The Amazon Women Warriors

This video is about The Dahomey’s Women Warriors 1:57 sec For the better part of 200 years, thousands of female soldiers fought and died to expand the borders of their West African kingdom. Even their conquerors, the French, acknowledged their "prodigious bravery." The Amazon Women Warriors of Dahomey (modern day Benin). They defeated the French Foreign Legion in 1890. they were consistently judged to be superior to the male soldiers in effectiveness and bravery. The Units were under female command. During their membership they were not allowed to have children or be part of married life. This group of female warriors was referred to as Mino, meaning "Our Mothers" in the Fon language, by the male army of Dahomey. They were armed with Winchester rifles, clubs and knives. & specializing in pre-dawn attacks on unsuspecting enemy villages. By the mid-19th century, they numbered between 1,000 and 6,000 women, about a third of the entire Dahomey army. However, according to some sources, the French army lost several battles to them, due to the female warriors' skill in battle that was "the equal of every contemporary body of male elite soldiers from among the colonial powers". A Beninese historian encountered an extremely old woman in the village of Kinta who convincingly claimed to have fought against the French in 1892. Her name was Nawi, and she died, aged well over 100, in November 1979