332 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
A German who has studied English to thorough mastery, except in the 
mere facility of speech, may in a discussion upon some of its principles 
be contradicted by any mere English speaker, who insists upon his 
superior knowledge because he actually speaks the language and his 
antagonist does not, but the student will probably be correct and the 
talker wrong. It is an old adage about oral speech that a man who 
understands but one language understands none. The science of a 
sign talker possessed by a restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau, 
who was greater as an orator than as a philologist, and who on a visit 
to England gravely argued that there was something seriously wrong 
in the British mind because the people would persist in saying ‘ give 
me some bread” instead of “ donnez-mot du pain,” which was so much 
easier and more natural. A designedly ludicrous instance to the same 
effect was Hood’s arraignment of the French because they called their 
mothers ‘‘mares” and their daughters “fillies.” It is necessary to take 
with caution any statement from a person who, having memorized or 
hashed up any number of signs, large or small, has decided in his con- 
ceit that those he uses are the only genuine Simon Pure, to be exclu- 
sively employed according to his direction, all others being counterfeits 
or blunders. His vocabulary has ceased to give the signs of any In- 
dian or body of Indians whatever, but becomes his own, the proprietor- 
ship of which he fights for as if secured by letters-patent. When a 
sign is contributed by one of the present collaborators, which such a 
sign talker has not before seen or heard of, he will at once condemn it 
as bad, just as a United States Minister to Vienna, who had been nursed 
in the mongrel Dutch of Berks County, Pennsylvania, declared that the 
people of Germany spoke very bad German. 
An argument for the uniformity of the signs of our Indians is derived 
from the fact that those used by any of them are generally understood by 
others. But signs may be understood without being identical with any 
before seen. The entribal as well as intertribal exercise of Indians for 
generations in gesture language has naturally produced great skill both 
in expression and reception, so as to render them measurably independent 
of any prior mutual understanding, or what in a system of signals is called 
preconcert. Two accomplished army signalists can, after sufficient trial, 
communicate without having any code in common between them, one 
being mutually devised, and those specially designed for secrecy are 
often deciphered. So, if any one of the more conventional signs is 
not quickly comprehended, an Indian skilled in the principle of signs 
resorts to another expression of his flexible art, perhaps reproducing 
the gesture unabbreviated and made more graphic, perhaps presenting 
either the same or another conception or quality of the same object or 
idea by an original portraiture. 
An impression of the community of signs is the more readily made 
because explorers and officials are naturally brought into contact more 
closely with those individuals of the tribes visited who are experts in 
