Plains Indian Sign Language
Plains Indian Sign Language, also known as Hand Talk, Plains Sign Talk, Plains Sign Language, or First Nation Sign Language, is an endangered sign language common to the majority of Indigenous nations of North America, notably those of the Great Plains, Northeast Woodlands, and the Great Basin. It was, and continues to be, used across what is now central Canada, the central and western United States and northern Mexico. This language was used historically as a lingua franca, notably for international relations, trade, and diplomacy; it is still used for story-telling, oratory, various ceremonies, and by deaf people for ordinary daily use.
In 1885, it was estimated that there were over 110,000 "sign-talking Indians", including Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, and Arapaho. As a result of the European colonization of the Americas, most notably including American boarding and Canadian residential schools, the number of sign talkers has declined sharply. However, growing interest and preservation work on the language has increased its use and visibility in the 21st century. Historically, some have likened its more formal register, used by men, to Church Latin in function. It is primarily used today by Elders and Deaf citizens of Indigenous nations.
Some deaf Indigenous children attend schools for the deaf and learn American Sign Language having already acquired Plains Sign Language. A group studied in 1998 were able to understand each other, though this was likely through the use of International Sign. Jeffrey E. Davis, a leading linguist in documentation efforts, hypothesizes that this contact, combined with potential contact with Martha's Vineyard Sign Language may suggest that ASL descends in part from Plains Sign Language.
Etymology
While there are many names for the language, Hand Talk is the preferred term in Indigenous communities. The term is a calque of the language's own name for itself. Other names for the language are used, like Plains Sign Talk and Plains Indian Sign Language, but these are erroneous as Hand Talk extends beyond the Great Plains into the Northeast Woodlands, the Great Basin, and beyond. Indeed, as McKay-Cody writes, Hand Talk itself should be considered a family of closely related languages.Whilst the name "Hand Talk" is a direct translation from the language itself, each nation has their own word or name for Hand Talk in their respective oral languages:
History
Hand Talk's history is intimately associated with both ancient and recent petroglyphs of the continent, however, little is known to academia about Plains Sign Talk's historical antecedents. The earliest records of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Gulf Coast region in what is now Texas and northern Mexico note a fully-formed sign language already in use by the time of the Europeans' arrival there. These records include the accounts of Cabeza de Vaca in 1527 and Coronado in 1541.Signing may have started in the southern parts of North America, perhaps in northern Mexico or Texas, and only spread into the Plains in recent times, though this suspicion may be an artifact of European observation. It is known that there is a complex of Maya sign languages called Meemul Chʼaabʼal or Meemul Tziij in the Kʼicheʼ language, but it is unknown to what extent Meemul Tziij has affected Hand Talk.
The Northwest is home to Plateau Sign Language, which is either a single language or a family of sign languages spoken by the local nations. It is also unknown how associated Plateau Sign Language is with Hand Talk, but it is probable that they are related. Although it is still spoken, especially by the Ktunaxa, the Plateau nations historically shifted to using Chinook Jargon instead.
In recent years, the Oneida Nation has taken steps to revive their sign language. Historically, the nations of the Northeast Woodlands, like the Haudenosaunee, spoke a variant of Hand Talk. The Oneida Sign Language Project officially began in 2016, and more signs are being added to this day.
Geography
Sign language use has been documented across speakers of at least 37 oral languages in twelve families, spread across an area of over 2.6 million square kilometres. In recent history, it was highly developed among the Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa, among others, and remains strong among the Crow, Cheyenne and Arapaho.The various nations with attested use, divided by language family, are:
- Algonquian: Anishinaabe, Arapaho, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree, Gros Ventre
- Athabaskan: Apache, Beaver, Navajo, Sarcee
- Caddoan: Arikara, Pawnee, Wichita
- Coahuiltecan: Atakapa, Coahuilteco, Karankawa, Tonkawa
- Iroquoian: Haudenosaunee, Wendat
- Numic: Comanche, Paiute, Shoshone, Ute
- Penutian: Cayuse
- *Sahaptian: Nez Perce, Palus, Sahaptin, Umatilla
- Piman: Pima, Papago, and continuing into northern Mexico
- Puebloan: Hopi, Keresan, Zuni
- *Tanoan: Kiowa, Taos
- Salishan: Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kalispel, Sanpoil, Spokane
- Siouan: Dakota, Crow, Hidatsa, Lakota, Mandan, Nakoda, Nakota, Omaha, Osage, Oto, Ponca
- Yuman: Maricopa
Southwest Hand Talk is spoken by the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and Pueblo peoples. However, amongst the Navajo and Keres people, there are two unrelated sign languages also spoken: Keresan Sign Language and, by a Navajo clan with a large number of deaf members, Navajo Family Sign. Likewise, Plateau Sign Language may or may not be related to Hand Talk.
Writing
Hand Talk's writing system is picture-writing in the form of petroglyphs, pictographs, and hieroglyphs. It is one of the few sign languages with a written form. As McKay-Cody writes of petroglyphic rock writing: "Although not necessarily linear, the pieces are pictographic narratives." Cherokee-Greek author Thomas King dispels the myth that "all literature in the Americas oral" in his book The Truth About Stories, a Native Narrative. "In fact, pictographic systems were used by a great many to commemorate events and to record stories."Rock writing served a variety of purposes, from narratives to marking territory to locator signs akin to modern-day road signage, the latter of which would be to indicate water sources, trails through canyons, and flash-flood zone warnings. As Hand Talk is a visual-spatial language, its writing is similarly non-linear and visual. In a study on writing in Ute Country, McKay-Cody points out that since the Hand Talk spoken in the Great Basin positions the past to the left and future to the right, rock writing of the region often similarly represent narratives chronologically from left-to-right. In contrast, Plains and Uto-Aztecan nations sign, and thus read and write, the past and future from right-to-left, such as the Lakota winter counts. Elevation, size, and direction of individual petroglyphs also encode semantics such as temporal, spatial, and other concepts.
The logographic picture writing of Hand Talk blurs the lines between art and writing. Many signs were written in the way they were signed. For example, the word for "hungry" involves an upward-facing flat hand cutting across one's stomach. Written, its glyph is of a human with a line through their stomach. However, deviating from the "standard" glyph, stylistic versions could also be drawn that are still readable to a Hand Talk speaker.
Hand Talk was not isolated to petroglyphic rock writing. Anishinaabe wiigwaasabakoon and Lakota winter counts are examples of writings on birch bark scrolls and buffalo hides, respectively. It is unknown what relation, if any, the hieroglyphic Mi'kmaw suckerfish script has with Hand Talk. During the era of colonization, Plains Sign Language was also written on paper. For example, a letter from the parents of an interned Kiowa student, Belo Cozad, was sent to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1890 from his parents.
Phonology
, working under the guidance of Alfred Kroeber and Charles F. Voegelin, was an early pioneer in not only the phonological analysis of Plains Sign Language but sign language phonology in general. In his unpublished dissertation, he developed a notation system and analysed Plains Sign Language as having eighty-two phonemes, which he called kinemes, each being able to be broken down further in terms of features. He analyzed signs as morphologically complex that others such as William Stokoe would analyze as monomorphemic, and many of his findings were later rediscovered. His study of Plains Sign Language was taking place at the same time as Stokoe's seminal studies of ASL phonology.West analyzed Plains Sign Language as having non-isolable phonemes classified as handshapes, directions, referents, motions or motion-patterns, and dynamics. Four of these parallel the now widely recognized sign language parameters handshape, orientation, location, and movement, which arose out of Stokoe's and other researchers’ later work on a variety of sign languages. The fifth, dynamic, is unique to West's analysis, though it may be present in other sign languages as well. West argued that this analysis avoids the issue of having signs consisting of a single phoneme be composed of multiple morphemes:
- Direction – paralleling vowels, there are eight distinctive directions, including the “directions” of either touching or being parallel to the referent. It can be combined with handshape to designate pointing or facing; with the referent, where it surfaces as placement; or with movement, where it specifies the direction of movement.
- Handshape – paralleling consonants, nine basic handshapes can be rounded or unrounded to form a total of 18 distinct handshapes.
- Referent – numbering 40, these account for the greater phonemic inventory of Plains Sign Language compared to most spoken languages. This can be a part of the hand, head, leg, body, or an external referent.
- Motion-patterns – there are four motion-patterns consisting of the shape of any movement.