mauuery.] CONVERSATION OF INDIANS WITH DEAF-MUTES. 323 
The deaf-mutes understood all but the sign for wheel, which they 
make as a large circle, with one hand. 
Another example: A deaf-mute pretended to hunt something; found 
birds, took his bow and arrows and killed several. 
This was fully understood. 
A narrative given by Alejandro was also understood by the deaf- 
mutes, to the effect that he made search for deer, shot one with a gun, 
killed and skinned it, and packed it up. 
It will be observed that many of the above signs admitted of and were 
expressed by pantomime, yet that was not the case with all that were 
made. President GALLAUDET made also some remarks in gesture which 
were understood by the Indians, yet were not strictly pantomimie. 
The opinion of all present at the test was that two intelligent mimes 
would seldom fail of mutual understanding, their attention being ex- 
clusively directed to the expression of thoughts by the means of com- 
prehension and reply equally possessed by both, without the mental 
confusion of conventional sounds only intelligible to one. 
A large collection has been made of natural deaf-mute signs, and also 
of those more conventional, which have been collated with those of the 
several tribes of Indians. Many of them show marked similarity, not 
only in principle but often in detail. 
The result of the studies so far as prosecuted is that what is called 
the sign language of Indians is not, properly speaking, one language, 
but that it and the gesture systems of deaf-mutes and of all peoples 
constitute together one language—the gesture speech of mankind—of 
which each system is a dialect. 
TO WHAT EXTENT PREVALENT AS A SYSTEM. 
The assertion has been made by many writers, and is currently re- 
peated by Indian traders and some Army officers, that all the tribes of 
North America have long had and still use a common and identical sign 
language, in which they can communicate freely without oral assistance. 
Although this remarkable statement is at variance with some of the 
principles of the formation and use of signs set forth by Dr. E. B. TyLor, 
whose admirable chapters on gesture speech in his Researches into 
the Harly History of Mankind have in a great degree prompted the 
present inquiries, that eminent authority did not see fit to discredit it. 
He repeats the report as he received it, in the words that “the same 
signs serve as a medium of converse from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of 
Mexico.” Its truth or falsity can only be established by careful com- 
parison of lists or vocabularies of signs taken under test conditions at 
widely different times and places. For this purpose lists have been 
collated by the writer, taken in ditterent parts of the country at several 
dates, from the last century to the last month, comprising together sev- 
eral thousand signs, many of them, however, being mere variants or 
