The Indian Sign Language, with Brief Explanatory Notes of the Gestures Taught Deaf-Mutes in our Institutions for their Instruction, and a Description of some of the Peculiar Laws, Customs, Myths, Superstitions, Ways of Living, Code of Peace and War Signals of our Aborigines
Philadelphia: L.R. Hamersly & Co., 1885. Very Good. Item #48518
Philadelphia: L.R. Hamersly & Co., 1885. First Edition. Octavo; blue cloth boards with gilt stamping to spine; dark topstain; brown endpapers; 443pp. + advertisements. Fold-out map. Mild wear with some staining and smudging to boards; spine sunned; binding sound; tidemarks and rippling to endpapers; foxing to preliminaries and edges of text block; closed tear to map; else unmarked and overall a Very Good copy.
The alphabetically listed entries show much about Native American cultures -- the entry for Abortion notes that the Crow are the only Indians who openly justify abortion, saying that their God authorized it. An interview with a Cheyenne Indian reveals that they'd rather not talk of such things, but he had heard of one tribe that did such a practice; when asked which tribe he replied, "the whites."
Price: $200.00