CONCLUSION PRESENTED. 37 



breast, and the right forefinger, representing the prisoner, is placed upright 

 within the curve and passed from one side to another, in order to show that 

 it is not permitted to pass out. {Long.) 



Soft is ingeniously expressed by first striking the open left hand sev- 

 eral times with the back of the right, and then striking with the right the 

 back of the left, restoring the supposed yielding substance to its former 

 shape. 



Without further multiplying examples, the conclusion is presented that 

 the gesture-signs among our Indians show no uniformity in detail, the 

 variety in expression among them and in their comparison with those of 

 deaf-mutes and transatlantic mimes being in itself of psychological interest. 

 The generalization of Tylor that " gesture-language is substantially the 

 same among savage tribes all over the world " must be understood, indeed 

 would be so understood from his remarks in another connection, as refer- 

 ring to their common use of signs and of signs formed on the same prin- 

 ciples, but not of the same signs to express the same ideas, even "substan- 

 tially," however indefinitely that dubious adverb may be used. 



GESTURE- SPEECH UNIVERSAL AS AN APT. 



The attempt to convey meaning by signs is, however, universal among the 

 Indians of the plains, and those still comparatively unchanged by civiliza- 

 tion, as is its successful execution as an art, which, however it may have 

 commenced as an instinctive mental process, has been cultivated, and con- 

 sists in actually pointing out objects in sight not only for designation, but 

 for application and predication, and in suggesting others to the mind by 

 action and the airy forms produced by action. 



In no other part of the thoroughly explored world has there been 

 spread over so vast a space so small a number of individuals divided by 

 so many linguistic and dialectic boundaries as in North America. Many 

 wholly distinct tongues have for a long indefinite time been confined to a 

 few scores of speakers, verbally incomprehensible to all others on the face 

 ot the earth who did not, from some rarely operating motive, laboriously 

 acquire their language. Even when the American race, so styled, flourished 

 in the greatest population of which we have any evidence (at least accord- 



