The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [83]
As herders, rather, they learned to wrestle animals into control, to always keep camels separated from horses because of their natural antipathy for one another, and to recognize where the cows could graze undisturbed by goats and sheep. They learned how to disassemble the ger, load the entire household onto only five camels in a precisely ordered fashion, move to a new camp, and rebuild the home. They knew when to bring the animals to shelter before a storm or how to track them afterward.
A child of the steppe was trained for survival and for constantly making vital decisions. Every morning, the herder steps out of the ger, looks around, and chooses today’s path according to the results of last week’s rain, yesterday’s wind, today’s temperature, or where the animals need to be next week. The quest for pasture is the same each day, but the way to find it varies. If the rains do not come, the herder must find them; if the grass does not grow here, the herder must find where it does. The herder cannot remain in one place, be still, and do nothing. The herder is forced to choose a path every day, time and time again.
While the farmer follows the same path to the same fields every day, the herder looks across a landscape of perpetual possibility. No fences or walls bar the way, but neither are there roads to guide or bridges to cross. The steppe is infinite opportunity. The options depend on the ability of the person who sees them and can find how to utilize them to meet today’s needs. The mountain becomes what the herder makes of it: a barrier to the herd’s migration or a refuge from the harsh blizzards and fierce sandstorms of spring and fall. A stone can be a hammer or something to throw at a lurking wolf, or it may mark the place to make a new hearth for today’s camp.
In such a world, children such as Manduhai and Bayan Mongke had to learn to think to survive. The child should learn from the parents but always be able to act alone and not merely follow orders. Wrong choices inflict terrific pain. A movement in the wrong direction can lead the animals on a death march of slow starvation and thirst. A box canyon may serve as a protected winter camp, but if the grass is insufficient for the animals, they will weaken and the wolves will slowly pick them off one by one. The child of the steppe learns to correct these wrong choices quickly or else die. The rigors of the nomadic life make a child into a self-reliant, hardy, and independent adult.
Both Manduhai and Bayan Mongke also knew the experience of being suddenly plucked from this pastoral life and taken to the royal court of an elderly relative. The new life not only freed them from the unending chores of daily herding life but also offered enticing opportunities for adventure.
After surviving the repeated attempts to kill him in infancy, Bayan Mongke reached sexual maturity, if not adulthood, early. At age fourteen he became a father and at fifteen became an unwilling contender for the title of Great Khan, an office that he did not yet want and was destined never to achieve.
He fathered a baby boy with Siker, the daughter of the Uriyanghai commoner family with whom he found refuge near the modern border of Mongolia and China. Her father seemed anxious to raise the family status by acquiring a Borijin son-in-law and grandchild, and rather than adopting Bayan Mongke as a son, he treated him as resident son-in-law performing bride service.