A large collection has been made of natural deaf-mute signs, and also of those more conventional, which have been collated with those of the several tribes of Indians. Many of them show marked similarity, not only in principle but often in detail.
The result of the studies so far as prosecuted is that what is called the sign language of Indians is not, properly speaking, one language, but that it and the gesture systems of deaf-mutes and of all peoples constitute together one language—the gesture speech of mankind—of which each system is a dialect.
TO WHAT EXTENT PREVALENT AS A SYSTEM.
The assertion has been made by many writers, and is currently repeated by Indian traders and some Army officers, that all the tribes of North America have long had and still use a common and identical sign language, in which they can communicate freely without oral assistance. Although this remarkable statement is at variance with some of the principles of the formation and use of signs set forth by Dr. E.B. Tylor, whose admirable chapters on gesture speech in his Researches into the Early History of Mankind have in a great degree prompted the present inquiries, that eminent authority did not see fit to discredit it. He repeats the report as he received it, in the words that "the same signs serve as a medium of converse from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico." Its truth or falsity can only be established by careful comparison of lists or vocabularies of signs taken under test conditions at widely different times and places. For this purpose lists have been collated by the writer, taken in different parts of the country at several dates, from the last century to the last month, comprising together several thousand signs, many of them, however, being mere variants or synonyms for the same object or quality, some being repetitions of others and some of small value from uncertainty in description or authority, or both.
ONCE PROBABLY UNIVERSAL IN NORTH AMERICA.
The conclusion reached from the researches made is to the effect that before the changes wrought by the Columbian discovery the use of gesture illustrated the remark of Quintilian upon the same subject (l. xi, c. 3) that "In tanta per omnes gentes nationesque linguæ diversitate hic mihi omnium hominum communis sermo videatur."
Quotations may be taken from some old authorities referring to widely separated regions. The Indians of Tampa Bay, identified with the Timucua, met by Cabeça de Vaca in 1528, were active in the use of signs, and in his journeying for eight subsequent years, probably through Texas and Mexico, he remarks that he passed through many dissimilar tongues, but that he questioned and received the answers of the Indians by signs "just as if they spoke our language and we theirs." Michaëlius, writing in 1628, says of the Algonkins on or near the Hudson River: "For purposes of trading as much was done by signs with the thumb and fingers as by speaking." In Bossu's Travels through that part of North America formerly called Louisiana, London, 1771 (Forster's translation), an account is given of Monsieur de Belle-Isle some years previously captured by the Atak-apa, who remained with them two years and "conversed in their pantomimes with them." He was rescued by Governor Bienville and was sufficiently expert in the sign language to interpret between Bienville and the tribe. In Bushmann's Spuren, p. 424, there is a reference to the "Accocessaws on the west side of the Colorado, two hundred miles southwest of Nacogdoches," who use thumb signs which they understand: "Theilen sich aber auch durch Daum-Zeichen mit, die sie alle verstehen."
Omitting many authorities, and for brevity allowing a break in the continuity of time, reference may be made to the statement in Major Long's expedition of 1819, concerning the Arapahos, Kaiowas, Ietans, and Cheyennes, to the effect that, being ignorant of each other's languages, many of them when they met would communicate by means of signs, and would thus maintain a conversation without the least difficulty or interruption. A list of the tribes reported upon by Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuweid, in 1832-'34, appears elsewhere in this paper. In Frémont's expedition of 1844 special and repeated allusion is made to the expertness of the Pai-Utes in signs, which is contradictory to the statement above made by correspondents. The same is mentioned regarding a band of Shoshonis met near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, and one of "Diggers," probably Chemehuevas, encountered on a tributary of the Rio Virgen.
Ruxton, in his Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, New York, 1848, p. 278, sums up his experience with regard to the Western tribes so well as to require quotation: "The language of signs is so perfectly understood in the Western country, and the Indians themselves are such admirable pantomimists, that, after a little use, no difficulty whatever exists in carrying on a conversation by such a channel; and there are few mountain men who are at a loss in thoroughly understanding and making themselves intelligible by signs alone, although they neither speak nor understand a word of the Indian tongue."