MemeMachineGo!

Scottish museum curators speculate that H. Rider Haggard’s She Who Must Be Obeyed was inspired by a First American woman:

Campbell was nothing but grateful after his encounter with the Tahltan Indian woman, whose name is not known, on the shores of Dease Lake in northern British Columbia while on a fur trading mission in the 1880s.

“Furious savages rushed into the room where McLeod and I were sitting,” he wrote. “Some of them seized our weapons from racks on the wall and would have assuredly shot us had not the Chieftainess, who was lodged at the end of the house, rushed in, and commanded silence.

“She found out the instigator of the riot, walked up to him, and stamping her foot on the ground, repeatedly spat in his face, her eyes blazing with anger.

“Peace and quiet reigned as suddenly as the outbreak had burst forth.”

[…]Research by David Forsyth and Maureen Barrie, curators for a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland, has established that Campbell was a close friend of Haggard. Forsyth said: “We now know Campbell often recounted his tales of daring to Haggard and it is the tale of the powerful chieftain which is believed to have caught his imagination and inspired his novel She.”

(Via Follow Me Here )