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Show 40 INDIANS CONVERSING WITH DEAF- MUTES. prising when it is considered that what is to the Indian a mere adjunct or accomplishment is to the deaf- mute the natural mode of utterance, and that there is still greater freedom from the trammel of translating words into action- instead of acting the ideas themselves- when, the sound of words being unknown, they remain still as they originated, but another kind of sign, even after the art of reading is acquired, and do not become entities as with us. It is to be remarked that Indians when brought to the East have shown the greatest pleasure in meeting deaf- mutes, precisely as travelers in a foreign country are rejoiced to meet persons speaking their language, with whom they can hold direct communication without the tiresome and often suspected medium of an interpreter. A Sandwich Islander, a Chinese, and the Africans from the slaver Amistad have, in published instances, visited our deaf- mute institutions with the same result of free and pleasurable intercourse, and an English deaf- mute had no difficulty in conversing with Laplanders. It appears, also, on the authority of SIBSCOTA, whose treatise was published in 1670, that Cornelius Haga, ambassador of the United Provinces to the Sublime Porte, found the Sultan's mutes to have established a language among themselves in which they could discourse with a speaking interpreter, a degree of ingenuity interfering with the object of their selection as slaves unable to repeat conversation. SUGGESTIONS TO OBSERVERS. The most important suggestion to persons interested in the collection of signs is that they shall not too readily abandon the attempt to discover recollections of them even among tribes long exposed to Caucasian influence and officially segregated from others. During the last week a missionary wrote that he was concluding a considerable vocabulary of signs finally procured from the Ponkas, although after residing among them for years, with thorough familiarity with their language, and after special and intelligent exertion to obtain some of their disused gesture- language, he had two months ago reported it to be entirely forgotten. A similar report was made by two missionaries among the . Ojibwas, though other trustworthy authorities have furnished a list of signs |
