Sign Language Among North American Indians 32

Sign Language Among North American Indians 32

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 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 NÁTCI'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 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 [Greek: ichthus], 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 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 [Greek letter: Alpha]

and [Greek letter: Omega] 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.