It is proper to give to all readers interested in the subject, but
particularly to those whose collaboration for the more complete work
above mentioned is solicited, an account of the mode in which the
researches have thus far been conducted and in which it is proposed
to continue them. After study of all that could be obtained in printed
form, and a considerable amount of personal correspondence, the
results were embraced in a pamphlet issued by the Bureau of Ethnology
in the early part of 1880, entitled "_Introduction to the Study of
Sign Language among the North American Indians as Illustrating the
Gesture Speech of Mankind._" In this, suggestions were made as to
points and manner of observation and report, and forms prepared to
secure uniformity and accuracy were explained, many separate sheets of
which with the pamphlet were distributed, not only to all applicants,
but to all known and accessible persons in this country and abroad
who, there was reason to hope, would take sufficient interest in the
undertaking to contribute their assistance. Those forms, TYPES OF HAND
POSITIONS, OUTLINES OF ARM POSITIONS, and EXAMPLES, thus distributed,
are reproduced at the end of this paper.
The main object of those forms was to eliminate the source of
confusion produced by attempts of different persons at the difficult
description of positions and motions. The comprehensive plan required
that many persons should be at work in many parts of the world.
It will readily be understood that if a number of persons should
undertake to describe in words the same motions, whether of
pantomimists on the stage or of other gesturers, even if the visual
perception of all the observers should be the same in the apprehension
of the particular gestures, their language in description might be so
varied as to give very diverse impressions to a reader who had never
seen the gestures described. But with a set form of expressions for
the typical positions, and skeleton outlines to be filled up and, when
necessary, altered in a uniform style, this source of confusion is
greatly reduced. The graphic lines drawn to represent the positions
and motions on the same diagrams will vary but little in comparison
with the similar attempt of explanation in writing. Both modes of
description were, however, requested, each tending to supplement
and correct the other, and provision was also made for the notation
of such striking facial changes or emotional postures as might
individualize or accentuate the gestures. It was also pointed out that
the prepared sheets could be used by cutting and pasting them in the
proper order, for successive signs forming a speech or story, so as to
exhibit the semiotic syntax. Attention was specially directed to the
importance of ascertaining the intrinsic idea or conception of all
signs, which it was urged should be obtained directly from the persons
using them and not by inference.
In the autumn of 1880 the prompt and industrious co-operation of
many observers in this country, and of a few from foreign lands,
had supplied a large number of descriptions which were collated and
collected into a quarto volume of 329 pages, called "_A Collection
of Gesture Signs and Signals of the North American Indians, with some
comparisons_."
This was printed on sized paper with wide margins to allow of
convenient correction and addition. It was not published, but was
regarded as proof, a copy being sent to each correspondent with
a request for his annotations, not only in revision of his own
contribution, but for its comparison with those made by others. Even
when it was supposed that mistakes had been made in either description
or reported conception, or both, the contribution was printed as
received, in order that a number of skilled and disinterested persons
might examine it and thus ascertain the amount and character of error.
The attention of each contributor was invited to the fact that, in
some instances, a sign as described by one of the other contributors
might be recognized as intended for the same idea or object as that
furnished by himself, and the former might prove to be the better
description. Each was also requested to examine if a peculiar
abbreviation or fanciful flourish might not have induced a difference
in his own description from that of another contributor with no
real distinction either in conception or essential formation. All
collaborators were therefore urged to be candid in admitting, when
such cases occurred, that their own descriptions were mere unessential
variants from others printed, otherwise to adhere to their own and
explain the true distinction. When the descriptions showed substantial
identity, they were united with the reference to all the authorities
giving them.
Many of these copies have been returned with valuable annotations, not
only of correction but of addition and suggestion, and are now being
collated again into one general revision.
The above statement will, it is hoped, give assurance that the work of
the Bureau of Ethnology has been careful and thorough. No scheme has
been neglected which could be contrived and no labor has been spared
to secure the accuracy and completeness of the publication still in
preparation. It may also be mentioned that although the writer has
made personal observations of signs, no description of any sign has
been printed by him which rests on his authority alone. Personal
controversy and individual bias were thus avoided. For every sign
there is a special reference either to an author or to some one or
more of the collaborators. While the latter have received full
credit, full responsibility was also imposed, and that course will be
continued.
No contribution has been printed which asserted that any described
sign is used by "all Indians," for the reason that such statement is
not admissible evidence unless the authority had personally examined
all Indians. If any credible person had affirmatively stated that a
certain identical, or substantially identical, sign had been found by
him, actually used by Abnaki, Absaroka, Arikara, Assiniboins, etc.,
going through the whole list of tribes, or any definite portion of
that list, it would have been so inserted under the several tribal
heads. But the expression "all Indians," besides being insusceptible
of methodical classification, involves hearsay, which is not the kind
of authority desired in a serious study. Such loose talk long delayed
the recognition of Anthropology as a science. It is true that some
general statements of this character are made by some old authors
quoted in the Dictionary, but their descriptions are reprinted, as
being all that can be used of the past, for whatever weight they may
have, and they are kept separate from the linguistic classification
given below.
Regarding the difficulties met with in the task proposed, the same
motto might be adopted as was prefixed to Austin's _Chironomia_: "_Non
sum nescius, quantum susceperim negotii, qui motus corporis exprimere
verbis, imitari scriptura conatus sim voces._" _Rhet. ad Herenn_, 1.3.
If the descriptive recital of the signs collected had been absolutely
restricted to written or printed words the work would have been
still more difficult and the result less intelligible. The facilities
enjoyed of presenting pictorial illustrations have been of great value
and will give still more assistance in the complete work than in the
present paper.
In connection with the subject of illustrations it may be noted that
a writer in the _Journal of the Military Service Institution of the
United States_, Vol. II, No. 5, the same who had before invented the
mode of describing signs by "means" mentioned on page 330 _supra_,
gives a curious distinction between deaf-mute and Indian signs
regarding their respective capability of illustration, as follows:
"This French system is taught, I believe, in most of the schools for
deaf-mutes in this country, and in Europe; but so great has been the
difficulty of fixing the hands in space, either by written description
or illustrated cuts, that no text books are used. I must therefore
conclude that the Indian sign language is not only the more natural,
but the more simple, as the gestures can be described quite accurately
in writing, and I think can be illustrated." The readers of this
paper will also, probably, "think" that the signs of Indians can be
illustrated, and as the signs of deaf-mutes are often identical with
the Indian, whether expressing the same or different ideas, and when
not precisely identical are always made on the same principle and with
the same members, it is not easy to imagine any greater difficulty
either in their graphic illustration or in their written description.
The assertion is as incorrect as if it were paraphrased to declare
that a portrait of an Indian in a certain attitude could be taken by
a pencil or with the camera while by some occult influence the same
artistic skill would be paralysed in attempting that of a deaf-mute
in the same attitude. In fact, text books on the "French system" are
used and one in the writer's possession published in Paris twenty-five
years ago, contains over four hundred illustrated cuts of deaf-mute
gesture signs.
The proper arrangement and classification of signs will always be
troublesome and unsatisfactory. There can be no accurate translation
either of sentences or of words from signs into written English. So
far from the signs representing words as logographs, they do not in
their presentation of the ideas of actions, objects, and events, under
physical forms, even suggest words, which must be skillfully fitted
to them by the glossarist and laboriously derived from, them by
the philologer. The use of words in formulation, still more in
terminology, is so wide a departure from primitive conditions as to
be incompatible with the only primordial language yet discovered. No
vocabulary of signs will be exhaustive for the simple reason that the
signs are exhaustless, nor will it be exact because there cannot be a
correspondence between signs and words taken individually. Not only
do words and signs both change their meaning from the context, but a
single word may express a complex idea, to be fully rendered only by
a group of signs, and, _vice versa_, a single sign may suffice for a
number of words. The elementary principles by which the combinations
in sign and in the oral languages of civilization are effected are
also discrepant. The attempt must therefore be made to collate and
compare the signs according to general ideas, conceptions, and, if
possible, the ideas and conceptions of the gesturers themselves,
instead of in order of words as usually arranged in dictionaries.
The hearty thanks of the writer are rendered to all his collaborators,
a list of whom is given below, and will in future be presented in
a manner more worthy of them. It remains to give an explanation of
the mode in which a large collection of signs has been made directly
by the officers of the Bureau of Ethnology. Fortunately for this
undertaking, the policy of the government brought to Washington during
the year 1880 delegations, sometimes quite large, of most of the
important tribes. Thus the most intelligent of the race from many
distant and far separated localities were here in considerable numbers
for weeks, and indeed, in some cases, months, and, together with
their interpreters and agents, were, by the considerate order of the
honorable Secretary of the Interior, placed at the disposal of this
Bureau for all purposes of gathering ethnologic information. The
facilities thus obtained were much greater than could have been
enjoyed by a large number of observers traveling for a long time over
the continent for the same express purpose. The observations relating
to signs were all made here by the same persons, according to a
uniform method, in which the gestures were obtained directly from the
Indians, and their meaning (often in itself clear from the context
of signs before known) was translated sometimes through the medium of
English or Spanish, or of a native language known in common by some
one or more of the Indians and by some one of the observers. When an
interpreter was employed, he translated the words used by an Indian
in his oral paraphrase of the signs, and was not relied upon to
explain the signs according to his own ideas. Such translations
and a description of minute and rapidly-executed signs, dictated
at the moment of their exhibition, were sometimes taken down by
a phonographer, that there might be no lapse of memory in any
particular, and in many cases the signs were made in successive
motions before the camera, and prints secured as certain evidence
of their accuracy. Not only were more than one hundred Indians thus
examined individually, at leisure, but, on occasions, several parties
of different tribes, who had never before met each other, and could
not communicate by speech, were examined at the same time, both by
inquiry of individuals whose answers were consulted upon by all the
Indians present, and also by inducing several of the Indians to engage
in talk and story-telling in signs between themselves. Thus it was
possible to notice the difference in the signs made for the same
objects and the degree of mutual comprehension notwithstanding such
differences. Similar studies were made by taking Indians to the
National Deaf Mute College and bringing them in contact with the
pupils.
By far the greater part of the actual work of the observation and
record of the signs obtained at Washington has been ably performed by
Dr. W.J. HOFFMAN, the assistant of the present writer. When the latter
has made personal observations the former has always been present,
taking the necessary notes and sketches and superintending the
photographing. To him, therefore, belongs the credit for all those
references in the following "LIST OF AUTHORITIES AND COLLABORATORS,"
in which it is stated that the signs were obtained at Washington from
Indian delegations. Dr. HOFFMAN acquired in the West, through his
service as acting assistant surgeon, United States Army, at a large
reservation, the indispensable advantage of becoming acquainted with
the Indian character so as to conduct skillfully such researches as
that in question, and in addition has the eye and pencil of an artist,
so that he seizes readily, describes with physiological accuracy,
and reproduces in action and in permanent illustration all shades
of gesture exhibited. Nearly all of the pictorial illustrations in
this paper are from his pencil. For the remainder, and for general
superintendence of the artistic department of the work, thanks are due
to Mr. W.H. HOLMES, whose high reputation needs no indorsement here.