Black Panther was a Wuss Compared to Real African Women Warriors

Black Panther was a Wuss compared to Real African Women Warriors

Dora Milaje, the special forces of the fictional Kingdom of Wakanda in the Black Panther movie, were based on a real group of women warriors called Dahomey Amazons. Known for their fearlessness, they were frontline soldiers in the army of the Kingdom of Dahomey, a West African empire that existed from 1625 to 1894. Europeans who visited the kingdom in the 19th Century dubbed them Amazons after the ruthless warriors of Greek mythology.

The women of Dahomey played important roles in all aspects of kingdom life. Although the king had ultimate leadership, royal women made their mark in the world of politics, religion, and the military. According to legend, when King Akaba died in 1716, his twin sister Hangbe took the throne. Dahomey women were respected as hunters, so she recruited a female guard to protect her and the palace and the tradition of female soldiers began.

Each king would build a new palace next to his predecessor’s, leaving the former as a mausoleum. Although the last king of the Dahomey Empire burnt the palaces before the French conquered the territory, a section stands in Abomey. The bas reliefs show the Amazons used clubs, as well as muskets and machetes. There is also a horse’s tail attached to a human skull, a trophy brought by an Amazon for her monarch to use as a fly swatter.

A Catholic missionary named Father Borghero, a guest of the king, witnessed a mock assault on an enemy fortress. Three thousand heavily armed soldiers, barefoot and bristling with clubs attacked a series of defenses. A few, known as Reapers, were armed with gleaming three-foot-long straight razors, capable of slicing a man clean in two. The Amazons advanced in silence. Their first obstacle was a wall of acacia branches bristling with needle-sharp thorns forming a barricade 440 yards long. Ignoring wounds, troops scrambled to the top and mimed hand-to-hand combat with imaginary defenders. Then they stormed huts and dragged out a group of cringing “prisoners.” The king assessed their performance and the bravest received belts made from acacia thorns which the warriors strapped around their waists.

Recruiting Amazons wasn’t difficult. Most West African women lived miserable lives of forced drudgery. Amazons lived in the royal compound and were kept well supplied with tobacco, alcohol and slaves, as many as 50 to each warrior. When Amazons left the palace, they were preceded by a slave girl with a bell warning every male to get out of their path and look the other way. To touch an Amazon meant death. I’ve had mornings like that myself.

In the end, they were no match for French forces. In the course of four major campaigns in the latter half of the 19th century, conservative estimates are the Amazons lost at least 6,000 dead, and perhaps as many as 15,000. In their last battles against French troops, equipped with vastly superior weaponry, about 1,500 women took the field, and roughly 50 survived. The women were the last to surrender. According to a rumor in the French occupation army, the survivors took their revenge by covertly substituting themselves for Dahomeyan women taken into the enemy stockade. Each allowed herself to be seduced by a French officer, and after he fell asleep cut his throat with his own bayonet.

Most sources suggest the last of Dahomey’s women warriors died by the 1940s, but historians think it’s possible some survived long enough to see their country regain its independence in 1960. I like to think a few were in the crowd, giving one final war cry.

 L. A. Kelley writes Sci-fy and Fantasy Adventures with humor, romance, and a little sass. She's never without a stylish acacia belt.