In the ancient kingdom of Dahomey, it is the king of Dahomey who essentially represents the government; but he was helped by a few dignitaries: the mingan, sort of prime minister; of them meo, secondary ministers, and numerous cabecères who have one, two, three or four ponytails depending on their importance. The king is represented in Ouidah by the yevoghan and by theagor. Moreover, these different characters have no authority of their own: they are real slaves of the king.
One of the main characteristics of the Dahomey regime is its despotism which reigns there, comparable to that of the Ashanti; the king and the great ones carefully supported their power on religious ceremonies. The “lion of Abomey” king, “cousin of the Leopard” is considered a god; his power is unlimited, he disposes of the lives and property of his subjects; he inherits the dead.
The custom had disappeared in XIXe century, but before that he took his meals in secret, being supposed not to eat or drink like ordinary mortals; in the same way he listened to the pleas behind a curtain which hid him from the sight of his subjects. Let us add that, according to tradition, there reigned in the undergrowth a phantom king in whose name the levying of taxes and annoyances of all kinds took place: everything that could be complained of was attributed to this fictitious king of Dahomey, and all that it was necessary to rejoice the largesse and the blessings was attributed to the real king.
An Amazon dahomean, from a photograph.
(source: E. Reclus, Man and the Earth, I).
In Dahomey, women were free to practice trades
men, they took part in the government and were
associated with the army. However, once married they
became the property of the husband who bought them.
The King of Dahomey has an army of women as the Queen (hobbyist) command with right of life and death; the queen's sons are the only royal princes, the sons of the other women are pages and the cabéceres are chosen from their number to whom it is forbidden to reveal their origin. In the harem the guardian of the brazier where the king lights his pipe, and the favorite who holds the spittoon are dignitaries of the kingdom. The other wives are slaves who take care of the housework and cooking. In addition, a few hundred women installed in the palace make up the royal guard: they are virgin Amazons guarded by eunuchs.
They declare that they devote themselves to the profession of man and soldier. Their costume is quite elegant: it is a tunic of several colors, on which fabulous animals are embroidered, and fairly short green or red pants. Their almost masculine forms, their courage, their cruelty make them excellent soldiers. They perform war dances with tireless precision. The king's guard further consists of 2,000 warriors armed with flint guns; in the event of war, it can raise a maximum of 12 to 13,000 men.
The government is only concerned with maintaining the court and waging war; but these expenses far exceed the income regularly collected by taxation. So we obtain resources as best we can, by robbing rich houses from time to time, by stopping goods in the streets; in Ouidah, the inhabitants who bought fabrics in the factories contacted trusted people to find out if the king's people were not lying in wait for them and were not going to strip them on the way back home: any attempt at resistance was a crime.
The result of the vexations exercised against the rich is a deep misery from which no one seeks to escape. In the spring, the king takes the able-bodied population who could harvest palm oil to war. We voluntarily left the country without roads or canals to close it to Europeans.
