rest of the delegation who
had not been present. He spoke without pause in his own language for
nearly an hour, in a monotone and without a single gesture. The reason
for this depressed manner was undoubtedly because he was very sad at
the result, involving loss of land and change of home; but the fact
remains that full information was communicated on a complicated
subject without the aid of a manual sign, and also without even
such change of inflection of voice as is common among Europeans. All
theories based upon the supposed poverty of American languages must be
abandoned.

The grievous accusation against foreign people that they have no
intelligible language is venerable and general. With the Greeks
the term [Greek: aglossos], "tongueless," was used synonymous with
[Greek: barbaros], "barbarian" of all who were not Greek. The name
"Slav," assumed by a grand division of the Aryan family, means "the
speaker," and is contradistinguished from the other peoples of the
world, such as the Germans, who are called in Russian "Njemez," that is,
"speechless." In Isaiah (xxxiii, 19) the Assyrians are called a people
"of a stammering tongue, that one cannot understand." The common use of
the expression "tongueless" and "speechless," so applied, has probably
given rise, as TYLOR suggests, to the mythical stories of actually
speechless tribes of savages, and the considerations and instances
above presented tend to discredit the many other accounts of languages
which are incomplete without the help of gesture. The theory that sign
language was in whole or in chief the original utterance of mankind
would be strongly supported by conclusive evidence to the truth of such
travelers' tales, but does not depend upon them. Nor, considering the
immeasurable period during which, in accordance with modern geologic
views, man has been on the earth, is it probable that any existing
races can be found in which speech has not obviated the absolute
necessity for gesture in communication among themselves. The signs
survive for convenience, used together with oral language, and for
special employment when language is unavailable.

A comparison sometimes drawn between sign language and that of our
Indians, founded on the statement of their common poverty in abstract
expressions, is not just to either. This paper will be written in
vain if it shall not suggest the capacities of gesture speech in that
regard, and a deeper study into Indian tongues