CHAPTER 1 (2:55)
INTRODUCTION
Sally Thompson
In Talking Without Words we will introduce you to different forms of non-verbal communication used by tribes of Montana in the days before telephones and email. We hope that you will be able to follow up with some research of your own about non-verbal communication.
Have you ever wondered how the ancestors of Montana’s tribes passed down their history, their stories from one generation to the next? How did people communicate with other tribes in the past when they didn’t know each other’s languages?
Indian communities had traders and explorers who traveled far and wide. They met people all the time who spoke different languages. Have you ever driven from Missoula to North Dakota? That’s how far the Salish people of Western Montana traveled to trade with the Mandans, a farming tribe that lived along the Missouri River in what is now near Bismarck, North Dakota. The Mandans were the center of a huge trading network that encompassed the entire middle of the continent. In 1795, Pierre Antoine Tabeau listed the “Flathead” tribes among those that visited Mandans to barter peltries every year. By this he meant the Salish people, whose name in sign language was misunderstood as Flathead. How did the Salish communicate with other tribes as they traveled along?
In Montana, before English was introduced as the common language, many different languages were spoken by resident tribes. How did people from one tribe communicate with people from other tribes? Many people were multi-lingual. They spoke many languages so that they could be effective communicators with their neighbors and trade associates. Imagine traveling through Europe or Africa. You would go from one country to another where different languages are spoken and different nonverbal cues are given.
If you are involved in international trade, you would have to learn these languages and spend time with the people in order to successfully communicate. It was the same for Indian people throughout North America, before English became the official language and before the written word provided a new means of communication. The local tribes had various means to communicate with each other, directly and indirectly. Some nonverbal communication is unintentional and other signals are given on purpose.
Think about all the ways that you give cues to each other throughout the day. What happens to your face when you don’t like what someone is saying to you? What about when you’re confused? Surprised? Do you think someone from another country responds in the same way? Did you know that in some cultures it is rude to look at people while they are talking? Indian people had to be very observant of the ways of many other cultures, in order to understand and be understood by people from other tribes.
CHAPTER 2 (6:34)
SIGN LANGUAGE – DIRECT COMMUNICATION
Sally Thompson
Let’s think about sign language. For those who didn’t speak other languages, the tribes of the Great Plains developed a way to communicate through signs. No one knows how old this language might be. How do we learn about sign language? The most important source is the people themselves. Some people still speak sign language and many of their grandchildren understand it.
ROB COLLIER (Nez Perce)
I remember my grandfather and when he would talk to us, he would sign. It’s that old ‘Indian can’t hold his hands still.’ And so we learned a lot of the different signs for different things like, me, you, the simple signs. And some of the tribal signs, what they called each other and clan signs.
Sally Thompson
Another source of information comes from research done over a century ago when sign talking was a common practice. We integrate sign language information from a book by W. P. Clark, who spent time with many Indian tribes in the 1870s and 80s, learning all he could about sign language. Another source of information comes from tapes made at the 1930 Sign Language Preservation Conference held in Browning, Montana. This sign talker gathering brought together the best of the sign talkers who still lived in the area in 1930. Indians of the Plains and Mountains were extremely adept at sign language.
ROB COLLIER (Nez Perce)
Sign language, all up and down the Columbia, the people would come over to this side of the mountains to buffalo hunt and out onto the Plains. And so even though sign language wasn’t really part of our particular culture, once we started moving out onto the plains we had to be able to communicate with the people on the Plains. And so that was where sign language came in.
DR. LANNY REAL BIRD (Crow)
Sign language is a very graceful, beautiful language. It was used like, for example, if we were hunting. We were on an intelligence mission, and we could see we were scouting an area and we could tell somebody (signing). We could tell them that, that we would meet and go check over there.
Sally Thompson
As Meriwether Lewis noted, after traveling all the way up the Missouri River from St. Louis, sign language, “seems to be universally understood by all the Nations we have yet seen.” He goes on to say that “this language is imperfect and liable to error but is much less so than would be expected. The strong parts of the ideas are seldom mistaken.” (Lewis, August 14, 1805) (V5-p88) In an article in the Dallas Herald, January 11, 1873, Warren Ferris recalls more details about sign language. He reported: These signs are made by graceful movements of the fingers, hands and arms, and are natural and expressive. These signs embrace animate and inanimate things; thought hope, light, darkness, truth, each has its sign, which is well understood as well as all other things, animate or otherwise, that is known to them. (Ferris 1940:328).
In this film, Mountain Chief of the Blackfeet Tribe is telling a story about a battle on the Whoop-Up Trail along the Milk River.
ROB COLLIER (Nez Perce)
Each clan had their own sign for themselves and then another tribe would have a sign for them as they saw them. So to say that there’s one sign for the Sioux people or one sign for the Blackfeet people, they had their own signs for themselves and each band had a sign for them because they saw them differently. They didn’t see them as all Blackfeet, all Piegan, all one tribe or another. Each band lived in a different place. A lot of it was what they ate, it was what they ate was the sign that was given to them. Like my people, my grandpa’s people, the Nez Perce, they say this is the only sign (sign), but the Shoshone had a different sign for us. They called us the eaters. We were the eaters.
WHO SPOKE SIGN LANGUAGE?
Sally Thompson
Tihee, the chief of the Bannacks at the Fort Hall Agency in the 1880s, stated that his people learned what they knew of the sign language from the Crows and Nez Perce; that from Fort Hall to the north and east the sign language was well understood, to the west and south it was not. At the 1930 sign language conference, the commemorative event in Browning, those represented at the conference included: Piegan, Blood, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Hidatsa, Arikara, Mandan, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Arapahoe, Crow, and Salish.
DR. LANNY REAL BIRD (Crow)
Sign language is an international language. It’s representative of all the great Indian civilizations and it’s still flourishing at this time.
ROB COLLIER (Nez Perce)
There are still very active sign talkers. Not so much over on the other side, in the Western side, but on the Plains it’s still very much utilized. It’s the older people and there’s a revitalization coming, people are teaching it. Just like the language. Language almost died out and so did the sign language and so there’s a big effort moving forward now to make sure that it’s not lost.
VERNON FINLEY (Kootenai)
The sign language has become almost extinct. I mean there are very few people who understand it, and there are some of us that are learning it and reviving it but in the past, even two generations ago when the people spoke, even though they didn’t have to, as they were speaking they were signing as well.