The last contingent of my African Lakes Company Army are the Yao. The Yao had moved into the area around lake Nyasa in the mid 19th century by which time they where under heavy Arab influence and enthusiastic slavers themselves. The Yao where split into several, not necessarily mutually friendly, clans that in the early years of the British Central African Protectorate gave the British a torrid time.
In around lake Nyasa the Yao where major players who seem to have ended up being recruited into several armies. The Shire Kololo chiefs included Yao among their subjects. The Chikunda of the Zambezi valley where originally recruited from, among others, Yao tribesmen. The Yao where heavily recruited into the various “Arab” slaver warlords armies and paradoxically recruited by the African Lakes Company to fight the slavers.
By the end of the 19th century the Yao where extensively armed with trade muskets. Chris Peers mentions these trade muskets where frequently painted red with black metal work. Painting trade muskets was a way of hiding the poor quality of these weapons which where often built from spares and repairs with unseasoned wood stocks. sadly from what little I could track down on line the red paint was actually a brown/orange/red varnish rather than a bright red (which would have been fun to paint).
It would appear the Yao liked to fight as skirmishes and weren’t very keen on attacking defended positions or close combat. They don’t appear to have carried any melee weapons other than a knife. According to Harry Johnstone the Yao fought by ” having dropped to one knee and fired their guns, they hastily retreat and reload their guns, while another rank takes their place”.
Chris Peers in his Central African book suggests that the Yao basically resembled other African people who had been influenced by the Arabs so Foundry Askaris would do the trick for miniatures. I did find one photo online which suggests that perhaps white cloth wasn’t the order of the day and cloth crop tops where possible.
The Yao chiefs could look at lot more Arab like it would seem and I think Northstar’s Ruga-Ruga in Arab dress would be a good fit.
So for my first unit of Yao I used a mix of foundry Askari and tribal musketeers, some Northstar Ruga-Ruga and a couple of Perry Ansar/Zulu plastic conversions. I decided to paint them in various brown clothing and paint their muskets as red trade muskets.
Using them in TMWBKs rules they will be irregular infantry with either a European leader when fighting for the British or and arabised chief when fighting for themselves or for Arab slavers. At some stage I hope to expand them to a whole Yao army to fight the British Protectorate forces under Harry Johnson.
23 December 2008, 02:11:59 AM
