342 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
likewise different bodies of people, would not always agree in the 
selection of those outlines and features. Taking the illustration of the 
attempt to invent a sign for bird, before used, any one of a dozen 
signs might have been agreed upon with equal appropriateness, and, in 
fact, a number have been so selected by several individuals and tribes, 
each one, therefore, being a synonym of the other. Another example of 
this is in the signs for deer, designated by various modes of expressing 
fleetness, by his gait when not in rapid motion, by the shape of his horns, 
by the color of his tail, and sometimes by combinations of several of 
those characteristics. Each of these signs may be indefinitely abbrevi- 
ated, and therefore create indefinite diversity. Another illustration, in 
which an association of ideas is apparent, is in the upward raising of 
the index in front of and above the head, which means above (sometimes 
containing the religious conception of heaven, great spirit, &c.), and 
also now, to-day. Not unfrequently these several signs to express the 
same ideas are used interchangeably by the same people, and some one 
of the duplicates or triplicates may have been noticed by separate 
observers to the exclusion of the others. On the other hand, they might 
all have been noticed, but each one among different bodies. Thus con- 
fusing reports would be received, which might either be erroneous in 
deducing the prevalence of particular signs or the opposite. Sometimes 
the synonym may be recognized as an imported sign, used with another 
tribe known to affect it. Sometimes the diverse signs to express the 
same thing are only different trials at reaching the intelligence of the 
person addressed. An account is given by Lieut. Heber M. Creel, Sev- 
enth Cavalry, U. 8. A., of an old Cheyenne squaw, who made about 
twenty successive and original signs to a recruit of the Fourth Cavalry 
to let him know that she wanted to obtain out of a wagon a piece of 
cloth belonging to her, to wipe out an oven preparatory to baking bread. 
Thus by tradition, importation, recent invention, or from all these causes 
together, several signs entirely distinct are produced for the same object 
or action. 
THE SAME SIGN WITH DIVERSE MEANINGS. 
This class is not intended to embrace the cases common both to sign and 
oral language where the same sign has several meanings, according to the 
expression, whether facial or vocal, and the general manner accompany- 
ing its delivery. The sign given for “stop talking” on page 339 may be 
used in simple acquiescence, ‘very well,” “all right!” or for comprehen- 
sion, “I understand ;” or in impatience, “‘you have talked enough!” which 
may be carried further to express actual anger in the violent ‘‘shut up!” 
But all these grades of thought accompany the idea of a cessation of 
talk. In like manner an acquaintance of the writer asking the same 
favor (a permission to go through their camp) of two chiefs, was answered 
by both with the sign generally used for repletion after eating, viz., the 
index and thumb turned toward the body, passed up from the abdomen 
to the throat; but in the one case, being made with a gentle motion and 
