Sign Language Among North American Indians 18

Sign Language Among North American Indians 18

SURVIVAL IN GESTURE.

 

Even when the specific practice of sign language has been generally

discontinued for more than one generation, either from the adoption

of a jargon or from the common use of the tongue of the conquering

English, French, or Spanish, some of the gestures formerly employed

as substitutes for words may survive as a customary accompaniment to

oratory or impassioned conversation, and, when ascertained, should be

carefully noted. An example, among many, may be found in the fact

that the now civilized Muskoki or Creeks, as mentioned by Rev. H.F.

Buckner, when speaking of the height of children or women, illustrate

their words by holding their hands at the proper elevation, palm up;

but when describing the height of "soulless" animals or inanimate

objects, they hold the palm downward. This, when correlated with the

distinctive signs of other Indians, is an interesting case of the

survival of a practice which, so far as yet reported, the oldest men

of the tribe, now living only remember to have once existed. It is

probable that a collection of such distinctive gestures among the most

civilized Indians would reproduce enough of their ancient system to be

valuable, while possibly the persistent inquirer might in his search

discover some of its surviving custodians even among Chabta or

Cheroki, Innuit or Abnaki, Klamath or Nutka.

 

 

DISTINCTION BETWEEN IDENTITY OF SIGNS AND THEIR USE AS AN ART.

 

The general report that there is but one sign language in North

America, any deviation from which is either blunder, corruption, or a

dialect in the nature of provincialism, may be examined in reference

to some of the misconceived facts which gave it origin and credence.

It may not appear to be necessary that such examination should be

directed to any mode of collecting and comparing signs which would

amount to their distortion. It is useful, however, to explain that

distortion would result from following the views of a recent essayist,

who takes the ground that the description of signs should be made

according to a "mean" or average. There can be no philosophic

consideration of signs according to a "mean" of observations. The

proper object is to ascertain the radical or essential part as

distinct from any individual flourish or mannerism on the one hand,

and from a conventional or accidental abbreviation on the other; but

a mere average will not accomplish that object. If the hand, being

in any position whatever, is, according to five observations, moved

horizontally one foot to the right, and, according to five other

observations, moved one foot horizontally to the left, the "mean"

or resultant will be that it is stationary, which sign does not

correspond with any of the ten observations. So if six observations

give it a rapid motion of one foot to the right and five a rapid

motion of the same distance to the left, the mean or resultant would

be somewhat difficult to express, but perhaps would be a slow movement

to the right for an inch or two, having certainly no resemblance

either in essentials or accidents to any of the signs actually

observed. In like manner the tail of the written letter "_y_" (which,

regarding its mere formation, might be a graphic sign) may have in

the chirography of several persons various degrees of slope, may be

a straight line, or looped, and may be curved on either side; but a

"mean" taken from the several manuscripts would leave the unfortunate

letter without any tail whatever, or travestied as a "_u_" with an

amorphous flourish. A definition of the radical form of the letter or

sign by which it can be distinguished from any other letter or sign

is a very different proceeding. Therefore, if a "mean" or resultant of

any number of radically different signs to express the same object or

idea, observed either among several individuals of the same tribe or

among different tribes, is made to represent those signs, they are

all mutilated and ignored as distinctive signs, though the result may

possibly be made intelligible in practice, according to principles

mentioned in the present paper. The expedient of a "mean" may be

practically useful in the formation of a mere interpreter's jargon,

but it elucidates no principle. It is also convenient for any one

determined to argue for the uniformity of sign language as against the

variety in unity apparent in all the realms of nature. On the "mean"

principle, he only needs to take his two-foot rule and arithmetical

tables and make all signs his signs and his signs all signs. Of course

they are uniform, because he has made them so after the brutal example

of Procrustes.

 

In this connection it is proper to urge a warning that a mere sign

talker is often a bad authority upon principles and theories. He

may not be liable to the satirical compliment of Dickens's "brave

courier," who "understood all languages indifferently ill"; but many

men speak some one language fluently, and yet are wholly unable to

explain or analyze its words and forms so as to teach it to another

person, or even to give an intelligent summary or classification

of their own knowledge. What such a sign talker has learned is by

memorizing, as a child may learn English, and though both the sign

talker and the child may be able to give some separate items useful to

a philologist or foreigner, such items are spoiled when colored by the

attempt of ignorance to theorize. A German who has studied English

to thorough mastery, except in the mere facility of speech, may in

a discussion upon some of its principles be contradicted by any mere

English speaker, who insists upon his superior knowledge because he

actually speaks the language and his antagonist does not, but the

student will probably be correct and the talker wrong. It is an old

adage about oral speech that a man who understands but one language

understands none. The science of a sign talker possessed by a

restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau, who was greater as an

orator than as a philologist, and who on a visit to England gravely

argued that there was something seriously wrong in the British mind

because the people would persist in saying "give me some bread"

instead of "_donnez-moi du pain_," which was so much easier and more

natural. A designedly ludicrous instance to the same effect was Hood's

arraignment of the French because they called their mothers "mares"

and their daughters "fillies." It is necessary to take with caution

any statement from a person who, having memorized or hashed up any

number of signs, large or small, has decided in his conceit that those

he uses are the only genuine Simon Pure, to be exclusively employed

according to his direction, all others being counterfeits or blunders.

His vocabulary has ceased to give the signs of any Indian or body of

Indians whatever, but becomes his own, the proprietorship of which he

fights for as if secured by letters-patent. When a sign is contributed

by one of the present collaborators, which such a sign talker has not

before seen or heard of, he will at once condemn it as bad, just as a

United States Minister to Vienna, who had been nursed in the mongrel

Dutch of Berks County, Pennsylvania, declared that the people of

Germany spoke very bad German.

 

An argument for the uniformity of the signs of our Indians is derived

from the fact that those used by any of them are generally understood

by others. But signs may be understood without being identical with

any before seen. The entribal as well as intertribal exercise of

Indians for generations in gesture language has naturally produced

great skill both in __EXPRESSION__ and reception, so as to render them

measurably independent of any prior mutual understanding, or what in

a system of signals is called preconcert. Two accomplished army

signalists can, after sufficient trial, communicate without having

any code in common between them, one being mutually devised, and those

specially designed for secrecy are often deciphered. So, if any one

of the more conventional signs is not quickly comprehended, an Indian

skilled in the principle of signs resorts to another __EXPRESSION__ of his

flexible art, perhaps reproducing the gesture unabbreviated and made

more graphic, perhaps presenting either the same or another conception

or quality of the same object or idea by an original portraiture.

 

An impression of the community of signs is the more readily made

because explorers and officials are naturally brought into contact

more closely with those individuals of the tribes visited who are

experts in sign language than with their other members, and those

experts, on account of their skill as interpreters, are selected as

guides to accompany the visitors. The latter also seek occasion to

be present when signs are used, whether with or without words, in

intertribal councils, and then the same class of experts comprises

the orators, for long exercise in gesture speech has made the Indian

politicians, with no special effort, masters of the art acquired by

our public speakers only after laborious apprenticeship. The whole

theory and practice of sign language being that all who understand its

principles can make themselves mutually intelligible, the fact of the

ready comprehension and response among all the skilled gesturers gives

the impression of a common code. Furthermore, if the explorer learn

to employ with ingenuity the signs used by any of the tribes, he will

probably be understood in any other by the same class of persons

who will surround him in the latter, thereby confirming him in the

"common" theory. Those of the tribe who are less skilled, but who are

not noticed, might be unable to catch the meaning of signs which have

not been actually taught to them, just as ignorant persons among us

cannot derive any sense from newly-coined words or those strange

to their habitual vocabulary, which, though never before heard,

linguistic scholars would instantly understand and might afterward

adopt.

 

It is also common experience that when Indians find that a sign which

has become conventional among their tribe is not understood by an

interlocutor, a self-expressive sign is substituted for it, from

which a visitor may form the impression that there are no conventional

signs. It may likewise occur that the self-expressive sign substituted

will be met with by a visitor in several localities, different

Indians, in their ingenuity, taking the best and the same means of

reaching the exotic intelligence.

 

There is some evidence that where sign language is now found among

Indian tribes it has become more uniform than ever before, simply

because many tribes have for some time past been forced to dwell near

together at peace. A collection was obtained in the spring of 1880, at

Washington, from a united delegation of the Kaiowa, Comanche, Apache,

and Wichita tribes, which was nearly uniform, but the individuals who

gave the signs had actually lived together at or near Anadarko, Indian

Territory, for a considerable time, and the resulting uniformity of

their signs might either be considered as a jargon or as the natural

tendency to a compromise for mutual understanding--the unification so

often observed in oral speech, coming under many circumstances out of

former heterogeneity. The rule is that dialects precede languages and

that out of many dialects comes one language. It may be found that

other individuals of those same tribes who have from any cause

not lived in the union explained may have signs for the same ideas

different from those in the collection above mentioned. This is

probable, because some signs of other representatives of one of the

component bodies--Apache--have actually been reported differing from

those for the same ideas given by the Anadarko group. The uniformity

of the signs of those Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Sioux who have been

secluded for years at one particular reservation, so far as could be

done by governmental power, from the outer world, was used in argument

by a correspondent; but some collected signs of other Cheyennes and

Sioux differ, not only from those on the reservation, but among

each other. Therefore the signs used in common by the tribes at

the reservation seem to have been modified and to a certain extent unified.