As the homeland of the Fon culture, the Dahomey kingdom was located in the southern part of what is today the country of Benin. The Dahomey kingdom is well-known historically for the Agojie, the elite female “amazon” military unit that guarded the king, as well as for the participation of the Fon in the African slave trade. The Dahomey kingdom came to an end after they were defeated by the French in the late 19^th century and were absorbed into colonial French West Africa.

The Fon have long made appliqué cloth textiles for their royalty, but during the colonial era, male artisans adopted the practice of making brightly colored, appliqué quilts that were available for sale to the public. Fon quilts became so popular that hierarchical family guilds of artisans, called tailors, developed to produce these and other appliqué textiles.

Two very popular Fon quilt designs are the Dahomey King Quilt and the Dahomey Kings Quilt; the King Quilt usually celebrates one Dahomey king and shows most or all of his strong-name symbols, while a Kings Quilt usually features each of the twelve historical kings of Dahomey as represented by one square in the quilt, listing each king’s name and one or more of his strong names. The strong names of a king consist of a group of motifs that symbolize that king’s reign; the Dahomey king would select his own strong names from strings of words, images, and/or proverbs that related to his manner of rulership and accomplishments.

Two well-known Dahomey kings are King Houegbadja and King Agadja.  The strong name symbols used for King Houegbadja are usually a fish and a fish net or trap, which refers to a proverb that tells how a fish that has escaped a net will not fall for that trap again; this symbol illustrates how Houegbadja was a wise leader who founded the Dahomey royal dynasty and established its political structure. King Agadja’s strong name symbol, meanwhile, is a European sailing ship, which illustrates how Agadja extended the Dahomey king’s borders to the sea and was the first Dahomey king to interact with Europeans.

Earlier Dahomey Kings Quilts often illustrate strong name symbols that openly celebrate the markedly violent reigns of some Dahomey kings. The square for King Dakodonou, for example, often showed a flint with a handle (which was used with steel to strike sparks and make a fire), along with a jar of indigo, a club, and a woman’s body with her head removed. The flint is one of Dakodonou’s strong names and refers to the proverb, “flint does not go into the scabbard,” meaning that the king was not merciful and did not withhold his revenge. The other strong name symbols, meanwhile, refer to how the king’s mother-in-law was using indigo dye when he killed her, which illustrates his brutality. Such depictions were meant to boost national pride among the Fon by portraying their kings as strong and powerful.

Later quilts, such as the quilt in this exhibition, soften or play down the violence of the Dahomey kings’ strong names. As on this quilt, the square for Dakodonou still shows the flint and the jar of indigo, but it no longer shows the club or the woman’s body. Likewise, the square for King Glele usually illustrates his strong name as a lion, which refers to a proverb that tells how, once a lion cub has grown his teeth, his enemies cower in fear; this refers to how Glele was a powerful king who could not be dethroned. Earlier versions of Glele’s strong name motif would illustrate the lion as ferocious, with a large, open mouth filled with many sharp teeth, but later quilts such as this one illustrate the lion’s face as almost comical, and a mouth with fewer teeth or even no teeth — and sometimes the lion is even smiling.  These changes may have been made to make the quilts more appealing to the tourist trade, or they may be the result of changing attitudes among the Fon artisans. Researched by McKenna O’Connor

 

For more information, you may contact the researcher(s) noted in the title of this exhibit entry, or Dr. Billie Follensbee, the professor of the course, at BillieFollensbee@MissouriState.edu