Asantewaa Hero in History Medallion

Yaa Asantewaa, queen mother of Ejisu, in batakari kɛseɛ battle dress
Unidentified photographer (possibly Friedrich Ramseyer), before 1900

When the men would not rise, she led the women (and men) into war.

Yaa Asantewaa
1840–1921, b. Besease, Ghana
Ruled within the Asante Empire from Ejisu

Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our king . . . Is it true that the bravery of the Asante is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be!

I must say this—if you, the men of Asante, 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 until the last of us fall in the battlefields.
—Yaa Asantewaa, March 1900

• The queen mother of Ejisu, Yaa Asantewaa, became regent of Ejisu, a chiefdom of the Asante Empire, when the British exiled her son, its ruler, and the asantehene (king), Prempeh I, in 1896.
• In a foolish act of hubris in 1900, the British governor demanded the Golden Stool—the spiritual and symbolic heart of the Asante nation—which had been hidden since the exile. With the backing of the remaining Asante leaders, Yaa Asantewaa took up arms and became the leader of the Asante fighting force.
• The Yaa Asantewaa War forced a small party of British invaders in the Asante capital of Kumasi into a six-month siege as Asante warriors held them at bay.
• Eventually overtaken and deported, Yaa Asantewaa passed in the company of the rest of the Asante court-in-exile in the Seychelles, three years before Prempeh I returned to Kumasi in 1924.
• The British never touched the Golden Stool.