Tracing the multi-faceted traditions and history of the chewa defence force since ancient times, the foregoing pages have highlighted that nineteenth-century sports such as hunting game appear particularly similar to practices in ancient Axum, which traded in forest products. Hunting in various regions brought the chewa to know land and people, and with other aspects of martial training, helped them to define and redefine the identity of local people and, by extension, Ethiopia and its borderlands. They encountered valorous resistance (which is not discussed for lack of space) and, following historical precedents dating back to antiquity, the monarchs perpetuated Ethiopian territorial holdings. As the medieval kings promoted the settlement of troops, the chewa raised inclusive support from home bases among the increasing population of the northeast African region. In the process, self-trained warriors in their rural societies actively participated in local politics, influencing the country's national and international policies. Warriors and monarchs alike saw land as part of their cherished identity of being Ethiopian, not just an economic resource. The tradition still survives as historical consciousness of personal and ancestral places within the country's frontiers.

Investigating the history and structure of this relationship with land has led to an exploration of the fascinating history of heroes, as the guerrilla warriors were considered, who, like their predecessors, sustained the country's independence, which they never lost. The chewa developed an alertness to external enemies during the transition of the monarchy to a peripatetic existence. In the changes occurring over centuries, a legacy of martial reputations was inculcated. Now known about notably in association with nineteenth-century monarchs who were basically chewa, these are: Tewodros's defiance of the Turks in his zeraf, and his later suicide to avoid capture at Magdala in 1868; Yohannes IV's victory (and death) at the Battle of Metemma in 1889; and Menelik II's victory at the Battle of Adewa in 1896. The tradition of self-identification with land, country and society enabled Menelik to rally the whole country to repulse the first Italian invasion at the Battle of Adewa in 1896. It endured and resurfaced during the resistance to the second invasion of 1935–41.