As I have had occasion to remark before, African women lack the finer
feminine qualities, both bodily and mental, wherefore even if an
African man were able to feel sentimental love he could not find an
object to bestow it on. An incident related by Du Chaillu (_Ashango
Land_, 187) illustrates the martial side of African femininity. A
married man named Mayolo had called another man's wife toward him. His
own wife, hearing of this, got jealous, told him the other must be his
sweetheart, and rushed out to seek her rival. A battle ensued:
"Women's fights in this country always begin by their
throwing off their _dengui_--that is, stripping
themselves entirely naked. The challenger having thus
denuded herself, her enemy showed pluck and answered
the challenge by promptly doing the same; so that the
two elegant figures immediately went at it literally
tooth and nail, for they fought like cats, and between
the rounds reviled each other in language the most
filthy that could possibly be uttered. Mayolo being
asleep in his house, and no one seeming ready to
interfere, I went myself and separated the two furies."
In Dahomey, as everybody knows, the bellicose possibilities of the
African woman have been utilized in forming bands of Amazons which are
described as "the flower of the army." They are made up of female
captives and other women, wear special uniforms, and in battle are
credited with even greater ferocity than the men. These women are
Amazons not of their own accord but by order of the king. But in other
parts of Africa there is reason to believe that bands of
self-constituted female warriors have existed at various times.
Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the time of Julius Caesar, says that on
the western coast of Libya (Africa) there used to live a people
governed by women, who carried on wars and the government, the men
being obliged to do domestic work and take care of the children. In
our time Livingstone found in the villages of the Bechuanas and Banyas
that men were often badly treated by the women, and the eminent German
anthropologist Bastian says(_S.S._, 178) that in "the Soudan the power
of the women banded together for mutual protection is so great that
men are often put under ban and obliged to emigrate." Mungo Park
described the curious bugaboo(_mumbo-jumbo_)by means of which the
Mandingo negroes used to keep their rebellious women in subjection.
According to Bastian, associations for keeping women in subjection are
common among men along the whole African West Coast. The women, too,
have their associations, and at their meetings compare notes on the
meanness and cruelty of their husbands. Now it is easy to conceive
that among tribes where many of the men have been killed off in wars
the women, being in a great majority, may, for a time at least, turn
the tables on the men, assume their weapons and make them realize how
it feels to be the "inferior sex." For this reason Bastian sees no
occasion to share the modern disposition to regard all the Amazon
legends as myths.