Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared with That Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-1880, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, Pages 263-552

This 1881 volume represents one of the earliest systematic studies of Native American sign language, a complex and fully developed manual communication system used across numerous tribes. Garrick Mallery, a pioneering ethnologist, spent two years collecting data from tribal informants, missionaries, and observers throughout the American West, creating a comprehensive taxonomy of gesture language that had previously received little serious scholarly attention. The work is notable for its comparative methodology: Mallery not only documented the signs of North American tribes but also compared them with gesture systems from other cultures worldwide and the communication methods of deaf-mute communities, seeking universal principles underlying all non-verbal linguistic expression. He distinguished between emotional and intellectual gestures, analyzed the relationship between facial expression and manual signing, and argued for the evolutionary significance of such systems as precursors to spoken language. Though Mallery himself characterized this as a progress report rather than a final analysis, the document remains an invaluable historical record of a sophisticated communication tradition at a moment when it was still actively used across the Great Plains. It will fascinate anyone interested in the history of linguistics, Native American studies, anthropological methodology, or the origins of human communication.