Omitting many authorities, and for brevity allowing a break in the continuity of time, reference may be made to the statement in Major Long’s expedition of 1819, concerning the Arapahos, Kaiowas, Ietans, and Cheyennes, to the effect that, being ignorant of each other’s languages, many of them when they met would communicate by means of signs, and would thus maintain a conversation without the least difficulty or interruption.  A list of the tribes reported upon by Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuweid, in 1832-’34, appears elsewhere in this paper.  In Fremont’s expedition of 1844 special and repeated allusion is made to the expertness of the Pai-Utes in signs, which is contradictory to the statement above made by correspondents.  The same is mentioned regarding a band of Shoshonis met near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, and one of “Diggers,” probably Chemehuevas, encountered on a tributary of the Rio Virgen.

Ruxton, in his Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, New York, 1848, p. 278, sums up his experience with regard to the Western tribes so well as to require quotation:  “The language of signs is so perfectly understood in the Western country, and the Indians themselves are such admirable pantomimists, that, after a little use, no difficulty whatever exists in carrying on a conversation by such a channel; and there are few mountain men who are at a loss in thoroughly understanding and making themselves intelligible by signs alone, although they neither speak nor understand a word of the Indian tongue.”

Passing to the correspondents of the writer from remote parts of North America, it is important to notice that Mr. J.W.  Powell, Indian superintendent, reports the use of sign language among the Kutine, and Mr. James Lenihan, Indian agent, among the Selish, both tribes of British Columbia.  The Very Rev. Edward Jacker, while contributing information upon the present use of gesture language among the Ojibwas of Lake Superior, mentions that it has fallen into comparative neglect because for three generations they had not been in contact with tribes of a different speech.  Dr. Francis H. Atkins, acting assistant surgeon, United States Army, in forwarding a contribution of signs of the Mescalero Apaches remarks:  “I think it probable that they have used sign language rather less than many other Indians.  They do not seem to use it to any extent at home, and abroad the only tribes they were likely to come into contact with were the Navajos, the Lipans of old Mexico, and the Comanches.  Probably the last have been almost alone their visiting neighbors.  They have also seen the Pueblos a little, these appearing to be, like the Phoenicians of old, the traders of this region.”  He also alludes to the effect of the Spanish, or rather lingua Mexicana, upon all the Southern tribes and, indeed, upon those as far north as the Utes, by which recourse to signs is now rendered less necessary.