IDNO

P.56885.

Description

"Amazonen Corps
a.d. Body guard of the Kings of Dahomey in West Africa.” [Photographer's annotation]

Souvenir cabinet card of the 'Amazons of Dahomey', an ethnographic show group of men, women and children from West Africa, mainly Togo.
Captain Gumma (also spelt Gouma) is sitting in the second row in the middle, and sitting on the floor to her left is Titi, a girl of 8 or 9 years old.
The names of other women in the group include Gutta (also spelled as Goutou, Guthu), Foma, Kemah (also spelled as Kiema), Fengri, Djaassa, Mamouna, Isamba. The men include Gueba, Djobi, Thio, and teenager Boima (spelled also Baema).
The group toured Europe with their impresario John Hood, a British entrepreneur.
[Knowledge shared by Ludomir Franczak, a visual artist, theatre director, and curator, via MAA Feedback, JD 18/01/2024]

Place

W Africa; W Europe; Republic of Benin; Togo; Germany; Hamburg [Dahomey]

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Gumma (also spelt Gouma); Gutta (also spelled as Goutou, Guthu); Foma; Kemah (also spelled as Kiema); Fengri; Djaassa; Mamouna; Isamba; Gueba; Djobi; Thio;Boima (spelled also Baema); Titi; John Hood

Photographer

Nissen, Peter, Hambug

Collector / Expedition

Date

1890

Collection Name

Source

Schofield, J. F.

Format

Cabinet Card

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.56880 to P.56886. were found inside the brown envelope C268/1/3/ which was inside the first drawer of the green cabinet, now numbered C268/1/.
C268/ is the new number given to the entire cabinet which was formerly numbered as batch 144.

Context: "This is a photograph of an "ethnographic show group" called "Amazons of Dahomey" which was made in Hamburg (not West Africa) around 1890. It shows a group of men and women that were coming from West Africa (mostly Togo) before one of the the first tours of the group performing as "Amazons of Dahomey". The group toured Europe with their impresario John Hood, and the card was made as a kind of souvenir or commercial card for European use. Nissen was a known Hamburg photographer making studio photographs also of zoo animals.
There are few other photographs from this session that are held in MARKK archives in Hamburg, but only this one was transformed into a cabinet card and sold at the shows of the group." [Knowledge shared by Ludomir Franczak, a visual artist, theatre director, and curator, via MAA Feedback, JD 18/01/2024]

Publication: A similar image of the same group was published in 'Le Petit Journal', Paris, 2. volume, number 14, illustrated supplement, Saturday 28 February 1891, illustration, "Amazons". [JD 16/02/2024]

Bibliographical Reference: 'Black Female Bodies and the “White” View
The Dahomey Amazon Shows in Poland at the End of the Nineteenth Century'
by Dominika Czarnecka
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, in 'Brill East Central Europe' 47 (2020) 285-312. [JD 16/02/2024]

Related Image: A group portrait of the 'Amazons of Dahomey', including many of the same people, is in the collections of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, reference 60038362, with the following information:
"In February 1891, British entrepreneur John Wood brought a dance group from Dahomey (modern Benin) to Paris. They were housed in the exhibition hall of the Jardin d'acclimatation in Bois de Boulogne. Among them were twenty-four so-called 'Amazons', the European name, inspired by the Amazons from Greek mythology, for the female warriors of the Fon kingdom who were deployed during the two wars with France (1890 and 1892-1894). They were an elite unit of approximately 4,000 to 6,000 female soldiers known for their exceptional courage. They also functioned as the king's personal bodyguard, both as his protector in the palace and as defender of his prestige on the battlefield (Argyle 1966: 40).
It is not known what the Amazons called themselves. In the literature they are referred to by the European term imposed on them. Perhaps they counted themselves only among the Ahosi, 'the king's wives'. According to Bay, every woman who served the king in any way and was associated with the palace organization was an Ahosi. She was a dependent, follower, subordinate or wife of the king (1998: 353). She could serve him as a guard, warrior, messenger, prostitute, dancer, spy, etc...
However, it is almost certain that there were no 'real' Amazons among the dance group members. A French journalist discovered that ten women were Egba (Yoruba) and the rest were from Dahomey but did not belong to the armed forces (1999: 196). Edgerton shows that it was not in itself unusual for an Egba to become an Amazon, for example a girl captured in 1851 during the siege of the Egba city of Abeokuta was raised as an Amazon in Dahomey (2000: 26).
But the clothing consisting of jewelry and tops trimmed with cowrie shells and bells was also not usual attire for the Amazons and was purely intended for decoration. An eyewitness account of Amazons on the battlefield describes them as being dressed in a blue cotton loincloth (indigo), the upper body bare, a leather belt with a cartridge bag around the waist and a red fez with an (eagle) feather on the head (2000: 112) . On the other hand, the representations of the so-called 'Dahomey Amazons' were indeed realistic. Their 'dance repertoire' consisted mainly of military exercises such as marching, combat simulations with swords, muskets and hand-to-hand combat. In addition to a number of male warriors, the Amazons were accompanied by two drummers during the performance. After Paris, the group toured Europe for years. There are indications that the group already visited the Netherlands before Paris. As early as 1890, an equestrian group appeared in the Netherlands, which, like the group from Paris, was led by leader Gumma (Faber and Wachlin 1990: 3 and 5).
This photo was taken in February 1891, captain Gouma is sitting in the second row in the middle, just in front of her is little Titi, a girl of 8 or 9 years old. A drawn group portrait, in a slightly different composition, appeared on February 28 in the illustrated supplement of the French newspaper Petit Journal. The Musée du quai Branly also houses an albumen print (inv. no. PP0023756) from the same photo session with the Amazon group, which is published on the cover and inside Edgerton's Warrior Women. In addition to the group shots, portrait photographs and physical anthropological images were also taken of all members in 1891, which ended up in an album for Prince Roland Bonaparte and the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie du Muséum (see also the collection of Musée du quai Branly)." [Information by Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, via Wikipedia images https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Groepsportret_van_de_zogenaamde_%27Amazones_uit_Dahomey%27_tijdens_hun_verblijf_in_Parijs_TMnr_60038362.jpg, JD 22/02/2024]

Place: The Place field was previously recorded as being “Africa; west Africa; Dahomey”, but Dahomey was the state of the Fon people, founded in the seventeenth century which survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey existed from 1960-1975. In 1975, the country was re-named "The People's Republic of Benin". The Place field has been amended accordingly. [Source: www.britannica.com, JD 28/7/2009]

CUMAA Exhibition: It was displayed in a group comprising of P.56929.ACH2, P.38760, P.56721.ACH2, P.56722.ACH2 and P.56723.ACH2 in Collected Sights in the section Photography and Art with the descriptive label:
“Nineteenth-century Souvenir artefacts with photographic images, fashioned solely for the tourist industry. A cabinet card of ‘Amazonian’ women of Dahomey, two postcards, one showing interior of a South African native hut and the other, a Fijian and an Indian constable, and three bookmarks depicting Japanese architecture.” [Sudeshna Guha 25/11/2002]

Publication: The photograph has been digitised for the European Collected Library of Artistic Performance (ECLAP) and is accessible on the portal http://www.eclap.eu/drupal/. [SG 30/10/2012]