MALLERY. ] ABBREVIATION OF SIGNS. 339 
He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb closed 
sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick, bent his 
back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held, as 
was before only imagined. Here at once was decrepit age dependent 
on a staff. The principle of abbreviation or reduction may be illustrated 
by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the 
voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird on a tree, and failing 
to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs are resorted to, perhaps 
suggesting the bill and wings of the bird, its manuer of clinging to the 
twig with its feet, its size by seeming to hold it between the hands, its 
color by pointing to objects of the same hue; perhaps by the action of 
shooting into a tree, picking up the supposed fallen game, and pluck- 
ing feathers. These are continued until understood, and if one sign or 
combination of signs proves to be successful it will be repeated on the next 
occasion by both persons engaged, and after becoming familiar between 
them and others will be more and more abbreviated. Conventionality 
in signs largely consists in the form of abbreviation which is agreed upon. 
When the signs of the Indians have from ideographic form thus become 
demotic, they may be called conventional, but still not arbitrary. In 
them, as in all his actions, man had at the first a definite meaning or pur- 
pose, together with method in their subsequent changes or modifications. 
Colonel Dodge gives a clear account of the manner in which an estab- 
lished sign is abbreviated in practice, as follows: ‘There are an almost 
infinite number and variety of abbreviations. For instance, to tell a 
man to ‘talk,’ the most common formal sign is made thus: Hold the 
right hand in front of, the back near, the mouth, end of thumb and 
index-finger joined into an ‘O, the outer fingers closed on the palm; 
throw the hand forward sharply by a quick motion of the wrist, and 
at the same time flip forward the index-finger. This may be done once 
or several times. 
“The formal sign to ‘cease’ or ‘stop doing’ anything is made by bring- 
ing the two hands open and held vertically in front of the body, one 
behind the other, then quickly pass one upward, the other downward, 
simulating somewhat the motion of the limbs of a pair of scissors, 
meaning ‘cut it off” The latter sign is made in conversation in a va- 
riety of ways, but habitually with one hand only. 
“The formal sign to ‘stop talking? is first to make the formal sign for 
‘tall, then the formal sign for ‘cut;’ but this is commonly abbreviated 
by first making the formal sign for ‘talk’ with the right hand, and then 
immediately passing the same hand, open, fingers extended, downward 
across and in front of the mouth, ‘talk, cut.’ 
“But though the Plains Indian, if asked for the sign to ‘stop talk- 
ing, will properly give the sign either in its extended or abbreviated 
form as above, he in conversation abbreviates it so much further that 
the sign loses almost all resemblance to its former self. Whatever the 
position of the hand, a turn of the wrist, a flip of the forefinger, and a 
