Ndaté Yalla Mbodj
Linguère (queen) of the Waalo (1810 – 1860)
Family : Place of birth : Waalo ; Date of birth : 1810 ; Mother : Linguère Awo Fatim Yamar Khuri Yaye Mbodj ; Father : Brak Amar Fatim Borso Mbodj (died January 1826)
Education : As a child she was saved by her mother during the tragedy of Nder, at about the age of ten.
Action : Crowned Linguère at Nder on 1 October 1846, after the death of her elder sister, she reigned until 1855. From 1846 her name appears on the agreements and official acts concluded between the Waalo and the French. At the start of 1847 she opposed French control of trade. On 18 June 1847 she wrote: “The Waalo belongs to us… Each of these chiefs governs his territory in the way that suits him.” In 1850 she received Abbé Boilat with great ceremony.
Trials : With Faidherbe’s arrival in 1854, the Waalo was the first kingdom hit by the policy of conquest of Senegal. On 25 February 1855 Faidherbe’s column, 1,100 strong, defeated the Linguère’s troops near Nder; the capital was taken and burned, along with more than forty villages.
Legacy : She died in 1860. The last great Linguère of the Waalo, she remains a symbol of resistance to colonisation. Her son Sidya Léon Diop continued the struggle; a school in Saint-Louis bears her name.