324 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
synonyms for the same object or quality, some being repetitions of 
others and some of small value from uncertainty in description or au- 
thority, or both. 
ONCE PROBABLY UNIVERSAL IN NORTH AMERICA. 
The conclusion reached from the researches made is to the effect that 
before the changes wrought by the Columbian discovery the use of gest- 
ure illustrated the remark of Quintilian upon the same subject (1. xi, ¢. 3) 
that “In tanta per omnes gentes nationesque lingue diversitate hic mihi 
omnium hominum communis sermo videatur.” 
Quotations may be taken from some old authorities referring to widely 
separated regions. The Indians of Tampa Bay, identified with the Ti- 
mucua, met by Cabecga de Vaca in 1528, were active in the use of signs, 
and in his journeying for eight subsequent years, probably through 
Texas and Mexico, he remarks that he passed through many dissimilar 
tongues, but that he questioned and received the answers of the Indi- 
ans by signs “just as if they spoke our language and we theirs.” Michaé- 
lius, writing in 1628, says of the Algonkins on or near the Hudson River : 
“ For purposes of trading as much was done by signs with the thumb 
and fingers as by speaking.” In Bossu’s Travels through that part of 
North America formerly called Louisiana, London, 1771 (Forster’s trans- 
lation), an account is given of Monsieur de Belle-Isle some years previ- 
ously captured by the Atak-apa, who remained with them two years 
and ‘“ conversed in their pantomimes with them.” He was rescued by 
Governor Bienville and was sufficiently expert in the sign language to 
interpret between Bienville and the tribe. In Bushmann’s Spuren, p. 424, 
there is a reference to the ““Accocessaws on the west side of the Colorado, 
two hundred miles southwest of Nacogdoches,” who use thumb signs 
which they understand: “ Theilen sich aber auch durch Daum-Zeichen 
mit, die sie alle verstehen.” 
Omitting many authorities, and for brevity allowing a break in the con- 
tinuity of time, reference may be made to the statement in Major Long’s 
expedition of 1819, concerning the Arapahos, Kaiowas, Ietans, and 
Cheyennes, to the effect that, being ignorant of each other’s languages, 
many of them when they met would communicate by means of signs, 
and would thus maintain a conversation without the least difficulty or 
interruption. A list of the tribes reported upon by Prince Maximilian 
von Wied-Neuweid, in 1832~34, appears elsewhere in this paper. In 
Frémont’s expedition of 1844 special and repeated allusion is made to 
the expertness of the Pai-Utes in signs, which is contradictory to the 
statement above made by correspondents. The same is mentioned re- 
garding a band of Shoshonis met near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, 
and one of “ Diggers,” probably Chemehuevas, encountered on a tribu- 
tary of the Rio Virgen. 
Ruxton, in his Adventures in Mewico and the Rocky Mountains, New 
York, 1848, p. 278, sums up his experience with regard to the Western 
