Examination into the identity of signs is complicated by the fact that
in the collection and description of Indian signs there is danger lest
the civilized understanding of them may be mistaken or forced. The
liability to those errors is much increased when the collections
are not taken directly from the Indians themselves, but are given
as obtained at second-hand from white traders, trappers, and
interpreters, who, through misconception in the beginning and their
own introduction or modification of gestures, have produced a jargon
in the sign, as well as in the oral intercourse. An Indian talking in
signs, either to a white man or to another Indian using signs which he
never saw before, catches the meaning of that which is presented and
adapts himself to it, at least for the occasion. Even when he finds
that his interlocutor insists upon understanding and presenting a
certain sign in a manner and with a significance widely different from
those to which he has been accustomed, it is within the very nature,
tentative and elastic, of the gesture art--both performers being on an
equality--that he should adopt the one that seems to be recognized
or that is pressed upon him, as with much greater difficulty he
has learned and adopted many foreign terms used with whites before
attempting to acquire their language, but never with his own race.
Thus there is now, and perhaps always has been, what may be called a
_lingua-franca_, in the sign vocabulary. It is well known that all the
tribes of the Plains having learned by experience that white visitors
expect to receive certain signs really originating with the latter,
use them in their intercourse just as they sometimes do the words
"squaw" and "papoose," corruptions of the Algonkian, and once as
meaningless in the present West as the English terms "woman" and
"child," but which the first pioneers, having learned them on the
Atlantic coast, insisted upon treating as generally intelligible.
The perversity in attaching through preconceived views a wrong
significance to signs is illustrated by an anecdote found in several
versions and in several languages, but repeated as a veritable Scotch
legend by Duncan Anderson, esq., Principal of the Glasgow Institution
for the Deaf and Dumb, when he visited Washington in 1853.
King James I. of England, desiring to play a trick upon the Spanish
ambassador, a man of great erudition, but who had a crotchet in his
head upon sign language, informed him that there was a distinguished
professor of that science in the university at Aberdeen. The
ambassador set out for that place, preceded by a letter from the King
with instructions to make the best of him. There was in the town
one Geordy, a butcher, blind of one eye, a fellow of much wit and
drollery. Geordy is told to play the part of a professor, with the
warning not to speak a word; is gowned, wigged, and placed in a chair
of state, when the ambassador is shown in and they are left alone
together. Presently the nobleman came out greatly pleased with the
experiment, claiming that his theory was demonstrated. He said: "When
I entered the room I raised one finger to signify there is one God. He
replied by raising two fingers to signify that this Being rules
over two worlds, the material and the spiritual. Then I raised three
fingers, to say there are three persons in the Godhead. He then
closed his fingers, evidently to say these three are one." After this
explanation on the part of the nobleman the professors sent for the
butcher and asked him what took place in the recitation room. He
appeared very angry and said: "When the crazy man entered the room
where I was he raised one finger, as much as to say I had but one eye,
and I raised two fingers to signify that I could see out of my one eye
as well as he could out of both of his. When he raised three fingers,
as much as to say there were but three eyes between us, I doubled up
my fist, and if he had not gone out of that room in a hurry I would
have knocked him down."
The readiness with which a significance may be found in signs when
none whatever exists is also shown in the great contest narrated
by Rabelais between Panurge and the English philosopher, Thaumast,
commencing as follows:
"Everybody then taking heed in great silence, the Englishman lifted
his two hands separately, clinching the ends of his fingers in the
form that at Chion they call the fowl's tail. Then he struck them,
together by the nails four times. Then he opened them and struck one
flat upon the other with a clash once; after which, joining them as
above, he struck twice, and four times afterwards, on opening them.
Then he placed them, joined and extended the one above the other,
seeming to pray God devoutly.
"Panurge suddenly moved his right hand in the air, placed the
right-hand thumb at the right-hand nostril, holding the four fingers
stretched out and arrayed in parallel lines with the point of the
nose; shutting the left eye entirely, and winking with the right,
making a profound depression with eyebrow and eyelid. Next he raised
aloft the left with a strong clinching and extension of the four
fingers and elevation of the thumb, and held it in line directly
corresponding with the position of the right, the distance between the
two being a cubit and a half. This done, in the like manner he lowered
towards the ground both hands, and finally held them in the midst as
if aiming straight at the Englishman's nose."
And so on at great length. The whole performance of Panurge was to
save the credit of Pantagruel by making fantastic and mystic motions
in pretended disputation with the signs given by Thaumast in good
faith. Yet the latter confessed himself conquered, and declared that
he had derived inestimable information from the purposely meaningless
gestures. The satire upon the diverse interpretations of the gestures
of Naz-de-cabre (_Pantagruel_, Book III, chap. xx) is to the same
effect, showing it to have been a favorite theme with Rabelais.