THE GESTUEB-LANGTJAGE. 35 



he comes out of his habitual apathy^ and displays a rare intel- 

 ligence in making himself understood. He varies his signs, 

 pronounces his words slowly, and repeats them without being 

 asked. His amour-'projpre seems flattered by the consequence 

 you accord to him by letting hiru instruct you. This facility of 

 making himself understood is above all remarkable in the inde- 

 pendent Indian, and in the Christian missions I should recom- 

 mend the traveller to address himself in preference to those of 

 the natives who have been but lately reduced, or who go back 

 from time to time to the forest to enjoy their ancient liberty."^ 

 It is well known that the Indians of North America, whose 

 nomade habits and immense variety of languages inust continu- 

 ally make it needful for them to communicate with tribes whose 

 language they cannot speak, carry the gesture-language to a- 

 high degree of perfection, and the same signs serve as a me- 

 dium of converse from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. 

 Several writers make mention of this ''Indian pantomime,". 

 and it has been carefully described in the account of Major 

 Long's expedition, and more recently by Captain Burton.^ The 

 latter traveller considers it to be a mixture of natural and con- 

 ventional signs, but so far as I can judge from the one hundred 

 and fifty or so which he describes, and those I find mentioned 

 elsewhere, I do not believe that there is a really arbitrary sign 

 among them. There are only about half-a-dozen of which the 

 meaning is not at once evident, and even these appear on close 

 inspection to be natural signs, perhaps a little abbreviated or 

 conventionalized. I am sure that a skilled deaf-and-dumb 

 talker would understand an Indian interpreter, and be himself 

 understood at first sight, with scarcely any difficulty, The 

 Indian pantomime and the gesture-language of the deaf-and-- 

 dumb are but different dialects of the same language of nature. 

 Burton says that an interpreter who knows all the signs is pre- 

 ferred by the whites even to a good speaker. ''A story is 



^ Humboldt and Bonpland, ^Voyage;' Paris, 1814, etc. toI. ii. p, 278. 



2 Edwin James, Major Stephen H. Long's Exped. Eocky Moua. ; Philadelphia, 

 1823, i. p. 378, etc, Capt. R. E. Bm-ton, ' The City of the Saints,' London, 1861, 

 p. 150, etc. See also Prinz Maximihan von Wied-Neuwied, ' Voyage dans I'lnte- 

 rieur de I'Amerique du Nord ;' Paris, 1840-3, vol. iii. p. 389, etc. 



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