has shown that they are
by no means so confined to the concrete as was once believed.

_ITS ORIGIN FROM ONE TRIBE OR REGION._

Col. Richard I. Dodge, United States Army, whose long experience among
the Indians entitles his opinion to great respect, says in a letter:

"The embodiment of signs into a systematic language is, I believe,
confined to the Indians of the Plains. Contiguous tribes gain, here
and there, a greater or less knowledge of this language; these again
extend the knowledge, diminished and probably perverted, to their
neighbors, until almost all the Indian tribes of the United States
east of the Sierras have some little smattering of it. The Plains
Indians believe the Kiowas to have invented the sign language, and
that by them its use was communicated to other Plains tribes. If this
is correct, analogy would lead us to believe that those tribes most
nearly in contact with the Kiowas would use it most fluently and
correctly, the knowledge becoming less as the contact diminishes.
Thus the Utes, though nearly contiguous (in territory) to the Plains
Indians, have only the merest 'picked up' knowledge of this language,
and never use it among themselves, simply because, they and the Plains
tribes having been, since the memory of their oldest men, in a chronic
state of war, there has been no social contact."

In another communication Colonel Dodge is still more definite:

"The Plains Indians themselves believe the sign language was invented
by the Kiowas, who holding an intermediate position between the
Comanches, Tonkaways, Lipans, and other inhabitants of the vast
plains of Texas, and the Pawnees, Sioux, Blackfeet, and other northern
tribes, were the general go-betweens, trading with all, making peace
or war with or for any or all. It is certain that the Kiowas are at
present more universally proficient in this language than any other
Plains tribe. It is also certain that the tribes farthest away from
them and with whom they have least intercourse use it with least
facility."

Dr. William H. Corbusier, assistant surgeon United States Army, a
valued contributor, gives information as follows:

"The traditions of the Indians point toward the south as the direction
from which the sign language came. They refer to the time when they
did not use it; and each tribe say they learned it from those south
of them. The Comanches, who acquired it in Mexico, taught it to the
Arapahoes and Kiowas, and from these t