Sign Language Among North American Indians 12

Sign Language Among North American Indians 12

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 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

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:

 

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.