By Monsuru Islamiyat Olaseni.

For nearly two centuries, the Kingdom of Dahomey did what no other kingdom on record had done: it built and sustained a standing army made entirely of women. Trained from girlhood, bound by an oath that death was preferable to capture, and organised into regiments sharper than most professional armies of their era, these warriors were the backbone of one of West Africa’s most formidable military powers. Then French colonial troops met them on the battlefield, and left with a confession most colonial accounts later tried to bury: it was never the men of Dahomey they feared. It was the women. The world would eventually borrow a name for them from Greek myth. Their own people had a better one: Agojie, or mino, “our mothers.”

Born Out of Necessity, Forged Into Legend

Historians still debate exactly when the Agojie began, but most trace their origins to the 17th or 18th century. One account credits King Houegbadja, who ruled Dahomey in the mid-to-late 1600s and is said to have kept a core of women elephant hunters, an early sign that women in Dahomey were already trained, armed, and formidable. A more widely told origin story centres on Queen Hangbe, who is said to have taken the throne after her brother’s death and built a militia of women willing to give their lives for the kingdom.

Why an all-female army emerged at all is still debated among historians. The leading theories point to the kingdom’s constant warfare thinning the ranks of male soldiers, the pressures of the transatlantic slave trade, and a striking palace rule: men were forbidden from entering the king’s palace after dark, partly as a safeguard against coups. Women filled that vacuum, and did so decisively.

Built for War

By the 1840s, the Agojie numbered around 6,000 strong, organised into specialised regiments: the Gbeto, elite huntresses; the Gulohento, riflewomen; the Nyekplohento, reapers wielding straight razors; the Gohento, archers; and the Agbalya, artillery gunners. Each division trained with a specific purpose, and together they formed one of the most disciplined fighting forces in West Africa.

Their reputation for bravery was recorded even by the European observers who feared them most. Missionaries and colonial officers alike described the Agojie and the wider Dahomean army as a relentless force, “always at war and generally victorious.” When the Agojie moved against a village, surprise was everything. They struck at dawn or under cover of darkness, and few who stood against them walked away unchallenged.

A History That Deserves Honesty

Any account of the Agojie that leaves out their role in Dahomey’s slave-raiding economy isn’t telling the whole story. Dahomey was, by multiple historical accounts, one of the West African kingdoms most deeply engaged in warfare and the slave trade of its era, and the Agojie took captives as part of that system. Recognising this doesn’t diminish their military skill or discipline. It’s simply the fuller, more honest picture of the world they operated in, and it’s worth remembering as we celebrate their strength.

The Last Stand and the Long Shadow

The Agojie fought their final battles against French colonial forces in the 1890s, during the Franco-Dahomean Wars, before Dahomey was absorbed into French West Africa. Even in defeat, their reputation only grew. French soldiers who survived engagements with them carried home accounts of an army that fought with a ferocity they hadn’t expected and couldn’t easily forget.

Their legacy has outlived the kingdom itself. The Agojie inspired the fictional Dora Milaje of Marvel’s Black Panther, and their story reached global audiences again through the 2022 film The Woman King. Beyond the pop culture references, though, the historical fact remains striking on its own: the world’s only documented standing all-female army wasn’t a myth borrowed from Greek legend. It was African, it was real, and its name was never Amazon to begin with. It was Agojie—our mothers.

Sources: I.A. Akinjogbin, “Dahomey and Its Neighbours, 1708-1818”, History Departmental Library, University of Ibadan; Smithsonian Magazine, Britannica, Study.com, HowStuffWorks