Amazons

by John Man

  Over to Burton. He could hardly wait. He had started to study the Fon language and had read everything available about them. He saw, noted and understood more than anyone before him, and many who followed, until modern anthropologists and historians filled the gaps, as best they could for a culture that had vanished.

  Carried northwards, slung between the shoulders of five bearers known as ‘hammock-men’, with six guards and a Dahomean escort of twenty, Burton had been provided with a selection of gifts requested by Glele: a 40-foot silk tent, a silver pipe, two silver belts with ‘lion and crane in raised relief’, two silver-and-gilt stands, and a coat of mail, with gauntlets. Glele had also asked for a horse-drawn carriage, such as befitted sovereigns like Queen Victoria and himself. Burton was told by the foreign minister, Lord John Russell, to explain that transporting a carriage and horses to the West African coast was tricky, and that ‘it would be very doubtful, from the nature of the country and climate, whether they would long survive.’ Burton was then supposed to hurry on with a reassurance: if future relations ‘should be of a nature to warrant such a proceeding, Her Majesty’s Government would not hesitate to endeavour to comply.’

  What he found on the plateau between two swampy, wooded rivers was a mini-nation of no more than 200,000. The capital, Abomey, had perhaps 20,000 inhabitants. For 200 years, the kings had ruled by exercising strict control of their many wives and children. They tried to avoid disputes over succession by nominating heirs in good time and favouring women as administrators. There were still altercations, but far fewer than among neighbouring groups; the average reign of the eleven Dahomean kings (1650–1894) was twenty-two years.

  Women were favoured in an extraordinary way. The system in which every official had a female counterpart prescribed a ‘mother’ whose job it was to shadow the official’s movements, policies and finances. Even the king had a shadow, based in the countryside, though a male shadow, not a female one. When and why this system evolved no one knows – possibly it went back to rule by twins in the early days of the kingdom – but it imposed checks and balances that would have amazed Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers of American democracy, and might have given some radical ideas to women in England on their slow march for women’s rights.

  Several Europeans had written of this strange society, but Burton was the first to record many of the details, with scathing comments, some witty, some crudely offensive, occasionally both. On the first day, a few miles short of the capital, there was a reception, including jesters who specialized in making faces and pretending to be deaf and dumb, which in Burton’s view made each of them ‘as lively as a professionally engaged mourner’. There were march-pasts, toasts, presentations of flags, and gun-salutes. The viceroy of the port of Whydah (today’s Ouidah), a former slaving kingdom conquered by Dahomey, introduced himself, doffing his felt hat. ‘His appearance revolts,’ wrote Burton, who knew him by reputation. ‘He is as bad as he looks, and his avarice is only to be equalled by his rapacity.’ Singers, drummers and bards followed, and ‘a truly barbarous display: eight human crania dished up on small wooden bowls like bread-plates, at the top of very tall poles.’

  A slow walk along a pebble road led to the palace compound. Eight gates, with guards under umbrellas of many colours – signs of status – opened on to thatched sheds about 30 metres long, tall at the front, sloping almost to the ground at the back. Rank upon rank of officials are all listed and described. One, ‘very old, with a peculiarly baboon-like countenance’, wore ‘a long coat which makes him look like a magnified bluebottle fly’. Finally came the royal reception: King Glele was ‘athletic, upwards of six feet high, lithe, agile, hair of the peppercorn variety’, eyebrows scant, hair thin, teeth sound, eyes bleary, which Burton put down to tedious receptions, perpetual smoking of a long-stemmed pipe and ‘a somewhat excessive devotion to Venus.’ He was on a bench swathed with red and white cloth and cushions. Behind him sat a throng of spouses. ‘If perspiration appears upon the royal brow, it is instantly removed with the softest cloth by the gentlest hands.’ He rose and shook hands vigorously. Through his prime minister and interpreter, he asked after Queen Victoria’s health, and that of her ministers, people and all recent visitors that he could remember. Stools were placed, toasts drunk, guns fired.

  Outside again for a pageant, under a canopy, Burton took notes, to the delight of the king. A line of twenty-four scarlet, green, purple and white umbrellas shielded the monarch and his wives. Male warriors were divided from female ones by bamboo palms. In lofty chairs sat a woman known as the Akutu, ‘a huge, old porpoise’, who was the ‘captainess’ of the king’s bodyguards (Burton feminized nouns whenever possible), and the corresponding ‘veteraness’ on the prime minister’s side, ‘also vast in breadth’, for ‘the warrioresses begin to fatten when their dancing days are done, and some of them are prodigies of obesity.’

  ‘The flower of the host was the mixed company of young Amazons lately raised by the King; this corps (about 200) … was evidently composed of the largest and finest women in the service.’ Each had a strip of blue or white cloth binding the hair, a sleeveless waistcoat and a skirt of blue, pink and yellow, kept tight around the waist by a sash, a cartridge box, belt or bandolier, a bullet bag on a shoulder strap, a knife and a flintlock in a black monkey skin.

  While a selection of Amazons danced and sang, officers grovelled in the dust, ‘and shovelled it up by handfuls over their heads and arms, showing that they were of lower rank than the ministers,’ an act common to ‘all semi-barbarous societies.’ Before the king, even the highest officers rolled, crawled or shuffled forward on their knees, to frequent cries of ‘King of all kings!’

  More songs, more dances followed, this time in the presence of

  a dozen razor women, who, defiling past the King … took their stations near the throne; they held their weapons upwards in the air like standards, with a menacing air and gesture. The blade is about 18 inches, and shaped exactly like a European razor; it closes into a wooden handle about two feet in length, and though kept in position by strong springs, it must be, I should think, quite as dangerous to the owner as to the enemy. These portable guillotines were invented by a brother of the late king Gezo.

  Perhaps because they were both impractical and recently invented, we hear nothing more of them in the fighting that is to come. There were more displays from ‘bayoneteeresses’ and ‘blunderbuss-women’, a final song –

  We like not to hear that Abeokuta lives;

  But soon we shall see it fall.

  – then the king wrapped his robe around himself and left, ‘every inequality of ground was smoothed, every stick and stone was pointed out, lest it might offend the royal toe’, and the reception was over.

  As 1863 gave way to the new year, Burton witnessed the annual so-called Customs, celebrations during which executions supplied the previous king ‘with fresh attendants in the shadowy world.’ In a 30-metre shed, which had a tower ‘not unlike that of an English village church’, were twenty prisoners in long white shirts, tied to posts, destined for sacrifice. They were well looked after, and apparently unconcerned. At the entrance to a tent-like shed, which contained the relics of King Gezo, sat the king, surrounded by wives, protected by a mass of coloured parasols, and attended by Amazons squatting ‘with their gun-barrels bristling upwards’. A crowd of perhaps 2,500 watched. Burton and his companions were seated under white parasols. The king spoke, sang, danced, wiped his brow with a forefinger and scattered his sweat over the delighted audience. So it went for five days: speeches, pageants, songs, music, dancing, feasting, military displays, parades of fetishes and oaths to defeat Abeokuta. Hunchbacks, of which there were many, cut swathes through the crowds with whips. At one point, the king threw cowrie shells, which were used as currency, into the crowd, starting a free-for-all. ‘No notice is taken if a man be killed or maimed in the affair; he has fallen honourably … Some lose eyes and noses; the Dahomeans … bite like hyenas – I have seen a h
and through which teeth met – and scratch like fisherwomen.’

  Burton adds a note on human sacrifice. True, when kings died they were followed into the grave by a court of wives, eunuchs, singers and drummers; and it was the custom to execute criminals. But things were not so bad when compared to practices back in England. After all, in that very year ‘we hung four murderers upon the same gibbet before 100,000 gaping souls in Liverpool,’ and strung up five pirates in front of Newgate prison. In Dahomey, ‘The executions are, I believe, performed without cruelty.’ That year, about eighty were to be beheaded, half of them ‘female victims killed by the Amazons in the palace, and not permitted to be seen by man.’ Adding those slain on suspicion of witchcraft, Burton guessed the annual toll to be 500. He reported that twenty-three were killed on the final night of the Customs. ‘The practice originates from filial piety, it is sanctioned by long use and custom, and it is strenuously upheld by a powerful and interested priesthood … Gelele [Burton’s spelling] I am persuaded could not abolish human sacrifice if he would; and he would not if he could.’

  Turning to the Amazons, he points out that they still maintained their roles as ‘wives’ and bodyguards, for ‘Gelele causes every girl to be brought to him before marriage, and if she pleases, he retains her in the palace.’ But now they were mostly warriors, ‘the masculine physique of the women enabling them to compete with men in enduring toil, hardships and privations.’ The force, some 2,500 – much reduced after the losses under the walls of Abeokuta – had five specialist units: ‘blunderbuss-women’, each with an attendant carrying ammunition; elephant hunters, the bravest of the brave; razor women; infantry, the bulk of the force; and archers, not many now that most had muskets, and used mainly as scouts. He saw them on the march. They were not exactly Grecian in their looks: they seemed old, Burton said, ugly, grumpy-looking, with immense buttocks. He might have added that they were determined, fiercely loyal, strong and willing to die for their king and country, just the sort of spirit needed in warfare.

  The privates carried packs on cradles, like those of the male soldiery, containing their bed-mats, clothes and food for a week or a fortnight, mostly toasted grains and bean-cake, hot with peppers. Cartridge-pouches of two different shapes were girt around their waists, and slung to their sides were water-gourds, fetish-sacks, bullet-wallets, powder-calabashes, fans, little cutlasses … flint, steel and tinder, and Lilliputian stools, with three or four legs.

  Supposedly the women were all celibate, since they were all legally the king’s wives; not that he had sex with many of them, and those few were exempted from military action. The rest were indeed celibate, at least while they were Amazons, because adultery with a royal wife meant dire punishment, even death. Not much of a deterrent, apparently: Burton reports that 150 Amazons were found to be pregnant and were tried with their lovers, eight of whom were executed, the rest being imprisoned or relegated. Some eyewitnesses suggested that enforced celibacy increased their ferocity. It also had another effect, as Burton claims in a footnote of surprising obscurity, given his interests. The Amazons, he says, prefer ‘the peculiarities of the Tenth Muse’. Today, the Tenth Muse is a comic-book heroine who is, somehow, the daughter of Zeus. Back in Burton’s day, some of those privileged with a classical education knew about the nine Muses who presided over all the arts, and also knew that Plato and many later writers referred to Sappho as the Tenth Musefn1 – Sappho the poetess of Lesbos, renowned for her ‘amorous disposition’ towards her female companions, in the coy words of Lamprière’s Classical Dictionary. Burton meant the Dahomey Amazons were lesbians, a statement for which he provided no evidence at all.

  They were undoubtedly very much the king’s women. Another eyewitness, a naval officer named Frederick Forbes, was told by one Amazon that the king ‘has borne us again, we are his wives, his daughters, his soldiers, his sandals’. They formed an elite, well supplied with food and slaves, cut off from their families, devoted exclusively to the king and the interests of his nation. They gloried in their power and ferocity, singing:

  Let the men remain at home,

  Growing corn and palms!

  We, the women,

  We’re going to bring back entrails

  With our hoes and our machetes.fn2

  At first sight, this looks as if the Amazons were a vanguard for women’s rights. Not so, because the women spoke of themselves as transformed into men. ‘We were women, we are now men,’ one of them told Forbes. Or as an ancient Amazon interviewed in the 1920s said, after she had killed and disembowelled her first enemy she was told, ‘You are a man.’ For them, the path to self-advancement lay through, rather than out of, subservience.fn3

  Ferocity was encouraged. As part of their training, the Amazons made mock assaults over barriers of thorns, ‘tearing their flesh as they crossed the prickly impediment,’ in the words of a Portuguese traveller in 1830. Others witnessed numerous staged attacks, slave-hunts and battles under the eyes of King Gezo and his successor Glele. All was done with tremendous zest, which often tipped over into brutality. In 1850, at the annual Customs celebrations, two visitors (the British trader and consul John Beecroft and the naval officer Frederick Forbes) watched four trussed and gagged prisoners carried in large baskets through the waiting crowds on to a platform, where four Amazons tilted the baskets and tumbled the prisoners to their deaths at the hands of the bloodthirsty mob. There were many beheadings. In 1889 and 1890, French visitors saw what was apparently an annual ritual, in which Amazons tore an ox apart with knives and their bare hands, smearing themselves with the entrails. Perhaps, they suggested, this was ‘insensitivity training’, hardening them to bloodshed.

  Burton was the opposite of a natural diplomat. He handed over all the gifts immediately, and told Glele what was expected of him in no uncertain terms. He said slave-raiding and slavery had to stop, ignoring the fact that ending it would destroy the relationship with Brazilian slavers, deprive the king of the income to support his army and officials, and generally wreck the economy. Glele was appalled. Peace with neighbours? Impossible. Oyo had invaded four times in the previous century, Glele’s predecessor had been shot by a Yoruba. Burton had a strong case, morally, but he was – as a black pastor who was present put it – all ‘hot passion and harsh temper’. Glele himself commented afterwards ‘that if the Queen send such Commissioners to him it will spoil everything.’ In fact, it did. There would be no treaty, no more presents, no more missions from the British. Burton’s days in West Africa ended shortly afterwards, in turmoil, because he had authorized payment in a court case that the Foreign Office refused to reimburse.

  A month after Burton’s departure, Glele set out to take his revenge on Abeokuta, with some 10–12,000 troops, including 3,000 Amazons. They arrived exhausted, after a twenty-two-day march. It was a disaster. The inhabitants were ready for them, behind repaired walls. The Amazons fought with fanatical zeal. Only four warriors managed to climb the earth ramparts, all Amazons, all killed. A popular story told of an Amazon who, to show her scorn of the enemy, sat on a copper cauldron not far from the ramparts, turned her back and began smoking a long pipe, bullets zipping around her, until a sniper shot her dead. The inhabitants sent out a sortie, cut off her head and displayed it around town. It was all over in an hour and a half. Glele escaped, losing his tent, throne, sandals, 1,000 captured and some 2,000 dead, including 700 Amazons. Abeokuta remained an obsession for Dahomey for another twenty-five years. There were later raids, but no victory.

  In those years, Glele launched several other campaigns beyond his borders. In 1879, he destroyed a Yoruba town, Meko, seizing 3,000 captives and taking 4,000 heads; Ketu, a town of 20,000 with a 7-kilometre wall and a 5-metre ditch, fell twice, in 1883, when its king was beheaded, and again two years later.

  Meanwhile, beyond Glele’s reach, greater forces were gathering. The French claimed authority over the ports of Porto-Novo and Cotonou, on the fringe of Glele’s territory. Glele agreed, then changed his mind and sent ra
iding parties into nearby villages. A French delegation went to Abomey to negotiate, but to no effect, for by then King Glele was dying. Jean Bayol, the head of the mission, was shocked when a ‘ravishing’ sixteen-year-old Amazon recruit named Nansica was called upon to kill for the first time. Her victim was a prisoner tied up and sitting in a big basket. She severed his head with three swings of her sword, cut the last bit of flesh connecting head to trunk, then (according to one witness) swept the blood from the sword with her fingers and licked them clean.

  In early 1890, France built up a contingent of 359 Africans under French officers in Cotonou – small, but newly armed with eight-shot Lebel repeating rifles, which could kill at 300 metres with high-velocity bullets. These bullets seem to have been dum-dums (named after an armoury in Calcutta), with soft lead heads that expanded on entry, leaving a fearsome exit wound. Winston Churchill recorded the effects after seeing action on India’s North-West Frontier in 1898: ‘The Dum-Dum bullet, though not explosive, is expansive … On striking a bone this causes the bullet to “set up” or spread out, and it then tears and splinters everything before it, causing wounds which in the body must be generally mortal and in any limb necessitate amputation.’ The Lebel far outgunned the attackers’ muzzle-loading flintlocks.