Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL), also known as Hand Talk or Plains Sign Language, is an endangered language common to various Plains Nations across what is now central Canada, the central and western United States and northern Mexico. This sign language was used historically as a lingua franca, notably for trading among tribes; it is still used for story-telling, oratory, various ceremonies, and by deaf people for ordinary daily use.
In 1885, it was estimated that there were over 110,000 "sign-talking Indians", including Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa and Arapaho. As a result of several factors, including the European colonization of the Americas, the number of sign talkers declined sharply from European colonization onward. However, growing interest and preservation work on Plains Sign Language has increased its use and visibility in the 21st century. Historically, some have likened its more formal register, used by men, to Church Latin in function. It is primarily used today by elders and deaf members of Native American tribes.
Some deaf Indigenous children attend schools for the deaf and learn American Sign Language (ASL) after having already acquired Plains Sign Language. A group studied in 1998 were able to understand each other, though this was likely through the use of International Sign. Jeffrey E. Davis, a leading linguist in documentation efforts, hypothesizes that this contact, combined with potential contact with Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (another potential antecedent to ASL) may suggest that ASL descends in part from Plains Sign Language.
History
Plains Sign Language's antecedents, if any, are unknown due a to lack of written records. However, the earliest records of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Gulf Coast region in what is now Texas and northern Mexico note a fully formed sign language already in use by the time of the Europeans' arrival there. These records include the accounts of Cabeza de Vaca in 1527 and Coronado in 1541.
Signing may have started in the south of North America, 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. Plains Sign Language 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 Colville in British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho, with western nations shifting instead to Chinook Jargon.
Geography
Sign language use has been documented across speakers of at least 37 spoken languages in twelve families, spread across an area of over 2.6 million square kilometres (1 million square miles). 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.
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 Tanoan: Kiowa, Taos Zuni Pueblo Caddoan: Wichita, Pawnee, Arikara Athabaskan: Apache (Mescalero, Lipan, Jicarilla, and Kiowa Apache), Navajo, 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.
It is known that Navajo has a comparably sizeable population of individuals who can speak the Navajo dialect of Plains Sign Language. There is also an unrelated sign language, Navajo Family Sign, in a clan of Navajos that has several deaf members.
There exists a variety of Plains Sign Language within the Blackfoot Confederacy. Little is known about the language beyond that it is used by Deaf community members, as well as by the community at large, to pass on oral traditions and stories.