The assertion has been made by many writers, and is currently repeated by Indian traders and some Army officers, that all the tribes of North America have long had and still use a common and identical sign language, in which they can communicate freely without oral assistance.  Although this remarkable statement is at variance with some of the principles of the formation and use of signs set forth by Dr. E.B.  TYLOR, whose admirable chapters on gesture speech in his Researches into the Early History of Mankind have in a great degree prompted the present inquiries, that eminent authority did not see fit to discredit it.  He repeats the report as he received it, in the words that “the same signs serve as a medium of converse from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.”  Its truth or falsity can only be established by careful comparison of lists or vocabularies of signs taken under test conditions at widely different times and places.  For this purpose lists have been collated by the writer, taken in different parts of the country at several dates, from the last century to the last month, comprising together several thousand signs, many of them, however, being mere variants or synonyms for the same object or quality, some being repetitions of others and some of small value from uncertainty in description or authority, or both.

ONCE PROBABLY UNIVERSAL IN NORTH AMERICA.

The conclusion reached from the researches made is to the effect that before the changes wrought by the Columbian discovery the use of gesture illustrated the remark of Quintilian upon the same subject (l. xi, c. 3) that “In tanta per omnes gentes nationesque linguae diversitate hic mihi omnium hominum communis sermo videatur.”

Quotations may be taken from some old authorities referring to widely separated regions.  The Indians of Tampa Bay, identified with the Timucua, met by Cabeca de Vaca in 1528, were active in the use of signs, and in his journeying for eight subsequent years, probably through Texas and Mexico, he remarks that he passed through many dissimilar tongues, but that he questioned and received the answers of the Indians by signs “just as if they spoke our language and we theirs.”  Michaelius, writing in 1628, says of the Algonkins on or near the Hudson River:  “For purposes of trading as much was done by signs with the thumb and fingers as by speaking.”  In Bossu’s Travels through that part of North America formerly called Louisiana, London, 1771 (Forster’s translation), an account is given of Monsieur de Belle-Isle some years previously captured by the Atak-apa, who remained with them two years and “conversed in their pantomimes with them.”  He was rescued by Governor Bienville and was sufficiently expert in the sign language to interpret between Bienville and the tribe.  In Bushmann’s Spuren, p. 424, there is a reference to the “Accocessaws on the west side of the Colorado, two hundred miles southwest of Nacogdoches,” who use thumb signs which they understand:  “Theilen sich aber auch durch Daum-Zeichen mit, die sie alle verstehen.”