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Ebook has 403 lines and 57753 words, and 9 pages

Translator: Lillian Delger Powers

Other: Huge L. Scott

SIGN TALK

THE GESTURE LANGUAGE OF THE CHEYENNE INDIANS

With additional Signs used by other tribes, also a few necessary Signs from the code of the Deaf in Europe and America, and others that are established among our Policemen, Firemen, Railroad Men, and School Children

IN ALL 1,725

The French and German equivalent words added by Lillian Delger Powers, M. D.

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1918

PREFACE In offering this book to the public after having had the manuscript actually on my desk for more than nine years, let me say frankly that no one realizes better than myself, now, the magnitude of the subject and the many faults of my attempt to handle it.

My attention was first directed to the Sign Language in 1882 when I went to live in Western Manitoba. There I found it used among the various Indian tribes as a common language, whenever they were unable to understand each other's speech. In later years I found it a daily necessity when traveling among the natives of New Mexico and Montana, and in 1897, while living among the Crow Indians at their agency near Fort Custer, I met White Swan, who had served under General George A. Custer as a Scout. He had been sent across country with a message to Major Reno, so escaped the fatal battle; but fell in with a party of Sioux, by whom he was severely wounded, clubbed on the head, and left for dead. He recovered and escaped, but ever after was deaf and practically dumb. However, sign-talk was familiar to his people and he was at little disadvantage in daytime. Always skilled in the gesture code, he now became very expert; I was glad indeed to be his pupil, and thus in 1897 began seriously to study the Sign Language.

This is practically the only publication quoted in preparing this work. I have referred to it continually as a standard--as the highest available authority.

HADLEY INDIAN SIGN PRINTS

About twenty-five years ago there lived in Anadarko, Indian Territory, an enthusiastic missionary worker named Lewis F. Hadley, known to the Indians as Ingonompashi.

He made a study of Sign Language in order to furnish the Indians with a pictographic writing, based on diagrams of the signs, and meant to be read by all Indians, without regard to their speech. Pointing to the Chinese writing as a model and parallel, he made a Sign Language font of 4,000 pictographic types for use in his projected works. He maintained that 110,793 Indians were at that time sign-talkers and he proposed to reach them by Sign-Language publications.

In pursuance of his plan, he issued the following:

It consists of 63 pages with 684 crude woodblocks of white lines on black ground, illustrating signs, alphabetically arranged, but without captions or text of any kind, except the explanation on the title page, abridged as above.

This is Hadley's most extended work. It is a dictionary of the Sign Language, in 268 large octavo leaves printed on one side only of each sheet.

This is the most ambitious work extant on the subject of Sign Language, but seems to be quite unknown to most ethnologists, and is not in any library, so far as I can learn, except the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the New York Public Library, the Library of Prof. J. C. Elsom of Wisconsin State University, and my own collection.

Of the 75 copies issued, only these 5 have been accounted for, but cards comprising the dictionary part were issued to the extent of 100,000 in sets of 571 each, and the reading matter on cards to the number of over 27,000.

To these should be added:

This interesting Italian work on Sign Language was written to show that the gestures figured on antique vases, etc., may be explained by their modern parallels, especially as observed in Naples. The 21 plates illustrate about one hundred of these gestures--about half of these are reproduced in Mallery's 1881 publication.

A considerable discourse on the Sign Language as used by the very primitive races. Many figures.

To John Homer Seger of Colony, Oklahoma, for much assistance. He was for 45 years in official control of the Indians at Darlington and Colony, Oklahoma. They were of the Southern Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho tribes chiefly. All his communications with them were in the Sign Language, so that he became one of our best experts. We have corresponded much, and during a prolonged visit to his home in August, 1915, we together went over every sign in this Manual. His signs were of the Cheyenne dialect.

To the Reverend Walter C. Roe of Colony, Oklahoma, for many notes and comments. He was so expert that he preached every Sunday in the Sign Language.

To Sheeaka, or Cyiaka , a Yanktonnais Sioux living at Standing Rock. He worked over my entire manuscript with me in 1912, endorsing most of the signs given by Clark, as well as adding those that are accredited to him. He was considered the best sign-talker on the reservation. His familiarity with the Sign Language was largely due to the fact that a member of his family was a deaf-mute, so that he has kept up the method while others of his generation are forgetting it. Frank Zahn, an intelligent and educated half-breed, acted as interpreter and helped with many suggestions.

In the autumn of 1916 I took my manuscript to Montana and received valuable help from the following Blackfoot Indians:

Bearhead, an old-time, full-blooded Piegan Indian, with a pronounced contempt for modern ways and modern signs; George Starr or Bull Calf, a half-blood, who acted as interpreter for Bearhead; Medicine Owl, Eagle Child, Three Bears, Two-Guns Whitecalf; all full-blooded Piegans and excellent sign-talkers.

Heavy Breast, a half-blood, acted as interpreter, with assistance from James C. Grant.

I am also indebted to Chasing Bear , a Santee, and to Chief Tom Frosted, a Yanktonnais; both of Standing Rock. About a dozen good signs were given me by C. B. Ruggles, of Taos, New Mexico; and helpful information was received from Thomas La Forge, official interpreter for the Crow Nation, and Clitzo Dead-man, an educated Navaho at Ganado, Arizona.

In the spring of 1917 I spent some time among the Cheyennes at Concho, Oklahoma, checking up my lists. My chief source of information was Robert Burns, an intelligent and educated Cheyenne, who spoke excellent English and was also a good sign-talker. At the same time I got much valuable assistance from Cheyenne Fanny , Deafy Fletcher, and numerous old Cheyennes and Arapahoes about the Post. Father Isadore, of the St. Patrick's Mission, Anadarko, Oklahoma, and the Reverend Sherman Coolidge , of Sheridan, Wyoming, also contributed.

In the case of special or unusual signs, I give the name of the best of my authorities; but when, according to my own observation, the sign is in general use and indorsed by practically all, no authority is cited.

I have to thank my friends James Mooney and F. W. Hodge of the Smithsonian Institution, and Professor J. Schuyler Long, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, for much helpful criticism; Professor Elmer D. Read, of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, for a review of the Introduction; also, Doctor Charles A. Eastman , Colonel W. F. Cody , Hamlin Garland, Miss Frances Densmore, and Mrs. Mary Austin for contributions or criticism.

For the French and German equivalent words I am chiefly indebted to Doctor Lillian Delger Powers, of Mt. Kisco, New York. Some assistance was given by Miss Dorothy Dwenger, of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Harry G. Seides, Professor of German, Jersey City High School, New Jersey.

The drawings throughout are by myself.

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON.

INTRODUCTION

ITS ANTIQUITY

Many thoughtful men have been trying for a century, at least, to give mankind a world-speech which would overstep all linguistic barriers, and one cannot help wondering why they have overlooked the Sign Language, the one mode common to all mankind, already established and as old as Babel. Yes, more ancient than the hills.

As far back as the records go, we find the Sign Language in use. General Hugh L. Scott has pointed out nineteen examples in Homer. Greek vases, Japanese bronzes, ancient Hindu statuary, as well as songs and legends older than history, give testimony in like tenor. While Egyptologists remind us that the oldest records show, not only that the Sign Language was then used, but that the one original code was much like that in use to-day. The fact that it is yet found all over the world wherever man is man, is proof of its being built on human nature in the beginnings. We might even argue that it is more ancient than speech.

Ideas certainly came before the words that express them. The idea of "hunger" must be a thousand times as old as any existing "word" for "hunger." When it became necessary to communicate to another the idea of hunger, it certainly was easier and more direct to communicate it by gesture than by word. The word had, perforce, to be more or less arbitrary, but the gesture was logical, and could at once indicate the pain, its place, and even hint at the cause.

The possible variations of a mere squeak in a concealed pipe are obviously less in number and far less graphic and logical than the various movements of two active, free-moving, compound, visible parts of the body that utilize all the dimensions of space, all the suggestions of speed, motion, physical form and action, juxtaposition, yes, even a measure of sound, and that could in a multitude of cases reproduce the very idea itself.

Animals have far more gestures to express thoughts and emotions than they have sounds, and children instinctively use gestures for various ideas long before they acquire the sound for them. In all races as a rule the very young children's gestures are the same, but the different words imposed by the different mothers have little or nothing in common, and no obvious basis in logic. All of which goes to prove the greater antiquity of eye-talk over ear-talk. To which conclusion we are forced also by the superiority of sight over hearing as a sense. "Seeing is believing," is convincement: hearing is more open to challenge.

Nor can the sign-talk have changed radically, for it is founded on the basic elements of human make-up, and on mathematics, and is so perfectly ideographic that no amount of bad presentation can completely divert attention from the essential thought to the vehicle; while punning is an impossibility.

It had all the inherent possibilities of speech, was indeed capable of even greater subtleties, as we have noted, and had a far greater distance range, three or four times that of spoken words.

In view of the greater antiquity and many advantages that hand gestures have over spoken language, one is prompted to ask: Why did it not develop and continue man's chief mode of inter-communication? The answer is, doubtless, partly because it was useless in the dark or when the person was out of sight or partly hidden by intervening things. Diagrammatically expressed it was thus:

Speech therefore covers all directions night and day.

Gesture covers one-third of the circle in hours of light.

Therefore speech serves six times as many occasions as gesture.

But the chief reason for the triumph of the appeal to the ear is doubtless because the hands were in constant use for other things; the tongue was not; was indeed practically free to specialize for this end.

ITS UNIVERSALITY

Latin races are proverbially hand-talkers, so that the Sign Language is more widely used among them than with Anglo-Saxons.

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