March 30, 2011 • 42 mins
Amazons are a well-known element of mythology, but are there any historical figures that could be considered real-life Amazons? Listen in as Deblina and Sarah traverse the globe to find five examples of historical Amazons.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blamey Chuck reboarding and I'm fair daddy. And
if you know the myth of the Amazon women, that
race of women warriors, it's probably in connection with Hercules labors.
(00:24):
In his ninth labor, the famous strong man is ordered
to bring back the girdle of Hipolita, the queen of
the Amazons. Yeah, and even Hercules knows that he's not
going to be able to handle the women alone, and
so he brings friends along his back up for his mission,
and it's lucky for him he does. But that's a
(00:45):
pretty serious reputation. I mean, I know it's a legend,
but still it's a serious reputation. And it makes sense though,
considering that in Greek myth, the Amazons were also believed
to be descended from Aries, the god of war. I
think Aries even gave Hipolita that stolen girdle. But there
are a lot of stories about where this race of
(01:06):
women came from, and most of them have the women
living in what is today Turkey Um. But probably they're
more famous for the stories about their their fighting and
the things they would do to themselves and the things
they do as a as a group. Yeah, that's absolutely true.
I think that everyone thinks of them as a force
(01:27):
to be reckoned with. And their name actually indicates that.
I think their name came from a Greek word that
means breastless, since legend had them cutting off or burning
their right breasts and youth so that they could handle
a bow easier. Pretty extreme length to go to just
to be able to use a weapon. But and the
bow wasn't the only weapon they used. They also carried
swords and double sided axes. Yeah, and to ensure a
(01:51):
constant supply of new warriors, because they were, of course
and all women group, they'd couple up with nearby men
or or may old prisoners and raise the girl babies
as amazons and either kill or name the boys or
raise them as servants or return them to their father's
probably the best course there um. But of course, the
(02:13):
Amazon women of Greek legend or mythical, even if there
may have been some female fighters who existed, but fortunately
the ladies of our podcasts are not mythical. They did
very much exist, and we're gonna be talking about several
of them today from around the world, and some of
them may be ones that you suggested or told us about.
(02:35):
We have mentioned this on previous podcasts, the possibility of
doing this list, and so we've been excited about it
for a while and solicited some some nominations on Facebook
kind of are like big blowout for Women's History Month,
are big celebration um even though we should we should
mention before we start, we don't wish to glamorize violence. No,
(02:57):
we're going to talk about some really tough, cool ladies
who did some kind of violent, sometimes terrible, sometimes really
not so great things, and so definitely no, we're not
condoning this behavior. We're just celebrating women and looking a
little more into the history of some of these women
that a lot of there's not really a lot of
(03:18):
definitive information out there about some of them, so we
had to dig dig some up. Yeah, but we're going
to start off in Japan with a lady who's probably
one of the few true female famirai in Japanese histories
and at the very least one of the most famous
yes um and her name is Nicana ta Keiko. Her
most well known warrior encounter took place during Japan's Boshing
(03:41):
Civil War in eighteen sixty eight. Now, during this period,
Japan was engulfed in battles between supporters of the old
Tokugawa showgun regime, which was the military style government, and
the newly established imperial government. And I think we're all
pretty familiar with the idea of samurai, right, Yeah, Katy
and I even did an episode on Samurai and the
(04:04):
Rhone and if you want to go refresh your memories
a little bit. Yeah, it was the warrior class up
to this point, and most of the time we see
them depicted as men. But author Diana E. Wright, who
wrote about female combatants of this time for the journal
War in History, she says that women of the warrior
class and Ezoo, which is the domain that Nicana was from,
we're actually expected to learn some hand to hand combat
(04:26):
skills themselves. They at least had to know the basics,
and this was to quote, protect their awards and prevent
their families from being dishonored. So they weren't just weak
women hiding in the household every time someone a threat came. Yeah,
but Nicana took it a step beyond that. She definitely
got a little bit more than the basic. She was
born in eighteen forty seven and she was adopted out
(04:48):
to Aka Yoka Ayana Suke, who was a master of
martial arts and calligraphy too, and he taught halberd skills
to the Lady of the Domain, who was the lord
of the the main adopted sister kind of the chief
noble woman in the in the area, and he also
trained Kano and twenty other girls in combat technique. So, um,
(05:10):
just to give you an idea about what the halberd
is too, Like, this is serious combat techniques. Halberd is
a long staff with I think an axe head attached
to it, So you had to be very strong and
very agile to to manage it. Yeah, and you definitely
wouldn't want to see one of these coming at you,
So if you were fighting with one, you met business.
(05:31):
And these skills that these girls were using really came
in handy around the time that we're talking about when
Imperial forces invaded Aizu in late fall eighteen sixty eight.
So by October eighth, the situation had gotten so bad
for Warrior family members that the official watchbell sounded and
this prompted women of the warrior class to do one
of a few things. One was mass suicide. They didn't
(05:54):
want to be taken alive. They didn't want to fight,
so they decided to kill themselves rather than face this
terrible fate. Or they could decide to do that right,
they could make the decision themselves. The other option was
withdrawing within Crane Castle, which was pretty fortified castle, and
they could help out with the defense there, so they
could help defend their community. But what Nicano did was
(06:17):
the last option, which was to take part in direct combat.
So she became part of what was known as the
Joe She Gun, which was an ad hoc volunteer platoon
organized by women of warrior families and had about twenty
to thirty women. This is what historians think, and Nicano's
mom was the leader, but Wright says that Nicano Takeiko
was actually the driving force of the group. And these
(06:39):
women all sort of they dressed in men's clothing, they
cut their hair so they had the appearance of young men. Yeah,
And so this group of women heard that the lady
of the domain Tero he May, had been taken to
a post station to the northwest of Aizu. So they
decided they were going to go rescue her, go to
her aid, and once they were there they got there
(07:00):
later that same night, they asked permission from the commander
of the grade that was there if they could join
his of course, all male forces. He refused though, He
said that, well, you women are of course well equipped,
and you're impressive looking, but you would embarrass this. Essentially,
(07:21):
if our enemy saw I EU women participating in combat,
they might take it as a sign of weakness. So
he refuses them. Yeah, they're kind of upset about this,
but they've learned that the lady of the domain is
probably back at the castle at this point, she's not
there at the post station, so they sort of agree
to hang out for a night. By the next day, though,
(07:41):
they are given audience with another commander at Takaku Post station,
and he also rejects them, although he's very impressed by
them as well, and he decides that they should go
back to Cranecastle and he sends them with another troop
of soldiers, but the commander of that troop, who was
actually charged with escorting them back to the castle, he says, okay, no,
(08:04):
you guys can be an actual unit. He designates the
women as a separate squad and Nicana ta Keiko as
the leader of that squad. So they're allowed to fight.
You kind of get to do it. Fortunes are changing,
and their chance to fight comes really soon. In fact,
it comes the next day on October tenth. Imperial forces
had positioned themselves at Yanangi Bridge, which was basically along
(08:26):
the road between the post station and the castle, the
road they were taking, and the Auzu troops came at
the Imperial forces from three sides, so they were mixed
with the men's group at this point, and um they
split up two men's divisions coming at the sides. The
women's squad was part of the one that attacked the
(08:46):
enemy head on. Yeah, there were some men mixed in
as well, but most of the women were. All of
the women in fact, were part of this group that
was taking him head on, and their goal was to
sort of strike suddenly and break through the enemy's forces
rather than trying to engage them in a long battle,
because they knew they probably didn't have great chances there
since the Imperial army had better weapons than they did,
(09:07):
and they just wanted to get back to the castle
to their destiny. They could actually defend it right, but
combat did devolve into hand to hand battle, and once
the Imperial army determined that they were fighting women, they
started to spread the word and try that they should
try to take the women alive. And that was, as
we mentioned, the one thing the women absolutely did not want.
(09:29):
This was for a lot of reasons. I think that
they just had no illusions about their fate if they
were to be captured, and they were afraid that they
would be sold to quote occidentals so told off to
the west somewhere, and they just didn't want that to happen.
They wanted to decide their own fate, so they charged
directly into the fire. Yeah, and many they performed pretty well.
(09:50):
I mean, of course it was it was brave to
make this direct charge, but they also took many imperial lives,
Nakano Takiko in particular, And we want to sort of
paint a sure for you of what Nicano looked like
in battle. Um she was described as having tied back hair, trousers,
and steely eyes, and she's supposedly radiated an intense male
(10:12):
spirit and engaged the enemy troops, killing five or six
with her hall bard Um, but she was eventually shot
through the chest at the height of that battle. Yeah,
her little sister Masuko had to sever her head with
the help of an Aisu soldier. So this was to
prevent it from becoming a trophy for the other side
(10:33):
and taken back to the other side. So they wrapped
it in a scarf and cremated it after the battle.
So gave her a little bit of honor later. And
I think to Billian and I have been kind of
horrified by this image for most of the day. Yes,
I think Mosco was about sixteen years old at this time,
so having to cut off her older sister's head, that
she saw this as her duty, you know, to preserve
(10:55):
her family's honor. Yeah, so another Amazon woman in the making,
and I ius that brings us to the next entry
on our list. We're gonna change continents entirely and talk
about one of the famous female pirates of all time,
Grace O'Malley. Yeah. We talked about another pirate lady a
few weeks ago in another podcast, Chungy Sou, and this one,
(11:17):
Grace O'Malley, is actually known to many as the pirate
Queen of Ireland. So kind of has her own little nickname.
She's also known. Sometimes you might see her named as Granya,
her Irish name. Either way, Grace O'Malley was born around
fifteen thirty. Her father was chieftain of the O'Malley clan,
so around this time there really wasn't a central government. Instead,
(11:38):
there were about sixty clans which were ruled individually by
chieftains and they, as you might guess, they settled most
disagreements at that time over land or whatever it was,
through clan warfare. Contentious time, so the O'Malley clan controlled
a large part of the western coast of Ireland and
they owned a large fleet of ships, and initially they
(11:59):
had a legit it living going on. They traded with
other countries and um you know, made made money in
an honest way. But eventually merchants in Galway banned clans
who lived outside the city from trading there, so they
were out of money and out of work. So to compensate,
the O'Malley started to charge a toll to all the
(12:21):
ships that entered a bay that was one of the
popular routes to Galway. So if you couldn't pay the toll,
too bad for you. Your ship would get plundered, so
it's it's non negotiable. Um. And Grace O'Malley was obviously
interested in joining this family business. Yeah, But at first
her dad, as many dads would, he refused and maybe
(12:43):
jokingly said to her, no, your long hair is gonna
get tangled in the ship's ropes. So she cut her
hair off, and that's how she became known by probably
her most famous nickname, Grace the Bald. After that, her
dad gave in and let her join his little pirate
team that he had going. Yeah, and she proved a
very able pirate of sorts. She could read currents and
(13:06):
tides and the weather. She was good on on board
the ship. She could manage the sales and anchors and navigate,
and she was She was good at the pirate work too.
She could raid cargo and helped defend her clan shoes.
So she proved to be a very able member of
the O'Malley clan. She did, however, give it up briefly, right.
(13:27):
She gave it up when she married Donald O'Flaherty, who
was chieftain of the Aflarerty clan, and she married him
in fifteen forty six and became a mother to three
of his children. Oh Flaherty was an interesting character in himself.
He was his clan was enemies with another clan called
the Joyce clan, and they gave him the nickname Donald
(13:47):
the Cock, and his castle therefore was known as Cox Castle.
So after Donald dies in fifteen sixty while battling the
Joyce clan, the Joyces immediately tried to overpower, but she
surprised them by fighting back. She successfully defends her property
with the help of her followers, and just an example
(14:07):
of the ingenuity she uses in her battling, she had
her men dismantle the castle towers, lead roof melted down
and pour it on her attackers. It's pretty scary. Yeah again,
don't try this at home. And the castle then became
known as Hen's Castle, So definitely a shift and who's
in charge here, right, letting everybody know. So the Auflorities
(14:30):
were definitely impressed by Gray successfully defending the castle, and
she really proved by doing so that she could fight
not only at sea but on land as well, and
by the fifteen seventies she was directing a fourth of
hundreds of men in both types of battles, so it
was her full time business by this point. Yeah, and
when her father died it became even bigger. She inherited
(14:52):
his fleet and for a while was the O'Malley clan's
new chieftain too. But she also participated in some political
coal stuff as well. She fought the English Tutor dynasty's
encroachment into Ireland, which ended up being kind of her downfall.
She was arrested on multiple occasions and her fleets were raided.
She eventually petitioned Queen Elizabeth the First directly for some support,
(15:15):
which she received, but her business was closely monitored after that,
and she ended up dying impoverished in her early seventies. Yeah.
But interestingly, that relationship with Queen Elizabeth is why we
know so much about Grace today, because the Queen got
Grace to fill out a document called eighteen Articles of
Interrogatory and she had to answer all these questions about
(15:37):
her marriages or children or properties, and um put it
all down on paper. And that's why we know so
much about Grace the Ball today. Fortunately. Yeah, thanks Queen Elizabeth.
The next group of women were going to talk about
didn't have a very clear cut survey like that for
us to go off of. Did they Sarah, Yeah, Because
the other entries on the life so far have been
(15:59):
individual women who took up arms for personal reasons. This
group of women, they were actually an army, so we're
gonna treat them as such and not focus on any
specific people. Um, they were an army though they weren't
a last resort. They weren't these accidental warriors. They were chosen,
and they were trained, and they were deployed as any
(16:20):
army would be. So they're really kind of a standalone
group for this podcast. So the Domey Kingdom in West
Africa needed highly trained warriors for for many reasons. Everybody
needs a group of highly trained warriors, I guess, but
in part it was because of its own actions. The
king would launch annual raids, slave raids on nearby areas
(16:42):
and by the captured prisoners and sell them to European
slave traders. So obviously that didn't win many neighborhood friends. No,
not at all. But the women, actually the warrior women,
they weren't originally set up to defend the kingdom. They
were originally formed as a group of elephant huntresses. Actually,
WHI is a surprise. Yeah, and they were trained as
(17:03):
royal guards and warriors after that. Yeah. So the women
were drafted from non Dahomian slaves and therefore they were
considered very reliable and trustworthy because they didn't have tribal
connections and families like the men the male recruits might,
so they were you could you could rely on your
(17:24):
your Dahomian women force. But by eighteen fifty a king
named Gizo shook up this process of selecting the troops
a little bit and he made it kind of a draft.
Almost every three years, families would present their daughters to
a royal board and the prettiest of the young women
(17:44):
would enter the harem and the strongest would enter the service.
And some were actually not selected this way that, but
they were turned over by their husbands for being unruly
or something that if the husbands couldn't handle them, they
would perhaps recommend them to the king or more likely
complain about them to the king, and the king would
(18:06):
take them into the elite fighting group. Really puts a
different spin on marital relations with that. But by the
eighteen eighties, the Dahomie women became a political power as well,
since their officers were noble women. Yeah, so we're gonna
talk a little bit about life as one of these
dahomie women. It was a major step up from from
(18:27):
the average life of a woman in the kingdom. Um,
they got a lot more privileges on a lot more respect,
but they were sworn to celibacy. An interesting point there.
If they were exceptionally brave, they might be able to
make a match marry a nobleman after they retired, essentially,
so you could there was a lot of social rising
(18:50):
potentially if you were an exceptional warrior and they trained rigorously.
Eventually they fought alongside the Royal Guard as the kingdom
standing army, so on, with the men too, and there
were about four thousand, five hundred men and women together. Yeah,
and it eventually got to be even more than that.
They were also notorious for their violence. They were known
(19:10):
to torture and mutilate people who they had killed and um.
They were also well known for their marksmanship. By the
eighteen forties, according to an article by Jeffrey Skelton in
Military History, they could load and fire a flint lock
musket in thirty seconds, while their their male counterparts were
said to take fifty seconds. There's some agility going on there,
(19:33):
I guess, yeah, agility and some fashion too. They cut
quite a figure. I would say. They wore white with
blue crocodile badges on their hats, which when I saw
a photo of the Sarah sent me an image of it,
and I think it looked like bows initially, so I
was surprised to find out that they were crandodile badges.
We should mention the picture I sent to Blina was
(19:54):
an engraving of a woman actually holding a decapitated head. Too.
Into Blina, I think you said, if she's wearing a
little blue bow on her head, that makes this image
so much more disturbing. Definitely, um, but now you know
it was a crocodile badge. Now I know, now it's
a little more fitting. Maybe I don't know, you decide,
(20:15):
but there was a little style change. If they were
elephant hunters. Also, they got to wear antelope porns. The
whole head dress made out of antelope porns, so that
would have been scary too, I would say so, but
in one with this going to give you a good
idea of what they looked like. They were described in
three months in captivity into homie like this. There they
(20:35):
are four thousand warriors, the four thousand black virgins of Dahomie,
the monarch's bodyguard, motionless in their war garments, with gun
and knife in hand, ready to leap forward at the
master's signal. Old or young, ugly or beautiful, they are
wonderful to look at. They're as well built as the
male warriors, and their attitude is just as disciplined and correct,
(20:57):
lined up as though against a rope. Yeah, with a
description like that, it's no wonder that they became known
as amazons. And it was actually the French who took
to calling them amazon's originally, right, yes, Yeah, And it
was the French who kind of got schooled by them.
Right In two, when the colonial forces fought up to
four thousand Amazons in the jungle, several fights took place,
one in which these Amazons supposedly had been driven into
(21:20):
a frenzy by English Jigin of all things, and would
continue to fight even after being bayonetted with their hands, feet,
and teeth. Yeah, so they just didn't quit, and ultimately
the French prevailed and took to Homei, which is today
part of benin Um but the Amazon troops they were disbanded.
They didn't totally go away though, obviously their troops disbanded,
(21:44):
But the women themselves are still around. And I found
postcards from long after the fact, I mean as late
as the nineteen twenties of pictures of the women, you know,
obviously middle aged by this point, but also still kind
of scared are you looking and tough to posing. And
I think they visited Europe at one point to show
(22:06):
off their fighting skills with with some of the male
warriors as well. So a very strange and i'd say
for this group of elite fighting women who existed for centuries. Yeah,
sort of becoming a novelty. Conveniently, our next subject also
did become somewhat of a novelty herself later in life,
(22:28):
maybe not through postcards, not through postcards, but that was
long after a very adventurous, very impressive military career. Yes,
our next subject is Catalina di aerro Uso, who is
also known as the Lieutenant Nun, and she has been
frequently requested by listeners. I think we've gotten at least
two or three requests just in the past couple of
(22:50):
months when I've been working on the podcast, and one
recently that was a very interesting It was from a
listener named Marcia in California, and she suggested, actually she
begged us to do a podcast on this topic and
said that she would make a deal with us, right, Sarah,
she did. It was an offer we couldn't refuse. Yeah,
she said that she would UM, as a professor in California,
(23:12):
she would have her students do a podcast style research project. Yeah,
in exchange for us doing a podcast on Catawina. So
here you go. I hope it. I hope it still
counts even though she's part of a list. Even though
she's part of a list, will still cover a lot
of details about her and UM, hopefully your students will
thank us. Hopefully they'll have fun with their project. So
(23:33):
to go ahead and get into her life. She was
born in San Sebastian and Northern Spain on February tent
and right off the bat, we have sort of a
questionable date there because in her autobiography I think she
lists a different year. She lists fifteen eighty five, but
fifte two is the recorded year of her baptism. So
right away we can see that some of the details
(23:53):
throughout this are going to be kind of sketchy conundrum,
keep it in mind. So some say her family was
middle class. Others say that her family was pretty wealthy,
which is probably more accurately the case, which we'll see
later on, but either way, Catalina ended up in a
Dominican convent at about age four, along with three of
her sisters. Yeah, and her four brothers, on the other hand,
(24:14):
headed off to join the Spanish military in the America's
but you could tell pretty early on that Catalina would
have rather been doing what her brothers were doing and
going off to the America's. She supposedly wanted to quote
travel and see the world, so she escaped from the
convent around sixteen o three, And again, that date sounds
a little weird depending on when you calculate her birth
(24:35):
from that just assumed she was around fifteen years old
at the time she cut her hair. She made these
mannish looking clothes for herself, um cutting up a blue
skirt in order to create a pair of breeches. Another
example of cross dressing. I know, it keeps them coming
up in the in the episodes recently, but she apparently
(24:56):
passed off pretty well when she had her new pants. Yeah,
she was really effective after she made these changes in
passing as a man. And I think we should stop
right here to reflect on the fact that this makes
her maybe a little different from some of the other
women on this list and some of the other women
we've talked about recently, in that she lived her life
which we're going to discuss in a in a minute,
(25:18):
as a man. So, yeah, she wasn't dealing with some
of the adversities. For instance, Nicano was dealing with men
not wanting to fight with her because hey, they just
thought she was another guy. Yeah, And I mean I
think that that was so even to the point that
when you read about her nowadays and you're talking about
her years as a man, many people will use a
(25:39):
male personal pronoun to describe her. But you'll notice that
we keep using she a lot throughout this podcast, just
because we tried to keep it consistent. But just a
little explanation for that. So she's passing as a man.
She stays in Spain for more than about three years
after that, wandering around serving a variety of masters, just
doing jobs here and there. Then she sets out for
(26:00):
the America's where she travels around a bit eventually heads
to Peru, where she joins the Spanish military, so helping
the Spanish crown and its efforts to colonize the America's
and she did that for about fifteen years. And she's
changed her name at this point too. Yep, she is
Antonio Romerez de Gusman, a brave soldier in the colonial army.
(26:21):
That's how she's known. It was a battle in Chili, though,
fighting the Aricano Indians, in which Catalina, then known as Antonio,
was promoted to lieutenant. She risks her life in this
battle to recover a royal flag, and she describes going
after it right into the enemy mob along with two
other soldiers who were on her side, and they were
(26:42):
killed in the process. She herself took three arrows and
a spear, but still survived to be promoted. Yeah, and
even after that military glory, though, she wasn't made permanent
commander of the company because she hung an Aracano chief
when she was supposed to take him alive. And so
that brings us to another side of Catalina. She was
(27:04):
a bloodthirsty conquistador, and I mean conquistadors already have a
reputation for that she was a gambler, she had a
quick temper. Uh she took part in a lot of duels,
and sometimes she killed her opponents in them. Sometimes she
ended up in prison, and she would always find a
way out, always found a way to escape punishment. And
(27:25):
one of her strategies, strangely enough, was to hide in churches.
Kind of a throwback to her time in the Constant right,
maybe she knew the INDs analysis on one of those
occasions is when she confessed her biological sex. Though she
confessed to a friar, who then told the bishop in
the area, so the secret is out at this point.
(27:48):
After that, she spends a couple of years in a
convent at Lima, where she has to start wearing female
attire again, until finally she's sent back to Spain in
sixty four for an audience with Philip the Fourth, and
he actually rewards her for her many years of service
with a pension and the right to continue wearing mail attire.
So she kind of pleads her case to him both
(28:09):
from a far and in person, and he he agrees
that she deserves this. Then she goes to see the
Pope and he also says that she can keep dressing
like a man, which is so bizarre. I don't usually
imagine the pope being okay with that. Well, she did
remain a virgin and all. I mean, and apparently that
was kind of crucial, wasn't it. That was something that
(28:31):
made it legitimate that she had been dressing like a
man and fighting alongside men for for so long. Yeah.
I think that we were discussing it a little bit,
and a lot of people who cross dressed have been
thought of over the years as sexual deviance in a way,
But she proved that she wasn't. I think when she
was back in South American all of this first started
to come out, the bishop there actually had her examined
(28:54):
by a couple of nuns and she was found to
be a virgin. Yeah, And I mean it also didn't
hurt that she did have decent family connections, that perhaps
her family was well off. That was another point in
her favor for being allowed to continue, uh living a
life that was quite different from the standards at the time. Yeah.
And I think that is a point that she made
(29:15):
to the king also when she was kind of pleading
her her case. And and I think, as we mentioned
before about her becoming a novelty. That was an aspect
of it too. She wasn't really viewed as a man
or a woman. She was some kind of hybrid that
nobody knew of, and they were. She became very popular
in that respect. Nobles like to invite her places, and
(29:35):
she was well thought of at the time, or at
least interesting. Yeah, and she she runs with that. She
writes an autobiography between sixteen and sixteen thirty, knowing that
people wanted to hear her story, and in sixteen thirty
she also moved back to the Americas and died about
twenty years later in Mexico, having led a very impressive,
(29:57):
if very strange life. Yeah, she's an interesting character because
she was one who, you know, like we were talking
about at the beginning of the podcast, you definitely can't
say she was always a likable character, but she was
just a fascinating Yes. So our final entry for this
list is also a lady who who kind of rocks
(30:18):
on the one hand, and it's kind of terrifying and
murderous on the other hand. And she is one of
the most popularly requested topics, especially for this series of
women Warriors. I think somebody even wrote on Twitter recently,
when are you going to do a podcast on Boudica
(30:38):
surprise subject. So Boudica is Britain's original queen Victoria because
Boudica means victory and she's regarded as something of a
national hero. But the comparison between the two queens definitely
ends there. Boudhica is not starting wedding traditions or Christmas traditions, obviously,
(30:59):
she was out crucifying Romans instead, different kind of reputation entirely, yes,
I should say so. In her background is also pretty hazy,
but here is what we know. She was born around
and Celtic Britain to a royal family. She eventually married Purseudicus,
who was probably her cousin, who became king or the
(31:19):
elected chief of the I c n I tribe. So
Boudica's queen kind of and her husband is on okay
terms with Rome until that is Roman leadership betrays the
family and the tribe. But we're gonna go back a
little bit before that and give you the background on
what was going on with the Romans in Britain at
this time and even a hundred years before that's when
(31:41):
they had gotten there and Interestingly, the icn I Boudica's
tribe had been one of the first to welcome Caesar
in fifty five or b C. But that first stage
of Roman contact wasn't that bad. It was more about
establishing trade and it proved to be quite profitable for
some of the tribes that participated of Caesar left and
(32:04):
stead of the Roman military, and it wasn't colonized rule
or anything like that. But things changed in forty one
a d. When our old friend Emperor Claudius, who he's
another one who always pops up in random episodes, he
decided that Britannia would make a really nice addition to
(32:25):
his empire. And he was he was especially thinking this
because he had something to prove, you know, he he
needed to make his name in getting Britannia as a
colony would be a really good way to do it. Yeah,
and it seems like he's going to get that fairly smoothly.
In the beginning, the Romans invade any icn I, along
with ten other British tribes offer their formal submission to him. Yeah,
(32:48):
and they're probably thinking, well, maybe it'll be like last time,
and will submit, will establish trade relations and the Romans
will go back home. Not so much. No, that's not
all that happens this time. The Romans don't leave. They
stay and they set up fortresses. They also installed a
governor and they ordered the Brits to surrender their weapons,
(33:09):
which is the first big thing. Yeah, the Ice and
I are not okay with this at all. They rebel
at this point. They're defeated and Presidicus Boudica's husband is
installed as their new king. So so he had not
been the ruler up until this point. This is why
we said early on that Presidicus Boudica and Rome had
(33:30):
an okay relationship with each other. He was essentially governing
as a client king. But things do not get better
for the British. Yeah. The governor establishes a colonial for
retired legionaries, which is just a hot dead for violence
and trouble. It's supposed to be a model Roman settlement,
but that is not the case. And of course it's
(33:51):
also eating up local land too. Yeah. And then the
new emperor Nero commission's attemple to his uncle Claudius and
has his financial off certain Britain call in debts issued
as grants, so just getting more money trouble the British. Yeah,
and in sixty one, the new governor of Britain, a
guy named Suetonius paulin Us, desmates this Druid stronghold at
(34:16):
the Isle of Mona, which is defended, Just to give
you an idea of what the Romans were up against.
Its defended by quote, black robed women with disheveled hair,
like furies brandishing torches and druids raising their hands to
heaven and screaming dreadful curses. Pretty scary stuff. But the
Romans end up winning, and after the victory they cut
(34:39):
down the island Sacred Grove, so a real slap in
the face to the Britons. But Budhica's beef starts after
all of this, and it's it's personal. Yeah, it starts
after her husband dies and leaves half of his estate
to the Emperor Nero and half to his daughters. And
you've said, Sarah that this mostly a symbolic thing, right,
(35:01):
I mean, he was. It was the last ditch kind
of effort for him. He knew he was a client king,
he ruled at the pleasure of Emperor Nero, but he
was hoping that by making this sort of goodwill gesture
he might be able to secure a little bit of
his fortune for his wife and his two daughters. It
does not work, though it completely backfire. No, the Roman
(35:25):
financial officer doesn't honor the will. His estate is seized
pseudocus his estate, that is, Boudica is flogged and her
daughters are raped. So Budica is pretty unhappy about the situation,
and she starts gathering other angry tribes, many of which
have been secretly hoarding weapons all the while. So before
we go any further, just to give you a little
(35:46):
description of Boudica. She is described much later in a
much later account as being very tall and grim in appearance,
with a piercing gaze and a harsh voice. She had
a mass of very fair hair which she grew down
to her hips, and wore a great gold torque and
multi colored tunic folded around her over which was a
thick cloak fastened with a broach. Yeah, so an imposing
(36:09):
figure and a note to ladies don't normally wear torqus,
which are giant gold necklaces, but Buddhica does so. The
first strike is Kemolodonum, which is the Roman capital in Britain,
and they don't just charge right in. They have people
on the inside, presumably Britain's who are who are living
(36:30):
and working there, who sort of set the stage by
wigging out the superstitious Romans. And they do that by
making the statue of Victory fall, so it looks like
it's been running out of the settlement and just gossiping too,
you know, talking about oh I saw a ruined phantom
settlement in the mouth of the Thames, and women acting
(36:52):
hysterically and talking about destruction and just getting everybody sort
of on edge before the attack comes, as if they
really needed to have that little intro pre scare going on.
Budica's army crushes the town, they destroyed the temple and
they kill everybody, and archaeological evidence even supports that this
destruction actually occurred. There are shards of the clay wall
(37:14):
that have been found that were essentially fired and hardened.
But he, I mean, it was a mud wall and
now it's like a pottery wall. That kind of blows
my mind. Um, but there are levels of ash everywhere.
Total destruction took place. So after that they took out
the infantry of the Ninth Legion, just sort of pretty
(37:35):
quickly the cavalry managed to escape, and from there they
moved on to lyndeni Um, which at this point was
only about fifteen years old and it was unwalled. The
Romans were feeling pretty cocky about it, I guess, and
Governor sweet Tonius, who has been off fighting those druids
in Mona, has just now returned and he realizes that
(37:57):
the town can't be defended, so he orders evacuated. A
lot of the women and the elderly stay behind, and
basically everyone who does stay behind is slaughtered by Boudica's
angry Britain's and this is what we meant before, but
we can't condone all the actions that are reported on
this podcast, because that's that's pretty bad. But from there
(38:20):
she just keeps going. Um. They move on to another
town which had close association with Rome, and once again
total destruction. They're punished for their association, but finally Sutnia
meets Boudica with and the twentie at least part of
the twentieth legion, and this time he chooses the ground
(38:42):
and invites the attack, and the Romans are severely outnumbered
ten thousand to Boudica's two hundred and thirty thousand, but
they are better trained and they have a little more
military expertise. This, after all, is not just coming into
unwalled Londinium and killing everyone. So Boudica's troops charge and
(39:04):
they are immediately showered with javelins. I feel like that
happens a lot in a lot of these battles. We
talk about. Showering of javelins never something you want to see.
The Brits chariots don't prove very useful because they're in
a very tight space, and their long swords aren't good either,
because they're fighting in close quarters. The Romans have much
(39:28):
shorter swords. They're easier to navigate in this cramped quarter.
And the other problem is when they moved to retreat
after they realized, oh no, we're in this, we're actually losing. Yeah,
they realize that they're blocked by their own wagons, which
they've brought along with them so their women folk could
watch the slaughter. And Boudica herself arrived in a chariot
(39:51):
with her two daughters. So this was really this wasn't
just a battle where all the men folk went off
to fight. It was kind of a family affair and
I guess they were. They were feeling pretty confident going
into it with such strong numbers, but in the end,
eighty thousand Brits die and only four hundred Romans. Boudica
(40:13):
manages to escape somehow. She dies of poison um potentially
poisoned herself soon afterwards, but she's given a lavish funeral,
She's treated as a hero and a queen, and all
of a sudden done. It seems like about seven thousand
Roman troops were killed during the course of the rebellion
and a remarkable seventy thousand civilians were killed in the city,
(40:38):
So pretty big damage from Budica. Yeah, and though the
rebellion was followed by heavy Roman suppression violence famine, Britain
eventually became one of the more orderly Roman colonies. So
no thanks to Buddica. She did not did not contribute
to that state of being. So I guess that ups
(41:00):
up our list of women warriors, And of course we've
done a few earlier episodes throughout them up on other
famous women fighters, and we hope you've enjoyed it. A
little treat for the month of March um if you
have any more. I mean, we're always maybe we'll take
a break for a while. Let peace prevailed. But um,
if you have more suggestions, definitely feel free to email
(41:23):
us at History podcast at how stuff works dot com
or to comment on Twitter where at missed in history
or on fadsbook Yeah. And you can also find us
on how stuff Works blog. Sarah and I blog every week,
and sometimes we blog about these podcast topics that you
may see a little more about women warriors there. Sometimes
we blog about history news if you don't think that's
(41:46):
too much of a paradox, but you can check them
out on our homepage by visiting www duck how stuff
works dot com For more on this and thousands of
other talks, fix visit how stuff works dot com to
learn more about the podcast. Click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
(42:08):
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes. M hmm.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blamey Chuck reboarding and I'm fair daddy. And
if you know the myth of the Amazon women, that
race of women warriors, it's probably in connection with Hercules labors.
(00:24):
In his ninth labor, the famous strong man is ordered
to bring back the girdle of Hipolita, the queen of
the Amazons. Yeah, and even Hercules knows that he's not
going to be able to handle the women alone, and
so he brings friends along his back up for his mission,
and it's lucky for him he does. But that's a
(00:45):
pretty serious reputation. I mean, I know it's a legend,
but still it's a serious reputation. And it makes sense though,
considering that in Greek myth, the Amazons were also believed
to be descended from Aries, the god of war. I
think Aries even gave Hipolita that stolen girdle. But there
are a lot of stories about where this race of
(01:06):
women came from, and most of them have the women
living in what is today Turkey Um. But probably they're
more famous for the stories about their their fighting and
the things they would do to themselves and the things
they do as a as a group. Yeah, that's absolutely true.
I think that everyone thinks of them as a force
(01:27):
to be reckoned with. And their name actually indicates that.
I think their name came from a Greek word that
means breastless, since legend had them cutting off or burning
their right breasts and youth so that they could handle
a bow easier. Pretty extreme length to go to just
to be able to use a weapon. But and the
bow wasn't the only weapon they used. They also carried
swords and double sided axes. Yeah, and to ensure a
(01:51):
constant supply of new warriors, because they were, of course
and all women group, they'd couple up with nearby men
or or may old prisoners and raise the girl babies
as amazons and either kill or name the boys or
raise them as servants or return them to their father's
probably the best course there um. But of course, the
(02:13):
Amazon women of Greek legend or mythical, even if there
may have been some female fighters who existed, but fortunately
the ladies of our podcasts are not mythical. They did
very much exist, and we're gonna be talking about several
of them today from around the world, and some of
them may be ones that you suggested or told us about.
(02:35):
We have mentioned this on previous podcasts, the possibility of
doing this list, and so we've been excited about it
for a while and solicited some some nominations on Facebook
kind of are like big blowout for Women's History Month,
are big celebration um even though we should we should
mention before we start, we don't wish to glamorize violence. No,
(02:57):
we're going to talk about some really tough, cool ladies
who did some kind of violent, sometimes terrible, sometimes really
not so great things, and so definitely no, we're not
condoning this behavior. We're just celebrating women and looking a
little more into the history of some of these women
that a lot of there's not really a lot of
(03:18):
definitive information out there about some of them, so we
had to dig dig some up. Yeah, but we're going
to start off in Japan with a lady who's probably
one of the few true female famirai in Japanese histories
and at the very least one of the most famous
yes um and her name is Nicana ta Keiko. Her
most well known warrior encounter took place during Japan's Boshing
(03:41):
Civil War in eighteen sixty eight. Now, during this period,
Japan was engulfed in battles between supporters of the old
Tokugawa showgun regime, which was the military style government, and
the newly established imperial government. And I think we're all
pretty familiar with the idea of samurai, right, Yeah, Katy
and I even did an episode on Samurai and the
(04:04):
Rhone and if you want to go refresh your memories
a little bit. Yeah, it was the warrior class up
to this point, and most of the time we see
them depicted as men. But author Diana E. Wright, who
wrote about female combatants of this time for the journal
War in History, she says that women of the warrior
class and Ezoo, which is the domain that Nicana was from,
we're actually expected to learn some hand to hand combat
(04:26):
skills themselves. They at least had to know the basics,
and this was to quote, protect their awards and prevent
their families from being dishonored. So they weren't just weak
women hiding in the household every time someone a threat came. Yeah,
but Nicana took it a step beyond that. She definitely
got a little bit more than the basic. She was
born in eighteen forty seven and she was adopted out
(04:48):
to Aka Yoka Ayana Suke, who was a master of
martial arts and calligraphy too, and he taught halberd skills
to the Lady of the Domain, who was the lord
of the the main adopted sister kind of the chief
noble woman in the in the area, and he also
trained Kano and twenty other girls in combat technique. So, um,
(05:10):
just to give you an idea about what the halberd
is too, Like, this is serious combat techniques. Halberd is
a long staff with I think an axe head attached
to it, So you had to be very strong and
very agile to to manage it. Yeah, and you definitely
wouldn't want to see one of these coming at you,
So if you were fighting with one, you met business.
(05:31):
And these skills that these girls were using really came
in handy around the time that we're talking about when
Imperial forces invaded Aizu in late fall eighteen sixty eight.
So by October eighth, the situation had gotten so bad
for Warrior family members that the official watchbell sounded and
this prompted women of the warrior class to do one
of a few things. One was mass suicide. They didn't
(05:54):
want to be taken alive. They didn't want to fight,
so they decided to kill themselves rather than face this
terrible fate. Or they could decide to do that right,
they could make the decision themselves. The other option was
withdrawing within Crane Castle, which was pretty fortified castle, and
they could help out with the defense there, so they
could help defend their community. But what Nicano did was
(06:17):
the last option, which was to take part in direct combat.
So she became part of what was known as the
Joe She Gun, which was an ad hoc volunteer platoon
organized by women of warrior families and had about twenty
to thirty women. This is what historians think, and Nicano's
mom was the leader, but Wright says that Nicano Takeiko
was actually the driving force of the group. And these
(06:39):
women all sort of they dressed in men's clothing, they
cut their hair so they had the appearance of young men. Yeah,
And so this group of women heard that the lady
of the domain Tero he May, had been taken to
a post station to the northwest of Aizu. So they
decided they were going to go rescue her, go to
her aid, and once they were there they got there
(07:00):
later that same night, they asked permission from the commander
of the grade that was there if they could join
his of course, all male forces. He refused though, He
said that, well, you women are of course well equipped,
and you're impressive looking, but you would embarrass this. Essentially,
(07:21):
if our enemy saw I EU women participating in combat,
they might take it as a sign of weakness. So
he refuses them. Yeah, they're kind of upset about this,
but they've learned that the lady of the domain is
probably back at the castle at this point, she's not
there at the post station, so they sort of agree
to hang out for a night. By the next day, though,
(07:41):
they are given audience with another commander at Takaku Post station,
and he also rejects them, although he's very impressed by
them as well, and he decides that they should go
back to Cranecastle and he sends them with another troop
of soldiers, but the commander of that troop, who was
actually charged with escorting them back to the castle, he says, okay, no,
(08:04):
you guys can be an actual unit. He designates the
women as a separate squad and Nicana ta Keiko as
the leader of that squad. So they're allowed to fight.
You kind of get to do it. Fortunes are changing,
and their chance to fight comes really soon. In fact,
it comes the next day on October tenth. Imperial forces
had positioned themselves at Yanangi Bridge, which was basically along
(08:26):
the road between the post station and the castle, the
road they were taking, and the Auzu troops came at
the Imperial forces from three sides, so they were mixed
with the men's group at this point, and um they
split up two men's divisions coming at the sides. The
women's squad was part of the one that attacked the
(08:46):
enemy head on. Yeah, there were some men mixed in
as well, but most of the women were. All of
the women in fact, were part of this group that
was taking him head on, and their goal was to
sort of strike suddenly and break through the enemy's forces
rather than trying to engage them in a long battle,
because they knew they probably didn't have great chances there
since the Imperial army had better weapons than they did,
(09:07):
and they just wanted to get back to the castle
to their destiny. They could actually defend it right, but
combat did devolve into hand to hand battle, and once
the Imperial army determined that they were fighting women, they
started to spread the word and try that they should
try to take the women alive. And that was, as
we mentioned, the one thing the women absolutely did not want.
(09:29):
This was for a lot of reasons. I think that
they just had no illusions about their fate if they
were to be captured, and they were afraid that they
would be sold to quote occidentals so told off to
the west somewhere, and they just didn't want that to happen.
They wanted to decide their own fate, so they charged
directly into the fire. Yeah, and many they performed pretty well.
(09:50):
I mean, of course it was it was brave to
make this direct charge, but they also took many imperial lives,
Nakano Takiko in particular, And we want to sort of
paint a sure for you of what Nicano looked like
in battle. Um she was described as having tied back hair, trousers,
and steely eyes, and she's supposedly radiated an intense male
(10:12):
spirit and engaged the enemy troops, killing five or six
with her hall bard Um, but she was eventually shot
through the chest at the height of that battle. Yeah,
her little sister Masuko had to sever her head with
the help of an Aisu soldier. So this was to
prevent it from becoming a trophy for the other side
(10:33):
and taken back to the other side. So they wrapped
it in a scarf and cremated it after the battle.
So gave her a little bit of honor later. And
I think to Billian and I have been kind of
horrified by this image for most of the day. Yes,
I think Mosco was about sixteen years old at this time,
so having to cut off her older sister's head, that
she saw this as her duty, you know, to preserve
(10:55):
her family's honor. Yeah, so another Amazon woman in the making,
and I ius that brings us to the next entry
on our list. We're gonna change continents entirely and talk
about one of the famous female pirates of all time,
Grace O'Malley. Yeah. We talked about another pirate lady a
few weeks ago in another podcast, Chungy Sou, and this one,
(11:17):
Grace O'Malley, is actually known to many as the pirate
Queen of Ireland. So kind of has her own little nickname.
She's also known. Sometimes you might see her named as Granya,
her Irish name. Either way, Grace O'Malley was born around
fifteen thirty. Her father was chieftain of the O'Malley clan,
so around this time there really wasn't a central government. Instead,
(11:38):
there were about sixty clans which were ruled individually by
chieftains and they, as you might guess, they settled most
disagreements at that time over land or whatever it was,
through clan warfare. Contentious time, so the O'Malley clan controlled
a large part of the western coast of Ireland and
they owned a large fleet of ships, and initially they
(11:59):
had a legit it living going on. They traded with
other countries and um you know, made made money in
an honest way. But eventually merchants in Galway banned clans
who lived outside the city from trading there, so they
were out of money and out of work. So to compensate,
the O'Malley started to charge a toll to all the
(12:21):
ships that entered a bay that was one of the
popular routes to Galway. So if you couldn't pay the toll,
too bad for you. Your ship would get plundered, so
it's it's non negotiable. Um. And Grace O'Malley was obviously
interested in joining this family business. Yeah, But at first
her dad, as many dads would, he refused and maybe
(12:43):
jokingly said to her, no, your long hair is gonna
get tangled in the ship's ropes. So she cut her
hair off, and that's how she became known by probably
her most famous nickname, Grace the Bald. After that, her
dad gave in and let her join his little pirate
team that he had going. Yeah, and she proved a
very able pirate of sorts. She could read currents and
(13:06):
tides and the weather. She was good on on board
the ship. She could manage the sales and anchors and navigate,
and she was She was good at the pirate work too.
She could raid cargo and helped defend her clan shoes.
So she proved to be a very able member of
the O'Malley clan. She did, however, give it up briefly, right.
(13:27):
She gave it up when she married Donald O'Flaherty, who
was chieftain of the Aflarerty clan, and she married him
in fifteen forty six and became a mother to three
of his children. Oh Flaherty was an interesting character in himself.
He was his clan was enemies with another clan called
the Joyce clan, and they gave him the nickname Donald
(13:47):
the Cock, and his castle therefore was known as Cox Castle.
So after Donald dies in fifteen sixty while battling the
Joyce clan, the Joyces immediately tried to overpower, but she
surprised them by fighting back. She successfully defends her property
with the help of her followers, and just an example
(14:07):
of the ingenuity she uses in her battling, she had
her men dismantle the castle towers, lead roof melted down
and pour it on her attackers. It's pretty scary. Yeah again,
don't try this at home. And the castle then became
known as Hen's Castle, So definitely a shift and who's
in charge here, right, letting everybody know. So the Auflorities
(14:30):
were definitely impressed by Gray successfully defending the castle, and
she really proved by doing so that she could fight
not only at sea but on land as well, and
by the fifteen seventies she was directing a fourth of
hundreds of men in both types of battles, so it
was her full time business by this point. Yeah, and
when her father died it became even bigger. She inherited
(14:52):
his fleet and for a while was the O'Malley clan's
new chieftain too. But she also participated in some political
coal stuff as well. She fought the English Tutor dynasty's
encroachment into Ireland, which ended up being kind of her downfall.
She was arrested on multiple occasions and her fleets were raided.
She eventually petitioned Queen Elizabeth the First directly for some support,
(15:15):
which she received, but her business was closely monitored after that,
and she ended up dying impoverished in her early seventies. Yeah.
But interestingly, that relationship with Queen Elizabeth is why we
know so much about Grace today, because the Queen got
Grace to fill out a document called eighteen Articles of
Interrogatory and she had to answer all these questions about
(15:37):
her marriages or children or properties, and um put it
all down on paper. And that's why we know so
much about Grace the Ball today. Fortunately. Yeah, thanks Queen Elizabeth.
The next group of women were going to talk about
didn't have a very clear cut survey like that for
us to go off of. Did they Sarah, Yeah, Because
the other entries on the life so far have been
(15:59):
individual women who took up arms for personal reasons. This
group of women, they were actually an army, so we're
gonna treat them as such and not focus on any
specific people. Um, they were an army though they weren't
a last resort. They weren't these accidental warriors. They were chosen,
and they were trained, and they were deployed as any
(16:20):
army would be. So they're really kind of a standalone
group for this podcast. So the Domey Kingdom in West
Africa needed highly trained warriors for for many reasons. Everybody
needs a group of highly trained warriors, I guess, but
in part it was because of its own actions. The
king would launch annual raids, slave raids on nearby areas
(16:42):
and by the captured prisoners and sell them to European
slave traders. So obviously that didn't win many neighborhood friends. No,
not at all. But the women, actually the warrior women,
they weren't originally set up to defend the kingdom. They
were originally formed as a group of elephant huntresses. Actually,
WHI is a surprise. Yeah, and they were trained as
(17:03):
royal guards and warriors after that. Yeah. So the women
were drafted from non Dahomian slaves and therefore they were
considered very reliable and trustworthy because they didn't have tribal
connections and families like the men the male recruits might,
so they were you could you could rely on your
(17:24):
your Dahomian women force. But by eighteen fifty a king
named Gizo shook up this process of selecting the troops
a little bit and he made it kind of a draft.
Almost every three years, families would present their daughters to
a royal board and the prettiest of the young women
(17:44):
would enter the harem and the strongest would enter the service.
And some were actually not selected this way that, but
they were turned over by their husbands for being unruly
or something that if the husbands couldn't handle them, they
would perhaps recommend them to the king or more likely
complain about them to the king, and the king would
(18:06):
take them into the elite fighting group. Really puts a
different spin on marital relations with that. But by the
eighteen eighties, the Dahomie women became a political power as well,
since their officers were noble women. Yeah, so we're gonna
talk a little bit about life as one of these
dahomie women. It was a major step up from from
(18:27):
the average life of a woman in the kingdom. Um,
they got a lot more privileges on a lot more respect,
but they were sworn to celibacy. An interesting point there.
If they were exceptionally brave, they might be able to
make a match marry a nobleman after they retired, essentially,
so you could there was a lot of social rising
(18:50):
potentially if you were an exceptional warrior and they trained rigorously.
Eventually they fought alongside the Royal Guard as the kingdom
standing army, so on, with the men too, and there
were about four thousand, five hundred men and women together. Yeah,
and it eventually got to be even more than that.
They were also notorious for their violence. They were known
(19:10):
to torture and mutilate people who they had killed and um.
They were also well known for their marksmanship. By the
eighteen forties, according to an article by Jeffrey Skelton in
Military History, they could load and fire a flint lock
musket in thirty seconds, while their their male counterparts were
said to take fifty seconds. There's some agility going on there,
(19:33):
I guess, yeah, agility and some fashion too. They cut
quite a figure. I would say. They wore white with
blue crocodile badges on their hats, which when I saw
a photo of the Sarah sent me an image of it,
and I think it looked like bows initially, so I
was surprised to find out that they were crandodile badges.
We should mention the picture I sent to Blina was
(19:54):
an engraving of a woman actually holding a decapitated head. Too.
Into Blina, I think you said, if she's wearing a
little blue bow on her head, that makes this image
so much more disturbing. Definitely, um, but now you know
it was a crocodile badge. Now I know, now it's
a little more fitting. Maybe I don't know, you decide,
(20:15):
but there was a little style change. If they were
elephant hunters. Also, they got to wear antelope porns. The
whole head dress made out of antelope porns, so that
would have been scary too, I would say so, but
in one with this going to give you a good
idea of what they looked like. They were described in
three months in captivity into homie like this. There they
(20:35):
are four thousand warriors, the four thousand black virgins of Dahomie,
the monarch's bodyguard, motionless in their war garments, with gun
and knife in hand, ready to leap forward at the
master's signal. Old or young, ugly or beautiful, they are
wonderful to look at. They're as well built as the
male warriors, and their attitude is just as disciplined and correct,
(20:57):
lined up as though against a rope. Yeah, with a
description like that, it's no wonder that they became known
as amazons. And it was actually the French who took
to calling them amazon's originally, right, yes, Yeah, And it
was the French who kind of got schooled by them.
Right In two, when the colonial forces fought up to
four thousand Amazons in the jungle, several fights took place,
one in which these Amazons supposedly had been driven into
(21:20):
a frenzy by English Jigin of all things, and would
continue to fight even after being bayonetted with their hands, feet,
and teeth. Yeah, so they just didn't quit, and ultimately
the French prevailed and took to Homei, which is today
part of benin Um but the Amazon troops they were disbanded.
They didn't totally go away though, obviously their troops disbanded,
(21:44):
But the women themselves are still around. And I found
postcards from long after the fact, I mean as late
as the nineteen twenties of pictures of the women, you know,
obviously middle aged by this point, but also still kind
of scared are you looking and tough to posing. And
I think they visited Europe at one point to show
(22:06):
off their fighting skills with with some of the male
warriors as well. So a very strange and i'd say
for this group of elite fighting women who existed for centuries. Yeah,
sort of becoming a novelty. Conveniently, our next subject also
did become somewhat of a novelty herself later in life,
(22:28):
maybe not through postcards, not through postcards, but that was
long after a very adventurous, very impressive military career. Yes,
our next subject is Catalina di aerro Uso, who is
also known as the Lieutenant Nun, and she has been
frequently requested by listeners. I think we've gotten at least
two or three requests just in the past couple of
(22:50):
months when I've been working on the podcast, and one
recently that was a very interesting It was from a
listener named Marcia in California, and she suggested, actually she
begged us to do a podcast on this topic and
said that she would make a deal with us, right, Sarah,
she did. It was an offer we couldn't refuse. Yeah,
she said that she would UM, as a professor in California,
(23:12):
she would have her students do a podcast style research project. Yeah,
in exchange for us doing a podcast on Catawina. So
here you go. I hope it. I hope it still
counts even though she's part of a list. Even though
she's part of a list, will still cover a lot
of details about her and UM, hopefully your students will
thank us. Hopefully they'll have fun with their project. So
(23:33):
to go ahead and get into her life. She was
born in San Sebastian and Northern Spain on February tent
and right off the bat, we have sort of a
questionable date there because in her autobiography I think she
lists a different year. She lists fifteen eighty five, but
fifte two is the recorded year of her baptism. So
right away we can see that some of the details
(23:53):
throughout this are going to be kind of sketchy conundrum,
keep it in mind. So some say her family was
middle class. Others say that her family was pretty wealthy,
which is probably more accurately the case, which we'll see
later on, but either way, Catalina ended up in a
Dominican convent at about age four, along with three of
her sisters. Yeah, and her four brothers, on the other hand,
(24:14):
headed off to join the Spanish military in the America's
but you could tell pretty early on that Catalina would
have rather been doing what her brothers were doing and
going off to the America's. She supposedly wanted to quote
travel and see the world, so she escaped from the
convent around sixteen o three, And again, that date sounds
a little weird depending on when you calculate her birth
(24:35):
from that just assumed she was around fifteen years old
at the time she cut her hair. She made these
mannish looking clothes for herself, um cutting up a blue
skirt in order to create a pair of breeches. Another
example of cross dressing. I know, it keeps them coming
up in the in the episodes recently, but she apparently
(24:56):
passed off pretty well when she had her new pants. Yeah,
she was really effective after she made these changes in
passing as a man. And I think we should stop
right here to reflect on the fact that this makes
her maybe a little different from some of the other
women on this list and some of the other women
we've talked about recently, in that she lived her life
which we're going to discuss in a in a minute,
(25:18):
as a man. So, yeah, she wasn't dealing with some
of the adversities. For instance, Nicano was dealing with men
not wanting to fight with her because hey, they just
thought she was another guy. Yeah, And I mean I
think that that was so even to the point that
when you read about her nowadays and you're talking about
her years as a man, many people will use a
(25:39):
male personal pronoun to describe her. But you'll notice that
we keep using she a lot throughout this podcast, just
because we tried to keep it consistent. But just a
little explanation for that. So she's passing as a man.
She stays in Spain for more than about three years
after that, wandering around serving a variety of masters, just
doing jobs here and there. Then she sets out for
(26:00):
the America's where she travels around a bit eventually heads
to Peru, where she joins the Spanish military, so helping
the Spanish crown and its efforts to colonize the America's
and she did that for about fifteen years. And she's
changed her name at this point too. Yep, she is
Antonio Romerez de Gusman, a brave soldier in the colonial army.
(26:21):
That's how she's known. It was a battle in Chili, though,
fighting the Aricano Indians, in which Catalina, then known as Antonio,
was promoted to lieutenant. She risks her life in this
battle to recover a royal flag, and she describes going
after it right into the enemy mob along with two
other soldiers who were on her side, and they were
(26:42):
killed in the process. She herself took three arrows and
a spear, but still survived to be promoted. Yeah, and
even after that military glory, though, she wasn't made permanent
commander of the company because she hung an Aracano chief
when she was supposed to take him alive. And so
that brings us to another side of Catalina. She was
(27:04):
a bloodthirsty conquistador, and I mean conquistadors already have a
reputation for that she was a gambler, she had a
quick temper. Uh she took part in a lot of duels,
and sometimes she killed her opponents in them. Sometimes she
ended up in prison, and she would always find a
way out, always found a way to escape punishment. And
(27:25):
one of her strategies, strangely enough, was to hide in churches.
Kind of a throwback to her time in the Constant right,
maybe she knew the INDs analysis on one of those
occasions is when she confessed her biological sex. Though she
confessed to a friar, who then told the bishop in
the area, so the secret is out at this point.
(27:48):
After that, she spends a couple of years in a
convent at Lima, where she has to start wearing female
attire again, until finally she's sent back to Spain in
sixty four for an audience with Philip the Fourth, and
he actually rewards her for her many years of service
with a pension and the right to continue wearing mail attire.
So she kind of pleads her case to him both
(28:09):
from a far and in person, and he he agrees
that she deserves this. Then she goes to see the
Pope and he also says that she can keep dressing
like a man, which is so bizarre. I don't usually
imagine the pope being okay with that. Well, she did
remain a virgin and all. I mean, and apparently that
was kind of crucial, wasn't it. That was something that
(28:31):
made it legitimate that she had been dressing like a
man and fighting alongside men for for so long. Yeah.
I think that we were discussing it a little bit,
and a lot of people who cross dressed have been
thought of over the years as sexual deviance in a way,
But she proved that she wasn't. I think when she
was back in South American all of this first started
to come out, the bishop there actually had her examined
(28:54):
by a couple of nuns and she was found to
be a virgin. Yeah, And I mean it also didn't
hurt that she did have decent family connections, that perhaps
her family was well off. That was another point in
her favor for being allowed to continue, uh living a
life that was quite different from the standards at the time. Yeah.
And I think that is a point that she made
(29:15):
to the king also when she was kind of pleading
her her case. And and I think, as we mentioned
before about her becoming a novelty. That was an aspect
of it too. She wasn't really viewed as a man
or a woman. She was some kind of hybrid that
nobody knew of, and they were. She became very popular
in that respect. Nobles like to invite her places, and
(29:35):
she was well thought of at the time, or at
least interesting. Yeah, and she she runs with that. She
writes an autobiography between sixteen and sixteen thirty, knowing that
people wanted to hear her story, and in sixteen thirty
she also moved back to the Americas and died about
twenty years later in Mexico, having led a very impressive,
(29:57):
if very strange life. Yeah, she's an interesting character because
she was one who, you know, like we were talking
about at the beginning of the podcast, you definitely can't
say she was always a likable character, but she was
just a fascinating Yes. So our final entry for this
list is also a lady who who kind of rocks
(30:18):
on the one hand, and it's kind of terrifying and
murderous on the other hand. And she is one of
the most popularly requested topics, especially for this series of
women Warriors. I think somebody even wrote on Twitter recently,
when are you going to do a podcast on Boudica
(30:38):
surprise subject. So Boudica is Britain's original queen Victoria because
Boudica means victory and she's regarded as something of a
national hero. But the comparison between the two queens definitely
ends there. Boudhica is not starting wedding traditions or Christmas traditions, obviously,
(30:59):
she was out crucifying Romans instead, different kind of reputation entirely, yes,
I should say so. In her background is also pretty hazy,
but here is what we know. She was born around
and Celtic Britain to a royal family. She eventually married Purseudicus,
who was probably her cousin, who became king or the
(31:19):
elected chief of the I c n I tribe. So
Boudica's queen kind of and her husband is on okay
terms with Rome until that is Roman leadership betrays the
family and the tribe. But we're gonna go back a
little bit before that and give you the background on
what was going on with the Romans in Britain at
this time and even a hundred years before that's when
(31:41):
they had gotten there and Interestingly, the icn I Boudica's
tribe had been one of the first to welcome Caesar
in fifty five or b C. But that first stage
of Roman contact wasn't that bad. It was more about
establishing trade and it proved to be quite profitable for
some of the tribes that participated of Caesar left and
(32:04):
stead of the Roman military, and it wasn't colonized rule
or anything like that. But things changed in forty one
a d. When our old friend Emperor Claudius, who he's
another one who always pops up in random episodes, he
decided that Britannia would make a really nice addition to
(32:25):
his empire. And he was he was especially thinking this
because he had something to prove, you know, he he
needed to make his name in getting Britannia as a
colony would be a really good way to do it. Yeah,
and it seems like he's going to get that fairly smoothly.
In the beginning, the Romans invade any icn I, along
with ten other British tribes offer their formal submission to him. Yeah,
(32:48):
and they're probably thinking, well, maybe it'll be like last time,
and will submit, will establish trade relations and the Romans
will go back home. Not so much. No, that's not
all that happens this time. The Romans don't leave. They
stay and they set up fortresses. They also installed a
governor and they ordered the Brits to surrender their weapons,
(33:09):
which is the first big thing. Yeah, the Ice and
I are not okay with this at all. They rebel
at this point. They're defeated and Presidicus Boudica's husband is
installed as their new king. So so he had not
been the ruler up until this point. This is why
we said early on that Presidicus Boudica and Rome had
(33:30):
an okay relationship with each other. He was essentially governing
as a client king. But things do not get better
for the British. Yeah. The governor establishes a colonial for
retired legionaries, which is just a hot dead for violence
and trouble. It's supposed to be a model Roman settlement,
but that is not the case. And of course it's
(33:51):
also eating up local land too. Yeah. And then the
new emperor Nero commission's attemple to his uncle Claudius and
has his financial off certain Britain call in debts issued
as grants, so just getting more money trouble the British. Yeah,
and in sixty one, the new governor of Britain, a
guy named Suetonius paulin Us, desmates this Druid stronghold at
(34:16):
the Isle of Mona, which is defended, Just to give
you an idea of what the Romans were up against.
Its defended by quote, black robed women with disheveled hair,
like furies brandishing torches and druids raising their hands to
heaven and screaming dreadful curses. Pretty scary stuff. But the
Romans end up winning, and after the victory they cut
(34:39):
down the island Sacred Grove, so a real slap in
the face to the Britons. But Budhica's beef starts after
all of this, and it's it's personal. Yeah, it starts
after her husband dies and leaves half of his estate
to the Emperor Nero and half to his daughters. And
you've said, Sarah that this mostly a symbolic thing, right,
(35:01):
I mean, he was. It was the last ditch kind
of effort for him. He knew he was a client king,
he ruled at the pleasure of Emperor Nero, but he
was hoping that by making this sort of goodwill gesture
he might be able to secure a little bit of
his fortune for his wife and his two daughters. It
does not work, though it completely backfire. No, the Roman
(35:25):
financial officer doesn't honor the will. His estate is seized
pseudocus his estate, that is, Boudica is flogged and her
daughters are raped. So Budica is pretty unhappy about the situation,
and she starts gathering other angry tribes, many of which
have been secretly hoarding weapons all the while. So before
we go any further, just to give you a little
(35:46):
description of Boudica. She is described much later in a
much later account as being very tall and grim in appearance,
with a piercing gaze and a harsh voice. She had
a mass of very fair hair which she grew down
to her hips, and wore a great gold torque and
multi colored tunic folded around her over which was a
thick cloak fastened with a broach. Yeah, so an imposing
(36:09):
figure and a note to ladies don't normally wear torqus,
which are giant gold necklaces, but Buddhica does so. The
first strike is Kemolodonum, which is the Roman capital in Britain,
and they don't just charge right in. They have people
on the inside, presumably Britain's who are who are living
(36:30):
and working there, who sort of set the stage by
wigging out the superstitious Romans. And they do that by
making the statue of Victory fall, so it looks like
it's been running out of the settlement and just gossiping too,
you know, talking about oh I saw a ruined phantom
settlement in the mouth of the Thames, and women acting
(36:52):
hysterically and talking about destruction and just getting everybody sort
of on edge before the attack comes, as if they
really needed to have that little intro pre scare going on.
Budica's army crushes the town, they destroyed the temple and
they kill everybody, and archaeological evidence even supports that this
destruction actually occurred. There are shards of the clay wall
(37:14):
that have been found that were essentially fired and hardened.
But he, I mean, it was a mud wall and
now it's like a pottery wall. That kind of blows
my mind. Um, but there are levels of ash everywhere.
Total destruction took place. So after that they took out
the infantry of the Ninth Legion, just sort of pretty
(37:35):
quickly the cavalry managed to escape, and from there they
moved on to lyndeni Um, which at this point was
only about fifteen years old and it was unwalled. The
Romans were feeling pretty cocky about it, I guess, and
Governor sweet Tonius, who has been off fighting those druids
in Mona, has just now returned and he realizes that
(37:57):
the town can't be defended, so he orders evacuated. A
lot of the women and the elderly stay behind, and
basically everyone who does stay behind is slaughtered by Boudica's
angry Britain's and this is what we meant before, but
we can't condone all the actions that are reported on
this podcast, because that's that's pretty bad. But from there
(38:20):
she just keeps going. Um. They move on to another
town which had close association with Rome, and once again
total destruction. They're punished for their association, but finally Sutnia
meets Boudica with and the twentie at least part of
the twentieth legion, and this time he chooses the ground
(38:42):
and invites the attack, and the Romans are severely outnumbered
ten thousand to Boudica's two hundred and thirty thousand, but
they are better trained and they have a little more
military expertise. This, after all, is not just coming into
unwalled Londinium and killing everyone. So Boudica's troops charge and
(39:04):
they are immediately showered with javelins. I feel like that
happens a lot in a lot of these battles. We
talk about. Showering of javelins never something you want to see.
The Brits chariots don't prove very useful because they're in
a very tight space, and their long swords aren't good either,
because they're fighting in close quarters. The Romans have much
(39:28):
shorter swords. They're easier to navigate in this cramped quarter.
And the other problem is when they moved to retreat
after they realized, oh no, we're in this, we're actually losing. Yeah,
they realize that they're blocked by their own wagons, which
they've brought along with them so their women folk could
watch the slaughter. And Boudica herself arrived in a chariot
(39:51):
with her two daughters. So this was really this wasn't
just a battle where all the men folk went off
to fight. It was kind of a family affair and
I guess they were. They were feeling pretty confident going
into it with such strong numbers, but in the end,
eighty thousand Brits die and only four hundred Romans. Boudica
(40:13):
manages to escape somehow. She dies of poison um potentially
poisoned herself soon afterwards, but she's given a lavish funeral,
She's treated as a hero and a queen, and all
of a sudden done. It seems like about seven thousand
Roman troops were killed during the course of the rebellion
and a remarkable seventy thousand civilians were killed in the city,
(40:38):
So pretty big damage from Budica. Yeah, and though the
rebellion was followed by heavy Roman suppression violence famine, Britain
eventually became one of the more orderly Roman colonies. So
no thanks to Buddica. She did not did not contribute
to that state of being. So I guess that ups
(41:00):
up our list of women warriors, And of course we've
done a few earlier episodes throughout them up on other
famous women fighters, and we hope you've enjoyed it. A
little treat for the month of March um if you
have any more. I mean, we're always maybe we'll take
a break for a while. Let peace prevailed. But um,
if you have more suggestions, definitely feel free to email
(41:23):
us at History podcast at how stuff works dot com
or to comment on Twitter where at missed in history
or on fadsbook Yeah. And you can also find us
on how stuff Works blog. Sarah and I blog every week,
and sometimes we blog about these podcast topics that you
may see a little more about women warriors there. Sometimes
we blog about history news if you don't think that's
(41:46):
too much of a paradox, but you can check them
out on our homepage by visiting www duck how stuff
works dot com For more on this and thousands of
other talks, fix visit how stuff works dot com to
learn more about the podcast. Click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
(42:08):
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes. M hmm.
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