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!
In connection with any theory it is
important to inquire into the permanence of particular
gesture signs to express a special idea or object when the
system has been long continued. Many examples have been
given above showing that the gestures of classic times are
still in use by the modern Italians with the same
signification; indeed that the former on Greek vases or
reliefs or in Herculanean bronzes can only be interpreted by
the latter. In regard to the signs of instructed deaf-mutes
in this country there appears to be a permanence beyond
expectation. Mr. Edmund Booth, a pupil of the Hartford
Institute half a century ago, and afterwards a teacher, says
in the "Annals" for April, 1880, that the signs used
by teachers and pupils at Hartford, Philadelphia,
Washington, Council Bluffs, and Omaha were nearly the same
as he had learned. "We still adhere to the old sign for
President from Monroe's three-cornered hat, and for governor
we designate the cockade worn by that dignitary on grand
occasions three generations ago."
The specific comparisons made, especially by Dr. Washington
Matthews and Dr. W.O. Boteler, of the signs reported by the
Prince of Wied in 1832 with those now used by the same
tribes from whom he obtained them, show a remarkable degree
of permanency in many of those that were so clearly
described by the Prince as to be proper subjects of any
comparison. If they have persisted for half a century their
age is probably much greater. In general it is believed that
signs, constituting as they do a natural mode of expression,
though enlarging in scope as new ideas and new objects
require to be included and though abbreviated as hereinafter
explained, do not readily change in their essentials.
The writer has before been careful to explain that he does
not present any signs as precisely those of primitive man,
not being so carried away by enthusiasm as to suppose them
possessed of immutability and immortality not found in any
other mode of human utterance. Yet such signs as are
generally prevalent among Indian tribes, and also in other
parts of the world, must be of great antiquity. The use of
derivative meanings to a sign only enhances this
presumption. At first there might not appear to be any
connection between the ideas of same and wife,
expressed by the sign of horizontally extending the two
forefingers side by side. The original idea was doubtless
that given by the Welsh captain in Shakspere's Henry V: "'Tis
so like as my fingers is to my fingers," and from this
similarity comes "equal," "companion," and subsequently the
close life-companion "wife." The sign is used in each of
these senses by different Indian tribes, and sometimes the
same tribe applies it in all of the senses as the context
determines. It appears also in many lands with all the
significations except that of "wife." It is proper here to
mention that the suggestion of several correspondents that
the Indian sign as applied to "wife" refers to "lying
together" is rendered improbable by the fact that when the
same tribes desire to express the sexual relation of
marriage it is gestured otherwise. Many signs but little
differentiated were unstable, while others that have proved
the best modes of expression have survived as definite and
established. Their prevalence and permanence being mainly
determined by the experience of their utility, it would be
highly interesting to ascertain how long a time was required
for a distinctly new conception or execution to gain
currency, become "the fashion," so to speak, over a large
part of the continent, and to be supplanted by a new "mode."
A note may be made in this connection of the large number of
diverse signs for horse, all of which must have been
invented within a comparatively recent period, and the small
variation in the signs for dog, which are probably
ancient.
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Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
