The Old Woman Who Led Her People in a Fight Against the British Empire
Frederick Mitchell Hodgson, British governor of the Gold Coast – today’s Ghana – travelled to Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti tribe, in March, 1900. There, he delivered a provocative speech, in which he demanded that the Ashanti produce the Golden Stool, the tribe’s most sacred object, so he could sit upon it. Unsurprisingly, that upset his audience. Into the spotlight stepped Nana Yaa Asantewaa, an old woman in her sixties, and a badass Ashanti Queen Mother. She rallied her people into resistance, in what came to be known as the War of the Golden Stool. Thousands of Ashanti took up arms, and Asantewaa was appointed war leader.
The Ashanti were eventually defeated and annexed to the Gold Coast, but retained their autonomy. They also did not produce the Golden Stool. It was largely thanks to Nana Yaa Asantewaa, born circa 1840 into the royal line of the Edweso clan of the Ashanti Confederacy. The Confederacy was an African state founded in 1701 by a chieftain named Osei Tutu. The new state’s foundation myth revolved around the Golden Stool – a mystical seat supposedly summoned from the sky by Osei Tutu’s chief priest. It fell into the lap of the Ashanti Confederacy’s founder, and thus confirmed his right to rule. The Golden Stool became the Ashanti state’s most sacred object, and the chief symbol around which the tribe united.