Aniwee, The Warrior Queen: A Tale of the Araucanian Indians and the Mythical Trauco People
9781465672056
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Day was drawing to a close. The setting sun was glinting and gleaming on the sparkling mica rocks, which border the deep gorges and high cliffs of the gradually rising ground that leads upwards from the plains of Geylum in Patagonia, to Las Manzanas in the territory of the Araucanian or Warrior Indians. High above the mica rocks rise the hills that skirt the Andes chain, and from the summit of these hills, the scene is one of magnificence and glory. So thought Aniwee, the youthful Warrior Queen, as she sat astride her horse, and watched the sunlight streaking the Rio Limay far below, and bathing in rose-coloured brilliance the snow-clad Cordilleras, which look down on the wooded ranges of hills beneath them, and which contain the splendid apple groves belonging to the great Manzaneros tribe. When we last saw Aniwee she had just bidden Harry and Topsie Vane a tender and pathetic farewell. Those who have perused the pages of “The Young Castaways,” will remember that she was the only child and daughter of Gilwinikush, head Cacique of the Tehuelches or Patagonian Indians, and that at the age of fourteen and a half she had married Piñone, the only son of the great Cuastral, Lord of the Araucanian, Manzaneros, Chenna, or Warrior Indians. They will also remember how Aniwee had distinguished herself, how she had won the proud titles of Huntress and Warrior, and how at length she had become one of the Warrior tribe herself. But Aniwee’s spell of wedded life was brief. Scarce a year and a half had passed away, when news was brought to her that Cuastral and Piñone had been treacherously slain by a party of Argentines who had lured them to attend an ostensible peace parliament, the Araucanians and Argentines—or, as these latter were better known to the Indians, the Cristianos—having previously been at war with one another. Thus at the age of sixteen Aniwee had found herself deprived of her dearly loved husband, and the mother of a little baby girl, his child and hers. And so impressed were the Araucanians with their young Queen’s sagacity, courage, and devotion to their interests, that they had, without a dissentient voice, elected the child to be Cacique over them, and appointed Aniwee, its mother, as Queen-Regent. Surely this was a triumph for Aniwee. Barely over the age of sixteen, and yet indeed a Warrior Queen—Queen of a mighty tribe, famed far and wide for its valour and its deeds of daring and renown. Yet was Aniwee equal to the occasion. Had she not Cuastral’s death and her own Piñone’s death to avenge? Was not her beautiful adopted country hemmed in on all sides by foes—Chilenos on the one hand, Argentines on the other—and should she not fight to the very death in its defence? It was a country well worth fighting for, extending from Las Manzanas on the south to Mendoza far away in the north, and peopled by hundreds of the great Warrior tribe, dwelling in fixed tolderias, many amidst the rich groves of piñones, apples, and araucarias with which the country abounded. Considerable wealth had fallen to her share when the Caciques’ deaths were announced, all of which she purposed holding for her child. Large flocks and herds, stores of silver ornaments, immense troupiglias of horses, and numberless ponchos, mantles, etc., were stored away amongst her subjects and in their safe keeping. Her power was absolute, her word law, her army efficient and devoted. Little had Aniwee dreamt, only three years previously, when she chafed and fretted at her seemingly useless life in the Patagonian toldos of her father Gilwinikush, that in so short a time would she wield power over so magnificent a people as the Araucanians.
