Davis, along with the project’s co-leader, Melanie McKay-Cody, a Chickamauga Cherokee/Choctaw from William Woods University in Missouri, identified more than two dozen sign-talkers among the various tribes. The group includes several tribal members who are deaf.

“Being able to carry on a fluent conversation, you’re running pretty short on who can do it,” said Ron Garritson of Billings, who helped with the area fieldwork.

“Most were either deaf or had grandparents who were deaf, and they learned the sign talk that way,” said Garritson, a sign-talker who has been giving presentations on Plains Indian sign language to school groups and museums since 2005.

On the Crow Reservation, Garritson knows four or five tribal members who are fluent in sign language and about as many on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

“We went up to Fort Belknap last year to interview elders. We ran into only one who knows it fluently,” Garritson said.

Wooden Legs, who grew up in Lame Deer on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, has helped Davis with his research for many years.