arising out of exclusively missionary
purposes, which was to force a translation of the Bible from a tongue
not adapted to its terms and ideas, and then to compile a grammar and
dictionary from the artificial result. A little ingenuity will direct
the more intelligent or complaisant gesturers to the expression of
the thoughts, signs for which are specially sought; and full orderly
descriptions of such tales and talks with or even without analysis and
illustration are more desired than any other form of contribution.

The original authorities, or the best evidence, for Indian
signs--i.e., the Indians themselves--being still accessible, the
collaborators in this work should not be content with secondary
authority. White sign talkers and interpreters may give some genuine
signs, but they are very apt to interpolate their own improvements.
Experience has led to the apparently paradoxical judgment that the
direct contribution of signs purporting to be those of Indians, made
by a habitual practitioner of signs who is not an Indian, is less
valuable than that of a discriminating observer who is not himself
an actor in gesture speech. The former, being to himself the best
authority, unwittingly invents and modifies signs, or describes what
he thinks they ought to be, often with a very different conception
from that of an Indian. Sign language not being fixed and limited, as
is the case with oral languages, expertness in it is not necessarily
a proof of accuracy in anyone of its forms. The proper inquiry is not
what a sign might, could, would, or should be, or what is the best
sign for a particular meaning, but what is any sign actually used
for such meaning. If any one sign is honestly invented or adopted by
any one man, whether Indian, African, Asiatic, or deaf-mute, it has
its value, but it should be identified to be in accordance with the
fact and should not be subject to the suspicion that it has been
assimilated or garbled in interpretation. Its prevalence and special
range present considerations of different interest and requiring
further evidence.

The genuine signs alone should be presented to scholars, to give
their studies proper direction, while the true article can always be
adulterated into a composite jargon by those whose ambition is only to
be sign talkers instead of making an honest contribution to ethnologic
and philologic science. The few direct contributions of interpreters
to the present work are, it is