Sign Language Among North American Indians 22

Sign Language Among North American Indians 22

Melon, squash, muskmelon_, used by the Utes and Apaches, is made by

holding the hand arched, fingers separated and pointing forward, and

pushing the hand forward over a slight curve near the ground, and the

generic sign for _animals_ by the Apaches is made in the same manner

at the height intended to represent the object.

 

The sign for _where?_, and _to search, to seek for_, made by the

Dakota (IV), is by holding the back of the hand upward, index pointing

forward, and carrying it from left to right about eight inches,

raising and lowering it several times while so doing, as if quickly

pointing at different objects. That for _some of them_, a part of a

number of things or persons, made by the Kaiowa, Comanche, Wichita,

and Apache Indians is nearly identical, the gesture being made less

rapidly.

 

 

 

 

RESULTS SOUGHT IN THE STUDY OF SIGN LANGUAGE.

 

 

These may be divided into (1) its practical application, (2) its aid

to philologic researches in general with (3) particular reference

to the grammatic machinery of language, and (4) its archæologic

relations.

 

 

 

_PRACTICAL APPLICATION._

 

The most obvious application of Indian sign language will for its

practical utility depend, to a large extent, upon the correctness

of the view submitted by the present writer that it is not a mere

semaphoric repetition of motions to be memorized from a limited

traditional list, but is a cultivated art, founded upon principles

which can be readily applied by travelers and officials, so as to

give them much independence of professional interpreters--as a

class dangerously deceitful and tricky. This advantage is not merely

theoretical, but has been demonstrated to be practical by a professor

in a deaf mute college who, lately visiting several of the wild tribes

of the plains, made himself understood among all of them without

knowing a word of any of their languages; nor would it only be

experienced in connection with American tribes, being applicable

to intercourse with savages in Africa and Asia, though it is not

pretended to fulfill by this agency the schoolmen's dream of an

ecumenical mode of communication between all peoples in spite of their

dialectic divisions.

 

It must be admitted that the practical value of signs for intercourse

with the American Indians will not long continue, their general

progress in the acquisition of English or of Spanish being so rapid

that those languages are becoming, to a surprising extent, the common

medium, and signs are proportionally disused. Nor is a systematic

use of signs of so great assistance in communicating with foreigners,

whose speech is not understood, as might at first be supposed, unless

indeed both parties agree to cease all attempt at oral language,

relying wholly upon gestures. So long as words are used at all, signs

will be made only as their accompaniment, and they will not always

be ideographic. An amusing instance in which savages showed their

preference to signs instead of even an onomatope may be quoted from

Wilfred Powell's _Observations on New Britain and neighboring Islands

during Six Years' Exploration_, in _Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc._, vol.

iii, No. 2 (new monthly series), February, 1881, p. 89, 90: "On one

occasion, wishing to purchase a pig, and not knowing very well how

to set about it, being ignorant of the dialect, which is totally

different from that of the natives in the north, I asked Mr. Brown how

I should manage, or what he thought would be the best way of making

them understand. He said, 'Why don't you try granting?' whereupon I

began to grunt most vociferously. The effect was magical. Some of

them jumped back, holding their spears in readiness to throw; others

ran away, covering their eyes with their hands, and all exhibited the

utmost astonishment and alarm. In fact, it was so evident that they

expected me to turn into a pig, and their alarm was so irresistibly

comic, that Mr. Brown and I both burst out laughing, on which they

gradually became more reassured, and those that had run away came

back, and seeing us so heartily amused, and that I had not undergone

any metamorphosis, began to laugh too; but when I drew a pig on the

sand with a piece of stick, and made motions of eating, it suddenly

seemed to strike them what was the matter, for they all burst out

laughing, nodding their heads, and several of them ran off, evidently

in quest of the pig that was required."

 

 

POWERS OF SIGNS COMPARED WITH SPEECH.

 

Sign language, being the mother utterance of nature, poetically styled

by Lamartine the visible attitudes of the soul, is superior to all

others in that it permits every one to find in nature an image to

express his thoughts on the most needful matters intelligently to any

other person. The direct or substantial natural analogy peculiar to

it prevents a confusion of ideas. It is to some extent possible to

use words without understanding them which yet may be understood by

those addressed, but it is hardly possible to use signs without full

comprehension of them. Separate words may also be comprehended by

persons hearing them without the whole connected sense of the words

taken together being caught, but signs are more intimately connected.

Even those most appropriate will not be understood if the subject

is beyond the comprehension of their beholders. They would be as

unintelligible as the wild clicks of his instrument, in an electric

storm, would be to the telegrapher, or as the semaphore, driven by

wind, to the signalist. In oral speech even onomatopes are arbitrary,

the most strictly natural sounds striking the ear of different

individuals and nations in a manner wholly diverse. The instances

given by SAYCE are in point. Exactly the same sound was intended to

be reproduced in the "_bilbit_ amphora" of Nævius, the "_glut glut_

murmurat unda sonans" of the Latin Anthology, and the "_puls_" of

Varro. The Persian "_bulbul_," the "_jugjug_" of Gascoigne, and the

"_whitwhit_" of others are all attempts at imitating the note of the

nightingale. Successful signs must have a much closer analogy and

establish, a _consensus_ between the talkers far beyond that produced

by the mere sound of words.

 

Gestures, in the degree of their pantomimic character, excel in

graphic and dramatic effect applied to narrative and to rhetorical

exhibition, and beyond any other mode of description give the force

of reality. Speech, when highly cultivated, is better adapted to

generalization and abstraction; therefore to logic and metaphysics.

The latter must ever henceforth, be the superior in formulating

thoughts. Some of the enthusiasts in signs have contended that this

unfavorable distinction is not from any inherent incapability, but

because their employment has not been continued unto perfection,

and that if they had been elaborated by the secular labor devoted

to spoken language they might in resources and distinctiveness have

exceeded many forms of the latter. Gallaudet, Peet, and others maybe

right in asserting that man could by his arms, hands, and fingers,

with facial and bodily accentuation, express any idea that could be

conveyed by words.

 

The combinations which can be made with corporeal signs are infinite.

It has been before argued that a high degree of culture might have

been attained by man without articulate speech and it is but a further

step in the reasoning to conclude that if articulate speech had not

been possessed or acquired, necessity would have developed gesture

language to a degree far beyond any known exhibition of it. The

continually advancing civilization and continually increasing

intercourse of countless ages has perfected oral speech, and as both,

civilization and intercourse were possible with signs alone it is

to be supposed that they would have advanced in some corresponding

manner. But as sign language has been chiefly used during historic

time either as a scaffolding around a more valuable structure to

be thrown aside when the latter was completed, or as an occasional

substitute, such development was not to be expected.

 

The process of forming signs to express abstract ideas is only a

variant from that of oral speech, in which the words for the most

abstract ideas, such as law, virtue, infinitude, and immortality,

are shown by Max Müller to have been derived and deduced, that

is, abstracted, from sensuous impressions. In the use of signs the

countenance and manner as well as the tenor decide whether objects

themselves are intended, or the forms, positions, qualities, and

motions of other objects which are suggested, and signs for moral

and intellectual ideas, founded on analogies, are common all over

the world as well as among deaf-mutes. Concepts of the intangible and

invisible are only learned through percepts of tangible and visible

objects, whether finally expressed to the eye or to the ear, in terms

of sight or of sound.

 

Sign language is so faithful to nature, and so essentially living in

its __EXPRESSION__, that it is not probable that it will ever die. It may

become disused, but will revert. Its elements are ever natural and

universal, by recurring to which the less natural signs adopted

dialectically or for expedition can always, with, some circumlocution,

be explained. This power of interpreting itself is a peculiar

advantage, for spoken languages, unless explained by gestures or

indications, can only be interpreted by means of some other spoken

language. When highly cultivated, its rapidity on familiar subjects

exceeds that of speech and approaches to that of thought itself. This

statement may be startling to those who only notice that a selected

spoken word may convey in an instant a meaning for which the motions

of even an expert in signs may require a much longer time, but it must

be considered that oral speech is now wholly conventional, and that

with the similar development of sign language conventional __EXPRESSION__s

with hands and body could be made more quickly than with the vocal

organs, because more organs could be worked at once. Without such

supposed development the habitual communication between deaf-mutes and

among Indians using signs is perhaps as rapid as between the ignorant

class of speakers upon the same subjects, and in many instances the

signs would win at a trial of speed. At the same time it must be

admitted that great increase in rapidity is chiefly obtained by the

system of preconcerted abbreviations, before explained, and by the

adoption of arbitrary forms, in which naturalness is sacrificed and

conventionality established, as has been the case with all spoken

languages in the degree in which they have become copious and

convenient.

 

There is another characteristic of the gesture speech that, though

it cannot be resorted to in the dark, nor where the attention of

the person addressed has not been otherwise attracted, it has the

countervailing benefit of use when the voice could not be employed.

This may be an advantage at a distance which the eye can reach, but

not the ear, and still more frequently when silence or secrecy is

desired. Dalgarno recommends it for use in the presence of great

people, who ought not to be disturbed, and curiously enough

"Disappearing Mist," the Iroquois chief, speaks of the former

extensive use of signs in his tribe by women and boys as a mark of

respect to warriors and elders, their voices, in the good old days,

not being uplifted in the presence of the latter. The decay of that

wholesome state of discipline, he thinks, accounts partly for the

disappearance of the use of signs among the modern impudent youth and

the dusky claimants of woman's rights.

 

An instance of the additional power gained to a speaker of ordinary

language by the use of signs, impressed the writer while dictating to

two amanuenses at the same moment, to the one by signs and the other

by words, on different subjects, a practice which would have enabled

Cæsar to surpass his celebrated feat. It would also be easy to talk to

a deaf and blind man at once, the latter being addressed by the voice and the former in signs.