The Black Spartans of West Africa
For the better part of 200 years, thousands of soldiers fought and died to expand the borders of their West African kingdom of Dahomey.The fiercely militaristic society was renowned for their female warrior, the “Black Spartan”.
While European narratives refer to the women soldiers as “Spartans” or “Amazons,” they called themselves mino — “our mothers,” or Ahosi — “King’s Wives”.
The empire was ruled over by various kings, and there is no evidence that any woman in Dahomey ever became an Ahosi willingly. However, women soldiers were rigorously trained, given uniforms, and equipped with Danish guns (obtained via the slave trade). By the mid-19th century, the Black Spartans numbered between 1,000 and 6,000 women, about a third of the entire Dahomey army.
Under King Gezo’s rule, female troops lived in his compound and were kept well supplied with tobacco, alcohol and slaves–as many as 50 to each warrior.
“When amazons walked out of the palace,” notes author Alpern, “they were preceded by a slave girl carrying a bell. The sound told every male to get out of their path, retire a certain distance, and look the other way.” To even touch these women meant death.
Membership among the mino was included the honing of any aggressive character traits these women has, solely for the purpose of war. During their membership, the mino were not allowed to have children, or enter into married life (though they were all legally married to the king). Many of them were virgins. They were said to sear one breast off as infants just to make it easier to draw a bow.
Above all else, however, the military custom that drew the most attention to the mino was “insensitivity training” — exposing un-blooded troops to death.
The Smithsonian writes, “At one annual ceremony, new recruits of both sexes were required to mount a platform 16 feet high, pick up baskets containing bound and gagged prisoners of war, and hurl them over the parapet to a baying mob below.There are also accounts of female soldiers being ordered to carry out executions. Jean Bayol, a French naval officer who visited Abomey in December 1889, watched as a teenage recruit, a girl named Nanisca “who had not yet killed anyone,” was tested. Brought before a young prisoner who sat bound in a basket, she:”
“walked jauntily up to , swung her sword three times with both hands, then calmly cut the last flesh that attached the head to the trunk… She then squeezed the blood off her weapon and swallowed it.”
These regiments had a semi-sacred status amongst their people, which intertwined with the Fon belief in Vodun — what is now modern day Voodoo. The practice was originally brought to the Caribbean by slaves, and adapted by the indigenous people. There are still Voudon temples around Benin, and the religion is still practiced today alongside Christianity and Islam.
