Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes | Page 9

explained by the fact that her ancestors for many generations had used
these gestures. A similar curious instance is mentioned by Cardinal
Wiseman (Essays, III, 547, London, 1853) of an Italian blind man, the
appearance of whose eyes indicated that he had never enjoyed sight,
and who yet made the same elaborate gestures made by the people with
whom he lived, but which had been used by them immemorially, as
correctly as if he had learned them by observation.

_LOSS OF SPEECH BY ISOLATION._
When human beings have been long in solitary confinement, been
abandoned, or otherwise have become isolated from their fellows, they
have lost speech either partially or entirely, and required to have it
renewed through gestures. There are also several recorded cases of
children, born with all their faculties, who, after having been lost or
abandoned, have been afterwards found to have grown up possessed of
acute hearing, but without anything like human speech. One of these
was Peter, "the Wild Boy," who was found in the woods of Hanover in
1726, and taken to England, where vain attempts were made to teach
him language, though he lived to the age of seventy. Another was a boy
of twelve, found in the forest of Aveyron, in France, about the
beginning of this century, who was destitute of speech, and all efforts
to teach him failed. Some of these cases are to be considered in
connection with the general law of evolution, that in degeneration the
last and highest acquirements are lost first. When in these the effort at
acquiring or re-acquiring speech has been successful, it has been
through gestures, in the same manner as missionaries, explorers, and
shipwrecked mariners have become acquainted with tongues before
unknown to themselves and sometimes to civilization. All persons in
such circumstances are obliged to proceed by pointing to objects and
making gesticulations, at the same time observing what articulate
sounds were associated with those motions by the persons addressed,

and thus vocabularies and lists of phrases were formed.

_LOW TRIBES OF MAN._
Apart from the establishment of a systematic language of signs under
special circumstances which have occasioned its development, the
gestures of the lower tribes of men may be generally classed under the
emotional or instinctive division, which can be correlated with those of
the lower animals. This may be illustrated by the modes adopted to
show friendship in salutation, taking the place of our shaking hands.
Some Pacific Islanders used to show their joy at meeting friends by
sniffing at them, after the style of well-disposed dogs. The Fuegians pat
and slap each other, and some Polynesians stroke their own faces with
the hand or foot of the friend. The practice of rubbing or pressing noses
is very common. It has been noticed in the Lapland Alps, often in
Africa, and in Australia the tips of the noses are pressed a long time,
accompanied with grunts of satisfaction. Patting and stroking different
parts of the body are still more frequent, and prevailed among the North
American Indians, though with the latter the most common expression
was hugging. In general, the civilities exchanged are similar to those of
many animals.

_GESTURES AS AN OCCASIONAL RESOURCE._
Persons of limited vocabulary, whether foreigners to the tongue
employed or native, but not accomplished in its use, even in the midst
of a civilization where gestures are deprecated, when at fault for words
resort instinctively to physical motions that are not wild nor
meaningless, but picturesque and significant, though perhaps made by
the gesturer for the first time. An uneducated laborer, if good-natured
enough to be really desirous of responding to a request for information,
when he has exhausted his scanty stock of words will eke them out by
original gestures. While fully admitting the advice to Coriolanus--
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant More learned than the

ears--
it may be paraphrased to read that the hands of the ignorant are more
learned than their tongues. A stammerer, too, works his arms and
features as if determined to get his thoughts out, in a manner not only
suggestive of the physical struggle, but of the use of gestures as a
hereditary expedient.

_GESTURES OF FLUENT TALKERS._
The same is true of the most fluent talkers on occasions when the exact
vocal formula desired does not at once suggest itself, or is
unsatisfactory without assistance from the physical machinery not
embraced in the oral apparatus. The command of a copious vocabulary
common to both speaker and hearer undoubtedly tends to a phlegmatic
delivery and disdain of subsidiary aid. An excited speaker will,
however, generally make a free use of his hands without regard to any
effect of that use upon auditors. Even among the gesture-hating English,
when they