About 1650 Doña Eustaquia de Sonza and Doña Ana Lezama de Ur-
inza of Potosí, Alto Perú, become the most famous female swashbucklers
in Spanish America. At the time, Potosí, a silver-mining town in the Boliv-
ian Andes, had more inhabitants than London, and was probably the rich-
est city in the world.
1688 Following a coup in Siam, women drilled in the use of muskets
replace the 600 European mercenaries and Christian samurai who had
served the previous government. The leader of these women was called Ma
Ying Taphan,or the Great Mother of War. Burmese princes also used fe-
male bodyguards inside their private apartments, and European, Japanese,
or Pathan mercenaries without.
About 1690 Female wrestling acts become common in Japanese red-
light districts. Although Confucianist officials charged that such acts were
harmful to public morals, female wrestling remained popular in Tokyo un-
til the 1890s and in remote areas such as southern Kyûshû and the Ryûkyûs
until the 1920s.
1697 A 40-year-old Maine woman named Hannah Dustin escapes
from an Abenaki Indian war party after hatcheting to death two Abenaki
men, their wives, and six of their seven children as they slept. (A third
Abenaki woman and a child escaped, although both appear to have been in-
jured.) For this slaughter (which is almost unique in frontier annals), the Pu-
ritan minister Cotton Mather proclaimed Dustin “God’s instrument,” while
the General Assembly of Massachusetts awarded her a sizable scalp bounty.
1705 Because a Comanche raid covers hundreds of miles and lasts for
months, wives often accompany war parties, where they serve as snipers,
cooks, and torturers. Unmarried Comanche women are also known to have
ridden into combat, although this is considered somewhat scandalous.
1706 A trooper in Lord Hay’s Regiment of Dragoons is discovered to
be a woman. At the time, she had thirteen years’ service in various regi-
ments and campaigns. Subsequently known as Mother Ross, she had en-
listed after first giving her children to her mother and a nurse. She spent her
military career dressed in a uniform whose waistcoat was designed to com-
press and disguise her breasts.
1707 The French opera star Julie La Maupin dies at the age of 37; in
1834 novelist Théophile Gautier made her famous as Mademoiselle de
Maupin.In her time she was a noted fencer and cross-dresser; her fencing
masters included her father, Gaston d’Aubigny, and a lover, a man named
Sérannes. Other redoubtable Frenchwomen of the day included Madame
de la Pré-Abbé and Mademoiselle de la Motte, who in 1665 fired pistols at
one another from horseback from a range of about 10 yards, and then, af-
ter missing twice, took to fighting with swords. And in 1868, two women
named Marie P. and Aimée R. dueled over which would get to marry a672 Women in the Martial Arts