THE MINO OF DAHOMEY…GRACE AND VALOR
If you are a fan of pop culture or artistic works featuring Black people, you are most certainly acquainted with Marvel’s Black Panther and the Dora Milaje. It would also be folly of me to assume that a majority of you do not know that the inspiration for the Dora Milaje came from a group of real African warrior women — The Mino of Dahomey, or as western civilizations called them, The Amazons of Dahomey.
This elite group of warriors played a vital role in the powerful Dahomey Kingdom circa 1600–1900, modern-day Republic of Benin. It is unclear why or when Dahomey first recruited its female warriors, but the most trusted theory claims the Mino first appeared as palace guards in the 1720s.
These guards were most likely ‘third-class’ wives of the king, that is, wives that were yet to bear children or considered insufficiently beautiful, and this role was a perfect fit as men were not allowed in the palace precinct after dark.
Mino means mothers in the Fon language.
Were they called that because being the king’s wives, they were ideally the kingdom’s mothers?
No one knows.
Historians believe that slave trade and volatile clashes with the Yoruba had decreased the Dahomey male population which nudged King Gezo, King of Dahomey, into conscripting women. King Gezo expanded the female corps from 600 guards to 6,000 warriors.
Was it easy to get into this elite troop?
You be the judge of that.
Recruits had to undergo extensive training that was as bloody as it was painful. They scaled thorn hedges, wrestled one another, and survived forest camping for nine days with minimal rations. However, the most gruesome of this training was the ‘insensitivity training’ where teenage girls decapitated prisoners in a show of strength and valor. Additionally, they would pick up baskets containing bound prisoners of war and hurl them over a parapet to angry mobs.
This created fearsome warriors immune to pain and without fear or empathy. So respected were these women that whenever they left the palace compound, a slave girl was sent ahead carrying a bell to warn men to get out of their path.
As a fact of life, all things must eventually come to an end and this applied to the Mino, courtesy of the Franco-Dahomean wars which were fueled by the scramble for Africa and slave trade.
The Dahomean army was no match for the French with their modern rifles — it is widely believed that the French won only because of their firepower. Even the French agreed that the Mino excelled at hand to hand combat.
Not only was The Mino the last regiment to surrender, but they also used their feminine guile to take down French troops. Mino warriors exponentially dwindled when they went undercover pretending to be captive Dahomean women, allowing French soldiers to seduce them, then killing the French in their sleep using bayonets.
It should be noted that The Mino were not the only martial women of days past. There were successful warrior queens such as Nzinga of Matamba (17th century Angola) and Mekatilili wa Menza of Giriama (20th century Kenya). Female guards weren’t unheard of in the 19th century as well. What set the latter apart was that they actively participated in wars and died for their king and country.
The history of the Dahomey warriors is unique and special to Black people around the world — Black women, even more so.
They represent an empowering symbol that neither begged for respect nor asked for protection. They took it.
