BULL. 30] 



SIGN LANGUAGE 



567 



of a traveler or party, the occurrence of 

 some notable incident, etc. These varied 

 from the simple bending of a twig, blaz- 

 ing of a tree, or piling of stones, to the 

 elaborate pictograph set in some conspic- 

 uous place, or the symbolic declaration 

 of war among the Eastern tribes, particu- 

 larly in the Gulf states, by setting up red- 

 painted arrows along the trail near the 

 enemy's village, along with the totemic 

 symbol of the attacking tribe, or leaving 

 in plain view a red-painted tomahawk 

 with a scalp attached. (j. m. ) 



Sign language. A system of gestures 

 in use by the Indians of the plains for 

 intercommunication among tribes speak- 

 ing different languages. Traces of such 

 a system have been found among the 

 former tribes of e. United States, in 

 the Canadian northwest, and in Mexico, 

 but as commonly known the sign lan- 

 guage belongs to the tribes between the 

 Missouri and the Kocky mts. and from 

 Fraser r., Brit. Col., s. to the Rio Grande. 

 It seems never to have extended w. of 

 the mountains, excepting among the Nez 

 Perces and other tribes accustomed to 

 make periodic hunting excursions into 

 the plains, nor to have attained any high 

 development among the sedentary tribes 

 in the eastern timber region, being super- 

 seded in these sections by some mother 

 dialect or trade jargon. In the great 

 treeless area of the plains, stretching 

 nearly 2,000 m. from n. to s. and occu- 

 pied by tribes of many different stocks, 

 all constantly shifting about in pursuit oit 

 the buffalo herds and thus continually 

 brought into friendly meeting or hostile 

 collision, the necessities of nomadic life 

 resulted in the evolution of a highly de- 

 veloped system of gesture communication 

 which, for all ordinary purposes, hardly 

 fell short of the perfection of a spoken 

 language. 



In its evolution the sign language ap- 

 pears to have followed the same lines 

 along which, according to the theory of 

 most philologists, human speech devel- 

 oped, viz, a gradual progress from the 

 representative to the conventional, from 

 the picture to the arbitrary symbol, the 

 sign language, however, being still 

 chiefly in the representative or panto- 

 mimic stage. It may, in fact, be de- 

 scribed as a motional equivalent of the 

 Indian pictograph, the conventional sign 

 being usually a close reference to the pre- 

 dominant characteristic of the object in 

 shape, habit, or purpose. The signs are 

 made almost entirely with the hands, 

 either one or both. Minor differences 

 exist, like dialects in spoken languages, 

 the differences being naturally greatest at 

 the two extremes of the sign-language 

 area, but 3ven with these slight dissimi- 

 larities a Sioux or a Blackfoot from the 



upper Missouri has no difficulty in com- 

 municating with a visiting Kiowa or 

 Comanche from the Texas border on any 

 subject from the negotiating of a treaty 

 to the recital of a mythic story or the 

 telling of a hunting incident. The claim 

 of any particular tribe to having invented 

 the system may be set down as mere 

 boasting, but it is universally admitted 

 that the Crows, Cheyenne, and Kiowa 

 are most expert in its use; and the tribes 

 E. and w. of the central area, viz, the 

 Omaha, Kansa, Osage, and others near 

 the Missouri, and the Ute and Shoshoni 

 in the mountains, know less of it. In 

 fluent grace of movement a conversation 

 in the sign language between a Cheyenne 

 and a Kiowa is the very poetry of motion. 

 As has been stated, the signs in every 

 case are founded on some tangible or 

 symbolic characteristic, although by ab- 

 breviation or "wearing down," as in a 

 spoken language, the resemblance has 

 frequently been obscured and conven- 

 tionalized. Thus the sign for man is 

 made by throwing out the hand, back 

 outward, with index finger extended up- 

 ward, apparently having reference to an 

 old root word in many Indian languages 

 which defines man as the erect animal. 

 Woman is indicated by a sweeping down- 

 ward movement of the hand at the side 

 of the head, with fingers extended toward 

 the hair to denote long flowing hair or 

 the combing of flowing locks. A white 

 man is distinguished as the hat wearer, 

 either by drawing the index flnger across 

 the forehead or by clasping the forehead 

 with outstretched thumb and index fin- 

 ger. For Indian the speaker rubs the 

 back of his left hand, or, perhaps, his 

 cheek, with the palm of the right to in- 

 dicate a person whose skin is of the same 

 color. The sign having obtained this con- 

 ventional meaning, it maybe used equally 

 by a white man to convey the same idea. 

 Each tribe is designated by a special sign 

 combination, usually the equivalent of 

 the common name in the various spoken 

 languages. Thus for Blackfoot the speaker 

 touches his moccasin and then rubs his 

 fingers upon something black. For Ute he 

 makes the sign for black man. For Paw- 

 nee, the "Wolf people" of the Plains 

 tribes, he throws up the right hand, with 

 two fingers apart and pointing upward 

 and forward, at the side of his head, to 

 indicate erect ears of a wolf, following 

 this with the sign for man, as already 

 explained. Another suggested interpre- 

 tation is "Horn people" from a peculiar 

 scalp-lock formerly worn by the Pawnee. 

 A tipi is shown by bringing both index 

 fingers together like an inverted V (a), to 

 indicate the conical shape and the cross- 

 ing of the poles. An ordinary house 

 would be distinguished by addmg the 



