316 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
sion “tongueless” and “speechless,” so applied, has probably given rise, 
as TYLOR suggests, to the mythical stories of actually speechless tribes 
of savages, and the considerations and instances above presented tend 
to discredit the many other accounts of languages which are incomplete 
without the help of gesture. The theory that sign language was in 
whole or in chief the original utterance of mankind would be strongly 
supported by conclusive evidence to the truth of such travelers’ tales, 
but does not depend upon them. Nor, considering the immeasurable 
period during which, in accordance with modern geologic views, man 
has been on the earth, is it probable that any existing races can be found 
in which speech has not obviated the absolute necessity for gesture in 
communication among themselves. The signs survive for convenience, 
used together with oral language, and for special employment when 
language is unavailable. 
A comparison sometimes drawn between sign language and that of 
our Indians, founded on the statement of their common poverty in ab- 
stract expressions, is not just to either. This paper will be written in 
vain if it shall not suggest the capacities of gesture speech in that regard, 
and a deeper study into Indian tongues has shown that they are by no 
means so confined to the concrete as was once believed. 
ITS ORIGIN FROM ONE TRIBE OR REGION. 
Col. Richard I. Dodge, United States Army, whose long experience 
among the Indians entitles his opinion to great respect, says in a letter: 
“The embodiment of signs into a systematic language is, I believe, 
confined to the Indians of the Plains. Contiguous tribes gain, here and 
there, a greater or less knowledge of this language; these again extend 
the knowledge, diminished and probably perverted, to their neighbors, 
until almost all the Indian tribes of the United States east of the Sier- 
ras have some little smattering of it. The Plains Indians believe the 
Kiowas to have invented the sign language, and that by them its use was 
communicated to other Plains tribes. If this is correct, analogy would 
lead us to believe that those tribes most nearly in contact with the 
Kiowas would use it most fluently and correctly, the knowledge becom- 
ing less as the contact diminishes. Thus the Utes, though nearly con- 
tiguous (in territory) to the Plains Indians, have only the merest ‘ picked 
up’ knowledge of this language, and never use it among themselves, 
simply because, they and the Plains tribes having been, since the memory 
of their oldest men, in a chronic state of war, there has been no social 
contact.” 
In another communication Colonel Dodge is still more definite: 
“The Plains Indians themselves believe the sign language was invent- 
ed by the Kiowas, who holding an intermediate position between the 
Comanches, Tonkaways, Lipans, and other inhabitants of the vast plains 
of Texas, and the Pawnees, Sioux, Blackfeet, and other northern tribes, 
were the general go-betweens, trading with all, making peace or war 
