There were once 100 of autochthonal voice communication , belonging to piles of wide different language families , address across North America . Still , tribe were able to put across with each other through a well - educate motion system . That system was observed in action by Europeans as early as 1540 , when the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado wrote of the Tonkawa multitude he encountered in what is now Texas . He observed that “ although they conversed by way of signs , they made themselves understood so well that there was no pauperism of an interpreter . ” By the 1920s , the organisation , now sleep with by scholar as Plains Indian Sign Language ( PISL ) , was nigh nonextant .
Concerned about preserving it in some mannikin for posterity , Hugh L. Scott — a retired major general of the U.S. Army who had dish up much of his military career in the West — lobbied Congress to patronise the making of a film and dictionary of the speech . In 1930 , documentation under an Act of Congress began with the filming of the Amerind Sign Language Council , where 18 participant , from a range of tribe and speech chemical group , came together in Browning , Montana , on the site where the Museum of the Plains Indian now stand .
The Great Depression soon interpose with the progress of the project , and though Scott tried to preserve it under his own backing , he died in 1934 . The moving picture languished in the National Archives until the beginning of the twenty-first century , when University of Tennessee professor Jeffrey E. Davis began digitize and dissect the original 8 mm film , with the aid of Grant from the University of Tennessee , the National Science Foundation , and the National Endowment for the Humanities . His bookHand Talk : Sign Language Among Indian Nationswas published in 2010 .
In the above video , narrate by Scott , you’re able to see the participants of the Sign Language Council talking in foretoken about a variety of thing , including how much they enjoy coming together for this gathering . But the disconsolate swarm hang over the proceedings is that the spoken language is already on the way out . As Scott notes , “ young man are not learning your sign oral communication , and before long it will disappear from this country . It is for us to make a record of it for those who amount after us before it becomes fall behind everlastingly . ”
More information about PISL , including motion-picture show , drawings , and a basic dictionary , can be found at theHand Talk site .
