Sign Language Among North American Indians 8
and Apuleius clearly alludes to the same gesture as used
in the adoration of Venus, by the words "_primore digito in erectum
pollicem residente_." The gesture is one of the few out of the
large number described in various parts of Rabelais' great work, the
significance of which is explained. It is made by Naz-de-cabre or
Goat's Nose (_Pantagruel_, Book III, Ch. XX), who lifted up into the
air his left hand, the whole fingers whereof he retained fistways
closed together, except the thumb and the forefinger, whose nails
he softly joined and coupled to one another. "I understand, quoth
Pantagruel, what he meaneth by that sign. It denotes marriage." The
quarrel is thus established to be about love; and the fluting satyr
seated between the two nymphs, behind whose back the accusation is
furtively made by the jealous one, may well be the object concerning
whom jealousy is manifested. Eudia therefore, instead of "serenely"
marking time for a "tranquil" tympanist, appears to be crying,
"Galené! you bad thing! you are having, or trying to have, an affair
with my Comus!"--an accusation which this writer verily believes to
have been just. The lady's attitude in affectation of surprised denial
is not that of injured innocence.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Fig. 67.--Group from a vase in the Homeric Gallery.]
[Illustration: Fig. 68.]
[Illustration: Fig. 69.]
Fig. 67, taken from a vase in the Homeric Gallery, is rich in natural
gestures. Without them, from the costumes and attitudes it is easy
to recognize the protagonist or principal actor in the group, and its
general subject. The warrior goddess Athené stands forth in the midst
of what appears to be a council of war. After the study of modern
gesture speech, the votes of each member of the council, with the
degree of positiveness or interest felt by each, can be ascertained.
Athené in animated motion turns her eyes to the right, and extends
her left arm and hand to the left, with her right hand brandishing a
lance in the same direction, in which her feet show her to be ready to
spring. She is urging the figures on her right to follow her at once
to attempt some dangerous enterprise. Of these the elderly man, who is
calmly seated, holds his right hand flat and reversed, and suspended
slightly above his knee. This probably is the ending of the modern
Neapolitan gesture, Fig. 68, which signifies hesitation, advice to
pause before hasty action, "go slowly," and commences higher with a
gentle wavering movement downward. This can be compared with the sign
of some of our Indians, Fig. 69, for _wait! slowly!_ The female figure
at the left of the group, standing firmly and decidedly, raises her
left hand directed to the goddess with the palm vertical. If this
is supposed to be a stationary gesture it means, "_wait! stop!_" It
may, however, be the commencement of the last mentioned gesture, "_go
slow_."
[Illustration: Fig. 70.]
Both of these members of the council advise delay and express doubt of
the propriety of immediate action.
[Illustration: Fig. 71.]
The sitting warrior on the left of Athené presents his left hand flat
and carried well up. This position, supposed to be stationary, now
means to _ask, inquire_, and it may be that he inquires of the other
veteran what reasons he can produce for his temporizing policy. This
may be collated with the modern Neapolitan sign for _ask_, Fig. 70,
and the common Indian sign for "_tell me!_" Fig. 71. In connection
with this it is also interesting to compare the Australian sign for
interrogation, Fig. 72, and also the Comanche Indian sign for _give
me_, Fig. 301, page 480, _infra_. If, however, the artist had the
intention to represent the flat hand as in motion from below upward,
as is probable from the connection, the meaning is _much, greatly_.
He strongly disapproves the counsel of the opposite side. Our Indians
often express the idea of quantity, _much_, with the same conception
of comparative height, by an upward motion of the extended palm, but
with them the palm is held downward. The last figure to the right,
by the action of his whole body, shows his rejection of the proposed
delay, and his right hand gives the modern sign of combined surprise
and reproof.
[Illustration: Fig. 72.]
It is interesting to note the similarity of the merely emotional
gestures and attitudes of modern Italy with those of the classics. The
Pulcinella, Fig. 73, for instance, drawn from life in the streets of
Naples, has the same pliancy and _abandon_ of the limbs as appears in
the supposed foolish slaves of the Vatican Terence.
[Illustration: Fig. 73.]
In close connection with this branch of the study reference must be
made to the gestures exhibited in the works of Italian art only modern
in comparison with the high antiquity of their predecessors. A good
instance is in the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, painted toward
the close of the fifteenth century, and to the figure of Judas
as there portrayed. The gospel denounces him as a thief, which is
expressed in the painting by the hand extended and slightly curved;
imitative of the pilferer's act in clutching and drawing toward
him furtively the stolen object, and is the same gesture that now
indicates _theft_ in Naples, Fig. 74, and among some of the North
American Indians, Fig. 75. The pictorial propriety of the sign is
preserved by the apparent desire of the traitor to obtain the one
white loaf of bread on the table (the remainder being of coarser
quality) which lies near where his hand is tending. Raffaelle was
equally particular in his exhibition of gesture language, even
unto the minutest detail of the arrangement of the fingers. It is
traditional that he sketched the Madonna's hands for the Spasimo di
Sicilia in eleven different positions before he was satisfied.
[Illustration: Fig. 74.]
No allusion to the bibliography of gesture speech, however slight,
should close without including the works of Mgr. D. De Haerne,
who has, as a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, in
addition to his rank in the Roman Catholic Church, been active in
promoting the cause of education in general, and especially that of
the deaf and dumb. His admirable treatise _The Natural Language of
Signs_ has been translated and is accessible to American readers in
the _American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb_, 1875. In that valuable
serial, conducted by Prof. E.A. FAY, of the National Deaf Mute College
at Washington, and now in its twenty-sixth volume, a large amount of
the current literature on the subject indicated by its title can be
found.
[Illustration: Fig. 75.]
MODERN USE OF GESTURE SPEECH.
Dr. TYLOR says (_Early History of Mankind_, 44): "We cannot lay down
as a rule that gesticulation decreases as civilization advances, and
say, for instance, that a Southern Frenchman, because his talk is
illustrated with gestures as a book with pictures, is less civilized
than a German or Englishman." This is true, and yet it is almost
impossible for persons not accustomed to gestures to observe them
without associating the idea of low culture. Thus in Mr. Darwin's
summing up of those characteristics of the natives of Tierra
del Fuego, which rendered it difficult to believe them to be
fellow-creatures, he classes their "violent gestures" with their
filthy and greasy skins, discordant voices, and hideous faces bedaubed
with paint. This description is quoted by the Duke of Argyle in his
_Unity of Nature_ in approval of those characteristics as evidence, of
the lowest condition of humanity.
Whether or not the power of the visible gesture relative to, and
its influence upon the words of modern oral speech are in inverse
proportion to the general culture, it seems established that they do
not bear that or any constant proportion to the development of the
several languages with which gesture is still more or less associated.
The statement has frequently been made that gesture is yet to some
highly-advanced languages a necessary modifying factor, and that
only when a language has become so artificial as to be completely
expressible in written signs--indeed, has been remodeled through their
long familiar use--can the bodily signs be wholly dispensed with. The
evidence for this statement is now doubted, and it is safer to
affirm that a common use of gesture depends more upon the sociologic
conditions of the speakers than upon the degree of copiousness of
their oral speech.
USE BY OTHER PEOPLES THAN NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.
The nearest approach to a general rule which it is now proposed to
hazard is that where people speaking precisely the same dialect are
not numerous, and are thrown into constant contact on equal terms with
others of differing dialects and languages, gesture is necessarily
resorted to for converse with the latter, and remains for an
indefinite time as a habit or accomplishment among themselves,
while large bodies enjoying common speech, and either isolated from
foreigners, or, when in contact with them, so dominant as to compel
the learning and adoption of their own tongue, become impassive in its
delivery. The ungesturing English, long insular, and now rulers
when spread over continents, may be compared with the profusely
gesticulating Italians dwelling in a maze of dialects and subject for
centuries either to foreign rule or to the influx of strangers on whom
they depended. So common is the use of gestures in Italy, especially
among the lower and uneducated classes, that utterance without them
seems to be nearly impossible. The driver or boatman will often,
on being addressed, involuntarily drop the reins or oars, at the
risk of a serious accident, to respond with his arms and fingers
in accompaniment of his tongue. Nor is the habit confined to the
uneducated. King Ferdinand returning to Naples after the revolt of
1821, and finding that the boisterous multitude would not allow his
voice to be heard, resorted successfully to a royal address in signs,
giving reproaches, threats, admonitions, pardon, and dismissal, to
the entire satisfaction of the assembled lazzaroni. The medium, though
probably not the precise manner of its employment, recalls Lucan's account of the quieting of an older tumult--
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