A short distance from the Marina Palace in Cotonou City stands a 30-metre-high monument called the Benin Amazone. It was unveiled this month and shows how proud this small West African country is of its history, which is slowly emerging from the ruins of colonial injustice and rewriting of history.
The small country in west Africa was once the centre of a powerful regional kingdom called the Kingdom of Dohamey. The country is becoming more and more eager to honour its historical heroes and heritage.
The statue, by a Chinese sculptor, Li Xiangqun, represents an Agoodie or Minon, a term that refers to members of a regional military corps entirely composed of women. Both admired and feared for their bravery, the Agoodie participated in most of the military campaigns the Dahome (or, ‘Danxome’) Kingdom waged against its enemies for nearly 200 years.
From modest beginnings as King Wegbaja‘s elephant hunters in the late 1600s, the women’s corp grew under Wegbaja’s son Agaja and were key to King Gezo‘s territorial expansion in the 1850s, when the kingdom expanded across most of what is today Nigeria. The group grew to about 6,000 people and was known for being fierce and cruel.
They were called the “Amazones du Dehomey” by the French colonial forces.