be correct and the talker wrong. It is an old adage about oral speech that a man who 

 understands but one language understands none. The science of a sign-talker pos- 

 sessed by a restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau, wlio was greater as an orator 

 than as a philologist, and who on a visit to England gravely argued that there was 

 something seriously wrong in the British mind because the people would insist upon 

 saying "give me some bread" instead of " donnez moi du pain," which was so much 

 easier and more natural. A designedly ludicrous instance to the same effect was 

 Hood's arraignment of the French because they called their mothers "mares" and 

 their daughters "Allies." Xot binding ourselves to theories, we should take with cau- 

 tion any statement from a person who, having memorized or hashed up any number 

 of signs, large or small, has decided in his conceit that those he uses are the only 

 genuine simon-]>ure, to be exclusively employed according to his direction, all others 

 being counterfeits or blunders. His vocabulary has ceased to give the signs of any 

 Indian or body of Indians whatever, but becomes the vocabulary of Dr. Jones or Lieu- 

 tenant Smith, the proprietorship of which he fights for as did the original Dr. Townsend 

 for his patent medicine. When a sign is contributed by one of the present collabora- 

 tors, which such a sign-talker lias not before seen or heard of, he will at once condemn 

 it as bad, just as a United Stares ^Minister to Vienna, who had been nursed in the 

 mongrel Dutch of Berks County, Pennsylvania, declared that the people of Germany 

 spoke very bad German. Tiie experience of the present editor is that the original 

 authorities, or the best evidence, for Indian signs — /. e., the Indians themselves — 

 being still accessible, the collaborators in this work should not be content with 

 secondary authority. White sign-talkers and interpreters may give some genuine 

 signs, but tliey are very apt to interpolate their own inventions and deductions. By 

 gathering the genuine signs alone we will be of use to scholar.s, and give our own stud- 

 ies proper direction, while the true article presented can always be adulterated into a 

 composite jargon by those whose ambition is only to be sigu-talkers instead of making 

 an honest contribution to ethnologic and philologic science. The few direct contri- 

 butions of interpreters to the present work are, it is believed, valuable, because they 

 were made without expression of self-conceit or symptom of possession by a pet theoiy. 

 So far as only concerns the able gentlemen who Jiave favored this Bui-eau with 

 their contributions there is no need to continue these remarks. Suffice it to repeat 

 with more emphasis, that their criticisms and suggestions are invited as to all matter 

 herein contained, even to the details of grouping and title-words in the alphabetic 

 arrangement, synonyms, and cross refeiences. In the present private and tentative 

 work many hundreds of separate slips of paper are for the first time connected together, 

 thereby rendering perfect order unexpected. It may be mentioned tliat some of the 

 title-words and phrases which have a quaint appeai-ance are those used by the older 

 printed authorities, for which it is not always safe to supply a synonym, and the signs 

 of those same authorities being tlie most curtly and obscurely described of all in the 

 collection, there is no alternative but to print them as they stand for such use as may 

 be possible, which will chiefly be ni their bearing upon the questions of i)ersistency and 

 universality. The present edition will allow the verbal expressions of the living and 

 accessible to be revised and to be comiiared with, thus perhaps to correct the imper- 

 fections of descriptions made by the dead and inaccessible; but the language of the 

 latter cannot now be changed. The arrangement of the Vocabulary is more to 

 group the concepts than the P^nglisli title-words according to the synonyms of that 

 language. A further stej) in the study will be to prepare a synoptic arrangement of 



