Fatigue. NeapolitanFig. 109.
As adupewas shown above, now theduperis 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.
Deceit. NeapolitanFig. 110.
Fig. 111 shows the ends of the index and thumb stroking the two sides of the nose from base to point. This meansastute, attentive, ready. Sharpness of the nasal organ is popularly associated with subtlety and finesse. The old Romans byhomo emunctæ narismeant an acute man attentive to his interests. The sign is often used in a bad sense, then signifyingtoosharp to be trusted.
Astuteness, readiness. NeapolitanFig. 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. Toexpress suspicion of a person the forefinger of the right hand is placed upon the side of the nose. It meanstainted, 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 theAborigines 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 thoseamong 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 theReport 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.
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.
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 hisLettre 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 whollyunacquainted 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 ProfessorFay, 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, ofFrou-Frouby 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 whetherGilbertewas 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:
When to enforce some very tender partHis left hand sleeps by instinct on the heart;His soul, of every other thought bereft,Seems anxious only—where to place the left!
When to enforce some very tender partHis left hand sleeps by instinct on the heart;His soul, of every other thought bereft,Seems anxious only—where to place the left!
When to enforce some very tender part
His left hand sleeps by instinct on the heart;
His soul, of every other thought bereft,
Seems anxious only—where to place the left!
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 somerapportrelating 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 pantomimeit 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.
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'sChironomiaof 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."
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 byearly 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 beingbar-bar-ousin 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. Morganmentions 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—
The graceless action of a heavy hand—
The graceless action of a heavy hand—
The graceless action of a heavy hand—
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. TheKalapuyas 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 orlingua-francaof 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.
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 theconfusion 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.
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 hisCity 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 connectiongives 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 domesticabandon, 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"tongueless" and "speechless," so applied, has probably given rise, asTylorsuggests, 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.
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 warwith 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 signlanguage 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 nearlyakin 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 besui 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.
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.
The generalization ofTylorthat "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.
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 understoodby 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 PresidentGallaudeta 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 forsquirrel, 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 (showinglength); 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 forjack-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 fordogwas 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;then, with the fingers of the right hand extended and separated throw them quickly forward and slightly upward (voiceortalking).
This sign was understood to meanbear, as that fordogis 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 ofwheels, 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 beingcovered—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.