"Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our king. If it were in the brave days of, the days of Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opoku Ware, chiefs would not sit down to see their king taken away without firing a shot. No white man could have dared to speak to chief of the Ashanti in the way the Governor spoke to you chiefs this morning. Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be! 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." ~ Yaa Asantewaa
Nana Yaa Asantewaa (c.1850-c.1920) was a woman of exceptional bravery who, in March 1900, raised and led an army of thousands against the British colonial forces in Ghana and their efforts to seize the Golden Stool, the Asante nation's spiritual symbol of unity and sovereignty. After defeat in 1901, she was exiled to the Seychelles where she spent two decades until her death in October 1921. Yaa Asantewaa's war was the last major war in Africa to be led by a woman.
