370 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, 
Where there has existed any form of artistic representation, however 
rude, and at the same time a system of ideographic gesture signs pre- 
vailed, it would be expected that the form of the latter would appear in 
the former. The sign of river and 
water mentioned on page 358 being 
established, when it became neces- 
sary or desirable to draw a character 
or design to convey the same idea, 
nothing would be more natural than 
to use the graphic form of delinea- 
tion which is also above described. 
Fic. 153. It was but one more and an easy step 
to fasten upon bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures that still 
in pigments or carvings preserve their skeleton outline, and in their ideog- 
raphy approach, as has been shown 
above, the rudiments of the pho- 
netiz alphabets that have been con- 
structed by other peoples. A tran- 
sition stage between gestures and 
pictographs, in which the left hand is 
used as a supposed drafting surface es 
upon which the index draws lines, Fic. 154. 
is exhibited in the DIALOGUE BETWEEN ALASKAN INDIANS, infra, page 
498, This device is common among deaf-mutes, without equal archieo- 
logic importance, as it may have been suggested by the art of writing, 
with which they are generally acquainted, even if not instructed in it. 
The reproduction of apparent gesture lines in the pictographs made 
by our Indians has, for obvious reasons, been most frequent in the at- 
tempt to convey those subjective ideas which were beyond the range of 
an artistic skill limited to the direct representation of objects, so that 
the part of the pictographs which is still the most difficult of interpre- 
tation is precisely the one which the study of sign language is likely to 
elucidate. The following examples of pictographs of the Indians, in 
some cases compared with those from foreign sources, have been se- 
lected because their interpretation is definitely known and the gestures 
CSE. corresponding with or suggested by them are well deter- 
mined. 
The common Indian gesture sign for sun is: “Right hand 
closed, the index and thumb eurved, with tips touching, thus 
approximating a circle, and held toward the 
sky,” the position of the fingers of the hand G) ©) 
ws, forming a cirele being shownin Fig. 155. Two 
of the Egyptian characters for sun, Figs. 156 and 157, are plainly the uni- 
versal conception of the disk. The latter, together with indications of 
rays, Fig. 158, and in its linear torm, Fig. 159, (Champollion, Dict., 9), 
Fic. 156. Fic. 157. 
