4() INDIANS CONVERSING WITH DEAF-MUTES. 



prising- when it is considered that what is to the Indian a mere adjunct or 

 accomplishment is to the deaf-mute the natural mode of utterance, and 

 that there is still greater freedom from the trammel of translating words 

 into action — instead of acting the ideas themselves — when, the sound of 

 words being unknown, they remain still as they originated, but another 

 kind of sign, even after the art of reading is acquired, and do not become 

 entities as with us. 



It is to be remarked that Indians when brought to the East have 

 shown the greatest pleasure in meeting deaf-mutes, precisely as travelers 

 .in a foreign country are rejoiced to meet persons speaking their language, 

 with whom they can hold direct communication without the tiresome and 

 often suspected medium of an interpreter. A Sandwich Islander, a Chi- 

 nese, and the Africans from the slaver Amistad have, in published instances, 

 visited our deaf-mute institutions with the same result of free and pleasura- 

 ble intercourse, and an English deaf-mute had no difficulty in conversing 

 with Laplanders. It appears, also, on the authority of Sibscota, whose 

 treatise was published in 1670, that Cornelius Haga, ambassador of the 

 United Provinces to the Sublime Porte, found the Sultan's mutes to have 

 established a language among themselves in which they could discourse 

 with a speaking interpreter, a degree of ingenuity interfering with the 

 object of their selection as slaves unable to repeat conversation. 



SUGGESTIONS TO OBSERVERS. 



The most important suggestion to persons interested in the collection 

 of signs is that they shall not too readily abandon the attempt to discover 

 recollections of them even among tribes long exposed to Caucasian influence 

 and officially segregated from others. 



During the last week a missionary wrote that he was concluding a con- 

 siderable vocabulary of signs finally procured from the Ponkas, although 

 after residing among them for years, with thorough familiarity with their 

 language, and after special and intelligent exertion to obtain some of their 

 disused gesture -language, he had two months ago reported it to be entirely 

 forgotten. A similar report was made by two missionaries among the 

 Ojibwas, though other trustworthy authorities have furnished a list of signs 



