Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/257

 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 249 informed as to the cause of the boisterous merriment until an after-hint from his friends and an after-thought by him- self. Of course he saw that he essayed an impossibility. His Indian auditors were not poets and the Chinook is not a flux for poetical expression. Primitive people are more given to pantomime than those more advanced, for the reason that it is necessary to supply the defects in their spoken language. The same necessity exists with children. In fact the panto- mime is the genetic medium of communication, and gradually recedes as articulate language is developed. The gestures of an enlightened orator are not really pantomime, but an index of feeling, an assistant of emphasis rather than of thought. Colonel Edward Baker was, next to John B. Gough, the most in action while speaking of any one I ever heard, but there was slight intention of pantomime, at least no resort to it in default of abundant language to express all he desired. Naturally and undesignedly with him, graceful action accom- panied deep feeling and most eloquent speech. Ex-Senator George H. Williams is a forcible orator and much given to action, which seems to bear, however, no relation to his speech except as a visible representative of force ; his arms going up and down with a regular tilt-hammer motion which earned him the uneuphonious but significant soubriquet of "Old Flax Break." Howlish Wampo, though a marvelous success in the use of his rudimentary language, was, when the occasion required, an adept in pantomime. To express his contempt of a dis- sembler, he was not contented by flaying him with the figura- tive epithet, "forked tongued" but must convey the same thought to the eye. Raising his right hand, back up, first and second fingers separated like a "fork" in front of and on a level with his mouth, he thrust the hand forward, diverging to the left, and uttered the words "one good talk," then bringing the hand back to the mouth, he thrust it out towards the right saying, "one bad talk." This combination he re- peated several times, his countenance and tones growing in disgust with each repetition. It did not seem that language' could do more.