Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-1880, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 263-552

In Short

This foundational ethnological study documents the sophisticated system of sign language used by North American Indigenous peoples to communicate across vast territories and language barriers. By comparing these gestures with those of deaf-mutes, historical orators, and diverse global cultures, the work demonstrates that sign language is not a primitive substitute for speech, but a complex, rational, and persistent mode of human interaction. It remains a vital record of a vanishing linguistic landscape, capturing both the practical mechanics of silent discourse and the deep-seated cognitive connections between thought, physical motion, and meaning.

The Story

The narrative begins with a bold premise: that the "physical machinery" of human expression—the hands, the face, and the posture—is a universal language that predates or supplements the limitations of vocal speech. The text moves quickly from theory to observation, establishing that the ability to sign is a latent power within all people, triggered by necessity. It examines the "gesture-hating" tendencies of modern, literate societies, contrasting them with the vivid, necessary pantomime found in Sicily or among the Indigenous nations of the American Plains.

The heart of the work lies in its meticulous documentation of the Plains Indian sign language. Here, the reader enters a world where tribes speaking mutually unintelligible tongues—Arapaho, Cheyenne, Dakota, and Shoshoni—met on the open terrain and conversed with total clarity through synchronized hand movements. The text explains that these signs are not merely random inventions but are deeply tied to the "connotive" nature of Indigenous languages, where nouns and verbs predicate the attributes of the world. Through hundreds of specific examples, the reader learns how to "say" concepts ranging from "brave" (strong-hearted) to "long ago" (a measurement of distance between the hands).

The argument then expands to address the philosophical and practical challenges of interpreting these gestures. The text warns against the human tendency to project meaning onto silence, citing the satirical literary disputes of Rabelais’s Panurge, where two men interpret each other's empty motions as profound wisdom. This cautionary note grounds the research in a rigorous reality: signs require rapport and context. Without shared experience, a gesture for an elephant might be interpreted by one observer as a trunk, by another as a tusk, and by a third as a small eye.

As the book approaches its conclusion, it broadens its scope to include the broader "telegraphy" of the landscape, such as the use of smoke and fire signals to convey complex information over dozens of miles. It details the precise methods by which a blanket, a small fire, and green grass were manipulated to send messages that were as structured as a written alphabet. Finally, the work leaves the reader with a massive, encyclopedic index of regional signs and tribal vocabularies. It concludes not with a final summary, but with a vast, open-ended invitation to students of linguistics to continue the work of collating these signs, ensuring that this record of a living, breathing, and silent history is preserved for future understanding.

How It Unfolds

The instinct for expression The text opens by asserting that even in cultures that disdain public gesturing, the hands remain the "minister of reason." It draws on historical authorities like Quintilian to establish that physical motion serves as a vital, often involuntary, partner to the tongue.

The Plains as a laboratory Focus shifts to the American West, where the necessity of inter-tribal trade and diplomacy created a remarkably stable, widespread sign language. It highlights the testimony of early mountain men and explorers who found they could communicate with Indigenous peoples for weeks without knowing a single word of a spoken language.

The architecture of a sign The middle chapters deconstruct the mechanics of specific gestures, showing how complex concepts—like bravery, time, or family relations—are built through physical metaphor. It illustrates how the movement of a hand over the heart or the position of a finger against the nose creates a stable, understood vocabulary across disparate nations.

The interpretation of silence The narrative introduces a healthy skepticism toward symbolic meaning, using literary examples to show how easily observers can misinterpret pantomime. It emphasizes that sign language is a living, social tool that requires mutual context rather than a fixed, static code.

The signaling landscape The final movement expands the definition of "sign" to include long-distance communication. It details the sophisticated use of smoke and fire signals, treating these as a form of visual telegraphy that allowed for sophisticated, multi-layered messages to traverse the vast, empty plains.

The People

The book relies less on traditional character-driven narrative and more on the voices of those who observed and practiced sign language. Central to the work are the Indigenous sign-talkers themselves, such as the Arapaho leader Little Raven and the Cheyenne Cross-Eyes, whose expertise served as the primary source material for the researchers. They are portrayed as clear-eyed communicators who want to establish meaning across cultural divides. Standing in their way is the "torpidity" of modern, written-language societies, which have largely lost the ability to use their bodies for speech.

Then there are the historical observers, such as the military scouts Ben Clark and Colonel Richard Dodge, who act as the bridge between the reader and the Plains nations. These men want to accurately document the systems they encounter, though they are occasionally hindered by their own cultural biases. Finally, the author, Garrick Mallery, emerges as a patient, methodical editor. He wants to synthesize these disparate observations into a coherent, scientific framework, resisting the urge to romanticize the subject while remaining deeply impressed by the intellectual sophistication of the sign languages he documents. Each figure, from the Indigenous orator to the meticulous ethnologist, eventually finds themselves changed by the realization that silence is not the absence of communication, but a different, equally precise, and perhaps more ancient way of being heard.

In Its Own Voice

"The action of the other parts of the body assists the speaker, but the hands (I could almost say) speak themselves."

This observation, attributed to the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, serves as the central thesis for why human beings—regardless of culture—instinctively use their hands to emphasize their thoughts.

"An Indian skilled in signs, as also a deaf-mute, at the sight of a new object, or at the first experience of some new feeling or mental relation, will devise some mode of expressing it in pantomimic gesture or by a combination of previously understood signs."

This passage highlights the inherent, creative intelligence required to communicate in sign, noting that language is a dynamic, evolving process rather than a static set of rules.

What It's Really About

The work is a profound inquiry into the nature of human language and the cognitive unity of the species. It argues that sign language is not a "degraded" or "lesser" form of communication compared to speech, but a highly logical system that reflects the same processes of thought and abstraction found in written language. It asks deep questions about how we define "literacy" and "intelligence." By examining the similarities between the signs used by Indigenous nations and those used by deaf communities, the book proposes that the ability to represent the world through physical space is a fundamental, perhaps even primary, human capacity. It is a defense of the idea that humans have always possessed the tools to transcend their local, parochial dialects if they are only willing to use their hands to bridge the gap.

Why Read It Today

Readers with an interest in anthropology, linguistics, or the history of the American West will find this an essential, if demanding, primary source. It feels like stepping into a nineteenth-century study, surrounded by stacks of field notes, letters from missionaries, and diplomatic reports. The reading experience is idiosyncratic and dense, filled with detailed diagrams and lists that reflect the era's commitment to exhaustive, empirical cataloging.

One must be prepared for the Victorian-era academic tone and the occasional period bias in how Indigenous peoples are described, which Mallery records with the clinical detachment of his time. However, the reward is an intimate look at a form of communication that was once vital to the survival and diplomacy of the Plains nations. It challenges the modern reader to consider how much of our own communication is lost because we have forgotten how to speak with anything other than our voices. What stays with you is the haunting, practical beauty of the descriptions: the way a hand held over the heart defines "brave," or how a simple blanket could transmit a complex warning across fifty miles of silence. It is a book that demands patience, but it repays that effort with a deeper understanding of the physical, visual, and profoundly human nature of language.