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Being so fundamental, ancient, and persistent, Sign Language is, perforce, universal. In some measure it is used by every race on earth to-day. Eskimo and Zulu, Japanese and Frenchman, Turk and Aztec, Greek and Patagonian. And whenever two men of hopelessly diverse speech have met, they have found a medium of thought exchange in the old Sign Language—the pantomimic suggestion of ideas.

Latin races are proverbially hand-talkers, so that the Sign Language is more widely used among them than with Anglo-Saxons.

But the American Plains Indian is undoubtedly the best sign-talker the world knows to-day. There are, or were, some thirty different tribes with a peculiar speech of their own, and each of these communicated with the others by use of the simple and convenient sign-talk of the plains. It is, or was, the language of Western trade and diplomacy as far back as the records go. Every traveller who visited the Buffalo Plains had need to study and practise this Western Volapuk, and all attest its simplicity, its picturesqueness, its grace, and its practical utility.

Many of the best observers among these have left us long lists of signs in use, Alexander Henry in his gossipy journal among the Mandans of the Missouri in 1806 tells us of the surprise and interest he felt in watching two Indian chiefs of different tribes who conversed freely for hours on all subjects of common interest, conveying their ideas accurately by nothing but simple gestures.

The European races are much less gifted as sign-talkers. But we all have a measure of it that is a surprise to most persons when first confronted with the facts. Our school children especially make daily use of the ancient signals.