Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/204

184 vocabulary and construction. He has sent forth an elaborate syllabus, with blanks and directions for filling them, to guide the inquiries of intelligent residents among the Indians, hoping to receive a very comprehensive body of returns. Colonel Mallory, U. S. A., is an adept in the sign-language, and has made valuable contributions upon it.

The human need and craving for fun, jollity, and amusement found their gratification among the aborigines in means and expressions in full consistency with their nature and condition. True, we should not look for a prevailing mirthfulness and hilarity among such a race of savages as occupied this continent. It is said that young camels are the only animals that never frisk, sport, or gambol in the spring of their existence; and the fact is referred to as a forecast of the sombreness of their cheerless service as soon as they are able to bear a burden and to tread the dry desert. So we associate with our Indians in their native state apathy, reserve, gloom, and sullenness of temper inconsistent with mirthfulness, abandon, and any spring of joy in fun and revelry. There is much that warrants this general view; for even the sports of the Indians, as we shall see, have a grimness and severity of aspect and method in full keeping with their prevailing characteristics. But there are exceptional individuals, occasions, and manifestations. Even without any concert of a company among them for a set purpose of play or revelry, there is an impulse in them for any easy and ready method for relieving the monotony or the seriousness of their experience. When only two or a small group of them are resting in their trampings or lounging indolently about their lodges, they will chaff and banter each other for anything that can be turned to ridicule, though seldom to the extent of provoking resentment. The Indians are much addicted to practical joking, ready to play off a funny or an annoying trick on each other, raising a roar and boisterous response for its success. There is large opportunity for this in the