The American Indians used to pass on news from one tribe to another over great distances by using smoke clouds. This system was developed as a result of the vastness of the prairie, the flatness of which also helped to make the smoke visible from far off. There was a code of signals which consisted of a combination of long and short puffs of smoke. But smoke clouds were not the only means of communication among the American Indians. Sometimes they used lights flashed from mirrors reflecting the Sun. The Indians also had a system of writing using ideographs or pictures that resembled the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Sound did not play a major part in the Indian system of communication as it did in the tom-tom system of drumming in Africa. The Indians, however, imitated animal sounds at night to recognize friend from foe.