Sign talk

by Ernest Thompson Seton

Footnotes

[¹] Professor Elmer D. Read writes me that all of these are in use among the deaf also, except the signs for “shame” and “church”; for these they make the Indian signs “red” and “house prayer,” respectively.

[²] “After going carefully over your syntax I approve it in the main but I think it quite likely that many of the rules are not so inflexible as this makes them seem; besides which, there must be always a certain amount of modification by transliteration from the spoken language of those using the signs. This would manifest itself in a growing conformity

of the Sign Language syntax to that of the more dominant spoken language.”—F. W. Hodge (Ethnologist, Smithsonian Institution).

[³] Since the above was written, I have come across L. F. Hadley’s pictographic writing of the Sign Language, fully set forth in the bibliographical matter. E. T. S.

SIGN TALK

A Universal Signal Code, Without Apparatus, for Use in the Army, the Navy, Camping, Hunting, Daily Life and Among the Plains Indians

SIGN TALK OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS

BY
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON