lumet were in many regions
unknown, and the use of wampum was by no means extensive. The wigwam
is not the type of native dwellings, which show as many differing
forms as those of Europe. In color there is great variety, and even
admitting that the term "race" is properly applied, no competent
observer would characterize it as red, still less copper-colored. Some
tribes differ from each other in all respects nearly as much as either
of them do from the lazzaroni of Naples, and more than either do
from certain tribes of Australia. It would therefore be expected,
as appears to be the case, that the conventional signs of different
stocks and regions differ as do the words of English, French, and
German, which, nevertheless, have sprung from the same linguistic
roots. No one of those languages is a dialect of any of the others;
and although the sign systems of the several tribes have greater
generic unity with less specific variety than oral languages, no one
of them is necessarily the dialect of any other.

Instead, therefore, of admitting, with present knowledge, that the
signs of our Indians are "identical" and "universal," it is the more
accurate statement that the systematic attempt to convey meaning by
signs is universal among the Indians of the Plains, and those still
comparatively unchanged by civilization. Its successful execution is
by an _art_, which, however it may have commenced as an instinctive
mental process, has been cultivated, and consists in actually pointing
out objects in sight not only for designation, but for application and
predication, and in suggesting others to the mind by action and the
airy forms produced by action. To insist that sign language is uniform
were to assert that it is perfect--"That faultless monster that the
world ne'er saw."

FORCED AND MISTAKEN SIGNS.

Examination into the identity of signs is complicated by the fact that
in the collection and description of Indian signs there is danger lest
the civilized understanding of them may be mistaken or forced. The
liability to those errors is much increased when the collections
are not taken directly from the Indians themselves, but are given
as obtained at second-hand from white traders, trappers, and
interpreters, who, through misconception in the beginning and their
own introduction or modification of gestures, have produced a jargon
in the sign, as well as in the oral intercourse. An Indian talking in
signs, either to a white