Named after the race of women warriors from Greek mythology, the Dahomey Amazons were an all-female military regiment in the Kingdom of Dahomey, now present-day Benin.
Reportedly assembled in the mid-to-late 1600s, the Amazons were known for their indifference to pain and fierceness in battle, as well as having great socio-political influence over their kingdom. To protect and enrich their own empire, there were periods when the Amazons cooperated with European colonialists, selling captured enemies from regional scuffles in exchange for weaponry and goods. By the mid-1800s, they numbered between 1,000 to 6,000 women. When the French invaded Dahomey in 1892, the Amazons put up an aggressive resistance. Afterward, the French soldiers noted their “incredible courage and audacity” in combat, as cited by the African American Registry, an online consortium of Black history educators.
Fierce battling between the Amazons and Europeans continued, but the African female warriors were eventually outnumbered and outgunned and, within a few years, they were largely wiped out.
While the Amazons were certainly powerful fighters, Leonard Wantchekon, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, argues it’s important to look beyond the shock value of their female warrior status when considering the Amazons’ legacy in history.
“The most important feature of the Amazons was not that they could kill like men,” says Wantchekon, a Benin native. “They were also regular people with regular lives, as well as well-respected cultural and political leaders in their communities.”
There is a widespread misconception that gender equity is a Western value, adds Wantchekon, when in fact, European colonization was a detriment to women’s rights in Benin, where the French disassembled the Amazons and banned female education and political leadership.
“When we push back against this misconception and embrace the culture of gender equality that was thriving in Benin and places like it before colonization,” Wantchekon adds, “it is a way to embrace the legacy of this exceptional group of African female leaders that European history tried so hard to erase.”
The warriors of this West African kingdom were formidable—and female
In the 17th century, Dahomey flourished under the protection of its all-woman military regiment that inspired Viola Davis’s acclaimed film The Woman King.
The Origin of the Dahomey Amazons
One account of their origins contends that they were elephant hunters who served under King Houegbadja, the third king of Dahomey, from around 1645 to 1685. Known as Gbeto in the Fon language the Dahomey, “hunted all kinds of game, including elephants, the most valuable and difficult of animals to kill.”
Elephants were almost completely wiped out from the area by the mid-19th century. The Gbeto were then integrated into the army of women soldiers. They wore brown blouses and brown-and-blue knee-length shorts.
These women fighters were also known by other names in the Fon languages, including Agojie, Agoji, Mino, or Minon. But the prevailing origin story of the Dahomey women warriors is that the group was formed at the behest of Queen Hangbe, daughter of Houegbadja, who rose to power after her twin brother Akaba died under mysterious circumstances in the early 1700s.
Call it mere coincidence or a masterstroke of tourism-focused timing. Earlier this year, when news spread that a hundred-foot-tall statue of Queen Tassi Hangbe had been erected in the West African nation of Benin, one could almost hear the faint click-clack of calculators adding up the revenue from future travelers inspired to visit after having seen the movie The Woman King.
Historical extravaganzas generally fare well at the box office, especially ones involving vivid costumery and spirited combat. Further buttress the lore and history of a real-life group of African female warriors, whose fierce prowess stunned all they encountered.
But conferring the label “Amazons” on these women soldiers of West Africa’s Kingdom of Dahomey is a non-starter for historian Pamela Toler.
Toler, author of the book Women Warriors: An Unexpected History, says it’s important to know the full story of the all-female regiment of warriors who existed from the late 1600s to the early 1900s. In fact, an examination of their origins and the society they arose from provides a more multidimensional image of these women warriors and the legacy they left behind.
The rise of the kingdom of Dahomey
Until recent decades, the vast majority of popular culture depictions of Africa have characterized the continent as an uncivilized, agrarian milieu before the arrival of Europeans like Portuguese explorer Henry the Navigator in the 15th century.
On the contrary, powerful ancient civilizations flourished throughout the continent, including the prehistoric Land of Punt and the kingdoms of Aksum and Nubia in northeast Africa; the West African empires of the Ashanti, Mali, and the Songhai; and the Kingdom of Zimbabwe.
The reality behind the myths of the Dahomey Amazons
Though it’s tempting to think that Dahomey’s female warriors may have very much resembled the sleek, ferociously glamorous fighters depicted in Black Panther, historian Toler says the reality is quite different.
“By the 1800s, contemporary accounts of them is that their uniforms were so similar to their male counterparts, people fighting against them don’t realize they’re women until they’re up close in hand-to-hand combat,” Toler says. “They most likely wore long shorts, a tunic, and a cap, not the sexualized almost bathing suits you’d see in modern-day depictions of female warriors.”
Tales of their exploits astonished many European explorers and slave traders, and the region’s female fighters helped burnish Dahomey’s reputation as a force to be reckoned with.
“By all accounts, they were fearsome, excellent marksmen,” Toler says. “They were skilled with hand-to-hand fighting, using weapons that were a lot like machetes. And there was absolutely nobody there to tell them that they shouldn’t be involved in combat, or that they didn’t have the upper body strength as you heard in European and North American history until recently.”
To be continued in the next edition ….
Source: National Geographic, History.com
