100 Nasty Women of History

by Hannah Jewell

  Soon, the British came under the direction of Sir Hugh Rose, another posho. They fired cannons at the fort’s city walls, and Lakshmibai rode her horse among her troops who were resisting the siege with their ancient guns. Without the arrival of reinforcements, Jhansi fell to the British and was destroyed. The better version of the story has it that Lakshmibai made her escape by leaping on horseback from the walls of the fort, her son on her back, but it’s more likely she just rode out normally at night.

  Lakshmibai was finally killed in June 1858 in combat with Hugh Rose’s soldiers. She is supposed to have said, when rallying her troops: ‘If killed in battle we enter the heavens and, if victorious, we rule the earth.’

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  Yaa Asantewaa

  c. 1840–1921

  Oh look, it’s the British again. Where are they now, with their little pink pricks? They’re in Asante kingdom, in part of what is now Ghana. It’s 1900, just a few years since they seized power and abolished the Asante monarchy and government, trying to make their little pink pricks feel better. But, oh no! The Asante kingdom is divided after five years of civil war, and while some Asante factions have sided with the British, many have not – including the queen mother, Yaa Asantewaa.

  Yaa Asantewaa was born around 1840 in central Ghana, and her little brother would become the chief of the Edweso people. When he died (RIP little bro) she took over as Queen Mother to her grandson and heir – whom the British exiled in 1896. To add to their fuckery, the British governor then demanded to have the Golden Stool, the throne and symbol of the Asante people. The British also wanted to stop sharing profits from mining concessions they had rented from the Asante. As the remaining non-exiled Asante leaders faffed about, unable to decide what to do, Yaa Asantewaa had words for them:

  I must say this, if you the men of Asante will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.

  The men were like, ‘Oh shit,’ and so Yaa Asantewaa became the leader of the war effort. It’s not known if she fought alongside their troops, or directed them like a general, but she led them one way or another throughout nearly two years of fighting. She masterminded deception techniques such as pulling strings through brush so that the British would waste their bullets on empty thickets, and strung up bells and bottles in the trees in order to hear them coming. The Asante and the British had fought many wars throughout the 19th century, but this would be their last.

  The Asante had the British forces cornered, laying siege to the British fort and cutting off food and supplies – but along came more pink-pricked reinforcements to break through the blockade. It’s rumoured that when she was captured, Yaa Asantewaa spat in the face of a commanding officer. She and more than 50 of her lieutenants and advisers were then exiled to the Seychelles, where she died in 1921. She has since become a national hero to Ghanaians and a symbol across Africa of resistance and leadership.

  65

  Jind Kaur

  1817–1863

  Jind Kaur became the ruler of the Sikh Empire of Punjab, which is now mostly in Pakistan, in 1839. When her husband the Maharaja died (RIP), she became the regent for her young son, Duleep Singh, who would grow up to be dreamy. Before that, however, mother and son would have to deal with those tea-drinking, whimsical flying-umbrella-nannying, quaint little bloodthirsty murderers, the British.

  The death of the Maharaja was seen by the British as an opportunity to finally stick their greedy, pink, stubby little fingers into the Punjab and annex it. They found an obstacle to their greedy pink finger plans, however, in the shape of Jind Kaur, who would defend the sovereignty of the Punjab through two Anglo-Sikh wars in 1845–6 and 1848–9. Unable to easily rid themselves of Jind Kaur, the British desperately tried to smear her reputation, saying she had a string of affairs with her ministers and calling her the ‘Messalina of the Punjab’. Messalina was a Roman empress who had also had her reputation smeared by allegations of sexual impropriety. Whether or not such rumours are true, we can confidently assume that those who spread them, both in the past and now, are lonely virgins.

  Jind Kaur was only in her early 20s when she led her forces into battle with the British, doing away with conventions concerning the proper behaviour of a woman of her station and instead holding court and giving counsel to her ministers and generals. When the British at last defeated her, they separated her from her son and sent him to England aged nine. They saw the pair as a threat to the legitimacy of British rule, which is a funny thing to worry about, since there was none to begin with. But you know, nine-year-olds can be very scary.

  As for Jind Kaur, she was imprisoned in a number of forts until one day when she disguised herself as a servant and fled. She travelled across 800 miles of forest, and upon finding safety in Kathmandu, Nepal, wrote the British a letter saying that she had escaped by magic. Her son, who had received such a gentlemanly education in England that he was in correspondence with Queen Victoria, eventually arranged for their reunion more than 13 years after their separation. She joined him in London, and died far from her home in 1863. See, with any story involving the British Empire, the story ends with sadness and dispossession. But oh, don’t the British just have such cute accents, aren’t they all so gentlemanly!

  66

  Lozen

  1840–1889

  As a Native American woman living in the late 19th century at a time when United States troops were rounding up tribes, evicting them from their land, and incarcerating them in crowded reservations far from their homes, Lozen faced an undue level of fuckery in her life.

  Lozen was born in 1840, a member of the Warm Springs band of the Apache people who lived in the area covering south-west New Mexico, south-east Arizona, the north-western bit of Texas and the Mexican borderlands.

  The Apache believe that each person is granted a unique set of powers from their supreme deity, Ussen. In Lozen’s day, Apache girls and boys alike underwent intense physical training and when Lozen came of age, she uncovered her own special powers that were to make her well suited to battle: a power over horses, a power to heal wounds and most importantly, the power to detect the direction and distance of enemies. This was divined by performing a special ritual in which she held out her arms, turned in a circle, sang a prayer and interpreted the tingling of her hands. And so, instead of getting married and settling into a domestic role, she became a warrior.

  For the Warm Springs Apache, enemies were everywhere. Despite efforts on the part of native people to make peace, clashes with Mexicans and the US army increased, heightened by the growing population of prospectors searching for gold. When the US took territory from Mexico, they set about moving native peoples to a small number of reservations in order to take their valuable lands – paying no attention to the tribe or where they were from or how they lived.

  In another classic white-people move, the US government would sign treaties with different tribes only to screw them over later. In 1870, the Warm Springs Apache had agreed to live on a reservation within their traditional lands in south-west New Mexico, Ojo Caliente – but in 1875, the US government wanted to concentrate all the tribes of the region on the San Carlos reservation, described by one Apache as ‘the worst place in all the great territory stolen from the Apaches’. Its landscape was barren of grass and game, the river water brackish, and the whole place infested with insects, rattlesnakes, and malaria.

  By 1877, Lozen’s band had had enough, and wanted to move back to Ojo Caliente. Continually pursued by the US army, in 1879 they fled to the mountains, following their leader and Lozen’s brother, Victorio, to a life of freedom. Constantly on the move to avoid the authorities, they carried out raids for horses, food, and ammunition. When it came to stealing horses, no one was better than Lozen. As one member of her band, James Kaywaykla, remembered it, she was an ‘expert at roping’, and ‘no man in the tribe was more skilful in stealing horses or stampeding
a herd than she’.

  That’s not all she could do. According to Kaywaykla, Lozen could ‘ride, shoot, and fight like a man’ and likely ‘had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio.’ She was the only woman who sat on war councils, and was highly respected by other warriors who saw her as their equal and by her extended tribe who followed her fearless lead.

  Native Americans weren’t allowed to leave their reservations, which is a pretty ass-backwards rule, if you think about it for even a half a second and you aren’t a racist. So in 1879 Lozen’s band fled under the cover of night. They found themselves trapped at a river, and seeing the women and children fearful to cross the rapids, Lozen led by example, driving her horse straight into the water, holding her rifle over her head, and swimming across to the other side. They followed her, and after Lozen rescued one horse and rider who had run into trouble, she told the women and children, ‘I must return to the warriors.’

  Lozen and her brother were an indomitable pair: he as chief, she guiding military strategy with her intuition and power to detect enemies, and both skilled in battle. With their powers combined, their band of about 60 warriors and their families managed to evade thousands of US army soldiers.

  In September 1880, Lozen had to separate from Victorio and their band because one of their number was about to give birth. Luckily for the expectant mother, Lozen was the kind of protector whose skills ranged from delivering a baby, to seeking food and water, to murdering a soldier should the occasion call for it. And, of course, she could steal horses.

  Separated from their tribe and with the US army in pursuit, Lozen, the young woman, and her newborn baby survived for weeks on the run. Lozen couldn’t use her gun without attracting attention, so killed a longhorn cattle using only her knife, which is NOT AN EASY TASK, given the longhorn’s, well, long horns. She used the longhorn for dried meat to last them a long journey across the desert; took its stomach for water, and its hide to make a bridle.

  Then, by the Rio Grande, she observed a Mexican camp and one night swam across the river, waited for a guard to turn his back from his horses, cut a huge, strong horse free, casually leapt onto its back and rode it straight into the river, dodging gunfire as they swam back to safety. In the weeks it took to get back to the reservation where the mother and her baby needed to be, Lozen would steal a second horse for good measure. Listen, if you’re not going to guard your horses properly, what else should you expect? Oh, she also killed a soldier and took his supplies. RIP.

  When Lozen finally made it back, she heard the devastating news that Victorio had been killed. His band had crossed the border to Mexico but were pursued by US soldiers thanks to a new treaty between the nations, and were finally ambushed. Lozen was filled with regret. She believed that if she had been with them, they might have survived.

  When Lozen was reunited with the band, the Warm Springs chief Nana said that ‘Victorio died as he lived, free and unconquerable.’

  ‘We are not to mourn for him,’ Nana said. ‘He has been spared the ignominy of imprisonment and slavery and for that I will give thanks to Ussen. His courage is to be the inspiration of those left to carry on our race and fortunately there are enough women and children that our People might increase. It is for us to rally and carry on the struggle.’

  The struggle, though, would only get worse. The rest of Lozen’s Apache band – even those who had stayed on reservations as commanded, and even those who had served as scouts for the US army – were rounded up and sent as prisoners to military forts in Florida, where many died from heat, humidity, and disease. The Apache wars were over. They were then moved on to Alabama, and from there were given their ‘freedom’ in Oklahoma. Some chose to return to New Mexico and their ancestral lands. Lozen would only make it as far as Alabama before dying of tuberculosis.

  So remember Lozen the next time you hear that all-American phrase, ‘Liberty, freedom, and justice for all.’ Not just for the way she died, a prisoner of the US government, but for the way Kaywaykla remembered her, ‘a magnificent woman on a beautiful black horse,’ fighting and staying free for as long as she could.

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  Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

  1900–1978

  I hope you’re ready to welcome some excellence into your life, because it’s time to talk about the Nigerian nationalist and women’s rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti.

  Taxes, as everyone knows, are boring. But women’s tax revolts, it turns out, are anything but. Especially if we’re talking about the Abeokuta women’s tax revolt of 1947–48, which we most certainly are. Abeokuta is now a Nigerian city and the capital of Ògùn state, but was once more of a city-state, located in south-west Nigeria in Egbaland.

  Not to oversell this tax revolt, but it was a completely fabulous historical event. It had everything. Cooperation among ladies of different social classes? Tick. Abusive songs? Absolutely. A lasting legacy of women uniting for common political goals? Yup. Old ladies taking their tops off? Indeed.

  So what was this tax revolt about? Well, like many things, this one can trace its origins to that great wank stain upon the pants of history, the British Empire. You know, that empire that makes old English people say ‘When I was a boy, things were different,’ before boiling some potatoes to have cold later, and voting Brexit. That empire.

  In the 1940s, that empire was at war. The British turned to their West African colonies for resources after the fall of its Far Eastern ones in 1942 to Axis powers. The Nigerian colonial government began to intervene heavily in the economy, taking steps like banning exports to Germany, setting quotas, and purchasing rice at below market prices – or just confiscating it.

  These policies wreaked extra havoc upon market women, who obviously wanted to sell their rice at a good price and not have it confiscated by colonial officials. Market women were subjected to special taxes, rents, and fines, and faced lots of idiotic and terrible behaviour from tax collectors. For example, some tax collectors believed they could judge if girls were 15 and therefore old enough to be taxed by stripping them and looking at their breasts. I would try and explain the logic of these assholes to you, but I fear it would do irreparable damage to both of our brains.

  In fact, the market women were facing three sets of puckered assholes: the tax collecting types, colonial officials, and the Alake Ademola II, the king of Abeokuta, who was basically a puppet of the colonial government. These assholes were all closely linked in their twattery. The Sole Native Authority, aka the British, gave the Alake arbitrary powers which he wielded with impunity. In setting things up this way, the British gave themselves plausible deniability whenever things went wrong. ‘Oh, it’s not us doing terrible things!’ they could say, while brushing their teeth with sausage meat. ‘It’s the Alake!’

  Enter Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who was not a market woman, and certainly not a twat, but rather a fancy lady. She was president of the Abeokuta Ladies’ Club, a club of other fancy ladies who met to discuss fancy lady activities and concerns.

  Seeing the injustice faced by the market women, and after personally intervening in defence of rice sellers, Ransome-Kuti encouraged her fancy ladies’ club to start meeting with the market women and to widen their interests to include social justice issues like women’s literacy and better education for children. The new, bigger group of women decided to form the Abeokuta Women’s Union, with Ransome-Kuti elected president. The group’s founding document clearly stated that ‘no member of the Union should think herself better than others, all must move freely and happily.’ This meant that the fancy ladies shouldn’t dress too fancy for meetings, and shouldn’t be snobs about the market women, who were very well organised as it was. The group, once united, quickly became a force to be reckoned with vis-à-vis all the assholes.

  Things came to a head in 1947, when the women started camping out in front of the Alake’s kingly compound to demonstrate against higher taxes, singing abusive songs at him.

  Let us now enjoy the w
ords to one such abusive song – which are remembered, by the way, in the memoirs of the great Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka, who was a young lad at the time, and doubtlessly learned a lot from the protesting women:

  O you men, vagina’s head will seek vengeance;

  You men, vagina’s head shall seek vengeance

  Even if it is one penny. If it is only a penny

  Ademola, we are not paying tax in Egbaland

  If even it is one penny.

  Now please look upon the following emoji:

  The AWU’s protest against the Alake’s taxes and abuses would last a full nine months. When a woman was arrested, others would turn up at the jail and protest there as well. They’d close the markets altogether in a display of their united power. They organised food and water deliveries so that women could stay put outside the palace, trapping the Alake inside. They were joined by some supportive men (#notallmen) and pretty much brought the whole town to a standstill. They signed petitions and wrote letters to the press dragging the Alake’s name. There was not much he could do, it turned out, when faced with so many well-organised vaginas seeking vengeance.

  At one point, an angry council member came out and yelled probably the most ill-advised thing you could ever yell at a group of jubilant, protesting women: ‘Go home and mind your kitchens and feed your children. What do you know about the running of state affairs? Not pay tax indeed! What you need is a good kick on your idle rumps.’