THE PASSING OF THE MASTER-GIRL
And of the rest of the deeds of the Master-Girl, and of her extreme wisdom, foresight and daring, what shall I say? Time would fail me to tell of her dealings with the White Wolves and the Beaver Totem, the Elks and the Red Clouds, and twenty tribes more; yea, and how she, moved thereto by memories of early humiliations, crossed the ranges in force and wiped out her old people the Little Moons; as to which grim deed I desire to express no opinion. Human nature, even nowadays, is queer, nor was it less queer in the Days of Ignorance. Let us admit that a warfare begun in self-defence was carried on for conquest. Her new weapon, her generalship carried all before her, and in her day the Sun-and-Moon Totem waxed great, throve and multiplied, became a dominant clan, pushing back the hunting and war parties of all other names for a month's journey and more. Nor was it a brief episode, for this woman, the Great Chieftainess, as men called her during her life, and for long after, ruled her tribe for so many seasons that if a man were asked to tell how long, that man must hold up his two full hands six times, and yet show three fingers beyond ("three whole men and three toes" by Eskimo count). So many times did the black-cock go a-lekking during the reign of the Master-Girl.
In her day every man of her tribe had not less than two wives. Yea, even her husband; for being childless herself, she, loving her Pŭl-Yūn with an exigeant and emulous love, was minded to see him with a larger family of young braves and girls to his name than any other man of the Totem, and to this end supplied him with wives whom she picked and trained: conjugal arrangements distressing to us moderns, but still existing among the Primitives of the Aurès Mountains in Southern Algeria, and which in the case of Pŭl-Yūn and Dêh-Yān in no wise lessened the reverence which the husband paid to the wife of his youth, nor the more exacting and jealous love with which she returned his affection.
Moreover, did she not arm and train an especial force of women archers?—women who hunted by moonlight?—These, and the Good Wolves of their training, were the camp-guard, both of the home stockade at the quarries whither the tribe removed, and of the flying camps in war-time. Sorely dreaded were they by the foemen of other Totems, as well for their close and accurate shooting as for their midnight raids, for the men of the Old Stone Are dreaded to go among dark woods for good and sufficient reasons, and having this fear engrained in their beings, had imagined and come to believe in a-many strange and dismal Things which haunted the dark beside those upon which an axe could bite, which beliefs are held, or at least acted upon, by not a few of their descendants to this hour (albeit by daylight they will in nowise allow that they feel any nervousness at all, nor will admit that Anything whatsoever exists to warrant it).
This Amazon force was recruited from among the fleetest and hardiest of the unmarried girls. Admission to its ranks was jealously restricted and hedged about according to the manner of savages by secret and severe initiatory ceremonies celebrated by virgin priestesses under the light of the New Moon, in forest retreats, to which no man was ever admitted.
And to this, Pŭl-Yūn, war-chief and arch-priest of the rival Sun-Disc cult, was brought to consent, an admission of the moral ascendency of the Master-Girl which will not be lost upon the discerning reader.
She would seem to have had a great time of it, but of her many campaigns (as of those of Kai Khosroo and of Genghis Khan and other conquerors whose exploits were too complete to be recorded) no faintest hollow whisper has come down to us. The chronicles of the First Woman-Chief (what a wealth of richly-embroidered incident is lost to mankind!) were writ in that earliest cuneiform script, the arrow-head, upon that most perishable of materials, the bodies of her foemen.
It may be surmised that the movements of the tribes whom her conquests dispossessed may account for some of the otherwise inexplicable migrations and settlements of peoples ignorant of the bow, the Australian to wit, and the still lower Tasmanian.
Proudly she lived, ruling her household vigorously and strictly, nor did her masterfulness decrease with advancing age.