These may be divided into (1) its practical application, (2) its aid
to philologic researches in general with (3) particular reference
to the grammatic machinery of language, and (4) its archaeologic
relations.
_PRACTICAL APPLICATION._
The most obvious application of Indian sign language will for its
practical utility depend, to a large extent, upon the correctness
of the view submitted by the present writer that it is not a mere
semaphoric repetition of motions to be memorized from a limited
traditional list, but is a cultivated art, founded upon principles
which can be readily applied by travelers and officials, so as to
give them much independence of professional interpreters--as a
class dangerously deceitful and tricky. This advantage is not merely
theoretical, but has been demonstrated to be practical by a professor
in a deaf mute college who, lately visiting several of the wild tribes
of the plains, made himself understood among all of them without
knowing a word of any of their languages; nor would it only be
experienced in connection with American tribes, being applicable
to intercourse with savages in Africa and Asia, though it is not
pretended to fulfill by this agency the schoolmen's dream of an
ecumenical mode of communication between all peoples in spite of their
dialectic divisions.
It must be admitted that the practical value of signs for intercourse
with the American Indians will not long continue, their general
progress in the acquisition of English or of Spanish being so rapid
that those languages are becoming, to a surprising extent, the common
medium, and signs are proportionally disused. Nor is a systematic
use of signs of so great assistance in communicating with foreigners,
whose speech is not understood, as might at first be supposed, unless
indeed both parties agree to cease all attempt at oral language,
relying wholly upon gestures. So long as words are used at all, signs
will be made only as their accompaniment, and they will not always
be ideographic. An amusing instance in which savages showed their
preference to signs instead of even an onomatope may be quoted from
Wilfred Powell's _Observations on New Britain and neighboring Islands
during Six Years' Exploration_, in _Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc._, vol.
iii, No. 2 (new monthly series), February, 1881, p. 89, 90: "On one
occasion, wishing to purchase a pig, and not knowing very well how
to set about it, being ignorant of the dialect, which is totally
different from that of the natives in the north, I asked Mr. Brown how
I should manage, or what he thought would be the best way of making
them understand. He said, 'Why don't you try granting?' whereupon I
began to grunt most vociferously. The effect was magical. Some of
them jumped back, holding their spears in readiness to throw; others
ran away, covering their eyes with their hands, and all exhibited the
utmost astonishment and alarm. In fact, it was so evident that they
expected me to turn into a pig, and their alarm was so irresistibly
comic, that Mr. Brown and I both burst out laughing, on which they
gradually became more reassured, and those that had run away came
back, and seeing us so heartily amused, and that I had not undergone
any metamorphosis, began to laugh too; but when I drew a pig on the
sand with a piece of stick, and made motions of eating, it suddenly
seemed to strike them what was the matter, for they all burst out
laughing, nodding their heads, and several of them ran off, evidently
in quest of the pig that was required."