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Dahomey’s Women Warriors For the better part of 200 years, thousands of female soldiers fought and died to expand the borders of their West African kingdom. Even their conquerors, the French, acknowledged their "prodigious bravery." By Mike Dash SMITHSONIAN.COM
SEPTE[/IMG] One of Daho[/IMG] Daho[/IMG] Wo[/IMG] Béhanz[/IMG] Female officers pictured in 1851, wearing symbolic horns of office on their heads. She intones a song of victory and dances: The blood flows, You are dead. The blood flows, We have won. The blood flows, it flows, it flows. The blood flows, The enemy is no more. But suddenly she stops, dazed. Her body bends, hunches, How old she seems, older than before! She walks away with a hesitant step. She is a former warrior, an adult explains…. The battles ended years ago, but she continues the war in her head. Sources Hélène Almeida-Topor. Les Amazones: Une Armée de Femmes dans l’Afrique Précoloniale. Paris: Editions Rochevignes, 1984; Stanley Alpern.Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2011; Richard Burton. A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome. London: RKP, 1966; Robin Law. ‘The ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey.’ Paideuma 39 (1993); J.A. Skertchley. Dahomey As It Is: Being a Narrative of Eight Months’ Residence in that Country, with a Full Account of the Notorious Annual Customs… London: Chapman & Hall, 1874.
Dahomey’s Women Warriors For the better part of 200 years, thousands of female soldiers fought and died to expand the borders of their West African kingdom. Even their conquerors, the French, acknowledged their "prodigious bravery." By Mike Dash SMITHSONIAN.COM
SEPTE[/IMG] One of Daho[/IMG] Daho[/IMG] Wo[/IMG] Béhanz[/IMG] Female officers pictured in 1851, wearing symbolic horns of office on their heads. She intones a song of victory and dances: The blood flows, You are dead. The blood flows, We have won. The blood flows, it flows, it flows. The blood flows, The enemy is no more. But suddenly she stops, dazed. Her body bends, hunches, How old she seems, older than before! She walks away with a hesitant step. She is a former warrior, an adult explains…. The battles ended years ago, but she continues the war in her head. Sources Hélène Almeida-Topor. Les Amazones: Une Armée de Femmes dans l’Afrique Précoloniale. Paris: Editions Rochevignes, 1984; Stanley Alpern.Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2011; Richard Burton. A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome. London: RKP, 1966; Robin Law. ‘The ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey.’ Paideuma 39 (1993); J.A. Skertchley. Dahomey As It Is: Being a Narrative of Eight Months’ Residence in that Country, with a Full Account of the Notorious Annual Customs… London: Chapman & Hall, 1874.