Name of Birth: Yaa Asantewaa
Place of Birth: Ejisu-Juaben Municipal District, Ghana
Date of Birth: date
unknown, 1840
Place of Death: Seychelles, East Africa’s
coast
Date of Death: October 17, 1921
Described as “African Joan D’Arc”,
Yaa Asantewaa was Queen Mother of the region of Edweso, part of the ancient
kingdom of Ashanti and part of modern Ghana. She was the sister of Kwasi
Afrane Panin, who became chief of Edweso when Yaa was really young. Near
them was the Golden Coast, a place where the british campaigned against the
Ashanti Empire by taxing, converting and taking control of parts of the tribe’s
territory, including many goldmines.
Prior to European colonization, the Ashanti people
developed an influential West African empire. Asantewaa was the Gatekeeper
of the "Golden Stool" (Sika 'dwa) during this powerful Ashanti
Confederacy (Asanteman), an independent federation of Asanti tribal
families that ruled from 1701 to 1896.
When the Ashanti started to resist the British domination,
they decided to take possession of the Golden Stool, a kind of sacred throne
for the Ashanti and symbol of their independence. In order to get it, the
British captain C.H. Armitage was sent to intimidate the population. The
Captain went from village to village beating children and adults, in the hopes
of getting the throne. In 1896, Asantehene (King)
Prempeh I of the Asanteman federation was captured and exiled to the
Seychelles islands by the British who had come to call the area the
British "Gold Coast." Asantewaa's brother was said to be among the
men exiled with Prempeh I, deported because of his opposition to British rule
in West Africa.
In 1900, British colonial governor Frederick
Hodgson called a meeting in the city of Kumasi of the Ashantehene local rulers.
At the meeting, Hodgson stated that King Prempeh I would continue to
suffer an exile from his native land and that the Ashanti people were to
surrender to the British their historical, ancestral Golden Stool - a dynastic
symbol of the Ashanti empire. In fact, power was transferred to each Asantahene
by a ceremonial crowning that involved the sacred Golden Stool. The
colonial governor demanded that it be surrendered to allow Hodgson to
sit on the Sika 'dwa as a symbol of British power.
Yaa was the only women present and the one in possession
of the stool. Seeing that her comrades pretended to surrender to the British’s
demands, she rose and said a passionate speech for the Ashantehenes,
saying that she refused to surrender to them, and that if they would, she would
call upon her fellow women and fight until the last one of them fell.
This speech unleashed the Yaa Asantewaa Independence
war, that started on that same day. As leader of the revolution, she gathered a
personal army of about 5.000 soldiers. During three months, she was able to siege
the British fortress in Kumasi. After suffering in the first combat, reinforcements
from Nigeria were brought to Ghana to deal with the troublesome Yaa. Finally,
in March 3rd of 1901 the Queen Mother was arrested and sent to exile
in the Seychelles, an
archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean off East Africa, where
she stayed until her death, at the age of 90.
Although arrested, her bravery stirred a kingdom-wide movement for
the return of Prempeh I and for independence.
Today, Ashanti is an administrative region in central
Ghana where most of the inhabitants are Ashanti people who speak Twi, an Akan
language group, similar to Fante. In 1935 the Golden Stool was used in the
ceremony to crown Osei Tutu Agyeman Prempeh II (ruled 1935-1970). Independence
from the British colonialist was secured in 1957. On August 3, 2000,
a museum was dedicated to Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa at
Kwaso in the Ejisu-Juaben District of Ghana.
“I must say this, if you the men of
Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon
my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight till the last of us
falls in the battlefields."
-- Queen Mother Nana Yaa
Asantewa
Sources:
http://www.blackhistoryheroes.com/2010/05/queen-mother-nana-yaa-asantewaa.html;
http://hypescience.com/lideres-femininas/
