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The Amazons

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Delilah
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« Reply #300 on: October 10, 2009, 05:44:25 pm »

Akka Tikki-Tikki. 1 In the Amazon valley and the Andes such duplication is common as regards topographical names--for instance, the Huar-huari and Pina-pina rivers, Lake Titikaka; the mountain Sara-sara; Chapi-chapi village; and there is also the Inje-inje tribe, who are extremely retiring forest folk, still in the stone age of development, and are supposed to use only the one word "inje" doubled, with different inflexions to express all their wants and feelings, in this resembling the tree-grown puellæ Wakwakiensis. This repetition in all kinds of ways is a favourite form of emphasis with primitive people, just as it is with small children.
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Delilah
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« Reply #301 on: October 10, 2009, 05:44:34 pm »

In passing, we may note the fact that in the three great centres of Amazonian traditions--in Asia, Africa, and America--though we have mention of mountains and forests, the real seats of activity are on extensive alluvial plains. Such situations have always been cradles of new nations and of social revolutions, for it is in these rich granaries that peoples mingle, man multiplies, where interests clash, giving rise to upheavals and abnormalities, until a new order of affairs has been evolved.
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Delilah
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« Reply #302 on: October 10, 2009, 05:44:43 pm »

That there was some justification for the legends there can be no reasonable doubt. The very diversity met with in regard to them is strongly in favour of some solid foundation having existed; because, if we consider them critically, they answer to some need of humanity. If we take into account the tendency,
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« Reply #303 on: October 10, 2009, 05:45:25 pm »



PUBLIC PROCESSION OF THE KING'S WOMEN, ETC.
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Delilah
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« Reply #304 on: October 10, 2009, 05:45:59 pm »

p. 209

on the one hand, to exaggerate, and on the other the frailty of mankind in the matter of giving and receiving evidence, we have much still left. We know that the Greeks loved the declamatory form; the Orientals revel in the superlative. We have seen the pitfalls that beset the inquiring explorers in America, and we have a similar note of warning from West Africa, where Father Bouché says: "Native interpreters aim less at being very accurate than at not displeasing the white man. They do not fail to flatter him by giving translations which they know he desires, or rather which they are aware will fall in with his views."
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Delilah
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« Reply #305 on: October 10, 2009, 05:46:10 pm »

Even apart from what we may be permitted to call these amenities of the "traitrous translators'" art mistakes may arise innocently enough from sheer confusion of tongues, a blundering all too easy in matters both great and small, as daily experience sufficiently demonstrates. Take as an instance a little incident that came under the writer's own observation. A very small boy was in the habit of calling a particularly favoured lady of his acquaintance his "clean friend," to her immense delight but to the scandalised bewilderment of the child's parents. Then it was discovered that the youngster had been translating Italian into English through the medium of French. "Propria" became "propre," and, of course, "propre" meant "clean," therefore "il mia propria amica" ("mine own particular friend") became his "clean friend." Assuredly perfectly logical, and not without a certain poetical symbolism of speech all the more pleasing for its very spontaneous unconscious cerebration, yet which,

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Delilah
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« Reply #306 on: October 10, 2009, 05:46:20 pm »

under different circumstances, might have proved grotesquely misleading. We are all--savages, barbarians, and civilised--little children in this transmutation of thought into concrete phrase, with the help of all too unstable words and the evasive flux of grammatical rules. Yet admitting all this, and allowing it to have due weight in its application to our particular study, we may conclude that the legends should be credited to a large extent.
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Delilah
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« Reply #307 on: October 10, 2009, 05:46:33 pm »

Let us clearly bear in mind our original three divisions of the subject. Of the third we need say little, for the matriarchal stage of civilisation has to be accepted in many quarters; and of great and little nations governed by women who not seldom were great fighters before the Lord, history repeatedly attests. We will only allude to this as a possible source of confusion, the outstanding deeds of a queen and her women captains being tacked on to or mixed up with the traditions of some more or less transitory women's camp. Into this category the Damute Amazons evidently, and the Bohemian Valasca probably, fall.
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Delilah
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« Reply #308 on: October 10, 2009, 05:46:46 pm »

We have, then, the two first divisions. That, through the exigencies of social organisation, women and young children had, and still have in a minor degree, to live alone periodically and for many months on end, is proved by actual experience. Local conditions may have occasionally emphasised this peculiarity, which would easily be evolved into a theory of an autonomous female community. It may be conceded that these conditions, combined with a rebellion against male tyranny under the stress of struggling from savagedom to higher

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Delilah
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« Reply #309 on: October 10, 2009, 05:46:58 pm »

things, may frequently have led to revolts and temporary pacts among women, who lived apart and only admitted men as an act of toleration or policy. Such "nations" and "tribes" were probably enough also brought about as the result of conquest, the conquerors having slain all males, and, for a time, which would vary according to local social progress and especially topographical peculiarities, failed to subdue the females. Where there were mountains difficult of access, or dense forests, probably with swamp-isolated islands, no doubt the women with their children would preserve their savage aloofness all the longer, and would, having almost certainly a previous acquaintance with warfare, be able to give a very good account. of themselves as warriors, whether acting purely on the defensive or actively retaliating on the enemy. Under these circumstances, communication between the sexes would arise only gradually, and be of a spasmodic, even of a clandestine nature, until the inevitable day came when the women surrendered to the men on the latter's own terms; for such is the predestined fate of all such "commonwealths," ancient or modern. But, given a mountainous country, or a district covered by primeval forest, and obstinate resistance, the women tribe would soon be regarded as something outside of nature, either to be cursed or fought, and almost certainly to be looked upon with a mixture of dread and veneration.
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Delilah
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« Reply #310 on: October 10, 2009, 05:47:09 pm »

This brings us to the fighting organisation. Now, both the temporary colonies of women evolved by natural everyday causes, and those feminine

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« Reply #311 on: October 10, 2009, 05:47:18 pm »

camps brought about by an abnormal concatenation of circumstances, would obviously have to organise for defence in savage and barbaric stages of evolution; and where the women had been accustomed to aid and abet their men in warfare, which is generally the case among nomadic tribes and mountaineers or forest dwellers, this organisation might be carried very far indeed. There were, then, we may conclude, women banded together to defend their homes, and others who joined the ranks, or even led men in warfare. But the fighting organisations as such were not the outcome of unisex "nations," they belong to the domain of religion. The god-king would have his armed guard, and these, we have seen, were often armed women, either because of the form of the worship or because of their fierceness, and such guards were, at all events in the earlier periods, a sacrificial body; and then the priest-king would strengthen his guards, converting them from his jailers, or perhaps more correctly from those who assisted him in his personal self-immolation, into ministrants of his own personal cult and policy, as exemplified by the King of Wydah and his thousands of "wives" who executed the royal sentences. When such guards grew numerous, it must often have become a matter of convenience and expediency to assign them special quarters, or even provinces, thus forming the nations, as we are told was the case in the Congo, and seems probable in connection with some of the sanctuaries in the Caucasus and Asia Minor. In such cases the women warriors would naturally come in time to form castes--or perhaps we had better say a privileged

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« Reply #312 on: October 10, 2009, 05:47:33 pm »

circle within the nation--and not a "nation" by themselves. They formed part of the social economy, and were not outside of it, though they might appear to be so when coming into contact with other races. And so we shall conclude by rejecting the idea of a long-sustained women's state, or even tribe (allowing for the exception of a transitory accident), while accepting the "women's islands" in a modified form, and the fighting Amazons as religious, or regal-religious, bodies.
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« Reply #313 on: October 10, 2009, 05:47:44 pm »

Even thus stripped of much of the marvellous, the problem is intensely interesting. While teaching us the fundamental unity of nature, manifested not less in the tendency to fall into error and distort half-truths until they degenerate so far as to seemingly sanction ghastly practices, than in its aspirations to higher things, it happily points to the immense strides accomplished in the march of progress. Onrushing waves necessarily involve the disconcerting phenomena of reflux eddies, which seem to tell of the elusive nature of hope, so that we are often cast down as we reflect on present conditions and contrast them with the near past, mellowed as such views are into a haunting beauty by the glamour of blurring sentiment. Nevertheless, if our retrospective glance is sufficiently comprehensive, the evidence of secured progress is unmistakable, and so we are heartened to look forward to a bright future that assuredly will not be ours, but to which humanity is heir, and whose advent we may all in some measure contribute to hasten.
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« Reply #314 on: October 10, 2009, 05:48:05 pm »

Footnotes

208:1 According to Arab traditions, Gian ben Gian was the gigantic king of the jinns, founder of the pyramids, who, having rebelled against God, was defeated by Lucifer before his fall. The jinns then became mischievous spirits of the dark and of lonely places.

http://sacred-texts.com/wmn/ama/ama11.htm
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