The hidden history of “Hand Talk”

The hidden history of an ancient language.

Centuries before we had American Sign Language, Native sign languages, broadly known as “Hand Talk,” were thriving across North America. Hand Talk would be influential in the formation of American Sign Language. But it has largely been written out of history.

One of these Hand Talk variations, Plains Indian Sign Language, was used so widely across the Great Plains that it became a lingua franca — a universal language used by both deaf and hearing people to communicate among tribes that didn’t share a common spoken language. At one point, tens of thousands of indigenous people used Plains Indian Sign Language, or PISL, for everything from trade to hunting, conflict, storytelling, and rituals.

But by the late 1800s, the federal government had implemented a policy that would change the course of indigenous history forever: a violent boarding school program designed to forcibly assimilate indigenous children into white American culture — a dark history that we’re still learning more about to this day.

Because of a forced “English-only” policy, the boarding school era is one of the main reasons we lost so many Native signers — along with the eventual dominance of ASL in schools for the deaf.

Today, there are just a handful of fluent PISL signers left in the US. In the piece above we hear from two of these signers who have dedicated their lives to studying and revitalizing the language. They show us PISL in action, and help us explore how this ancient language holds centuries of indigenous history.

Note: The headline on this piece has been updated.
Previous headline: Before American Sign Language, we had "Hand Talk"

[Vox]

Though this resolution mostly affected white schools — it wasn't until almost 100 years later that ASL would be recognized as a fully formed language. But as we reported in the piece, there was no big renaissance of Plains Indian Sign Language at that time. Native hearing students were forced to speak English in boarding schools, and Native deaf students, in many cases, were forced to replace PISL with ASL. –Ranjani

[usenglishwithnativeenglish]

I'm an enrolled member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. My father was fluent in Cheyenne and plains Indian sign language, as he learned both long before learning English. I miss him. RIP, daddy

[TheMedicatedArtist]

It’s amazing how the tribes used sign language to overcome language barriers. It seems incredibly innovative for the time, especially since most signs are self-explanatory.

[oro]

linguistic genocide/the destruction of peoples native language is something that truly horrifies me

[ForestRaptor]

The fact that Hand Talk was essentially transcribed into text/glyph form and knowing Hand Talk allows you to understand the text is jaw dropping to me. It's the kind of thing that would help decipher many a written language that no longer have anyone to read them!

[icecp]

As a learner of Chinese it amazes me that "hand talk" has similarities to Chinese such as the lack of an alphabet, measuring months by moons (月), and the use of compound words. Even the Chinese word for war (大战) has the same literal translation as hand talk. Just shows how big and small our world is.

[Dexy]

It seems to me that Indigenous people didn't automatically assume people with hearing loss we're less than. Love that!

[madisonhernandez]

What is the most mind blowing aspect of this to me is as a ASL student of 8 years that took many Deaf History courses I never ONCE heard of Hand Talk. The language crafted around this language, the culture that fought for The world to hear and validate Deaf history completely wrote out their Deaf Indigenous population that crafted their language. And I finally realised how deep my culture had been written out of the history I was taught my whole life

[Safrout]

he said at 4:40 "how many winters are you?", and i was amazed by that as an Arab, because we ask similar questions like: "how many autumns are you?" and "how many springs are you?"

[amiaswolfgang]

I am an ASL-user myself (semi-mute and hard of hearing if anyone is curious) and I was unfortunately taught a very white and colonialist history of the language (ie "ASL is a modified version of French sign with some additions from Deaf communities in the US" and not the truth that many of those Deaf communities were most certainly Native. We were taught under the quiet assumption by our teacher and textbook that those communities were white and that Native peoples in the Americas has no indigenous sign languages of their own). I'm very happy that this video exists to help bridge some of the gaps in my education in my second language and Deaf history in North America.

[xPXGx]

This was absolutely fascinating. I had no idea Hand Talk was the precursor to ASL.

[galacticgrandmas]

PISL honestly seems easier to learn than ASL. The symbols make much more sense and seem logical to where even if you didn’t know the sign you could somewhat grasp what’s being discussed.

[nwkrbct]

I think the thing that is so fascinating to me about sign language is how easy it is to pick up. In just this ten minute video had me making the gestures shown and communicating basic concepts and imitating the simple sentences they used as examples. I might try and learn basic ASL and Hand Talk because of this video.

[videovedo]

I'm Italian. I didn't know about PISL and it's weird how familiar all this sounds to me. Our hand gestures, which are not a complete language but with which in certain circumstances you can build entire sentences, developed exactly because people from different regions of Italy couldn't understand one another in any other way. They are so ingrained in our culture that we still use them even now (and actually even while talking) that we can all speak standard Italian.
I'm going to do some more reading about PISL and related Indian hand languages, as it's truly fascinating.

[eliza]

As an indigenous person I’ve always wished our sign language was more known about Ty!

[joermnyc]

I learned about Hand Talk from”The Mandolorian”, as Native American actors portrayed Tuskan Raiders, or Sand People, and they would communicate with Mando (and later Boba Fett) using Hand Talk to negotiate to traverse their land (something many people didn’t bother to do, and then they wondered why they were shot at.) Really sad most people don’t know that ASL was derived from Hand Talk.

[soumyabratachakraborty]

I love how Vox videos talk about something we are interested about but feel we don't have the time to explore

[briangarrow]

The native people who lived on the Pacific coast had a language for trade that was used for hundreds of years before the white man came to their homeland. Tribes traded, and warred with each other while using sea going canoes that could carry over 30 people. Their seamanship was incredible, especially considering how dangerous the ocean is along the North Pacific coast.

[diulikadikaday]

The term used here to describe Indigenous people "People of the land" is the same translation used in Te Reo Maori (the Maori language in New Zealand). Tangata Whenua literally means "people (of the) land". I am not Maori, but I have been doing night classes in it and the words you learn give you an insight into it's culture. We are learning words about the environment and geography. On the other hand, when I learnt french, a lot was about food and travel. Whereas when learning Mandarin, I felt like we talked a lot about family.

[jakes]

I've often seen fictionalized depictions of Native Americans in old movies doing signs with their hands, but never knew they were imitating an actual complex living language of hand talk. Amazing video.