Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba

Some of its fiercest defenders were women, and some of its most sophisticated states were built not around a single throne, but around entire confederacies and secret societies of elder statesmen.

Consider Queen Nzinga of the kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba in what is now Angola, who spent close to four decades in the first half of the 17th century leading armed resistance against the Portuguese colonization, personally negotiating treaties, building alliances with the Dutch against Portugal.

Centuries later and further east, Yaa Asantewaa, queen mother of Ejisu in the Ashanti Empire in Ghana, did something similar against the British.

In 1900, when British colonial officers demanded the Ashanti hand over the Golden Stool, the sacred symbol of Ashanti kingship and spiritual unity, Yaa Asantewaa rose in council and famously declared, "If the men of the Ashanti would not fight, the women would." And she personally led an army of thousands against British Maxim's guns and artillery in what became known as the War of the Golden Stool, the last major African war against European colonization fought in that region.

In the highlands and river valleys of 17th century West Central Africa, amid the encroaching shadows of transatlantic slavery, and European colonial expansion, one woman stood as an unyielding wall against conquest.

This is the extraordinary life of Queen Nzinga Mbande, of Ndongo and Matamba.

A sovereign whose brilliant statecraft, battlefield courage, and fierce independence redefined the possibilities of royal leadership.

Marked from her birth in 1582 by an omen that foretold a life of struggle and power, Nzinga grew up in the royal court of Kabasa, observing the delicate mechanics of Mbundu statecraft, military strategy and foreign diplomacy.

She has been broken from her throne once.

She has proven, across every mile of exile and every fire lit in defiance of Portuguese patrols, that breaking her from her purpose is another matter entirely.

Chapter 7 The Conquest of Matamba The year is 1631, and Nzinga Mbande stands at the edge of a river she does not recognize, water the color of rust, sliding past her feet, and she understands, with a particular clarity that comes only after loss, that she has nothing left but her own mind and the loyalty of the warriors still willing to call her queen.

Behind her lies Ndongo, the kingdom of her birth, the throne her father once held, the throne her brother fouled with cowardice and Portuguese collusion before his death left it to her.

And it is accompanied by a complete censorship and cover up of the state sponsored efforts to not just resist enslavement on the African continent, but to go to war against it.

You have the Empire of Angola under Queen Nzinga, who for 30 years used her state military to go to war against slave traders.

You had groups, organizations.

You had literally police forces of these countries in the regions of Ghana, Nigeria.

So I need to be, you to be comfortable so I can pull your birth chart to see where you fit in.

And then I tie you into one of the, African matriarchs, like one of the queens, Queen Nzinga, Queen Yasantoa.

Like we tapping into that because if you look before the Europeans came over and took, the queens was running the world.

And these women, they possess a lot of these dominant traits.