Returning to the topic about which they’d been speaking, Oluoma said, “When the Europeans first arrived in West Africa, they were greeted by inter-tribal warfare everywhere they looked. Male-dominated petty kingdoms vying for power would have been a familiar sight to the colonizers because it echoed their own history. However, the foreigners also encountered vestiges of female sovereignty which contradicted the myth of universal male power. Europeans dismissed these cases as anomalies because they didn’t fit the patriarchal model of the way things ought to be.”
“That’s bleak.” Cassie sighed.
“The picture isn’t quite so bleak as that, my dear pythia,” their guide retorted. “Of all the continents contaminated by overlord influence, Africa has had the longest tradition of female authority. It’s fascinating to see how much of that authority managed to survive the onslaught of overlord indoctrination. It persisted in spite of the Semitic invasions, patriarchal kingdoms, the arrival of Europeans, the slave trade, and finally colonization. Female influence may have changed its shape, but it hasn’t disappeared entirely. I find that heartening. African women are quite resilient.”
Griffin sat forward in the back seat. “There are anomalies all over the continent—tribes in which women occupy positions of power. If one accepts the overlord hypothesis that Africa was always patriarchal because that is the natural order of things, then there is no precedent for some of the traditions which are still very much alive. Take the rain queens, for example.”
“Rain queens?” Cassie asked.
“Yes, it’s a hereditary title among the Balobedu Tribe of South Africa. The throne passes from a woman to her eldest daughter. The Rain Queen is credited with supernatural power to affect the weather. The neighboring Zulu tribe was terribly afraid of her. It doesn’t matter whether one believes in her power or not, there are flesh and blood women who have held that title for the past four hundred years.”
“It is interesting that prior to the rain queens, the Balobedu had gone patristic but eventually returned to their matrilineal roots,” Oluoma said.
“There are other instances of female authority. The queen mothers of Benin for example,” Griffin continued. “The queen mother wasn’t simply a figurehead. In a close parallel to the mother of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, she maintained her own court and played an active role in the government of the kingdom. And then, of course, there are the Dahomey Amazons.”
“The what?” Cassie peered at Griffin with curiosity.
“The name ‘Amazon’ was given to them by Europeans, as you might expect. Until the end of the nineteenth century, they were known as the warrior women of Dahomey. Traditionally, they acted as the king’s bodyguard, but they also comprised one-third of the Dahomian army and participated in many of the kingdom’s wars. Male enemies learned to fear their formidable battle skills. The last Amazon died in 1979.”
Cassie became temporarily distracted by the increasingly hilly terrain through which they were travelling. She could see mountains off in the distance which were probably part of the Cross River National Park. She’d skimmed a travel book the night before that described the park. It consisted of tropical rain forest, but the mountains to the north supposedly afforded a much cooler climate than the endless summer near the coast. The summits of the mountains were enveloped in fog. Maybe it really was cooler up there, Cassie thought. She switched her attention back to her companions.
Oluoma was still speaking. “And there are dozens of other cases of women behaving in ways that would never have been sanctioned by a typical overlord society. I’ll give you an example from my own backyard. I come from the Igbo tribe which is very numerous in this part of Nigeria. Although my tribe has many branches and some of them have turned patriarchal, Igbo women have always occupied a strong social position. They possess their own kinship and market networks and have always controlled their own agricultural products. These were never considered part of their husband’s property. When the British came to rule Nigeria, they approached matters much as any other overlord culture would.” Oluoma darted a glance at Griffin in the rear-view mirror. “No offense, my dear boy,”
“None taken,” the scrivener replied. “I don’t particularly identify with the imperial phase of my nation’s history.”
Oluoma continued. “The British assumed that Igbo males were the decision-makers and ignored the opinion of the women.” She chuckled. “That was a very risky approach to take, as they soon learned. In 1914, the British divided southeast Nigeria, or Igboland, into several regions and appointed what they called native ‘warrant chiefs’ to oversee the affairs of different regions. Many of the warrant chiefs were guilty of corruption and abuses specifically aimed at women. They would confiscate women’s property for no reason and force them into marriages without their consent. This offensive situation went on for years and finally reached a crisis over taxation.
“In 1929, the British ordered a census of Igbo women’s property, and suspicion grew that a women’s tax might be instituted even though the British had promised never to tax women’s property. A dispute arose between a census taker and an elderly woman when she was told to count her possessions. Word traveled quickly from one market town to another that the women might be taxed, so they decided to do something about it. They organized. Ten thousand women demonstrated in front of the district administration office and demanded that their warrant chief give them a letter saying that their possessions would not be taxed. He refused until the British intervened and ordered him to produce the letter. The warrant chief didn’t like being forced to meet the women’s demands, so he retaliated by taking several protest leaders hostage. When news of this outrage spread, the protest swelled, and demonstrators demanded his removal from office.
