336 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
by which the latter were established occurred during long periods, when 
the tribes forming them were so separated as to have established alto- 
gether diverse customs and mythologies, and when the several tribes were 
with such different environment as to have formed varying conceptions 
needing appropriate sign expression. The old efror that the North 
American Indians constitute one homogeneous race is now abandoned. 
Nearly all the characteristics once alleged as segregating them from the 
rest of mankind have proved not to belong to the whole of the pre- 
Columbian population, but only to those portions of it first explored. The 
practice of scalping is not now universal, even among the tribes least 
influenced by Civilization, if it ever was, and therefore the cultivation 
of the scalp-lock separated from the rest of the hair of the head, or with 
the removal of all other hair, is not a general feature of their appear- 
ance. The arrangement of the hair is so different among tribes as to be 
one of the most convenient modes for their pictorial distinction. The 
war paint, red in some tribes, was black in others; the mystic rites of 
the calumet were in many regions unknown, and the use of wampum 
was by no means extensive. The wigwam is not the type of native 
dwellings, which show as many differing forms as those of Europe. In 
color there is great variety, and even admitting that the term ‘“‘race” 
is properly applied, no competent observer would characterize it as red, 
still less copper-colored. Some tribes differ from each other in all re- 
spects nearly as much as either of them do from the lazzaroni of Naples, 
and more than either do from certain tribes of Australia. It would 
therefore be expected, as appears to be the case, that the conventional 
signs of different stocks and regions differ as do the words of English, 
French, and German, which, nevertheless, have sprung from the same 
linguistic roots. No one of those languages is a dialect of any of the 
others; and although the sign systems of the several tribes have greater 
generic unity with less specific variety than oral languages, no one of 
them is necessarily the dialect of any other. 
Instead, therefore, of admitting, with present knowledge, that the 
signs of our Indians are “identical” and “universal,” it is the more ac- 
curate statement that the systematic attempt to convey meaning by 
signs is universal among the Indians of the Plains, and those still com- 
paratively unchanged by civilization. Its successful execution is by an 
art, which, however it may have commenced as an instinctive mental 
process, has been cultivated, and consists in actually pointing out ob- 
jects in sight not only for designation, but for application and predi- 
cation, and in suggesting others to the mind by action and the airy 
forms produced by action. ‘To insist that sign language is uniform were 
to assert that it is perfect—‘ That faultless monster that the world ne’er 
saw.” 
FORCED AND MISTAKEN SIGNS. 
Examination into the identity of signs is complicated by the fact that 
in the collection and description of Indian signs there is danger lest the 
