Mental Development in the Child and the Race
Appendix B[1]: Cases of the use of the right and left hands respectively, gathered from the Report of Colonel Garrick Mallery, on 'Sign Language among the North American Indians' [2] by Professor Lester Jones of Heidelberg University"
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"In the main part of Colonel Mallery's paper, where the cases cited are used as merely illustrative of the writer's own subject, the following data for the problem of right-handedness have been obtained: --
| No. of Cases cited |
Left Hand used |
Right Hand used |
Both Hands used |
| 66 | 1 | 37 | 28 |
"In about a thousand illustrations appended to the paper proper, the left hand is used distinctively alone twenty-three times.
"In the same appendix, in a dialogue of a hundred and sixteen signs used, the left hand acts distinctively alone five times.
"In the Natei narrative of seventy-five signs, the left hand is used distinctively alone three times, the right hand twenty-seven times.
"In the Patricio narrative of sixty-six signs, the left hand is used distinctively alone three times, the right hand twenty times.[3]
"It is worth observing that in the dialogue and two narratives, making a total of about three hundred signs, or less than one-third of the thousand signs cited, we find the left hand used alone eleven
(470) times, or about one-half the full number of times occurring in the entire thousand cases. This would seem to indicate that the more reflective the thought becomes' the more the left hand figures, while in the isolated more unpremeditated forms, it is the right hand that invariably springs into action.
"Two illustrations must suffice to show the general preference of the right hand over the left. In describing Indians conversing about the camp-fire, Mr. Mallery writes (p. 340): 'Two Indians whose blankets are closely held to their bodies by the left hand, which is necessarily rendered unavailable for gesture, will severally thrust the right from beneath the protecting fold, and converse freely. The same is true when one hand of each holds the bridle of a horse.' Again, this preference is well shown in the gesture sign for sunrise (p. 371): 'The forefinger of the right hand is crooked to represent the sun's disk, and pointed or extended to the left, then slightly elevated.
"'In this connection it may be noted that when the gesture is carefully made in open country, the pointing would generally be to the east, and the body turned so that its left would be in that direction.'
"The two-hand movement in making a sign is used, perhaps, as much as the right hand alone; yet in almost every case of the double-hand movement the right hand takes the initiative and plays the active role, with the left as merely supplementary. For example, the sign gesture for 'hard' is made thus: open the left hand and strike against it several times with the right.
"Again, in making the sign gesture for 'done,' hold the extended left hand horizontally before the body, fingers pointing to the right, and cut edgewise downward, with extended right hand, past the tips of the left.
"Many signs appearing to be made by the left hand alone, on closer scrutiny can be included in the two-hand movement. For example, in the expression 'three white men,' 'white men' is made first with right hand alone; but to convey the meaning, the right hand must persist until the sign for three is made, which remains for the left hand to do. It is in reality a double-hand
(417) movement with the left to be used as necessity requires, supplementary to the right."
NOTE By THE AUTHOR. -- It is evident that this report supports the new that the right hand was pre-eminently the 'expressive' member in pre-historic times. The common signs among different tribes, found also in deaf-mute sign language, show that many of these forms of expression are not late conventions, but rather matter of real aboriginal usage. If, then, they date back to the period before the development of speech, we have much reason for believing that right-handedness is originally a one-sided expressive function. Cf. Chap. IV., § 2, above.
