From A Disability History of the United States by Kim Nielson. Another section (linked) describes signed languages as extremely common of most Indigenous groups to North America.
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The Spanish explorers assumed they encountered discrete gestures–not a language. Today’s scholars confidently argue that signed language among indigenous nations served deaf and hard of hearing people as well as the communication needs of peoples of different languages. European explorers benefited from already existing signed languages or signed communications, but dismissed them as unsophisticated hand signals.
Spanish explorers were contemporaries of the Spanish Benedictine monk Pedro Ponce de Leon (1520-1584), who was just beginning to argue that deaf people could be educated and is credited with developing the first manual alphabet.
North American indigenous sign languages thus existed long prior to any signed language in Europe. (France, the home of other early explorers, became a leader in deaf education, but not until the 1700s.) Members of indigenous nations believed that people born deaf had intellect and personal capacity. European peoples tended to believe the opposite.
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