While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Distinction Between Identity of Signs and
Their Use as an Art
The general report that there is but one
sign language in North America, any deviation from which is
either blunder, corruption, or a dialect in the nature of
provincialism, may be examined in reference to some of the
misconceived facts which gave it origin and credence. It may
not appear to be necessary that such examination should be
directed to any mode of collecting and comparing signs which
would amount to their distortion. It is useful, however, to
explain that distortion would result from following the
views of a recent essayist, who takes the ground that the
description of signs should be made according to a "mean" or
average. There can be no philosophic consideration of signs
according to a "mean" of observations. The proper object is
to ascertain the radical or essential part as distinct from
any individual flourish or mannerism on the one hand, and
from a conventional or accidental abbreviation on the other;
but a mere average will not accomplish that object. If the
hand, being in any position whatever, is, according to five
observations, moved horizontally one foot to the right, and,
according to five other observations, moved one foot
horizontally to the left, the "mean" or resultant will be
that it is stationary, which sign does not correspond with
any of the ten observations. So if six observations give it
a rapid motion of one foot to the right and five a rapid
motion of the same distance to the left, the mean or
resultant would be somewhat difficult to express, but
perhaps would be a slow movement to the right for an inch or
two, having certainly no resemblance either in essentials or
accidents to any of the signs actually observed. In like
manner the tail of the written letter "y" (which,
regarding its mere formation, might be a graphic sign) may
have in the chirography of several persons various degrees
of slope, may be a straight line, or looped, and may be
curved on either side; but a "mean" taken from the several
manuscripts would leave the unfortunate letter without any
tail whatever, or travestied as a "u" with an
amorphous flourish. A definition of the radical form of the
letter or sign by which it can be distinguished from any
other letter or sign is a very different proceeding.
Therefore, if a "mean" or resultant of any number of
radically different signs to express the same object or
idea, observed either among several individuals of the same
tribe or among different tribes, is made to represent those
signs, they are all mutilated and ignored as distinctive
signs, though the result may possibly be made intelligible
in practice, according to principles mentioned in the
present paper. The expedient of a "mean" may be practically
useful in the formation of a mere interpreter's jargon, but
it elucidates no principle. It is also convenient for any
one determined to argue for the uniformity of sign language
as against the variety in unity apparent in all the realms
of nature. On the "mean" principle, he only needs to take
his two-foot rule and arithmetical tables and make all signs
his signs and his signs all signs. Of course they are
uniform, because he has made them so after the brutal
example of Procrustes.
In this connection it is proper to urge a warning that a
mere sign talker is often a bad authority upon principles
and theories. He may not be liable to the satirical
compliment of Dickens's "brave courier," who "understood all
languages indifferently ill"; but many men speak some one
language fluently, and yet are wholly unable to explain or
analyze its words and forms so as to teach it to another
person, or even to give an intelligent summary or
classification of their own knowledge. What such a sign
talker has learned is by memorizing, as a child may learn
English, and though both the sign talker and the child may
be able to give some separate items useful to a philologist
or foreigner, such items are spoiled when colored by the
attempt of ignorance to theorize. A German who has studied
English to thorough mastery, except in the mere facility of
speech, may in a discussion upon some of its principles be
contradicted by any mere English speaker, who insists upon
his superior knowledge because he actually speaks the
language and his antagonist does not, but the student will
probably be correct and the talker wrong. It is an old adage
about oral speech that a man who understands but one
language understands none. The science of a sign talker
possessed by a restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau,
who was greater as an orator than as a philologist, and who
on a visit to England gravely argued that there was
something seriously wrong in the British mind because the
people would persist in saying "give me some bread" instead
of "donnez-moi du pain," which was so much easier and
more natural. A designedly ludicrous instance to the same
effect was Hood's arraignment of the French because they
called their mothers "mares" and their daughters "fillies."
It is necessary to take with caution any statement from a
person who, having memorized or hashed up any number of
signs, large or small, has decided in his conceit that those
he uses are the only genuine Simon Pure, to be exclusively
employed according to his direction, all others being
counterfeits or blunders. His vocabulary has ceased to give
the signs of any Indian or body of Indians whatever, but
becomes his own, the proprietorship of which he fights for
as if secured by letters-patent. When a sign is contributed
by one of the present collaborators, which such a sign
talker has not before seen or heard of, he will at once
condemn it as bad, just as a United States Minister to
Vienna, who had been nursed in the mongrel Dutch of Berks
County, Pennsylvania, declared that the people of Germany
spoke very bad German.
An argument for the uniformity of the signs of our Indians
is derived from the fact that those used by any of them are
generally understood by others. But signs may be understood
without being identical with any before seen. The entribal
as well as intertribal exercise of Indians for generations
in gesture language has naturally produced great skill both
in expression and reception, so as to render them measurably
independent of any prior mutual understanding, or what in a
system of signals is called preconcert. Two accomplished
army signalists can, after sufficient trial, communicate
without having any code in common between them, one being
mutually devised, and those specially designed for secrecy
are often deciphered. So, if any one of the more
conventional signs is not quickly comprehended, an Indian
skilled in the principle of signs resorts to another
expression of his flexible art, perhaps reproducing the
gesture unabbreviated and made more graphic, perhaps
presenting either the same or another conception or quality
of the same object or idea by an original portraiture.
An impression of the community of signs is the more readily
made because explorers and officials are naturally brought
into contact more closely with those individuals of the
tribes visited who are experts in sign language than with
their other members, and those experts, on account of their
skill as interpreters, are selected as guides to accompany
the visitors. The latter also seek occasion to be present
when signs are used, whether with or without words, in
intertribal councils, and then the same class of experts
comprises the orators, for long exercise in gesture speech
has made the Indian politicians, with no special effort,
masters of the art acquired by our public speakers only
after laborious apprenticeship. The whole theory and
practice of sign language being that all who understand its
principles can make themselves mutually intelligible, the
fact of the ready comprehension and response among all the
skilled gesturers gives the impression of a common code.
Furthermore, if the explorer learn to employ with ingenuity
the signs used by any of the tribes, he will probably be
understood in any other by the same class of persons who
will surround him in the latter, thereby confirming him in
the "common" theory. Those of the tribe who are less
skilled, but who are not noticed, might be unable to catch
the meaning of signs which have not been actually taught to
them, just as ignorant persons among us cannot derive any
sense from newly-coined words or those strange to their
habitual vocabulary, which, though never before heard,
linguistic scholars would instantly understand and might
afterward adopt.
It is also common experience that when Indians find that a
sign which has become conventional among their tribe is not
understood by an interlocutor, a self-expressive sign is
substituted for it, from which a visitor may form the
impression that there are no conventional signs. It may
likewise occur that the self-expressive sign substituted
will be met with by a visitor in several localities,
different Indians, in their ingenuity, taking the best and
the same means of reaching the exotic intelligence.
There is some evidence that where sign language is now found
among Indian tribes it has become more uniform than ever
before, simply because many tribes have for some time past
been forced to dwell near together at peace. A collection
was obtained in the spring of 1880, at Washington, from a
united delegation of the Kaiowa, Comanche, Apache, and
Wichita tribes, which was nearly uniform, but the
individuals who gave the signs had actually lived together
at or near Anadarko, Indian Territory, for a considerable
time, and the resulting uniformity of their signs might
either be considered as a jargon or as the natural tendency
to a compromise for mutual understanding—the unification so
often observed in oral speech, coming under many
circumstances out of former heterogeneity. The rule is that
dialects precede languages and that out of many dialects
comes one language. It may be found that other individuals
of those same tribes who have from any cause not lived in
the union explained may have signs for the same ideas
different from those in the collection above mentioned. This
is probable, because some signs of other representatives of
one of the component bodies—Apache—have actually been
reported differing from those for the same ideas given by
the Anadarko group. The uniformity of the signs of those
Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Sioux who have been secluded for
years at one particular reservation, so far as could be done
by governmental power, from the outer world, was used in
argument by a correspondent; but some collected signs of
other Cheyennes and Sioux differ, not only from those on the
reservation, but among each other. Therefore the signs used
in common by the tribes at the reservation seem to have been
modified and to a certain extent unified.
The result of the collation and analysis of the large number
of signs collected is that in numerous instances there is an
entire discrepancy between the signs made by different
bodies of Indians to express the same idea, and that if any
of these are regarded as rigidly determinate, or even
conventional with a limited range, and used without further
devices, they will fail in conveying the desired impression
to any one unskilled in gesture as an art, who had not
formed the same precise conception or been instructed in the
arbitrary motion. Few of the gestures that are found in
current use are, in their origin, conventional. They are
only portions, more or less elaborate, of obvious natural
pantomime, and those proving efficient to convey most
successfully at any time the several ideas became the most
widely adopted, liable, however, to be superseded by more
appropriate conceptions and delineations. The skill of any
tribe and the copiousness of its signs are proportioned
first to the necessity for their use, and secondly to the
accidental ability of the individuals in it who act as
custodians and teachers, so that the several tribes at
different times vary in their degree of proficiency, and
therefore both the precise mode of semiotic expression and
the amount of its general use are always fluctuating. Sign
language as a product of evolution has been developed rather
than invented, and yet it seems probable that each of the
separate signs, like the several steps that lead to any true
invention, had a definite origin arising out of some
appropriate occasion, and the same sign may in this manner
have had many independent origins due to identity in the
circumstances, or if lost, may have been reproduced.
The process is precisely the same as that observed among
deaf-mutes. One of those unfortunate persons, living with
his speaking relatives, may invent signs which the latter
are taught to understand, though strangers sometimes will
not, because they may be by no means the fittest
expressions. Should a dozen or more deaf-mutes, possessed
only of such crude signs, come together, they will be able
at first to communicate only on a few common subjects, but
the number of those and the general scope of expression will
be continually enlarged. Each one commences with his own
conception and his own presentment of it, but the
universality of the medium used makes it sooner or later
understood. This independent development, thus creating
diversity, often renders the first interchange of thought
between strangers slow, for the signs must be
self-interpreting. There can be no natural universal
language which is absolute and arbitrary. When used without
convention, as sign language alone of all modes of utterance
can be, it must be tentative, experimental, and flexible.
The mutes will also resort to the invention of new signs for
new ideas as they arise, which will be made intelligible, if
necessary, through the illustration and definition given by
signs formerly adopted, so that the fittest signs will be
evolved, after rivalry and trial, and will survive. But
there may not always be such a preponderance of fitness that
all but one of the rival signs shall die out, and some,
being equal in value to express the same idea or object,
will continue to be used indifferently, or as a matter of
individual taste, without confusion. A multiplication of the
numbers confined together, either of deaf-mutes or of
Indians whose speech is diverse, will not decrease the
resulting uniformity, though it will increase both the
copiousness and the precision of the vocabulary. The Indian
use of signs, though maintained by linguistic diversities,
is not coincident with any linguistic boundaries. The
tendency is to their uniformity among groups of people who
from any cause are brought into contact with each other
while still speaking different languages. The longer and
closer such contact, while no common tongue is adopted, the
greater will be the uniformity of signs.
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Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
