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!
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."
Passing to the correspondents of the writer from remote
parts of North America, it is important to notice that Mr.
J.W. Powell, Indian superintendent, reports the use of sign
language among the Kutine, and Mr. James Lenihan, Indian
agent, among the Selish, both tribes of British Columbia.
The Very Rev. Edward Jacker, while contributing information
upon the present use of gesture language among the Ojibwas
of Lake Superior, mentions that it has fallen into
comparative neglect because for three generations they had
not been in contact with tribes of a different speech. Dr.
Francis H. Atkins, acting assistant surgeon, United States
Army, in forwarding a contribution of signs of the Mescalero
Apaches remarks: "I think it probable that they have used
sign language rather less than many other Indians. They do
not seem to use it to any extent at home, and abroad the
only tribes they were likely to come into contact with were
the Navajos, the Lipans of old Mexico, and the Comanches.
Probably the last have been almost alone their visiting
neighbors. They have also seen the Pueblos a little, these
appearing to be, like the Phœnicians of old, the traders of
this region." He also alludes to the effect of the Spanish,
or rather lingua Mexicana, upon all the Southern
tribes and, indeed, upon those as far north as the Utes, by
which recourse to signs is now rendered less necessary.
Before leaving this particular topic it is proper to admit
that, while there is not only recorded testimony to the past
use of gesture signs by several tribes of the Iroquoian and
Algonkian families, but evidence that it still remains, it
is, however, noticeable that these families when met by
their first visitors do not appear to have often impressed
the latter with their reliance upon gesture language to the
same extent as has always been reported of the tribes now
and formerly found farther inland. An explanation may be
suggested from the fact that among those families there were
more people dwelling near together in communities speaking
the same language, though with dialectic peculiarities, than
became known later in the farther West, and not being
nomadic their intercourse with strange tribes was less
individual and conversational. Some of the tribes, in
especial the Iroquois proper, were in a comparatively
advanced social condition. A Mohawk or Seneca would probably
have repeated the arrogance of the old Romans, whom in other
respects they resembled, and compelled persons of inferior
tribes to learn his language if they desired to converse
with him, instead of resorting to the compromise of gesture
speech, which he had practiced before the prowess and policy
of the confederated Five Nations had gained supremacy and
which was still used for special purposes between the
members of his own tribe. The studies thus far pursued lead
to the conclusion that at the time of the discovery of North
America all its inhabitants practiced sign language, though
with different degrees of expertness, and that while under
changed circumstances it was disused by some, others, in
especial those who after the acquisition of horses became
nomads of the Great Plains, retained and cultivated it to
the high development now attained, from which it will surely
and speedily decay.
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Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
