Note 1104 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

The nature-made necessity of scattering in small groups to seek pasturage induces in the nomad a spirit of independence. The Bedouin is personally free. The power of the sheik is only nominal,1104 and depends much upon his personal qualities. The gift of eloquence among the ancient Arabs has been attributed to the necessity of persuading a people to whom restraint was irksome.1105 Political organization is conspicuously lacking among the Tibbus of the Sahara1106 and the Turkoman tribes of the Trans-Caspian steppes. "We are a people without a head," they say. The title of sheik is an empty one. Custom and usage are their rulers.1107 Though the temporary union of nomadic tribes forms an effective army, the union is short-lived. Groups form, dissolve and re-form, with little inner cohesion. The Boers in South African grasslands showed the same development. The government of the Dutch East India Company in Cape Colony found it difficult to control the wandering cattlemen of the interior plateau. They loved independence and isolation; their dissociative instincts, bred by the lonely life of the thin-pastured veldt, were overcome only by the necessity of defense against the Bushmen. Then they organized themselves into commandos and sallied out on punitive expeditions, like the Cossack tribes of the Don against marauding Tartars. Scattered over wide tracts of pasture land, they were exempt from the control of either Dutch or English authority; but when an energetic administration pursued them into their widespread ranches, they eluded control by trekking.1108 Here was the independent spirit of the steppe, reinforced by the spirit of the frontier.