MALLERY.] DISUSE OF SIGN LANGUAGE. 313 
Kalapuyas of Southern Oregon until recently used a sign language, but 
have gradually adopted for foreign intercourse the composite tongue, 
commonly called the Tsinuk or Chinook jargon, which probably arose 
for trade purposes on the Columbia River before the advent of Euro- 
peans, founded on the Tsinuk, Tsihali, Nutka, &c., but now enriched by 
English and French terms, and have nearly forgotten their old signs. 
The prevalence of this mongrel speech, originating in the same causes 
that produced the pigeon-English or lingua-franca of the Orient, ex- 
plains the marked scantiness of sign language among the tribes of the 
Northwest coast. 
Where the Chinook jargon has not extended on the coast to the North, 
the Russian language commences, used inthe same manner, but it has not 
reached so deeply into the interior of the continent as the Chinook, which 
has been largely adopted within the region bounded by the eastern line 
of Oregon and Washington, and has become known even to the Pai- 
Utes of Nevada. The latter, however, while using it with the Oregonian 
tribes to their west and north, still keep up sign language for commu- 
nication with the Banaks, who have not become so familiar with the 
Chinook. The Alaskan tribes on the coast also used signs not more than 
a generation ago, as is proved by the fact that some of the older men 
can yet converse by this means with the natives of the interior, whom 
they occasionally meet. Before the advent of the Russians the coast 
tribes traded their dried fish and oil for the skins and paints of the east- 
ern tribes by visiting the latter, whom they did not allow to come to the 
coast, and this trade was conducted mainly in sign language. The 
Russians brought a better market, so the travel to the interior ceased, 
and with it the necessity for the signs, which therefore gradually died 
out, and are little known to the present generation on the coast, though 
still continuing in the interior, where the inhabitants are divided by 
dialects. 
No explanation is needed for the disuse of a language of signs for the 
special purpose now in question when the speech of surrounding civil- 
ization is recognized as necessary or important to be acquired, and 
gradually becomes known as the best common medium, even before it is 
actually spoken by many individuals of the several tribes. When it 
has become general, signs, as systematically employed before, gradually 
fade away. 
THEORIES ENTERTAINED RESPECTING INDIAN SIGNS. 
In this paper it is not designed to pronounce upon theories, and cer- 
tainly none will be advocated in a spirit of dogmatism. The writer rec- 
ognizes that the subject im its novelty specially requires an objective 
and not a subjective consideration. His duty is to collect the facts as 
they are, and this as soon as possible, since every year will add to the 
