Orompoto

The thing Oyo was feared for in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was its cavalry, and the cavalry traces to a woman who took the throne in the 1550s because her house had run out of men. Oyo was in exile at Igboho when she reigned — the Nupe had taken the old capital — and she is the ruler who turned that round. The transformation story, that she became a man before mounting the throne, is reported in the oral tradition and is reported here as tradition rather than as event; what the same tradition does not do is doubt that she reigned. She was absent from a registry that carried three Oyo rulers already.

Domains

• queenship
• horsemanship
• warfare

Sources

• Orompoto is the first female Alaafin of Oyo, reigning c. 1554-1562 from Igboho, sister of Eguguojo, who expelled the Nupe in 1555 and founded the Oyo cavalry, importing horses from Timbuktu in 1557.: Reference treatments of Orompoto's reign, her succession after Eguguojo, the Nupe campaign of 1555 and the cavalry she raised. (secondary)