[From Colonel Garrick Mallery's "Sign Language of the Indians of the Upper Missouri in 1832.">[
Although nearly every book of travels among the Indians found between the Alleghenies and the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, refers to their frequent and convenient use of sign language, there are only three useful collections of described signs of any early date, either printed, or, so far as ascertained, in manuscript. These are as follows:[272]
The one collected by Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neu-Wied, in 1832-34, from the Cheyenne, Shoshoni, Arikara, Satsika, and the Absaroki, the Mandans, Hidatsa, and other Northern Dakotas.[273] This list is not published in the English edition, but appears in the German, Coblenz, 1839, and in the French, Paris, 1840. Bibliographic reference is often made to this distinguished explorer as "Prince Maximilian," as if there were but one possessor of that christian name among princely families. No translation of this list into English appears to have been printed in any shape, while the German and French editions are costly and difficult of access, so the collection cannot readily be compared by observers with the signs now made by the same tribes. The translation now presented is intended to facilitate such comparison. It is based upon the German original, but in a few cases where the language was so curt as not to give a clear idea, was collated with the French edition of the succeeding year, which, from some internal evidence, appears to have been published with the assistance or supervision of the author. Many of the descriptions are, however, so brief and indefinite in both their German and French forms, that they necessarily remain so in the present translation. The princely explorer, with the keen discrimination shown in all his work, doubtless observed what has escaped many recent reporters of aboriginal signs, that the latter depend much more upon motion than mere position—and are generally large and free—seldom minute. His object was to express the general effect of the motion, rather than to describe it so as to allow of its accurate reproduction by a reader who had never seen it. For the latter purpose, now very desirable, a more elaborate description would have been necessary, and even that would not in all cases have been sufficient without pictorial illustration. In a few instances the present writer has added explanations preceded by a dash—. Remarks on the signs might be indefinitely extended, but the present object is to assist present observers in making their own comparisons and suggestions, which, it is hoped, they will contribute to the final work on Sign Language, now in preparation by the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, of which notice has been given in a preliminary pamphlet lately issued.
It is worthy of note that the distinguished explorer, who was the earliest to publish a comprehensive and scientific account of the tribes of the upper Missouri, is the only printed authority agreeing with the present writer in denying the existence of a universal sign language among the several tribes, in the sense of a common code, the report of which has generally been accepted without question. He states that the signs described, gathered by him from the tribes above mentioned, are unintelligible to the Dakotas (probably Sioux), Assiniboins, Ojibwas, Krees, and other nations. He undoubtedly means, however, that different signs prevailed among the two bodies of Indians, so divided by himself, and that the individuals who had only learned by rote one set of those signs, would not understand the other set which they had never seen, unless they were accomplished in the gesture speech as an art, and not as a mere memorized list of arbitrary motions. It has been clearly ascertained that two Indians of different tribes who have neither oral language nor previously adopted signs in common, can, after a short trial, communicate through familiarity with the principles of gesture speech, signs being mutually invented and accepted.
The philosophic prince also was one of the first to correct another common error, in attributing the use of signs to the poverty of the aboriginal tongues.
List of the Prince of Wied-Neu-Wied
1. Good: Place the right hand horizontally in front of the breast, and move it forward.—This gesture is more fully described by a recent observer, as follows: "Place the right hand horizontally in front of the breast, and touching it, fingers and thumbs closed and extended, back of hand up, move rather sharply to the front until the forearm is nearly extended." It may convey the suggestion of "level," "no difficulty," and resembles some signs for "content." Many Indians and deaf mutes use gestures to express a pleasant taste in the mouth, for "good" even in a moral sense. (G. S. 124; S. L. 25.)