Sign Talk: The Universal Language

Source: Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 14, No. 2, The Indian and the West (
Spring, 1964), p. 74
Published by: Montana Historical Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4516811
Accessed: 08-03-2016 00:45 UTC

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 Sign Talk:

The

Universal

Language

GEN. SCOTT AND WADES-IN-THE-WATER

M ANY THOUGHTFUL MEN have been trying for a century, at least, to give

mankind a world-speech which would overstep all linguistic barriers,

and one cannot help wondering why they have overlooked the Sign Language,

the one mode common to all mankind, already established and as old as

Babel. . .

THE AMERICAN PLAINS INDIAN was undoubtedly the best sign-talker the

world ever knew . . . There are, or were, some thirty different tribes with a

peculiar speech of their own, and each of these communicated with the others

by use of the simple and convenient sign-talk of the plains. It was the language

of Western trade and diplomacy as far back as the records go. Every traveller

who visited the Buffalo Plains had need to study and practice this Western

Volapuk, and all attest its simplicity, its picturesqueness, its grace, and practi-

cal utility . . .

A TRUE SIGN LANGUAGE is an established code of logical gestures to

convey ideas; and is designed as an appeal to the eye, without the

assistance of sounds, grimaces, apparatus, personal contact, written or spoken

language, or reference to words or letters; preferably made by using only the

hands and adjoining parts of the body.

Measured by these standards, there was only one true Gesture Language

in the field; that was the sign-talk of the American Indians ...

-Introduction to "Sign Talk: a Universal Signal Code, Without Apparatus,

for Use in the Army, the Navy, Camping, Hunting, and Daily Life," by

Ernest Thompson Seton, prepared with the assistance of General Hugh L.

Scott, U. S. Army, 1918, Doubleday, Page & Co., N. Y.

GEN. SCOTT

AND Xq

TWO-GUNS-WHITE-CALF

74~~~SiiLi;' Ni

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