Garrick Mallery

“ One very marked peculiarity of the drawings of the Indians is that within each particular system, such as may be called a tribal system, of pictography, every Indian draws in precisely the same manner. The figures of a man, of a horse, and of every other object delineated, are made by every one who attempts to make any such figure with all the identity of which their mechanical skill is capable, thus showing their conception and motive to be the same. ”

“ It is an old adage about oral speech that a man who understands but one language understands none. The science of a sign talker possessed by a restrictive theory is like that of Mirabeau, who was greater as an orator than as a philologist, and who on a visit to England gravely argued that there was something seriously wrong in the British mind because the people would persist in saying "give me some bread" instead of "donnez-moi du pain," which was so much easier and more natural. ”

“ In the chest of the body is a round globule painted red, emblematic of the fire within the horns of the crescent in the lodge. The lower part of the body is green, symbolic of the eastern ocean beyond which dwells the mescal woman who is the ruling spirit or divinity to whom prayers are addressed in the ceremony, and the star under her feet is the morning star which heralds her approach. In her left hand is a device representing the fan of eagle feathers used to shield the eyes from the glare of the fire during the ceremony. ”

“ Even when he finds that his interlocutor insists upon understanding and presenting a certain sign in a manner and with a significance widely different from those to which he has been accustomed, it is within the very nature, tentative and elastic, of the gesture art—both performers being on an equality—that he should adopt the one that seems to be recognized or that is pressed upon him, as with much greater difficulty he has learned and adopted many foreign terms used with whites before attempting to acquire their language, but never with his own race. ”

“ When the Haidas visit Victoria or the towns on Puget Sound they are dressed in the garb of white people and present a respectable appearance, in marked contrast with the Indians from the west coast of Vancouver’s Island, or the vicinity of Cape Flattery, who dress in a more primitive manner, and attract notice by their more picturesque costumes than do the Haidas, about whom there is nothing outwardly of unusual appearance, except the tattoo marks on the hands of the women, which show their nationality at a glance of the most careless observer. ”

“ It was obvious in cross-examining the old men of the Algonquians that the performances of jugglery were exhibitions of the pretended miraculous power of an adventurer whereby he obtained a reputation above his rivals and derived subsistence and authority by the selling of charms and pretended superhuman information. The charms and fetiches which still are bought from the few shamans who yet have a credulous clientele are of three kinds—to bring death or disease on an enemy, to lure an enemy into an ambush, and to excite a return to sexual love. ”

“ Histrionic perfection is, indeed, more shown in the slight shades of movement of the head, glances of the eye, and poises of the body than in violent attitudes; but these slight movements are wholly unintelligible without the words uttered with them. Even in the expression of strong emotion the same gesture will apply to many and utterly diverse conditions of fact. The greatest actor in telling that his father was dead can convey his grief with a shade of difference from that which he would use if saying that his wife had run away, his son been arrested for murder, or his house burned down ”

“ In the interior of South America, between the 2d and 4th degrees of North latitude, a forest-covered plain is enclosed by four rivers, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare. In this district are found rocks of granite and of syenite, covered, like those of Caicara and Uruana, with colossal symbolical figures of crocodiles and tigers, and drawings of household utensils, and of the sun and moon. At the present time this remote corner of the earth is entirely without human inhabitants, throughout an extent of more than 8,000 square geographical miles. ”

“ In the still expanse of virgin forests, and especially in the boundless solitudes of the great plains, a slight sound can be heard over a large area, that of the human voice being from its rarity the most startling, so that it is now, as it probably has been for centuries, a common precaution for members of a hunting or war party not to speak together when on such expeditions, communicating exclusively by signs. The acquired habit also exhibits itself not only in formal oratory and in impassioned or emphatic conversation, but also as a picturesque accompaniment to ordinary social talk. ”

“ There is a symbolism so natural, that, like certain implements peculiar to the stone age, it does not belong to any particular race, but constitutes a characteristic trait of mankind at a certain phase of its development. Of this class are representations of the sun by a disk or radiating face, of the moon by a crescent, of the air by birds, of water by fishes or a broken line, of thunder by an arrow or a club, etc. ”

“ No vocabulary of signs will be exhaustive for the simple reason that the signs are exhaustless, nor will it be exact because there cannot be a correspondence between signs and words taken individually. Not only do words and signs both change their meaning from the context, but a single word may express a complex idea, to be fully rendered only by a group of signs, and, vice versa, a single sign may suffice for a number of words. The elementary principles by which the combinations in sign and in the oral languages of civilization are effected are also discrepant. ”

“ The way of declaring war by the Canadian Algonquian Indians is this: They send back to the nation that they have a mind to quarrel with a slave of the same country, with orders to carry to the village of his own nation an axe, the handle of which is painted red and black. ”

“ An excited speaker will, however, generally make a free use of his hands without regard to any effect of that use upon auditors. Even among the gesture-hating English, when they are aroused from torpidity of manner, the hands are involuntarily clapped in approbation, rubbed with delight, wrung in distress, raised in astonishment, and waved in triumph. The fingers are snapped for contempt, the forefinger is vibrated to reprove or threaten, and the fist shaken in defiance. ”

“ After the writer had inspected the rocks and discovered their characteristics, and learned how to distinguish and copy their markings, it seemed that, with the exception of a few designs recently dug or chipped out by lumbermen or visitors, almost always initials, the only interesting or ancient portions were scratchings which could be made on the soft slate by any sharp instrument. The faces of the rocks were immense soft and polished drawing-slates, presenting to any person who had ever drawn or written before an irresistible temptation to draw or write. ”

“ OUR INDIAN CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO SIGN LANGUAGE.
In no other thoroughly explored part of the world has there been found spread over so large a space so small a number of individuals divided by so many linguistic and dialectic boundaries as in North America. Many wholly distinct tongues have for an indefinitely long time been confined to a few scores of speakers, verbally incomprehensible to all others on the face of the earth who did not, from some rarely operating motive, laboriously acquire their language. ”

“ In one line ascending from the part of the rock nearest the river there is a tortoise; a spread eagle, executed with great expression, particularly the head, to which is given a shallow relief, and a child, the outline of which is very well drawn. In a parallel line there are other figures, but among them that of a woman only can be traced. These are very indistinct. Upon the side of the rock there are two awkward figures which particularly caught my attention. One is that of a man with his arms uplifted, and hands spread out as if engaged in prayer. ”

“ The most interesting light in which the Indians of North America can be regarded is in their present representation of a stage of evolution once passed through by our own ancestors. Their signs, as well as their myths and customs, form a part of the paleontology of humanity to be studied in the history of the latter as the geologist, with similar object, studies all the strata of the physical world. ”