size by seeming to hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the same hue; perhaps by the action of shooting into a tree, picking up the supposed fallen game, and plucking feathers.  These are continued until understood, and if one sign or combination of signs proves to be successful it will be repeated on the next occasion by both persons engaged, and after becoming familiar between them and others will be more and more abbreviated.  Conventionality in signs largely consists in the form of abbreviation which is agreed upon.  When the signs of the Indians have from ideographic form thus become demotic, they may be called conventional, but still not arbitrary.  In them, as in all his actions, man had at the first a definite meaning or purpose, together with method in their subsequent changes or modifications.

Colonel Dodge gives a clear account of the manner in which an established sign is abbreviated in practice, as follows:  “There are an almost infinite number and variety of abbreviations.  For instance, to tell a man to ‘talk,’ the most common formal sign is made thus:  Hold the right hand in front of, the back near, the mouth, end of thumb and index-finger joined into an ‘O,’ the outer fingers closed on the palm; throw the hand forward sharply by a quick motion of the wrist, and at the same time flip forward the index-finger.  This may be done once or several times.

“The formal sign to ‘cease’ or ‘stop doing’ anything is made by bringing the two hands open and held vertically in front of the body, one behind the other, then quickly pass one upward, the other downward, simulating somewhat the motion of the limbs of a pair of scissors, meaning ‘cut it off.’  The latter sign is made in conversation in a variety of ways, but habitually with one hand only.

“The formal sign to ‘stop talking’ is first to make the formal sign for ‘talk,’ then the formal sign for ‘cut;’ but this is commonly abbreviated by first making the formal sign for ‘talk’ with the right hand, and then immediately passing the same hand, open, fingers extended, downward across and in front of the mouth, ‘talk, cut.’

“But though the Plains Indian, if asked for the sign to ’stop talking,’ will properly give the sign either in its extended or abbreviated form as above, he in conversation abbreviates it so much further that the sign loses almost all resemblance to its former self.  Whatever the position of the hand, a turn of the wrist, a flip of the forefinger, and a turn, of the wrist back to its original position is fully equivalent to the elaborate signs.”

It may be added that nearly every sign which to be intelligibly described and as exhibited in full requires the use of both hands, is outlined, with one hand only, by skillful Indians gesturing between themselves, so as to be clearly understood between them.  Two Indians, whose blankets are closely held to their bodies by the left hand, which is necessarily rendered unavailable for gesture, will severally thrust the right from beneath the protecting folds and converse freely.  The same is true when one hand of each holds the bridle of a horse.