Leopard Society

Not to be confused with Ekpe.

A sculpture by Paul Wissaert depicting a leopard man (1913)

Leopard Society, leopard men, and Anyoto were names used for one or more secret societies that operated in West and Central Africa approximately between 1890 and 1935. ^{[1] [2]} It was believed that members of the society could transform into leopards through the use of witchcraft. ^[3] The presumably earliest reference to the society in Western literature can be found in George Banbury's Sierra Leone, Or the White Man's Grave (1888). ^[3] In Western culture, depictions of the society have been widely used to portray Africans as barbaric and uncivilized. ^[1]

Accounts

Members of the society would allegedly dress in leopard skins, waylaying travelers with sharp claw-like weapons in the form of leopards' claws and teeth and engaging in cannibalism, but such claims have been disputed. Scholar Vicky van Bockhaven writes:

Reports that the Anyoto sometimes imitated leopard attacks, and the existence of their costumes, played on the European imagination. Reports often mention the Anyoto killing innocent victims without any apparent reason. The cannibalistic aspect also receives a great deal of attention in the reports, even if it does not generally seem correct. ^[1]

During field research in the 1960s among the Mano people in north-central Liberia, the American anthropologist James Riddell collected detailed statements about the Leopard and Crocodile Societies that had been active in that area, including from former members of these societies. They had comprised men from different towns and their primary purpose had been to organize trade between these towns, which were otherwise independent political units. ^[4] Only men who could command the labour of many dependents were allowed to join, as the trade organization and the transport and protection of trade goods were labour-intensive. Those who wanted to join had to sacrifice a member of their "own domestic group in a cannibalistic feast" to prove that they had sufficiently many dependents whose services they could contribute. The supposed waylaying of travellers was only a trick to hide the connection between the victim and the man who had chosen to sacrifice them. ^[5] The cannibal feasts, on the other hand, were real, according to several old members of the society interviewed by Riddell. ^[6]

In the 1920s, Lady Dorothy Mills spoke with several district commissioners who tried to juridically prosecute members of the Leopard Society engaged in cannibal murders. She noted: "The members will offer and help to procure some one of their own family for the sacrifice. A man will offer up his wife or his child or his young brother". ^[7] To avoid suspicions, the chosen victim was usually kidnapped outside their home, but Mills also spoke with a man who had witnessed how a group of "Leopards" raided a house, carrying away a man and a boy who had been sleeping there, supposedly as victims for their next feast. ^[8]

In a criminal trial in the 1900s, a member of the Leopard Society confessed that he had been present when a girl donated by another member of the society had been murdered and that he had eaten of her flesh. In this case, the victim was a purchased slave, not a relative of the donor. The child was killed and beheaded by her owner, who then divided the corpse into four parts by cutting it "down the centre and across the middle". The flesh was cooked and eaten by the members of the society; some who had not been able to be present during the ceremony also received their parts and ate them later. ^[9]

In another trial a few years later, a man stated that another member of the society had volunteered his niece for sacrifice. After the girl had been stabbed to death with a large knife and cut into pieces, all her flesh was roasted over an open fire and eaten by members of the society, including the witness. The most important members could choose their preferred parts, while the others had to be satisfied with the remainders. Everything was eaten, including the edible organs; only the girl's bones and skull, picked clean of all flesh, were left behind when the feast was finished. ^[10] Due to this testimony and other evidence, the girl's uncle was found guilty of murder and later executed. ^[11] Other trials showed similar patterns of men volunteering dependents, often relatives, for sacrifice and consumption. ^[12] While all members of the society seem to have been adult men, the eaten victims were usually "young boys and girls". ^[13]

Encounters with suspected remnants of the Leopard Society in the post-colonial era have been described by Donald MacIntosh ^[14] and Beryl Bellman. ^[15]

In art

Réorganisation (2002) by Congolese painter Chéri Samba depicts the struggle about whether the Wissaert sculpture (see image at top) should remain on display in the Royal Museum for Central Africa

In 1913, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, acquired a sculpture by Paul Wissaert commissioned by the Belgium Ministry of Colonies depicting a leopard man preparing to attack a victim. ^[1] The scene in the sculpture was appropriated by Hergé in Tintin au Congo. ^[17] The sculpture is depicted by Congolese artist Chéri Samba in Réorganisation (2002), commissioned by the Royal Museum, at the center of a tug-of-war between Africans trying to remove the sculpture from the museum, and whites trying to keep it there. ^{[17] [16]}

See also

• Belgian colonial empire
• Cannibalism in Africa
• Colonization of the Congo Basin
• Crocodile Society
• Poro society

References

1. van Bockhaven, Vicky (2009). "Leopard-men of the Congo in literature and popular imagination". Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. 46 (1): 79–94. ISSN   0041-476X.
2. "The Leopard Society – Africa in the mid 1900s". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 3 April 2008.
3. Beatty 1915, p. 3.
4. Riddell 1979, pp. 121, 129–130, 140.
5. Riddell 1979, p. 130.
6. Riddell 1979, p. 140.
7. Mills, Lady Dorothy (1926). Through Liberia. London: Duckworth. p. 119.
8. Mills 1926, pp. 118–119.
9. Kalous, Milan (1974). Cannibals and Tongo Players of Sierra Leone. Auckland: Wright & Carman. pp. 104–105.
10. Beatty 1915, pp. 45–48.
11. Beatty 1915, pp. 58–60.
12. Beatty 1915, pp. 31–32.
13. Beatty 1915, p. 120.
14. Travels in the White Man's Grave: Memoirs from West and Central Africa, by Donald MacIntosh, 1998
15. Beryl L. Bellman (1986). The Language of Secrecy: Symbols and Metaphors in Poro Ritual. Rutgers University Press, p. 47
16. "The Africa Museum in Brussels". Apollo Magazine. 2019-03-02. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
17. Wachter, Ellen Mara De (2018-12-11). "Has Belgium's Newly Reopened Africa Museum Exorcized the Ghosts of its Colonial Past?". Frieze. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

Bibliography

• Beatty, Kenneth James (1915). Human Leopards: An Account of the Trials of Human Leopards Before the Special Commission Court, with a Note on Sierra Leone, Past and Present. London: Hugh Rees. Reprint: New York: AMS Press, 1978. ISBN   978-0-404-12006-1.
• Riddell, James C. (1979). "The Gbannah Ma (Mano) in Two Economies". In Dorjahn, Vernon R.; Isaac, Barry L. (eds.). Essays on the Economic Anthropology of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Philadelphia: Institute for Liberian Studies.

Further reading

• Axelrod, Alan (1997). The International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders. Checkmark Books.
• Bernheim, Pierre-Antoine, and Guy Stavridès (1992). Cannibales ! Ed. Plon. pp. 264–267 and 399–400 (notes).
• Burrows, D. (1914). "The Human Leopard Society of Sierra Leone". In: Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 13, No. 50, pp. 143–151.
• Cyrier, Jeremy (1999). "Anioto: Mise d'une patte sur la puissance. Hommes de léopard du Congo belge, 1911–1936". Talk at the 4th Annual Midwestern Graduate Student Conference for African Studies, September 12, 1999 in East Lansing, Michigan.
• Hutton, J. H. (1920). "Leopard-men in the Naga Hills". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
• Joset, Paul-Ernest (1955). Les sociétés secrètes des hommes-léopards en Afrique Noire Paris: Payot.
• Lindskog, Birger (1954). African Leopard Men. Uppsala: Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia, VII.
• Mokede, Paul-Roger (1971). Société secrète des Anioto, hommes léopards, ches les Babali, Congo-Kinshasa. Paris: Université de soutenance, École pratique des hautes études.
• Pratten, David (2007). The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria. Indiana University Press. ISBN   978-0-253-34956-9.

Fiction

• Poore Sheehan, Perley (2007). "The Leopard Man and Other Stories". Pulpville Press. ISBN   978-1-936-72002-6.

External links

• The Leopard Society in the Nimba Range and at the Kru coast Archived 2012-07-17 at the Wayback Machine
• 1900–1950: The Leopard Society in 'Vai country' in Bassaland Archived 2010-11-23 at the Wayback Machine