he Cheyennes learned it. The
Sioux say that they had no knowledge of it before they crossed the
Missouri River and came in contact with the Cheyennes, but have quite
recently learned it from them. It would thus appear that the Plains
Indians did not invent it, but finding it adapted to their wants
adopted it as a convenient means of communicating with those whose
language they did not understand, and it rapidly spread from tribe
to tribe over the Plains. As the sign language came from Mexico,
the Spaniards suggest themselves as the introducers of it on this
continent. They are adepts in the use of signs. Cortez as he marched
through Mexico would naturally have resorted to signs in communicating
with the numerous tribes with which he came in contract. Finding them
very necessary, one sign after another would suggest itself and be
adopted by Spaniards and Indians, and, as the former advanced, one
tribe after another would learn to use them. The Indians on the
Plains, finding them so useful, preserved them and each tribe modified
them to suit their convenience, but the signs remained essentially
the same. The Shoshones took the sign language with them as they moved
northwest, and a few of the Piutes may have learned it from them, but
the Piutes as a tribe do not use it."

Mr. Ben. Clarke, the respected and skillful interpreter at Fort Reno
writes to the same general effect:

"The Cheyennes think that the sign language used by the Cheyennes,
Arapahoes, Ogallala and Brule Sioux, Kiowas, and Comanches originated
with the Kiowas. It is a tradition that, many years ago, when the
Northern Indians were still without horses, the Kiowas often raided
among the Mexican Indians and captured droves of horses on these
trips. The Northern Plains Indians used to journey to them and trade
for horses. The Kiowas were already proficient in signs, and the
others learned from them. It was the journeying to the South that
finally divided the Cheyennes, making the Northern and Southern
Cheyennes. The same may be said of the Arapahoes. That the Kiowas were
the first sign talkers is only a tradition, but as a tribe they are
now considered to be the best or most thorough of the Plains Indians."

Without engaging in any controversy on this subject it may be noticed
that the theory advanced supposes a comparatively recent origin of
sign language from one tribe and one region, whereas, so far as can be
traced, the conditions favorable to a sign lan