78 GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WORD-LANGUAGE, 



like the Arapalios, possess a very scanty vocabulary, pro- 

 nounced in a quasi-unintelligible way, can bardly converse with 

 one another in the dark ; to make a stranger understand them 

 they must always repair to the camp-fire for ' pow-wow/ "^ 



Mr. Schoolcraft, whose opinion on the matter would have 

 been valuable, knew of the question, and inserted it in the list 

 of inquiries to be answered by Indian agents, etc. Asking 

 for information about the language of any tribe, he puts the 

 inquiry. No. 345, " Is gesticulation essential to carry out some 

 of its meanings ? "'^ 



The array of evidence in favour of the existence of tribes 

 whose language is incomplete without the help of gesture- 

 signs, even for things of ordinary import, is very remarkable. 

 The matter is important, ethnologically, for could it be taken as 

 proved, that there are really people whose language does not 

 suffice to speak of the common subjects of every-day life with- ^ 

 out the aid of gesture, the fact would either furnish about the 

 strongest case of degeneration known in the history of the 

 human race, or would supply a telling argument in favour of 

 the theory that the gesture-language is the original utterance 

 of mankind, out of which speech has developed itself more or 

 less fully among different tribes. But the evidence does not 

 in any case give all that would be required to prove the fact. 

 Spix and Martius make no claim to having mastered the Puri 

 and Coroado languages. The Coroado words for " to-morrow " 

 and " the day after to-morrow," viz. herinanta and hind heri- 

 nanta, make it unlikely that their neighbours the Puris, who 

 are so nearly on the same level of civilization, have no such 

 words. (I have not had access to a Puri vocabulary, which 

 would probably settle the question.) Mr. Mercer seems to 

 have adopted the common view of foreigners about the Ved- 

 dahs, but it has happened here, as in many other accounts of 

 savage tribes, that closer acquaintance has shown them to 

 have been wrongly accused, Mr. Bailey, who has had good 

 opportunities of studying them, shows them to be low in cul- 

 ture, but by no means exceptionally so, and he contradicts their 

 supposed deficiency in language with the remark, " I never 



* Burton, ' City of tlie Saints,' p. 151. ^ Schoolcraft, part i. p. 564. 



