INDIAN TONGUES NOT DEPENDENT ON GESTURE. H 



been successful 'with strangers to their tongue, or perhaps when they are 

 guarding against being overheard by others. In fact, individuals of those 

 American tribes specially instanced in these reports as unable to converse 

 without gesture, often, in their domestic abandon, wrap themselves up in 

 robes or blankets with only breathing holes before the nose, so that no part 

 of the body is seen, and chatter away for hours, telling long stories. If 

 in daylight they thus voluntarily deprive themselves of the possibility of 

 making signs, it is clear that their preference for talks around the fire at 

 night is explicable by very natural reasons without the one attributed. 

 The inference, once carelessly made from, the free use of gesture by some 

 of the Numa stock, that their tongue was too meager for use without 

 signs, is refuted by the now ascertained fact that their vocabulary is 

 remarkably copious and their parts of speech better differentiated than those 

 of many people on whom no such stigma has been affixed. All theories, 

 indeed, based upon the supposed poverty of American languages must 

 be abandoned. 



The true distinction is that where people speaking precisely the same 

 dialect are not numerous, and are thrown into constant contact on equal 

 terms with others of differing dialects and languages, gesture is necessarily 

 resorted to for converse with the latter, and remains as a habit or accom- 

 plishment among themselves, while large bodies enjoying common speech, 

 and either isolated from foreigners, or, when in contact with them, so domi- 

 nant as to compel the learning and adoption of their own tongue, become 

 impassive in its delivery. The undemonstrative English, long insular, and 

 now rulers when spread over continents, may be compared with the profusely 

 gesticulating Italians dwelling in a maze of dialects and subject for centu- 

 ries either to foreign rule or to the influx of strangers on whom they de- 

 pended. King Ferdinand returning to Naples after the revolt of 1821, and 

 finding that the boisterous multitude would not allow his voice to be heard, 

 resorted successfully to a royal address in signs, giving reproaches, threats, 

 admonitions, pardon, and dismissal, to the entire satisfaction of the assem- 

 bled lazzaroni, which rivalry of Punch would, in London, have occasioned 

 measureless ridicule and disgust. The difference in what is vaguely styled 

 temperament does not wholly explain this contrast, for the performance was 



