Sign Language Among North American Indians 14

Sign Language Among North American Indians 14

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 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 [Greek: aglossos], "tongueless," was used synonymous with

[Greek: barbaros], "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, 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

__EXPRESSION__s, 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 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 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.