All the Amazons were ex-officio royal wives, and the first person who made the king a father was one of his soldieresses. It was high treason to touch them even accidentally; they lodged in the palace, and when they went abroad all men, even strangers, had to clear off the road. Gelele often made his visitors honorary commandants of his guard of Amazons (I was made one); but this did not entitle them to inspect companies.
Such a régime makes the Amazons, as might be expected, intolerably fierce. Their sole object in life is blood-spilling and head-snatching. They pride themselves upon not being men, and with reason. The soldiers blink and shrink when they fire their guns; the soldieresses do not. The men run away; the women fight to the bitter end. In the last
attack on the city of Abokuta (March 15th, 1864) several of the Amazons of my own regiment scaled the walls; their brethren-in-arms hardly attempted the feat.
Dahomé thus presented the anomaly of an African kingdom in which women took precedence of men. Hence every employé of Government had to choose a “mother”—that is to say, some elderly Amazon officer who would look after his interests at headquarters. Often he had two, an “old mother,” dating from the days of the late king, and a “young mother,” belonging to the actual reign. He had to pay them well, or his affairs were inevitably bad. Thus there was also a Brazilian, an English, and a French “mother”; and visitors of those nations were expected to propitiate their fond and unpleasant parents with presents of cloth, jewelry, perfumes, and so forth.
The levée ended with a kind of parade. A few simple manœuvres and many furious decapitation dances were performed by a select company of the young Amazons. They were decently dressed in long sleeveless waistcoats, petticoats of various coloured cottons, secured at the waist by a sash and extending to the ankles, whilst narrow fillets of ribbon secured their hair and denoted their corps. Their arms were muskets and short swords, and all had belts, bullet bags, and cartridge boxes.
When the sun set a bottle of rum was sent to us. At this hint we rose and prepared to retire. Gelele again descended from his seat and accompanied
us to the gate, preceded by a buzzing swarm of courtiers, who smoothed every inch of ground for the royal foot. He finally shook hands with us, and promised to meet us in a few days at Agbomé, the capital.
We lost no time in setting out for Agbomé, and were surprised to find an excellent carriage road, broad and smooth, between the two cities. Agbomé had no hotels, but we managed lodgings at the house of the bukono, a high officer who was doctor and wizard to the Court and curator of strangers, whom he fleeced pitilessly.
I will now touch briefly on the ill-famed “customs” of Dahomé. The word is taken from the Portuguese costume, and here means the royal sacrifices. Many travellers have witnessed them, but no one has attempted to inquire into their origin. I attribute these murderous customs not to love of bloodshed, but simply to filial piety.
The Dahoman, like the ancient Egyptian, holds this world to be his temporary lodging. His own home is Ku-to-men, or Deadman’s Land. It is not a place of rewards and punishments, but a Hades for ghosts, a region of shades, where the king will rule for ever and where the slave will always serve. The idea is ever present to the popular mind. When, for instance, sunshine accompanies rain the Dahoman says the spirits are marketing. In Brazil the fox is marrying; in England the devil is beating his wife.