402 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
The translation now presented is based upon the German original, but 
ip. a few cases where the language was so curt as not to give a clear 
idea, was collated with the French edition of the succeeding year, 
which, from some internal evidence, appears to have been published 
with the assistance or supervision of the author. Many of the descrip- 
tions are, however, so brief and indefinite in both their German and 
French forms that they necessarily remain so in the present translation. 
The princely explorer, with the keen discrimination shown in all his 
work, doubtless observed what has escaped many recent reporters of 
Indian signs, that the latter depend much more upon motion than mere 
position, and are generally large and free, seldom minute. His object 
was to express the general effect of the motion rather than to describe it 
with such precision as to allow of its accurate reproduction by a reader 
who had never seenit. To have presented the signs as now desired for 
comparison, toilsome elaboration would have heen necessary, and even 
that would not in all cases have sufficed without pictorial illustration. 
On account of the manifest importance of determining the prevalence 
and persistence of the signs as observed half a century ago, an excep- 
tion is made to the general arrangement hereafter mentioned by intro- 
ducing after the Wied signs remarks of collaborators who have made 
special comparisons, and adding to the latter the respective names of 
those collaborators—as, (Matthews), (Boteler). Itis hoped that the work 
of those gentlemen will be imitated, not only regarding the Wied signs, 
but many others. 
4. The signs given to publication by Capt. R. F. Burton, which, it 
would be inferred, were collected in 186061, from the tribes met or 
learned of on the overland stage route, including Southern Dakotas, 
Utes, Shoshoni, Arapahos, Crows, Pani, and Apaches. They are con- 
tained in The City of the Saints, New York, 1862, pp. 123-130. 
Information has been recently received to the effect that this collec- 
tion was not made by the distinguished English explorer from his per- 
sonal observation, but was obtained by him from one man in Salt Lake 
City, a Mormon bishop, who, it is feared, gave his own ideas of the forma- 
tion and use of signs rather than their faithful description. 
5. A list read by Dr. D. G. MACGOWAN, at a meeting of the American 
Ethnological Society, January 23, 1866, and published in the Historical 
Magazine, vol. x, 1866, pp. 86, 87, purporting to be the signs of the Cad- 
dos, Wichitas, and Comanches. 
6. Annotations by Lieut. HEBER M. CREEL, Seventh United States 
Cavalry, received in January, 1881. This officer is supposed to be 
specially familiar with the Cheyennes, among whom he lived for eight- 
een months; but his recollection is that most of the signs described by 
him were also observed among the Arapaho, Sioux, and several other 
tribes. 
7. A special contribution from Mr, F. F. GERARD, of Fort A. Lincoln, 
D. T., of signs obtained chiefly from a deaf-mute Dakota, who has trav- 
