56 SENTENCES AND SYNTAX. 



principle of abbreviation or reduction may be illustrated by supposing- a 

 person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the voice, seeking to call 

 attention to a particular bird on a tree, and failing to do so by mere indication. 

 Descriptive signs are resorted to, perhaps suggesting the bill and wings of the 

 bird, its manner of clinging to the twig with its feet, its size by seeming to 

 hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the same hue ; 

 perhaps by the action of shooting into a tree, picking up the supposed 

 fallen game, and plucking feathers. These are continued until understood, 

 and if one sign or group of signs proves to be successful that will be re- 

 peated on the next occasion by both persons engaged, and when becoming 

 familiar between them and others will be more and more abbreviated. To 

 this degree only, when the signs of the Indians have from ideographic form 

 become demotic, are they conventional, and none of them are arbitrary, but 

 in them, as in all his actions, man had at first a definite meaning or purpose, 

 together with method in their after changes or modifications. The forma- 

 tion and reception of signs upon a generally understood principle, by which 

 they may be comprehended when seen for the first time, has been before 

 noticed as one of the causes of the report of a common code, as out of a 

 variety of gestures, each appropriate to express a particular idea, an ob- 

 server may readily have met the same one in several localities. 



It were needless to suggest to any qualified observer that there is in 

 the gesture-speech no organized sentence such as is integrated in the lan- 

 guages of civilization, and that he must not look for articles or particles or 

 passive voice or case or grammatic gender, or even what we use as a sub- 

 stantive or a verb, as a subject or a predicate, or as qualifiers or inflexions. 

 The sign radicals, without being specifically any of our parts of speech, 

 may be all of them in turn. He will find no part of grammar beyond the 

 pictorial grouping which may be classed under the scholastic head of syn- 

 tax, but that exception is sufficiently important to make it desirable that 

 specimens of narratives and speeches in the exact order of their gesticula- 

 tion should be reported. The want before mentioned, of a sufficiently com- 

 plete and exact collection of tales and talks in the sign-language of the 

 Indians, leaves it impossible to dwell now upon their syntax, but the sub- 

 ject has received much discussion in connection with the order of deaf-mute 



