130 INDIANS OF THE PLAIN8. 



least three dialectic groups: the Santee say Dakota 

 and the Teton, Lakota, one always using d for the 

 other's I; the Santee hda (go home), the Teton, gla 

 and the Yankton kda. Even within the different 

 communities of the Teton small differences are said to 

 exist. Hence, the differences in speech are after all 

 gradations of variable magnitude from the study of 

 which philologists are able to discover relationship 

 and descent, all believed to have originated from one 

 now extinct mother tongue being classed under one 

 family, or stock name. In short, there are no language 

 characters peculiar to the Plains tribes, as is the case 

 with other cultural characters. 



The foregoing remarks apply entirely to oral lan- 

 guage. We must not overlook the extensive use of a 

 sign language which seems to have served all the pur- 

 poses of an international or inter-tribal language. The 

 signs were made with the hands and fingers, but were 

 not in any sense the spelling out of a spoken language. 

 The language was based upon ideas alone. Had it 

 been otherwise, it could not have been understood 

 outside of the tribe. Though some traces of such a 

 language have been met with outside of the Plains, it is 

 only within the area that we find a system so well 

 developed that inter-tribal visitors could be entertained 

 with sign-talk on all subjects. The Crow, Kiowa, 

 Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Blackfoot are generally re- 

 garded as having been most proficient and the Omaha, 

 Osage, Kansas and Ute, as least skillful in its use. It 

 may not be amiss to add that in most tribes could be 



