was too far distant
for them to distinguish more than an indistinct outline of objects, they
beheld two dark columns of horsemen issue forth from the center of the
great semicircle of lodges and move slowly in their direction. Chiquita
guessed their meaning. As a child she had witnessed the ceremony when
her father, the Whirlwind, was proclaimed Chief of the nation.

Without pausing, they came trailing across the valley in two separate
columns, thousands of horsemen and women, the men on the right hand, the
women on the left; all riding bareback with simple _riatas_ twisted
around the horse's lower jaw. Save for their sandals and the skins of
the panther and ocelot and jaguar, the Mexican leopard, which they wore
clasped at the left shoulder by a golden, jeweled clasp, and which fell
diagonally down across the body to the right knee, leaving the arms and
shoulders and the greater part of the body bare and the left leg exposed
to the hip, the women were as naked as the men who wore sandals and
loin-skins only. Heavy clasps and bracelets and girdles of gold and
silver, set with pearls and opals, and turquoise and topaz, and emeralds
and sapphires, adorned their arms and waists.

Among the Tewana there was no distinction in authority between man and
woman. Like the Amazons of old, the women carried long steel-tipped
lances and shields and bows and quivers of arrows slung across their
backs as did the men. The head of each Cacique or Chieftain of a hundred
warriors or Amazons was adorned with a circlet of gold with a clasp of
precious stones on the left side of the head holding a single eagle's
feather that slanted downward across the left shoulder.

On they came, the half-wild horses prancing and plunging and snorting
and neighing, their manes and the long black hair and braids of the men
and women flying in the breeze; the lance tips and jewels and their
naked, bronze bodies flashing and glistening in the sun; a wonderful,
wild, picturesque, barbaric pageant, a voice from the past; magnificent
specimens of manhood and womanhood; free men, exemplifying the fullness
of life--the life that is worth living. The jewels and precious metals
which they wore represented incredible wealth, but were regarded by them
as objects of beauty only, for these were the Tewana, the people, who
for the sake of freedom, had trampled material wealth under foot; had
held Montezuma in check and resisted the encroachments of the Spaniard
ever s