Yaa Asantewaa

Yaa Asantewaa was born around 1840 in Besease, within the Edweso (Ejisu) state of the Asante Empire, in what is today the Ashanti Region of Ghana. She rose to become the Ohemaa — Queen Mother — of Ejisu, holder of one of the honored stools of the Asante federation. In that office she was a guardian of tradition and continuity, charged with counseling the ruler, safeguarding the sacred order, and helping choose those who would sit upon the stool.

Her age of trial came in 1900. After the British exiled the Asantehene Prempeh I, Governor Frederick Hodgson demanded to sit upon the Golden Stool — the Sika Dwa, soul of the Asante nation. To the Asante this was intolerable sacrilege. When the assembled chiefs wavered, Yaa Asantewaa rose and rallied them, and she was chosen to lead the fighting force: the first and only woman entrusted with that command in Asante history.

The rising she led became known as the War of the Golden Stool, or the Yaa Asantewaa War. Thousands took up arms and besieged the British fort at Kumasi. Though the empire eventually brought overwhelming force to bear and suppressed the revolt, her stand preserved the Golden Stool itself, which was never surrendered to British hands.

Captured and exiled to the Seychelles, Yaa Asantewaa died there on 17 October 1921. In 1924 the surviving exiles were permitted to return, and her remains were brought home for a royal burial. She endures as a mother of her nation and a byword for courage — the queen who would not let her people's soul be cast down.