Indian Sign Language

by William Tomkins

Plains Indians from different tribes speaking different languages were nevertheless able to communicate facts and feelings of considerable complexity when they met. They used a language composed of gestures made almost entirely with the hands and fingers, probably the most highly developed gesture language to be found in any part of the world.
With this book, you will find it simple to use this language, which the author learned in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, principally from Sioux Indians in Wyoming. Drawings and short descriptions make clear the proper positions and motions of the hands to convey the meaning of over 870 alphabetically arranged common words — hungry, camp, evening, angry, fire, laugh, owl, cat, many times, brave, cold, heart, rain, spotted, together, river, etc. The words are then used in sample sentences. There are also brief sections on the pictography and ideography of the Sioux and Ojibway tribes, and on smoke signals.
This is a book for anyone who wants to learn or teach Indian sign language — scouts, school teachers, camp counselors, scout leaders, parents, linguists, and students of Indian culture. To help counselors and teachers, the last chapters give instructions on how to conduct the Indian ceremony for opening a council fire, an Indian initiation ceremony, and suggestions for sign language tests and exercises.

Genres: History, Language, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Native American, Reference

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1969

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book...signs are illustrated and easy to understand. Pictures are large and easy to understand. It never ceases to amaze me how resourceful indigenous people around the world are; so much could still be learned from them in so many different areas. Actually incorporated several for use with friends...works well when you want to say something silently.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, especially to those into the history of plains tribes of North America.

[Doris Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I. LOVE THIS BOOK WELL DONE👌🤙😎

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Indian Sign Language
Tomkins, William
required text for college courses on native american traditions, it looks at the historical record of trade sign language

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is there useful info in here? Yeah . . .
Is it from a particularly reliable source? Maybe???

I'm always nervous when I see an introduction that features (and I swear this was his actual nickname) Indian Charlie. You don't often get an endorsement like that from the Vice President of the United States. [Pausing this review to let you all know, in case you didn't, Charles Curtis was the first Native American VP in 1829.] He is, to put it mildly, a contentious figure in Indigenous History. I'm not going to explain here because it really deserves its own book.

What in the name of Charles Alexander Eastman is going on in this book? I know, invoking the ghost of Ohiyesa is maybe strange, but he's the one who started this unusual connection between Indian culture and the scouts. I actually think overall this book is a decent, albeit boring lexicon that does the best it can to capture a moving, visual based language. That said, maybe we don't need to shoehorn the scouts into every one of these books? It came out after the scouting movement boom and dip, so I'm not even sure why they're doing this.

The most useful thing this book have is sweet, sweet sauce. The source work in this book is incredibly helpful not only in understanding the presented "universal language," but also at showing the history of its usage. Yes, that history is cataloged by colonial history, but the author is clearly not taking their side on the presentation of that history. He's delightfully neutral.