national heroines. Raised in a household of boys, she was fearless and brilliant as a military strategist. When her husband died, she came out of purdah to fight the British, becoming the key figure extraordinaire who trained women for her army with special care. These women came to be known as the “amazons of Jhansi.” Lakshmi herself was famous for calmly taunting enemy generals, “Do your worst, I will make you a woman.” Her fame spread like wildfire throughout India, making her their national shero when she broke through an encircling ambush of British soldiers during battle and escaped in horseback to a hundred miles away in just twenty-four hours with a ten-year-old boy clinging to her back. She and the boy were the only two survivors of the slaughtered Indian troops. It should also be noted that Lakshmi was in full armor in sweltering 120 degree heat. She died on the battlefield in Gwalior when she was barely thirty; a British general called her the “greatest hero” he’d ever known.
Qui Jin was called a “Heroine Among Women” by Sun Yat-Sen. She was simply amazing! Born in 1874, her hobbies included cross-dressing and riding through the streets of Chinese cities and villages. She founded the first newspaper for women in China, founded a school for girls, and escaped from her arranged marriage to pursue her revolutionary goals of overthrowing the Qing Monarchy. Quite the intellectual, she wrote poetry and took a vow of silence during her imprisonment upon being arrested for plotting the assassination of the Qing governor. Her daughter followed in her mother’s pioneering footsteps by becoming China’s first aviatrix.
Women Warriors of the Americas
Coyolxauhqui was an Aztec divinity who fought her own mother, Coatlicue, for defending the warrior-god she had birthed (her brother, I suppose, but enemy nevertheless!) Coyolxauhqui’s daunting name means “the one whose face was tattooed with rattlesnakes.”
According to herstorian Carolyn Niethammer, Pohaha was a brave battle axe with a sense of humor for whom the heat of battle was quite rousing. Of North American Tewa Indian tribal origin, Pohaha’s name tells the tale: “po” referred to the wetness between her legs caused by her excitement in battle and “ha ha” was a name given her because of her shrieks of laughter as she warred. Pohaha wanted to make sure her enemies knew they were up against a woman warrior, and would lift her skirt to prove her gender.
Weetamoo, the Squaw of Sachem of Pocasset, lived in the area of what is now Tiverton, Rhode Island, from 1650 for a quarter-century of legendary awesomeness. She commanded an army of 300 women warriors and stunned all who encountered her with her incredible beauty and charisma. She was a good tactician and courageous in battle. When her husband, Wamsutta, was poisoned by the English, Weetamoo went native in a big way and decided to try to eradicate the white invaders from her land. She joined her brother-in-law Metacom and their armies fought side-by-side against the English in King Phillip’s War. During the Great Swamp fight of 1675, she drowned in the Tetcut River while being chased by Brits. The Redcoats fished her body out of the flood-swollen river, cut off her head, and put it on display.
Bowdash was an Indian woman who acted as a guide for white men explorers. Born to the Kutenai tribe in Montana, she was a folk shero in her part of the west, celebrated for being a peacemaker, prophet, messenger, and warrior in song and story, passed down orally through generations. Her story is both gory and glorious. According to Kutenai legend, when she was being killed by her enemies by their knives, her wounds magically sealed up.
Elizabeth Custer was the very independent wife of the famous Major General George A. Custer who traveled west after the Civil War. “Libbie” rode with the Seventh Cavalry beside her husband and other notables such as Wild Bill Hickok and Medicine Bill Comstock. She was an extraordinary horsewoman, able to ride forty miles a day easily. Her overprotective (to say the least!) husband instructed his regiment to kill her themselves rather than let her fall into enemy hands. This never happened, because she and her sister missed out on the Battle of Little Big Horn when they left the fort for some horseback adventures of their own. Libbie also traveled to India and rode a horse through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. She lived to the ripe old age of ninety-two and was buried in West Point’s military cemetery beside George.
Pauline Cushman was a gypsy woman of great beauty who fought in the Civil War and gained the rank of major for her courage in fighting behind enemy lines in Tennessee. Her life was incredibly colorful—after the war, she went out west and gave speeches in full Union uniform. She also acted, amazing audiences, favoring the role and costume of an Amazon. For a time, she settled in Arizona where she ran a hotel and kept the peace with her trusty Colt 45. Upon moving to the Wild West outpost of San Francisco, she took the law into her own hand again and bullwhipped a man in public for libeling her. No doubt, people thought twice before speaking ill of gypsy soldier gal Pauline Cushman after that!
Poker Alice Ivers was one of the special breed of “Wild West Amazons” who ran a casino, smoked cigars, and sported a six-shooter she used with skill. In the 1880s, she ran across a card dealer in Pecos who cheated; she waited and watched until the pot was worth taking, held her gun to his head and then made off with the $5,000 prize, shouting, “I don’t mind a cheat, it’s a clumsy cheat that I can’t stand.”
Belle Starr fought for the Yankees as an underground guerilla on the other side of the Mason Dixon Line. Unfortunately for her and a few hundred others, these guerilla groups were outlawed and Belle was on the lam, unable to go home. Forced to a life of crime as an accidental fugitive, Belle showed a flair for stickups and cattle rustlings, and generally supported her bad self as a gun-for-hire. Belle has gotten a bum rap as a colorful criminal; she and the others from the underground were patriots who served their country well in extreme danger only to have the rug (or flag, as it were) pulled out from under them.
Calamity Jane was born in 1852 and remains a household name for her skill as a sharpshooter, muleskinner, midwife, gambler, and horseback scout. Her real name was Martha Jane Canary, and she died a pauper in 1903, even though she herself would give the shirt off her back to the needy or sick. She also wouldn’t think twice about shooting the hat off any man who disrespected her!
Woman Chief, the “Absaroka Amazon,” was a Gros Ventre girl raised by the Crow tribe who captured her in a hunt shortly after her birth, estimated to have been in 1806. Like Shoshone Sacajawea, without whom Lewis and Clark would have made the Donner Party look like a walk in the park, Woman Chief was a highly skilled hunter, guide, negotiator, and translator, who specialized in buffalo hunting, horse thieving, and close-range battle. Her reputation swelled to mythic proportion when she killed and wounded several men in her first skirmish. Her fellow warriors sang songs in her honor, and she made for hot fireside chat. As a hunter, she was reputed as “capable of killing five buffalo during a hunt and then butchering them and loading them on to packhorses singlehandedly.” Her sleight-of-hand style of horse trading won her a place on the Council of Chiefs and the title of Woman Chief. She was murdered by a Gros Ventre warrior in the middle of negotiations for peace she was undertaking between the Crows and her native tribe.
Her courage and glory is celebrated in Zapata’s revolutionary song, “Adelita.” However, Adelita was very much a real person, not just a romantic notion in a popular song. She was a gaucha at the turn of the twentieth century in Zapata’s, and later Pancho Villa’s army. There were many women soldiers in the peasant armies of the revolution called “soldederas” who started following the army as cooks, water-bearers, and camp followers helping the cause by helping the
