When the spiritual becomes political

Women who lead rebellions are often prophets, seeresses, medicine women

Rebel Shamans: Women Confront Empire (title page)

The English language isn’t adequate to put a name to these women. Diviners, priestesses, oracles, visionaries… Within their own cultures, they had titles: mambo, catalonan, mganga, veleda, mugirwa, calundureira, obeah woman, ixhwele. Sometimes outsider-words like santa or kahina. Often, we don’t know what title their own people knew them by, only that they stepped up to oppose invasion and colonization.

I’ve seen the spiritual placed in opposition to political action many times, but this pattern is so marked. My course on the Rebel Shamans has a full length video and short essays on these historical figures, including: Veleda of the Bructerii (Netherlands), Dahia al-Kahina (Tunisia / Algeria), Tang Saier (China), Jeanne d’Arc (France), Juana Icha (Peru), Kimba Vita (Congo), Maria Candelaria (Chiapas), Queen Nanny of the Maroons (Jamaica), Cécile Fatiman (Haiti), Antonia Luzia (Brazil), Toypurina (Kizh / Tongva) and the Prophetess of Chupu (Chumash Nation), both in southern California; Wanankhucha (Somali Bantu), Lozen (Apache Nation), Teresa de Cabora (Mayo, NW Mexico), Nehanda Nyakasikana (Zimbabwe), Muhumusa (Rwanda / Uganda), Nomtetha Nkwenkwe (!Xhosa, South Africa), Alinesitoué Diatta (Senegal).

I’ll share some of them here. First, Dahia or Dihia al-Kahina (an Arabic title that meant prophetess). She mobilized an Amazigh resistance movement, fighting for two decades against the Muslim invasion of North Africa.

In southern China, where many Indigenous peoples still spoke Austroasiatic Austronesian languages, or Austronesian languages related to Vietnamese, the Chinese empire gradually extended its rule:

Kimpa Vita, also known as Doña Beatriz de Kongo, arose as a prophetess in the early 1700s, preaching retention of Kongo ways under assault from Portuguese missionaries. She led a procession to reclaim the traditional capital, and preached an African Liberation theology, with a Black Madonna and Black saints, especial San Antonio: “We have saints in Kongo too.” Capuchin priests regarded her as a threat and had her burned as a heretic in 1706. But the Antoniados movement that she founded spread to the African Diaspora, especially in Brazil and Colombia.

Juana Icha was one of many Peruvian medicine women who resisted colonial oppression in the 17th century. She spoke out against abuses by priests and other officials, and brought food to men who were being marched off to slavery in the silver mines. For this she was called before the Inquisition. The colonial rulers demonized the medicine women and their Quechua religion, as Guaman Poma de Ayala showed them surrounded by devils in his Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (circa 1615).

Baybalan leaders against Spanish in the Philippines

In 1595, the great anitera Cabacungan confronted the Spanish puppet chief, Don Francisco Yringan, a convert to Catholicism. She led resistance to christianization. Spanish sources distort her spiritual leadership by claiming “the devil” frequently spoke with her.

In 1607, the babaylan Caquenga advised her Cagayan people in northeast Luzon
to keep their ancestral ways and ceremonies, and not to convert to the invaders’ religion. She “wielded a great amount of social power.” Calling for liberty, Caquenga gathered her followers and fled into the mountains, allying with former enemies to defend themselves against the missionaries and Spanish armies in newly-converted Nalfotan. Some men from her village betrayed her, one of them claiming that she had been his slave, and succeeded in enslaving her.

By 1609, the babaylan Cariapa sang a prophecy to the chieftains of Daius / Bohol:
“This land will be changed, other people will possess it, with another culture, other practices. This town is to be utterly destroyed. This province with the rest of the islands will be subjugated.”

Africans in many parts of the America escaped from slavery and headed into the wilderness, where they formed communities that came to be called “Maroons.” (The name is derived, offensively, from the Spanish cimarron, referring to escaped animals who went wild.) They established independent settlements in Surinam, in the Great Dismal Swamp spanning Virginia and North Carolina, the quilombos of Brazil, and in the highland interior of Jamaica. Queen Nanny of the Maroons led the most successful of these Jamaican statelets, from her village of Nannytown. She was an obeah woman with special powers, but also a brilliant military strategist, who employed shell trumpets to signal the approach of British soldiers, and set ambushes to keep them out of her territory. She made it too dangerous for them to enter, in a policy named as “You no call, me no come.” Nanny forced British colonials to make
a treaty in 1743 that conceded the Jamaican interior to her people. Of course, they later broke it.

Cécile Fatiman became a significant figure in the Haitian revolution. She inaugurated the fight against the French slavery regime with a ceremony in the Bois Caiman on August 21, 1791. Before people assembled from plantations all around, she performed a petro ceremony invoking Ezili Dantò. She designated Dutty Boukman as the general who would lead the revolt, and swore all present into the revolution.

Another important figure was the Dominican-born Marie LaVeau, who became known as the “Vodou Queen” of New Orleans. She held large ceremonies in
Congo Square, and became a potent advocate for African-Americans against the white power structure.

The Lucumí priestess Carlota led a rebellion against slavery in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1843. It began with her and other members of her Yoruba religious community rising up against the overseers, armed only with the machetes they used to cut sugar cane. They took their guns, and went on to take over the Triunvirato and Acana sugar mills, killing the slave drivers and gathering more weapons. The plantation owners quickly assembled militias to crush the revolt, which was one of hundreds of anti-slavery insurrections in the Caribbean over the centuries. Some described here.

In Brazil, the Angolan calundureira Antonia Luzia was tried by the Inquisition for
“calling together black and brown women to adore dances,” and for “seeking the ancestors’ help in dominating the masters’ wills.” They eventually deported her to a prison in Portugal.

Colonization by the Spanish mission system spread from eastern Mexico to California. Medicine women sparked two major revolts against the enslavement and near-starvation of their people. The first was in 1785, led by Toypurina, a young Kizh or Tongva woman; it was betrayed before it could begin, and she was forced into exile hundreds of miles away, “married” to a soldier. The second was inspired by a woman whose name was not recorded, a prophetess of Chupu, Mother Earth. She counseled her Chumash people to wash off their baptisms with “tears of the Sun,” and they continued to build secret shrines, which the colonists hunted down. This revolt at Santa Barbara was 20 years in the making, and it was partly successful. About half the Chumash escaped inland, while the rest were either killed or re-enslaved.

Harriet Tubman was a dreamer guided by her visions. She led many people out of slavery and became a major figure inn the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, she was the brilliant military strategist who led the Combahee River Raid, freeing hundreds of people from slavery in South Carolina at a single stroke.

Some people might say: Why Harriet? she wasn’t a medicine woman… Because a white man threw a brick that struck her in the forehead, she would periodically fall into deep sleeps, and had precognitive dreams, or second sight, that helped her evade capture time and again.

North Woman of the Northern Cheyenne

The US army force-marched her people south onto a reservation in Oklahoma, where food was scarce and they were not allowed to hunt or gather. Starving, they made a break for freedom, and this was when North Woman came into her power: “when the the Cheyenne were fleeing north from Oklahoma, she found she could hear voices that told her where the soldiers were and in which direction they should travel to avoid the soldiers. She was always right, and those chiefs who listened to her [Ó'kôhómôxháahketa, Little Coyote, often mistranslated as Little Wolf] made it up north safely. Those that didn’t met a great hardship, and many of them died.” —Mike Running Wolf. One of them was Dull Knife: “We cannot listen to this woman. We are men-leaders. My mind is made up.” (The US military later captured his people.)

Lozen realized her medicine power from Ussen (Great Spirit) at her womanhood initiation. As she prayed and turned, her medicine told her how many enemies were approaching, and from what direction, and how far away they were. She became a woman-loving warrior for her people, fighting in many battles against the Mexican and US armies. According to Peter Aleshire (Woman Warrior: The Story of Lozen, Apache Warrior and Shaman), Lozen fought in more campaigns against the Mexicans and the Americans than any of the great Apache leaders such as Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, Juh, Chihuahua, Geronimo or her own brother, Victorio. “Lozen began fighting Mexican soldiers and scalp hunters, eternal enemies of her band, when she came of age in the 1840’s,” said Aleshire. “After the Americans arrived in 1848 to lay claim to her homeland, she battled them as well.”

The warrior Kaywaykla later said, “She could ride, shoot, and fight like a man, and I think she had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio.” The elder Nana agreed: “Though she is a woman there is no warrior more worthy than the sister of Victorio.”

On one occasion, Lozen stayed behind to help a woman give birth, escorted her safely back to the reservation, then rode to Chihuahau and located the rest of her band. But without her guidance, many were killed by the Mexican army, including her brother Victorio. She later fought beside Geronimo after his breakout from the San Carlos reservation, and eventually, when all was lost, surrendered with him. The US army put them on trains and deported them to a POW camp in the Gulf. In the damp climate, in confined conditions, Lozen died of tuberculosis.

Nehanda Nyakasikana was a Shona lion prophet (nehanda), from a lineage of women founded more than 500 years ago. Their base was a cave shrine at Mazoe, known as Nehanda’s Rock, at the headwaters of the Mazoe river. Chargwe was nehanda in the late 1800s, when Cecil Rhodes was invading her country from South Africa. She mobilized a resistance and won victories early on, but Rhodes brought mercenary reinforcements and the just-invented machine gun. He dynamited the sacred cave, and inflicted such unprecedented deaths that Nehanda surrendered, fearing her people would be annihilated. This was how white supremacist Rhodesia began. The British hanged Nehanda in 1890; she went to the gallows defiant to her last breath.

There are many more stories to tell, but I’ll stop here. You’ll notice that these are all Indigenous or African Diasporic women. Some others are known from Europe, such as Veleda, prophetess of the Bructerian Insurrection in Lower Germania, and even Jeanne d’Arc falls into this category of spirit-inspired warriors.

See Rebel Shamans and many more video courses here.