86 LIMITATIONS TO THE USE OF ANTHROPOLOGIC DATA. 
supplies of water. When Mr. Burton was in Salt Lake City he, doubt- 
less, heard these stories. 
So the falsehoods of a murderer, told to hide his crime, have gone 
into history as facts characteristic of the people of the United States in 
their treatment of the Indians. In the paragraph quoted from Burton 
some other errors occur. The Utes and Shoshonis do not claim to have 
descended from an ancient people that immigrated into their present 
seats from the Northwest. Most of these tribes, perhaps all, have myths 
of their creation in the very regions now inhabited by them. 
Again, these Indians have not been demoralized mentally or physie- 
ally by the emigrants, but have made great progress toward civiliza- 
tion. 
The whole account of the Utes and Shoshonis given in this portion of 
the book is so mixed with error as to be valueless, and bears intrinsic 
evidence of having been derived from ignorant frontiersmen. 
Turning now to the first volume of Spencer’s Principles of Sociology 
(page 149), we find him saying: 
And thus prepared, we need feel no surprise on being told that the Zuni Indians 
require ‘‘much facial contortion and bodily gesticulation to make their sentences per- 
fectly intelligible ;” that the language of the Bushman needs so many signs to eke 
out its meaning, that ‘‘they are unintelligible in the dark ;” and that the Arapahos 
“can hardly converse with one another in the dark.” 
When people of different languages meet, especially if they speak 
languages of different stocks, a means of communication is rapidly es- 
tablished between them, composed partly of signs and partly of oral 
words, the latter taken from one or both of the languages, but curiously 
modified so as hardly to be recognized. Such conventional languages 
are usually called ‘‘jargons,” and their existence is rather brief. 
When people communicate with each other in this manner, oral speech 
is greatly assisted by sign-language, and it is true that darkness im- 
pedes their communication. The great body of frontiersmen in America 
who associate more or less with the Indians depend upon jargon meth- 
ods of communication with them; and so we find that various writers 
and travelers describe Indian tongues by the characteristics of this 
jargon speech. Mr. Spencer usually does. 
The Zuni and the Arapaho Indians have a language with a complex 
grammar and copious vocabulary well adapted to the expression of the 
thoughts incident to their customs and status of culture, and they have no 
more difficulty in conveying their thoughts with their language by night 
than Englishmen have in conversing without gaslight. An example 
from each of three eminent authors has been taken to illustrate the 
worthlessness of a vast body of anthropologic material to which even 
the best writers resort. 
Anthropology needs trained devotees with philosophic methods and 
keen observation to study every tribe and nation of the globe almost 
de novo; and from materials thus collected a science may be established. 
