Sign Language Among North American Indians 13

Sign Language Among North American Indians 13

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 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 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--

 

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. The 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 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.