NATURE 



93 



THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 18S0 



SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG THE AMERICAN 



INDIANS 

 Introduction to the Study of Sign-Language among the 

 North American Indians, as Illustrating the Gesture- 

 Speech of Mankind. By Garrick Mallery. (Washing- 

 ton : Government Printing Office, 18S0. ) 



UNDER this modest title another of those valuable 

 contributions, which we owe to the Smithsonian 

 Institution, has been made to science. Researches into 

 the ethnography of the North American Indians have 

 been going on for the last eleven years under the super- 

 intendence of Mr. J. W. Powell, and a series of compact 

 and beautifully-printed monographs has lately been started 

 for the purpose of aiding and directing them. The mono- 

 graph just issued forms the second of the series hitherto 

 published, and in spite of its title is full of new and 

 interesting matter. It will be appreciated not only by 

 those who are actually engaged in observing the life and 

 manners of barbarous tribes, but also by every student 

 of language and anthropology. 



The evidence that has been accumulating for some 

 time past makes it probable that the most important part 

 of language, its grammatical machinery, originated in 

 gestures and signs. These were the means whereby 

 sense and meaning were imported into spoken words. 

 As Col. Mallery remarks : " A child employs intelligent 

 gestures long in advance of speech, although very early 

 and persistent attempts are made to give it instruction in 

 the latter but none in the former ; it learns language 

 only through the medium of signs ; and long after 

 familiarity with speech, consults the gestures and facial 

 expressions of its parents and nurses as if to translate or 

 explain their words." An examination of the sign- 

 language or languages of mankind consequently becomes 

 of high importance, and it is strange that no thorough 

 and scientific attempt to undertake it has hitherto been 

 made. Leibnitz indeed, with the instinct of genius, 

 pointed out the need and importance of such an investi- 

 gation (in his " Collectanea Etymologica," ch. 9), but his 

 words met with no response. It is therefore all the more 

 satisfactory to find that the subject has at last been taken 

 up in America, where special opportunities still exist for 

 collecting materials, notwithstanding the rapid decrease 

 in the native population that seems to have been going 

 on of late years. North America has always been the 

 country where a language of signs was pre-eminently in 

 vogue. Col. Mallery says with justice that " the words 

 of an Indian tongue, being synthetic or undifferentiated 

 parts of speech, are in this respect strictly analogous to 

 the gesture elements which enter into a sign-language." 

 Just as a single idea or mental picture is represented by 

 a connected group of individual gestures, so too it is 

 expressed in the polysynthetic speech of the Red Indian 

 by a group of individual syllables which form but one 

 word. 



The first question we have to ask ourselves is whether 



sign-languages are the same all over the world, whether 



each idea or group of ideas has a fixed and natural 



gesture or sign corresponding to it everywhere. To this 



Vol. xxii.— No. 553 



question the researches made among the American 

 Indians furnish a conclusive reply. "The alleged exist- 

 ence of one universal and absolute sign-language is, in its 

 terms of general assertion, one of the many popular 

 errors prevailing about our aborigines." Many signs are 

 purely conventional, while many ideas or objects may be 

 denoted by more than one sign. The signs used by the 

 different Indian tribes to indicate the same ideas by no 

 means agree together, nor do they always agree, so far as 

 I know, with the signs employed for the same ideas in 

 the Old World, whether by savages or by deaf-mutes. The 

 curious language of signs employed in monasteries where 

 the rule of silence was strictly observed, which is given 

 by Leibnitz, if compared with the lists of signs furnished 

 by American explorers, is a good example of the fact. 



At the same time no signs can be so arbitrary and 

 conventional as spoken words, nor can an idea be 

 expressed by so many different signs as it can be by 

 different sounds. Col. Mallery observes that " further 

 evidence of the unconscious survival of gesture-language 

 is afforded by the ready and involuntary response made 

 in signs to signs when a man with the speech and 

 habits of civilisation is brought into close contact with 

 Indians or deaf-mutes. Without having ever seen or 

 made one of their signs, he will soon not only catch the 

 meaning of theirs, but produce his own, which they will 

 likewise comprehend, the power seemingly remaining 

 latent in him until called forth by necessity. The signs 

 used by uninstructed congenital deaf-mutes and the facial 

 expressions and gestures of the congenitally blind also 

 present considerations under the heads of 'heredity ' and 

 ' atavism,' of some weight when the subjects are de- 

 scended from and dwell among people who had disused 

 gestures for generations, but of less consequence in cases 

 such as that mentioned by Cardinal Wiseman of an 

 Italian blind man who, curiously enough, used the precise 

 signs made by his neighbours." 



But care must be taken to distinguish between two 

 things which are frequently confused together. Gestures 

 and signs are wholly different, gestures being natural 

 signs more or less conventional. A gesticulation is a 

 gesture which has become a sign, and the nearer signs 

 approach to gesticulations the more readily and in- 

 stinctively they will be understood. 



Those who wish to know what the Indian sign-language 

 is will find plenty of interesting and suggestive examples 

 in Col. Mallery' s Introduction. He has added a list of 

 his authorities as well as a speech in signs addressed- by 

 a medicine-man of the Wichitas to Mr. A. J. Holt, and a 

 story in signs told by Natshes, the Pah-Ute chief, to 

 Dr. W. J. Hoffman. These curious specimens of sign- 

 language will show what it is more effectually than any 

 description could do, and will justify the analysis and 

 classification of the signs proposed by Col. Mallery. 



In conclusion, aid and suggestions are asked from all 

 interested in the subject, or who are in actual contact with 

 savage and barbarous tribes. A list of words is appended 

 for which the corresponding signs are wanted, those of 

 chief importance being marked by an asterisk. We hope 

 that the ethnographical department of the Smithsonian 

 Institution will meet with all the assistance in this under- 

 taking to which it is entitled. There must be many 

 observers among the uncivilised races of the Old World 



