward, brought down
with great rapidity with a sinuous, undulating motion; finger still
extended diagonally downward toward the right. (Cheyenne II.)

Fig. 189.

Fig. 188.

Figs. 188 and 189 also represent lightning, taken by
Mr. W.H. Jackson,
photographer of the
late U.S. Geolog. and
Geog. Survey, from the
decorated walls of an estufa
in the Pueblo de
Jemez, New Mexico. The former is
blunt, for harmless, and the latter terminating
in an arrow or spear point,
for destructive or fatal, lightning.

Fig. 191.

Fig. 190.

A common sign for speech, speak,
among the Indians is the repeated
motion of the index in a straight line
forward from the mouth. This line,
indicating the voice, is shown in Fig. 190, taken from the Dakota
Calendar, being the expression for the fact
that “the-Elk-that-hollows-walking,” a Minneconjou chief, “made
[pg 374]
medicine.” The ceremony is indicated by the head of an albino buffalo. A
more graphic portraiture of the conception of voice is in Fig. 191,
representing
an antelope and the whistling sound produced by the animal
on being surprised or alarmed. This is taken from MS. drawing book
of an Indian prisoner at Saint Augustine,
Fla., now in the Smithsonian Institution, No. 30664.

Fig. 192 is the exhibition of wrestling for
a turkey, the point of interest in the present
connection being the lines from the mouth
to the objects of conversation. It is taken
from the above-mentioned MS. drawing book.

Fig. 192.

The wrestlers, according to the foot
prints, had evidently come together, when,
meeting the returning hunter, who is
wrapped in his blanket with only one
foot protruding, they separated and threw
off their blankets, leggings, and moccasins,
both endeavoring to win the turkey,
which lies between them and the donor.

In Fig. 193, taken from the same MS.
drawing book, the conversation is about the lassoing, shooting, and
final killing of a buffalo which has wandered to a camp. The dotted
lines indicate footprints. The Indian drawn under the buffalo having
secured the animal by the fore feet, so informs his companions, as
indicated by the line drawn from his mouth to the object mentioned; the
left-hand figure, having also secured the buffalo by the horns, gives his
nearest comrade an opportunity to strike it with an ax, which he no
[pg 375]
doubt announces that he will do, as the line from his mouth to the head
of the animal suggests. The Indian in the upper left-hand corner is told
by a squaw to take an arrow and join his companions, when he turns his
head to inform her that he has one already, which fact he demonstrates
by holding up the weapon.

Fig. 193.

The Mexican pictograph, Fig. 194, taken from Kingsborough, II, pt.
1, p. 100, is illustrative of the sign made by the Arikara and Hidatsa for
tell and conversation. Tell me is: Place the flat
right hand, palm upward,
about fifteen inches in front of the right side of the face, fingers
pointing to the left and front; then draw the hand inward toward and
against the bottom of the chin. For conversation, talking between
two
persons, both hands are held before the breast, pointing forward, palms
up, the edges being moved several times toward one another. Perhaps,
however, the picture in fact only means the common poetical image of
“flying words.”

Fig. 194.

Fig. 195.

Fig. 195 is one of Landa’s characters, found in Rel. des choses de
Yucatan, p. 316, and suggests one of the gestures for talk and more
especially that for sing, in which the
extended and separated
fingers are passed forward
and slightly downward
from the mouth—”many
voices.” Although the
last opinion about the
bishop is unfavorable to
the authenticity of his
work, yet even if it were
prepared by a Maya, under
his supervision, the
latter would probably
have given him some genuine
native conceptions,
and among them gestures
would be likely to occur.

Fig. 198.

Fig. 197.

Fig. 196.

The natural sign for
hear, made both by Indians
and deaf-mutes,
consisting in the motion
of the index, or the index
and thumb joined, in a
straight line to the ear, is
illustrated in the Ojibwa
pictograph Fig. 196,
“hearing ears,” and those
of the same people, Figs.
197 and 198, the latter
of which is a hearing serpent, and the former means “I hear, but your
words are from a bad heart,” the hands being thrown out as in the
final part of a gesture for bad heart, which is
made by the hand being closed and held near
the breast, with the back toward the breast,
then as the arm is suddenly extended
the hand is opened and the fingers
separated from each other.
(Mandan and Hidatsa I.)

The final part of the gesture,
representing the idea of bad, not connected with heart, is
illustrated in Fig. 236 on page 411.

The above Ojibwa pictographs are taken from Schoolcraft, loc. cit.
I, plates 58, 53, 59.

Fig. 199, a bas-relief taken from Dupaix’s Monuments of New Spain,
[pg 377]
in Kingsborough, loc. cit. IV, pt. 3, p. 31, has been considered to
be a
royal edict or command. The gesture to hear is plainly depicted, and
the
right hand is directed to the persons addressed, so the command appears
to be uttered with the preface
of Hear Ye! Oyez!

Fig. 199.

Fig. 200.

The typical sign for kill
or killed is: Right hand
clinched, thumb lying along
finger tips, elevated to near
the shoulder, strike downward
and outward vaguely in the direction of the object
to be killed. The abbreviated sign is simply to
clinch the right hand in the manner described and
strike it down and out from the right side. (Cheyenne
II.) This gesture, also appears among the Dakotas and
is illustrated in Fig. 200.

Fig. 201.

Fig. 201, taken from the Dakota Calendar, illustrates this gesture.
It
[pg 378]
represents the year in which a Minneconjou chief was stabbed in the
shoulder by a Gros Ventre, and afterwards named “Dead Arm” or
“Killed Arm.” At first the figure was supposed to show the permanent
drawing up of the arm by anchylosis, but that would not be likely
to be the result of the wound described, and with knowledge of the gesture
the meaning is more clear.

Fig. 202, taken from Report upon the Reconnaissance of Northwestern
Wyoming, &c., Washington, 1875, p. 207, Fig. 53, found in the Wind
River Valley, Wyoming Territory, was interpreted by members of a Shoshoni
and Banak delegation to Washington in 1880 as “an Indian killed
another.” The latter is very roughly delineated in the horizontal figure,
but is also represented by the line under the hand of the upright figure,
meaning the same individual. At the right is the scalp taken and the
two feathers showing the dead warrior’s rank. The arm nearest the
prostrate foe shows the gesture for killed.

Fig. 202.

Fig. 203.

The same gesture appears in Fig. 203, from the same authority and
locality. The scalp is here held forth, and the
numeral one is designated by the stroke at the bottom.

Fig. 204, from the same locality and authority,
was also interpreted by the Shoshoni and
Banak. It appears from their description that
a Blackfoot had attacked the habitation of
some of his own people. The right-hand upper
figure represents his horse with the lance suspended
from the side. The lower figure illustrates
the log house built against a stream.
The dots are the prints of the horse’s hoofs,
while the two lines running outward from the
upper inclosure show that two thrusts of the
lance were made over the wall of the house, thus killing the occupant
and securing two bows and five arrows, as represented in the
left-hand
group. The right-hand figure of that group shows the hand raised in
the attitude of making the gesture for kill.

Fig. 204.

As the Blackfeet, according to the interpreters, were the only Indians
in the locality mentioned who constructed log houses, the drawing becomes
additionally interesting, as an
attempt appears to have been made
to illustrate the crossing of the logs
at the corners, the gesture for which
(log-house) will be found on page 428.

Fig. 205.

Fig. 205 is the Egyptian character
for veneration, to glorify (Champollion,
Dict., 29), the author’s understanding
being that the hands are raised
in surprise, astonishment.

The Menomoni Indians now begin
their prayers by raising their hands
in the same manner. They may have
been influenced in this respect by the
attitudes of their missionaries in
prayer and benediction. The Apaches,
who have received less civilized tuition,
in a religious gesture corresponding
with prayer spread their hands
opposite the face,
palms up and backward, apparently
expressing
the desire to
receive.

Fig. 206.

Fig. 206 is a copy
of an Egyptian tablet
reproduced from
Cooper’s Serpent
Myths, page 28. A
priest kneels before
the great goddess
Ranno, while supplicating
her favor. The
conception of the author
is that the hands
are raised by the supplicant
to shield his
face from the glory of
the divinity. It may
be compared with
signs for asking for
mercy and for giving mercy to another, the former being: Extend both
forefingers, pointing upward, palms toward the breast, and hold the hands
before the chest; then draw them inward toward their respective sides,
and pass them up ward as high as the sides of the head by either cheek.
[pg 380]
(Kaiowa I; Comanche III; Apache II; Wichita
II.) The latter, to have
mercy on another, as made by the same tribes, is: Hold both hands
nearly
side by side before the chest, palms forward, forefinger only extended
and pointing upward; then move them forward
and upward, as if passing them by the
cheeks of another person from the
breast to the sides of the head.

Fig. 207.

A similar gesture for supplication
appears in Fig. 207, taken from Kingsborough,
loc. cit., III, pt. I, p. 24.

Fig. 208.

An Indian gesture sign for smoke,
and also one for fire, has been described
above, page 344. With the former is connected the Aztec design
(Fig. 208) taken from Pipart, loc. cit., II, 352, and the latter
appears
in Fig. 209, taken from Kingsborough, III, pt. I, p. 21.

A sign for medicine-man, shaman, is thus described: “With its
index-finger extended and
pointing upward, or
all the fingers extended,
back of hand outward, move
the right hand from
just in front of the
forehead, spirally
upward, nearly to
arm’s length, from
left to right.” (Dakota IV.)

Fig. 209.

Fig. 210, from the
Dakota Calendar,
represents the making
of medicine or
conjuration. In that
case the head and
horns of a white buffalo
cow were used.

Fig. 210.

Fig. 211.

Fig. 211 is an Ojibwa pictograph taken from Schoolcraft, loc. cit.,
representing
medicine-man, meda. With these horns and spiral may be collated
Fig. 212 which portrays the ram-headed Egyptian god Knuphis,
or Chnum, the spirit, in
a shrine on the boat of the sun, canopied
by the serpent-goddess Ranno, who is also seen facing him inside
the shrine. This is reproduced from Cooper’s Serpent Myths, p. 24.
The same deity is represented in Champollion, Gram., p. 113, as
reproduced in Fig. 213.

Fig. 214 is an Ojibwa pictograph found in Schoolcraft, I, pl. 58, and given
as power. It corresponds with the sign for doctor, or
medicine-man,
made by the Absarokas by passing the extended and separated index
[pg 381]
and second finger of the right hand upward from the forehead, spirally,
and is considered to indicate “superior knowledge.” Among the Otos,
as part of the sign with the same meaning,
both hands are raised to the side of the head, and
the extended indices pressing the temples.

Fig. 212.

Fig. 213.

Fig. 214.

Fig. 215 is also an Ojibwa pictograph from
Schoolcraft I, pl. 59, and is said to signify Meda’s
power. It corresponds with another sign made
for medicine-man by the Absarokas and Comanches,
viz, The hand passed upward before
the forehead, with index loosely extended. Combined
with the sign for sky, before given, page
372, it means knowledge of superior matters; spiritual power.

The common sign for trade is made by extending the forefingers,
holding them obliquely upward, and crossing
them at right angles to one another, usually
in front of the chest. This is often
abbreviated by merely crossing the forefingers,
see Fig. 278, page 452.
It is illustrated in Fig. 216, taken
from the Prince of Wied’s Travels
in the Interior of North America;
London, 1843, p. 352.

Fig. 215.

To this the following explanation is given: “The cross signifies, ‘I
will barter or trade.’ Three animals are drawn on the right hand of the
cross; one is a buffalo; the two others, a weasel (Mustela
Canadensis) and an otter. The writer offers in
exchange for the skins of these animals (probably
meaning that of a white buffalo) the articles
which he has drawn on the left side of the cross.
He has, in the first place, depicted a beaver very plainly, behind which
there is a gun; to the left of the beaver are thirty strokes, each ten
[pg 382]
separated by a longer line; this means, I will give thirty beaver skins
and a gun for the skins of the three animals on the right hand of the
cross.”

Fig. 216.

Fig. 217 is from Kingsborough, III, pt. 1, p. 25,
and illustrates the sign for to give or to present,
made by the Brulé-Dakotas by holding both hands
edgewise before the breast, pointing forward and
upward, the right above the left, then throwing
them quickly downward until the forearms
reach a horizontal position.

Fig. 217.

Fig. 218 is taken from the Dakota Calendar,
representing a successful raid of the
Absarokas or Crows upon the Brulé-Sioux, in which the village of
the latter was surprised and a large number of horses captured. That
capture is exhibited by the horse-tracks
moving from the village, the gesture
sign for which is often made by a circle
formed either by the opposed thumbs and
forefingers of both hands or by a circular motion
of both hands, palms inward, toward each other. In
some cases there is a motion of
the circle, from above downward, as formed.

Fig. 218.

Fig. 219, from Kingsborough I, pt. 3, p. 10, represents Chapultepec,
“Mountain of the Locust,” by one enormous locust on top of
a hill. This shows the mode of augmentation in the same
manner as is often done by an exaggerated gesture. The
curves at the base of the mountain are intelligible only as
being formed in the sign for many, described on pages 359
and 488.

Fig. 219.

Fig. 220, taken from Pipart, loc. cit., is the Mexican pictograph
for soil
cultivated, i.e., tilled and planted. Fig. 221, from the same
authority,
[pg 383]
shows the sprouts coming from the cultivated soil, and may be compared with
the signs for grass and grow on page 343.

Fig. 220.

Fig. 221.

The gesture sign for road, path, is sometimes made by indicating two
lines forward from the body, then imitating
walking with the hands upon the imaginary
road. The same natural representation of
road is seen in Fig. 222, taken from Pipart,
loc. cit., page 352. A place where two roads
meet—cross-roads—is shown in Fig. 223, from Kingsborough.
Two persons are evidently having a chat in sign language
at the cross-roads.

Fig. 222.

Fig. 223.

Fig. 224.

If no gesture is actually included in all of
the foregoing pictographs, it is seen that a
gesture sign is made with the same conception
which is obvious in the ideographic pictures. They are selected as
specially transparent and clear. Many others less distinct
are now the subject of examination for elucidation. The following examples
are added to show the ideographic style of
pictographs not connected with gestures,
lest it may be suspected that an attempt
is made to prove that gestures are always
included in or connected with them.
Fig. 224, from the Dakota Calendar,
refers to the small-pox which broke out in the
year (1802) which it specifies. Fig. 225 shows in the design at the
left, a warning or notice, that though a goat can climb up the rocky
trail a horse will tumble—”No Thoroughfare.” This was contributed
[pg 384]
by Mr. J.K. Hillers, photographer of the United States Geological Survey,
as observed by him in Cañon De Chelly, New Mexico, in 1880.

Fig. 225.

SIGNS CONNECTED WITH ETHNOLOGIC FACTS.

The present limits permit only a few examples of the manner in
which the signs of Indians refer to sociologic, religious, historic, and
other ethnologic facts. They may incite research to elicit further
information
of the same character.

Fig. 226.

Fig. 227.

The Prince of Wied gives in his list of signs the heading Partisan,
a term of the Canadian voyageurs, signifying a leader of an occasional
or volunteer war party, the sign being reported
as follows: Make first the sign of
the pipe, afterwards open the thumb and
index-finger of the right hand, back of the
hand outward, and move it forward and upward
in a curve. This is explained by
the author’s account in a different connection,
that to become recognized as a leader
of such a war party as above mentioned,
the first act among the tribes
using the sign was the consecration, by fasting succeeded
by feasting, of a medicine pipe without ornament, which the
leader of the expedition afterward bore before him as his
badge of authority, and it therefore naturally became an emblematic
sign. This sign with its interpretation supplies a meaning to Fig. 226
from the Dakota Calendar showing “One Feather,” a Sioux chief who
raised in that year a large war party against the Crows, which fact is
simply denoted by his holding out demonstratively an unornamented
pipe. In connection with this subject, Fig. 227, drawn and explained
by Two Strike, an Ogalala Dakota, relating to his own achievements,
displays four plain pipes to exhibit the fact that he had led four war
parties.

Fig. 228.

The sign of the pipe or of smoking is made in a different manner, when
used to mean friend, as follows: (1) Tips of the two first fingers
of the
right hand placed against or at right angles to the mouth; (2) suddenly
elevated upward and outward to imitate smoke expelled.
(Cheyenne II). “We two smoke together.” This is illustrated
in the Ojibwa pictograph, Fig. 228, taken
from Schoolcraft I, pl. 59.

Fig. 230.

Fig. 229.

A ceremonial sign for peace, friendship,
is the extended fingers, separated (R), interlocked in front of the breast,
hands horizontal, backs outward. (Dakota I.) Fig. 229 from the
Dakota
Calendar exhibits the beginning of this gesture. When the idea conveyed
[pg 385]
is peace or friendship with the whites, the hand shaking of the latter is
adopted as in Fig. 230, also taken from the Dakota Calendar, and
referring
to the peace made in 1855 by General Harney, at Fort
Pierre, with a number of the tribes of the Dakotas.

It is noticeable that while the ceremonial gesture of
uniting or linking hands is common and ancient in
token of peace, the practice of shaking hands on
meeting, now the annoying etiquette of the Indians in their intercourse
with whites, was not until very recently and is even now seldom
used by them between each other, and is clearly a foreign importation.
Their fancy for affectionate greeting was in giving a pleasant bodily,
sensation by rubbing each other on the breast, abdomen, and limbs, or
by a hug. The senseless and inconvenient custom of shaking hands is,
indeed, by no means general throughout the world, and in the extent to
which it prevails in the United States is a subject of ridicule by
foreigners.
The Chinese, with a higher conception of politeness, shake their
own hands. The account of a recent observer of the meeting of two
polite Celestials is: “Each placed the fingers of one hand over the fist
of the other, so that the thumbs met, and then standing a few feet apart
raised his hands gently up and down in front of his breast. For special
courtesy, after the foregoing gesture, they place the hand which had been
the actor in it on the stomach of its owner, not on that part of the
interlocutor,
the whole proceeding being subjective, but perhaps a relic of
objective performance.” In Miss Bird’s Unbeaten Trades in Japan,
London,
1880, the following is given as the salutatory etiquette of that
empire: “As acquaintances come in sight of each other they slacken their
pace and approach with downcast eyes and averted faces as if neither
were worthy of beholding each other; then they bow low, so low as to
bring the face, still kept carefully averted, on a level with the knees, on
which the palms of the hands are pressed. Afterwards, during the
friendly strife of each to give the pas to the other, the palms of
the hands
are diligently rubbed against each other.”

Fig. 231.

The interlocking of the fingers of both hands above given as an Indian
sign (other instances being mentioned
under the head of Signals, infra) is
also reported by R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines
of Victoria, loc. cit., Vol. II, p.
308, as made by the natives of Cooper’s
Creek, Australia, to express the highest degree of friendship, including
a special form of hospitality in which the wives of the entertainer
performed
a part. Fig. 231 is reproduced from a cut in the work referred to.

But besides this interlocked form of signifying the union of friendship
the hands are frequently grasped together. Sometimes the sign is
abbreviated
by simply extending the hand as if about to grasp that of
another, and sometimes the two forefingers are laid side by side, which
last sign also means, same, brother and companion. For
description and
[pg 386]
illustration of these three signs, see respectively pages 521, 527, and 317.
A different execution of the same conception of union or linking to signify
friend is often made as follows: Hook the curved index over the
curved
forefinger of the left hand, the palm of the latter pointing forward, the
palm of the right hand being turned toward the face; remaining fingers
and thumbs being closed. (Dakota VIII.) Fig. 232.

Fig. 232.

Wied’s sign for medicine is “Stir with the right
hand into the left, and afterward blow into the
latter.” All persons familiar with the Indians
will understand that the term “medicine,” foolishly
enough adopted by both French and English
to express the aboriginal magic arts, has no therapeutic
significance. Very few even pretended
remedies were administered to the natives and
probably never by the professional shaman, who worked by incantation,
often pulverizing and mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent
their detection. The same mixtures were employed in divination. The
author particularly mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white “medicine”
stone, as hard as pyrites, was produced by rubbing in the hand
snow or the white feathers of a bird. The blowing away of the disease,
considered to be introduced by a supernatural power foreign to the
body, was a common part of the juggling performance.

A sign for stone is as follows: With the back of the arched right
hand
(H) strike repeatedly in the palm of the left, held horizontal, back
outward,
at the height of the breast and about a foot in front; the ends of
the fingers point in opposite directions. (Dakota I.) From its use
when
the stone was the only hammer.

A suggestive sign for knife is reported, viz: Cut past the mouth
with
the raised right hand. (Wied.) This probably refers to the general
practice
of cutting off food, as much being crammed into the mouth as can
be managed and then separated from the remaining mass by a stroke
of a knife. This is specially the usage with fat and entrails, the Indian
delicacies.

An old sign for tomahawk, ax, is as follows: Cross the arms and
slide the edge of the right hand, held vertically, down over the left
arm. (Wied.) This is still employed, at least for a small hatchet,
or
“dress tomahawk,” and would be unintelligible without special knowledge.
The essential point is laying the extended right hand in the
bend of the left elbow. The sliding down over the left arm is an almost
unavoidable but quite unnecessary accompaniment to the sign, which
indicates the way in which the hatchet is usually carried. Pipes, whips,
bows and arrows, fans, and other dress or emblematic articles of the
“buck” are seldom or never carried in the bend of the left elbow as is
the ax. The pipe is usually held in the left hand.

The following sign for Indian village is given by Wied: Place the
open thumb and forefinger of each hand opposite to each other, as if to
[pg 387]
make a circle, but leaving between them a small interval; afterward move
them from above downward simultaneously. The villages of the tribes
with which the author was longest resident, particularly the Mandans
and Arikaras, were surrounded by a strong circular stockade, spaces or
breaks in the circle being left for entrance or exit.

Signs for dog are made by some of the tribes of the plains
essentially
the same as the following: Extend and spread the right, fore, and middle
fingers, and draw the hand about eighteen inches from left to right across
the front of the body at the height of the navel, palm downward, fingers
pointing toward the left and a little downward, little and ring fingers to
be
loosely closed, the thumb against the ring-finger. (Dakota IV.) The
sign
would not be intelligible without knowledge of the fact that before the
introduction of the horse, and even yet, the dog has been used to draw
the tent- or lodge-poles in moving camp, and the sign represents the
trail. Indians less nomadic, who built more substantial lodges, and to
whom the material for poles was less precious than on the plains, would
not have comprehended this sign without such explanation as is equivalent
to a translation from a foreign language, and the more general one
is the palm lowered as if to stroke gently in a line conforming to the
animal’s
head and neck. It is abbreviated by simply lowering the hand
to the usual height of the wolfish aboriginal breed, and suggests
the animal
par excellence domesticated by the Indians and made a companion.

Several examples connected with this heading may be noticed under
the preceding head of gestures connected with pictographs, and others
of historic interest will be found among the Tribal Signs, infra.

NOTABLE POINTS FOR FURTHER RESEARCHES.

It is considered desirable to indicate some points to which for special
reasons the attention of collaborators for the future publication on the
general subject of sign language may be invited. These now follow:

INVENTION OF NEW SIGNS.

It is probable that signs will often be invented by individual Indians
who may be pressed for them by collectors to express certain ideas,
which signs of course form no part of any current language; but while
that fact should, if possible, be ascertained and reported, the signs so
invented are not valueless merely because they are original and not
traditional, if they are made in good faith and in accordance with the
principles of sign formation. Less error will arise in this direction than
from the misinterpretation of the idea intended to be conveyed by
spontaneous
signs. The process resembles the coining of new words to which
the higher languages owe their copiousness. It is observed in the signs
[pg 388]
invented by Indians for each new product of civilization brought to
their notice.

An interesting instance is in the sign for steamboat, made at the
request
of the writer by White Man (who, however, did not like that sobriquet
and announced his intention to change his name to Lean Bear), an
Apache, in June, 1880, who had a few days before seen a steamboat for
the first time. After thinking a moment he gave an original sign, described
as follows:

Make the sign for water, by placing the flat right hand before the
face,
pointing upward and forward, the back forward, with the wrist as high
as the nose; then draw it down and inward toward the chin; then with
both hands indicate the outlines of a horizontal oval figure from before
the body back to near the chest (being the outline of the deck); then
place both flat hands, pointing forward, thumbs higher than the outer
edges, and push them forward to arms’-length (illustrating the powerful
forward motion of the vessel).

An original sign for telegraph is given in Natci’s Narrative,
infra.

An Indian skilled in signs, as also a deaf-mute, at the sight of a new
object, or at the first experience of some new feeling or mental relation,
will devise some mode of expressing it in pantomimic gesture or by a
combination
of previously understood signs, which will be intelligible to
others, similarly skilled, provided that they have seen the same objects
or have felt the same emotions. But if a number of such Indians or
deaf-mutes were to see an object—for instance an elephant—for the first
time, each would perhaps hit upon a different sign, in accordance with
the characteristic appearance most striking to him. That animal’s trunk
is generally the most attractive lineament to deaf-mutes, who make a
sign by pointing to the nose and moving the arm as the trunk is moved.
Others regard the long tusks as the most significant feature, while others
are struck by the large head and small eyes. This diversity of conception
brings to mind the poem of “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” which
with true philosophy in an amusing guise explains how the sense of touch
led the “six men of Indostan” severally to liken the animal to a wall,
spear, snake, tree, fan, and rope. A consideration of invented or original
signs, as showing the operation of the mind of an Indian or other
uncivilized
gesturer, has a psychologic interest, and as connected with the
vocal expression, often also invented at the same time, has further value.

DANGER OF SYMBOLIC INTERPRETATION.

In the examination of sign language it is important to form a clear
distinction between signs proper and symbols. The terms signs and
symbols are often used interchangeably, but with liability to
misconstruction,
as many persons, whether with right or wrong lexical definition,
ascribe to symbols an occult and mystic signification. All characters
in Indian picture-writing have been loosely styled symbols, and, as
there is no logical distinction, between the characters impressed with
[pg 389]
enduring form and when merely outlined in the ambient air, all Indian
gestures, motions, and attitudes might with equal appropriateness be
called symbolic. While, however, all symbols come under the generic
head of signs, very few signs are in accurate classification symbols. S.T.
Coleridge has defined a symbol to be a sign included in the idea it
represents. This may be intelligible if it is intended that an ordinary
sign is extraneous to the concept and, rather than suggested by it, is
invented to express it by some representation or analogy, while a symbol
may be evolved by a process of thought from the concept itself; but it is
no very exhaustive or practically useful distinction. Symbols are less
obvious and more artificial than mere signs, require convention, are not
only abstract, but metaphysical, and often need explanation from history,
religion, and customs. They do not depict but suggest subjects; do not
speak directly through the eye to the intelligence, but presuppose in the
mind knowledge of an event or fact which the sign recalls. The symbols
of the ark, dove, olive branch, and rainbow would be wholly meaningless
to people unfamiliar with the Mosaic or some similar cosmology, as
would be the cross and the crescent to those ignorant of history. The
last named objects appeared in the class of emblems when used in
designating
the conflicting powers of Christendom and Islamism. Emblems
do not necessarily require any analogy between the objects representing,
and the objects or qualities represented, but may arise from pure accident.
After a scurrilous jest the beggar’s wallet became the emblem of the
confederated
nobles, the Gueux of the Netherlands; and a sling, in the early
minority of Louis XIV, was adopted from the refrain of a song by the
Frondeur opponents of Mazarin. The portraiture of a fish, used, especially
by the early Christians, for the name and title of Jesus Christ was
still more accidental, being, in the Greek word ιχθυς,
an acrostic composed
of the initials of the several Greek words signifying that name and title.
This origin being unknown to persons whose religious enthusiasm was
as usual in direct proportion to their ignorance, they expended much
rhetoric to prove that there was some true symbolic relation between an
actual fish and the Saviour of men. Apart from this misapplication, the
fish undoubtedly became an emblem of Christ and of Christianity, appearing
frequently on the Roman catacombs and at one time it was used
hermeneutically.

The several tribal signs for the Sioux, Arapahos, Cheyennes, &c., are
their emblems precisely as the star-spangled flag is that of the United
States, but there is nothing symbolic in any of them. So the signs for
individual chiefs, when not merely translations of their names, are
emblematic
of their family totems or personal distinctions, and are no more
symbols than are the distinctive shoulder-straps of army officers. The
crux ansata and the circle formed by a snake biting its tail are
symbols,
but consensus as well as invention was necessary for their
establishment,
and the Indians have produced nothing so esoteric, nothing which they
intended for hermeneutic as distinct from descriptive or mnemonic
[pg 390]
purposes. Sign language can undoubtedly be and is employed to express
highly metaphysical ideas, but to do that in a symbolic system requires
a development of the mode of expression consequent upon a similar
development
of the mental idiocrasy of the gesturers far beyond any yet
found among historic tribes north of Mexico. A very few of their signs
may at first appear to be symbolic, yet even those on closer examination
will probably be relegated to the class of emblems.

The point urged is that while many signs can be used as emblems and
both can be converted by convention into symbols or be explained as
such by perverted ingenuity, it is futile to seek for that form of
psychologic
exuberance in the stage of development attained by the tribes now
under consideration. All predetermination to interpret either their
signs or their pictographs on the principles of symbolism as understood
or pretended to be understood by its admirers, and as are sometimes
properly applied to Egyptian hieroglyphs, results in mooning mysticism.
This was shown by a correspondent who enthusiastically lauded the
Dakota Calendar (edited by the present writer, and which is a mere
figuration
of successive occurrences in the history of the people), as a numerical
exposition of the great doctrines of the Sun religion in the equations
of time, and proved to his own satisfaction that our Indians preserved
hermeneutically the lost geometric cultus of pre-Cushite scientists.

Another exhibition of this vicious practice was recently made in the
interpretation of an inscribed stone alleged to have been unearthed near
Zanesville, Ohio. Two of the characters were supposed, in liberal exercise
of the imagination, to represent the Α and Ω
of the Greek alphabet.
At the comparatively late date when the arbitrary arrangement
of the letters of that alphabet had become fixed, the initial and
concluding
letters might readily have been used to represent respectively
the beginning and the end of any series or number of things, and this
figure of speech was employed in the book of Revelations. In the attempted
interpretation of the inscription mentioned, which was hawked
about to many scientific bodies, and published over the whole country,
the supposed alpha and omega were assumed to constitute a universal
as well as sacred symbol for the everlasting Creator. The usual menu
of Roman feasts, commencing with eggs and ending with apples, was
also commonly known at the time when the book of Revelations was
written, and the phrase “ab ovo usque ad mala” was as appropriate as
“from alpha to omega” to express “from the beginning to the end.”
In deciphering the stone it would, therefore, be as correct in principle
to take one of its oval and one of its round figures, call them egg and
apple, and make them the symbols of eternity. In fact, not depending
wholly for significance upon the order of courses of a feast or the
accident
of alphabetical position, but having intrinsic characteristics in reference
to the origin and fruition of life, the egg and apple translation,
would be more acceptable to the general judgment, and it is recommended
to enthusiasts who insist on finding symbols where none exist.

SIGNS USED BY WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

For reasons before given it is important to ascertain the varying extent
of familiarity with sign language among the members of the several
tribes, how large a proportion possesses any skill in it, and the average
amount of their vocabulary. It is also of special interest to learn the
degree
to which women become proficient, and the age at which children
commence its practice; also whether they receive systematic instruction
in it. The statement was made by Titchkemátski that the Kaiowa and
Comanche women know nothing of sign language, while the Cheyenne
women are versed in it. As he is a Cheyenne, however, he may not
have a large circle of feminine acquaintances beyond his own tribe,
and his negative testimony is not valuable. Rev. A.J. Holt, from
large experience, asserts that the Kaiowa and Comanche women do
know and practice sign language, though the Cheyenne either are more
familiar with it than the Kaiowa or have a greater degree of expertness.
The Comanche women, he says, are the peers of any sign-talkers.
Colonel Dodge makes the broad assertion that even among the Plains
tribes only the old, or at least middle-aged, men use signs properly,
and that he has not seen any women or even young men who were at
all reliable in signs. He gives this statement to show the difficulty in
acquiring sign language; but it is questionable if the fact is not simply
the result of the rapid disuse of signs, in many tribes, by which, cause
women, not so frequently called upon to employ them, and the younger
generation, who have had no necessity to learn them, do not become
expert. Disappearing Mist, as before mentioned, remembers a time
when the Iroquois women and children used signs more than the men.

It is also asserted, with some evidence, that the signs used by males
and females are different, though mutually understood, and some minor
points for observation may be indicated, such as whether the commencement
of counting upon the fingers is upon those of the right or the left
hand, and whether Indians take pains to look toward the south when
suggesting the course of the sun, which would give the motion from
left to right.

A suggestion has been made by a correspondent that some secret
signs of affiliation are known and used by the members of the several
associations, religious and totemic, which have been often noticed among
several Indian tribes. No evidence of this has been received, but the
point is worth attention.

POSITIVE SIGNS RENDERED NEGATIVE.

In many cases positive signs to convey some particular idea are not
reported, and in their place a sign with the opposite signification is
given,
coupled with the sign of negation. In other words, the only mode of
expressing the intended meaning is supposed to be by negation of the
reverse of what it is desired to describe. In this manner “fool—no,”
[pg 392]
would be “wise,” and “good—no,” would be “bad.” This mode of expression
is very frequent as a matter of option when the positive signs are in
fact also used. The reported absence of positive signs for the ideas
negatived
is therefore often made with as little propriety as if when an ordinary
speaker chose to use the negative form “not good,” it should be
inferred that he was ignorant of the word “bad.” It will seldom prove,
on proper investigation, that where sign language has reached and retained
any high degree of development it will show such poverty as to
require the expedient of negation of an affirmative to express an idea
which is intrinsically positive.