1. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of female chiefs in the 1880–98 period. Sierra Leone Archives (hereafter S.L.A.), Records of Paramount Chiefs (1899). For a list of women chiefs in 1914, see Carol (P. Hoffer) MacCormack, ‘Mende and Sherbro Women in High Office,’ Canadian Journal of African History, 6, no. 2 (1972): 151–64.
2. After the protectorate ordinances were put in place, succession to chieftaincy technically became an open process, no longer legitimized solely by sanction in the secret Poro bush or grove. A vote on the eligible candidates was made in a public meeting of the tribal authorities. However, the candidates’ eligibility was decided by the British-imposed senior administrative officer in charge of the district. Those persons seeking office would have to prove descent from previous chiefs recognized by the British when the protectorate was established in 1898. See Kenneth Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 199–202, for a discussion of chieftaincy elections in the colonial period.
3. Judith Van Allen, ‘Sitting on a Man’: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women,’ Canadian Journal of African Studies 6, no. 2 (1972): 169–82
4. Kamene Okonjo, ‘The Dual-Sex Political System in Operation: Igbo Women and Community Politics in Midwestern Nigeria,’ in Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, ed. Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna G. Bay (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 45–58.
5. The British arrested the asantehemaa (supreme female ruler) of the Asante along with her son the asanthene in a bid to break the power of the Asante empire. See Ivor Wilks, ‘Asante in the Nineteenth Century: Setting the Record Straight,’ Ghana Studies Journal 3 (2000):13–59. In contrast, the British installed warrant chiefs in Igboland in an effort to establish a governing structure through which to rule.