American Indian nations of the Great Plains spoke so many different languages that vocal communication between them was difficult. As extensive trade networks developed and political alliances became necessary, an elegant language of the hands developed that cut across spoken language barriers. This language became known as Indian Sign Language or, more accurately, Plains Sign Language.
Details of the origin of Plains Sign Language are unknown, but historical records show that when Spanish explorers in Coronado's expedition entered the southern plains in 1541-42, they encountered Indians who were using signs. Captain William Clark, who carried out extensive field research in the 1870s and used the sign language fluently, was of the opinion that, whatever its origin, the language had particularly flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with many other aspects of Plains cultures, as horse nomadism arrived and the permanent population of the plains increased. Clark learned the sign language from Indian scouts of the Pawnee, Shoshone, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, and Sioux Nations, who were employed by the U.S. Army in 1876-77 and who conversed with each other entirely in signs.
Garrick Mallery, a former army officer turned ethnologist, collected evidence that showed that despite many regional variations in signed vocabulary in the nineteenth century, such dialect differences did not prevent skilled sign talkers from understanding each other across the whole plains area. In his book The Indian Sign Language (1885), Clark suggests that long-term alliances between powerful nomadic tribes like the Cheyennes and Arapahos encouraged sign-language use because their spoken languages were so different and Arapaho was difficult for the Cheyennes to master. Tribes like the Kiowas, who moved great distances and thus frequently made new contacts, also became very proficient in the language. The Crows, who created alliances with many surrounding nations, became good sign talkers in the process and passed their knowledge on to tribes from the eastern plateau such as the Nez Perces, Shoshones, and Bannocks.
Although we do not know exactly how and why Plains Sign Language developed, there are a number of factors that shed some light on the subject. First, no one nation in the plains area was economically or politically dominant, and so no particular spoken language was imposed upon neighboring groups. Perhaps the Plains peoples of long ago simply maximized the panhuman tendency to resort to gestures when in the company of equals who do not share a spoken language.
Second, in contrast to the kinds of philosophical and religious biases against the human body that had existed for over two thousand years in European thought, Native Americans did not consider gestures to be "primitive" or less sophisticated than speech, and so manual gestures (signs) were not considered to be of less value than vocal gestures (speech) as a means of communicating.
Third, sign languages generally have properties that make them easier to learn than spoken languages. In Plains Sign Language, for example, extensive use is made of signs that look like the objects and actions they refer to (iconic signs), in addition to signs that are grammaticalized pointing gestures (indexical signs). Such properties make signs quicker to learn than the abstract sound combinations of a spoken language (arbitrary signs). Nevertheless, Plains Sign Language is not a "universal" language. It is one of many sign languages in use around the world, most of which are not mutually intelligible, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary.
Fourth, with increasing travel and trade, and with the formation of new political alliances, gestures common to two or more nations may have undergone a gradual process of acceptance or rejection for use in intertribal contexts, the product of which was a standard sign system that became a common language. Skilled sign talkers would probably be those who were well traveled and who represented their nations frequently in intertribal contexts. It is possible that at first a number of signed pidgins were used in trading or diplomatic contexts, just as spoken pidgins were used in other complex linguistic areas. Frequent users would extend the vocabulary and create rules for the grammar until a full-fledged sign language evolved.
The sign language was of great practical value for economic and political purposes, but was also important in social contexts in which people shared their life experiences with friends and allies and entertained visitors with jokes and stories. Although the impetus for its widespread standardization undoubtedly came from its intertribal functions, the sign language was also used by people from the same tribe. Signing became part of a person's everyday language use, adding meaning to speech in numerous everyday contexts, especially during instances of storytelling and public oratory. Some outside investigators claimed that only men knew the sign language, but this perception may have resulted from the fact that men were much more visible to them in the public sphere.
This author found that by the 1980s, Plains Sign Language was no longer commonly used on the northern plains because forced accommodation to the English language had led to its gradual replacement. Its decline mirrors that of many spoken languages of the Plains Indians. In the late twentieth century fluent sign talkers are few, but they can be found in several communities where elders learned the language at an early age, where traditional storytelling keeps it alive, or where deafness in a family has preserved its practical function. Signing remains in use among the Assiniboins, Stoneys, Blackfeet, Piegans, Bloods, Crows, and Northern Cheyennes, in contexts involving such activities as religious ceremonies, drumming, and storytelling. This author has also noted that, in speaking their native language, Plains people frequently use gestures from the sign language to accompany their speech in everyday interactions. The revival of interest in indigenous languages, and the efforts to preserve them, have led to a renewed interest in the Plains Sign Language. Among the Assiniboins at Fort Belknap, and on the Blackfoot, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne Reservations in Montana, for example, the sign language is being incorporated into language-maintenance programs.
William P. Clark, The Indian Sign Language (1885; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982); Brenda Farnell, "Do You See What I Mean?": Plains Indian Sign Talk and the Embodiment of Action (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995); Jean Umiker-Sebeok and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds., Aboriginal Sign Languages of the Americas and Australia 2 vols. (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1978).
Brenda Farnell
University of Iowa
