Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/45

Rh understood is above all remarkable in the independent Indian, and in the Christian missions I should recommend the traveller to address himself in preference to those of the natives who have been but lately reduced, or who go back from time to time to the forest to enjoy their ancient liberty."

It is well known that the Indians of North America, whose nomade habits and immense variety of languages must continually make it needful for them to communicate with tribes whose language they cannot speak, carry the gesture-language to a high degree of perfection, and the same signs serve as a medium of converse from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. Several writers make mention of this "Indian pantomime," and it has been carefully described in the account of Major Long's expedition, and more recently by Captain Burton. The latter traveller considers it to be a mixture of natural and conventional signs, but so far as I can judge from the one hundred and fifty or so which he describes, and those I find mentioned elsewhere, I do not believe that there is a really arbitrary sign among them. There are only about half-a-dozen of which the meaning is not at once evident, and even these appear on close inspection to be natural signs, perhaps a little abbreviated or conventionalized. I am sure that a skilled deaf-and-dumb talker would understand an Indian interpreter, and be himself understood at first sight, with scarcely any difficulty. The Indian pantomime and the gesture-language of the deaf-and-dumb are but different dialects of the same language of nature. Burton says that an interpreter who knows all the signs is preferred by the whites even to a good speaker. "A story is told of a man, who, being sent among the Cheyennes to qualify himself for interpreting, returned in a week and proved his competence: all that he did, however, was to go through the usual pantomime with a running accompaniment of grunts."

In the Indian pantomime, actions and objects are expressed