Sarraounia Mangou was a chief/priestess of the animist Azna subgroup of the Hausa, who fought French colonial troops of the

Voulet–Chanoine Mission The Voulet–Chanoine Mission or Central African-Chad Mission (french: mission Afrique Centrale-Tchad) was a French military expedition sent out from Senegal in 1898 to conquer the Chad Basin and unify all French territories in West Africa. This ...

at the

Battle of Lougou The French Voulet-Chanoine Mission, led by the captains Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine, had been dispatched in 1898 to Africa by the French government with the mission to conquer the territories between the Niger River and Lake Chad and join in ...

(in present-day

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesSarraounia Sarraounia Mangou was a chief/priestess of the animist Azna subgroup of the Hausa people , Hausa, who fought French colonial troops of the Voulet–Chanoine Mission at the Battle of Lougou (in present-day Niger) in 1899. She is the subject of th ...

'' based on the novel of the same name by Nigerien writer

Abdoulaye Mamani Abdoulaye Mamani (1932–1993) was a Nigerien poet, novelist and trade unionist. Biography Mamani was born in 1932 in Zinder, Niger. He was a trade unionist. In 1980 he published his novel '' Sarraounia'', based on the real-life Battle of Lougou ...

Biography

''Sarraounia'' means ''queen'' or ''female chief'' in the

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also * ...

language. Among the predominantly animist Azna people of

Lougou Lougou is a town and arrondissement in the Alibori Department of northeastern Benin. It is an administrative division under the jurisdiction of the commune of Ségbana. According to the population census conducted by the Institut National de la St ...

and surrounding Hausa towns and villages, the term refers to a lineage of female rulers who exercised both political and religious power. Sarraounia Mangou was the most famous of the Sarraounias due to her resistance against French colonial troops at the

in 1899. While most chiefs in Niger pragmatically submitted to French power, Sarraounia Mangou mobilized her people and resources to confront the French forces of the

, which launched a fierce attack on her fortress capital of Lougou. Overwhelmed by the superior firepower of the French, she and her fighters retreated from the fortress, and engaged the attackers in a protracted guerrilla battle which eventually forced the French to abandon their project of subduing her. According to native oral history she was a witch with pure yellow eyes who could hurl fire at the invaders and even summon fog to help them get away from the French army. It's said her magical charms erased her troops footsteps from the battlefield and any crops that were blazed to ash regrew overnight with more than enough food to keep the warriors going.

References

{{cite journal , author=Antoinette Tidjani Alou , author-link=Antoinette Tidjani Alou , date=Spring 2009 , title=Niger and Sarraounia: One Hundred Years of Forgetting Female Leadership , journal=Research in African Literatures , volume=40 , issue=1 , pages=42–56 , doi=10.2979/RAL.2009.40.1.42 , jstor=30131185 Year of death missing Women rulers in Africa 19th-century women rulers African resistance to colonialism African women in war Rebellions in Africa Women in 19th-century warfare 19th-century rulers in Africa History of Niger Nigerien military personnel African animists Year of birth unknown