The Dahomey Amazons

Ahosi of Dahomey, ca. 1890

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The Dahomey Amazons (Fon:"Mino" or "Minon" or "Agoji") were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey which existed from the 1700s until 1904. They are the only documented all female army in world history. They were named Amazons by Western Europeans who encountered them for the first time due to their similarity to the mythical Amazons of ancient Anatolia and the Black Sea. This unusual emergence of an all-female military regiment was the result of Dahomey's male population facing high casualties in frequent warfare with neighboring West African states, as well as Dahomey being forced to annually give male slaves to the Oyo Empire. The lack of men likely led the kings of Dahomey to recruit women into the army.

King Houegbadja (who ruled from 1645 to 1685), the third King of Dahomey, is said to have originally started the group which would later become the Amazons, as a corps of elephant hunters called the gbeto. 

Houegbadja's daughter Queen Hangbe (ruling from 1708 to 1711) established a female bodyguard. European merchants recorded their presence. According to tradition, her brother and successor King Agaja successfully used them in Dahomey's defeat of the neighbouring kingdom of Savi in 1727. The group of female warriors was referred to as Mino, meaning "Our Mothers" in the Fon language, by the male army of Dahomey. Other sources contest the claim that King Agaja's older sister Queen Hangbe was the ruler to establish the units, some even going so far as to question whether or not Queen Hangbe actually existed.

From the time of King Ghezo (ruling from 1818 to 1858), Dahomey became increasingly militaristic. Ghezo placed great importance on the army, increasing its budget and formalizing its structure from ceremonial to a serious military. While European narratives refer to the women soldiers as "Amazons", they called themselves ahosi (king's wives) or Mino (our mothers).

In 1864, Captain Sir Richard F. Burton documented over two thousand tribeswomen serving as warriors and reported how two-thirds of them were maidens with passions and love between each other. He also mentioned “a corps of prostitutes” kept for the Amazons’ use. Several years earlier, in 1850, English naval officer Frederick Forbes wrote down his own observations: “The Amazons are not supposed to marry, and, by their own statement, they have changed their sex. ‘We are men,’ they say, ‘not women.’ All dress alike, diet alike, and male and female emulate each other: what the males do, the Amazons will endeavour to surpass.”

Veterans at the annual meeting in Abomey in 1908