Geography
Sign language use has been documented across speakers of at least 37 oral languages in twelve families, spread across an area of over 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers). 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.
Each nation used a distinct manually coded language, as was the case in aboriginal Australia. In addition, there was a trade pidgin that may have never been extensively used, or was only used by a well-traveled elite. This contact language may be distinguished as Plains Standard SL, as opposed to the generic term Plains Indian SL for the various ethnic forms. These were reportedly not used by the deaf, who used home sign instead.
Signing may have started in the south, 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. Sign, or at least contact sign, spread to the Sauk, Fox, Potawatomi, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Caddo after their removal to Oklahoma. Via the Crow, it replaced the divergent Plateau Sign Language among the eastern nations that used it, the Coeur d’Alene, Sanpoil, Okanagan, Thompson, Lakes, Shuswap, and Coleville in British Columbia, with western nations shifting instead to Chinook Jargon.
The various nations with attested use, divided by language family, are:
- Piman: Pima, Papago, and continuing into northern Mexico
- isolates of the Texas coast: Coahuilteco, Tonkawa, Karankawa, Atakapa
- Yuman: Maricopa
- Numic: Paiute, Ute, Comanche, Shoshone
- Kiowa
- Tanoan: Taos Pueblo
- Zuni Pueblo
- Caddoan: Wichita, Pawnee, Arikara
- Athabaskan: Apache (Mescalero, Lipan, Jicarilla, and Kiowa Apache), Sarcee, Beaver
- Algonquian: Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Cree, Ojibwa
- Kutenai
- Siouan: Mandan, Crow, Hidatsa, Omaha, Osage, Assinibion, Ponca, Oto, Sioux (Teton, Yankton, Yanktonai, Santee)
- Sahaptian: Nez Perce, Sahaptin, Umatilla, Palus
- Cayuse
- Salish: Kalispel, Coeur d’Alene, Flathead, Spokane, Sanpoil (shifted from the distinct Plateau Sign Language)
A distinct form is also reported from the Wyandot of Ohio.
Read more about this topic: Plains Indian Sign Language
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