20 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



dates were collected by the speaker, comprising more than 

 eight hundred signs. The result is that there is often an en- 

 tire discrepancy between the signs made by different bodies 

 of Indians to express the same idea. Very few of the limited 

 number of gestures that are in general use are at all conven- 

 tional, being only portions more or less elaborate of obvious 

 natural pantomime; and those proving to be the fittest ex- 

 pressions of the several ideas become the most widely adopted. 

 In some cases the original air pictures of an outline or action 

 •have become abbreviated; and even if both the original 

 conception and delineation were at first the same, the two 

 or more abbreviations become unlike. The first conceptions 

 were also often diverse, because all objects have several 

 characteristics, and what strikes one set of people as the 

 most distinctive will not always so impress another. 



The speaker gave from the collected lists, or vocabula- 

 ries, a large number of examples where either the concep- 

 tion or execution, or both, to express the same idea are 

 widely diverse. Also a number of typical cases of agree- 

 ment, followed by illustrations of others not remarkable 

 either for general or limited acceptance, but for the philos- 

 ophy or poetry suggested by their picturesque figuration. 

 Some of these were compared with the gestures of savage 

 and civilized people in the Old World; with those of deaf 

 mutes; with the code of the Cistercian monks, who were 

 vowed to silence; and with the picture writing on buffalo 

 robes and on Egyptian pyramids. The general result proved 

 that there was no uniformity in detail, but the variety in 

 expression was in itself of great psychological interest. While 

 the assertion of a single universal sign-language among the 

 tribes is, therefore, one of the popular errors about our abo- 

 rigines, it is, nevertheless true, that the attempt to convey 

 meaning by signs is universal among them;" and further, 

 two intelligent pantomimists, whether Indian or Caucas- 

 sian, deaf-mute, or without common tongue, will seldom fail 

 of mutual understanding when their attention is exclusively 



