a better knowledge of the traditions and ancient customs of his people than any other person now living.  This superior knowledge was strikingly apparent in the course of the investigations which were made respecting the sign language.  Two other members of his tribe, well-educated and very intelligent men of middle age, the one a chief and government interpreter, the other a clergyman now settled over a white congregation, had both been consulted on the subject and both expressed the opinion that nothing of the sign language, properly speaking, was known among the Six Nations.  They were alike surprised and interested when the old chief, in their presence, after much consideration, gradually drew forth from the stores of his memory the proofs of an accomplishment which had probably lain unused for more than half a century.”

One of the most conclusive instances of the general knowledge of sign language, even when seldom used, was shown in the visit of five Jicarilla Apaches to Washington in April, 1880, under the charge of Dr. Benjamin Thomas, their agent.  The latter said he had never heard of any use of signs among them.  But it happened that there was a delegation of Absaroka (Crows) at the same hotel, and the two parties from such widely separated regions, not knowing a word of each other’s language, immediately began to converse in signs, resulting in a decided sensation.  One of the Crows asked the Apaches whether they ate horses, and it happening that the sign for eating was misapprehended for that known by the Apaches for many, the question was supposed to be whether the latter had many horses, which was answered in the affirmative.  Thence ensued a misunderstanding on the subject of hippophagy, which was curious both as showing the general use of signs as a practice and the diversity in special signs for particular meanings.  The surprise of the agent at the unsuspected accomplishment of his charges was not unlike that of a hen who, having hatched a number of duck eggs, is perplexed at the instinct with which the brood takes to the water.

The denial of the use of signs is often faithfully though erroneously reported from the distinct statements of Indians to that effect.  In that, as in other matters, they are often provokingly reticent about their old habits and traditions.  Chief Ouray asserted to the writer, as he also did to Colonel Dodge, that his people, the Utes, had not the practice of sign talk, and had no use for it.  This was much in the proud spirit in which an Englishman would have made the same statement, as the idea involved an accusation against the civilization of his people, which he wished to appear highly advanced.  Still more frequently the Indians do not distinctly comprehend what is sought to be obtained.  Sometimes, also, the art, abandoned in general, only remains in the memories of a few persons influenced by special circumstances or individual fancy.

In this latter regard a comparison may be made with the old science of heraldry, once of practical use and a necessary part of a liberal education, of which hardly a score of persons in the United States have any but the vague knowledge that it once existed; yet the united memories of those persons could, in the absence of records, reproduce all essential points on the subject.