Leopard Society

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A sculpture by Paul Wissaert depicting a leopard man (1913) Homme-leopard (Tervueren).jpg
A sculpture by Paul Wissaert depicting a leopard man (1913)

Leopard Society and leopard men were names used for secret societies that operated in West and Central Africa from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. [2] Such societies existed in several African regions and were generally independent of each other. [3] [4] The possibly earliest reference to one of them in Western literature can be found in George Banbury's Sierra Leone, or the White Man's Grave (1888). [5] In Western culture, depictions of such societies have been used to portray Africans as barbaric and uncivilized. [6]

Contents

Accounts

Leopard men were an actual phenomenon, but one that was badly understood by colonial administrators and other outsiders, especially European ones. Historical accounts of their acts often misunderstood their motives and modes of operation, mixing "spectacular hearsay and rumour" with possibly accurate information. [7] Moreover, outside accounts often failed to distinguish between different societies of "human leopards", instead blending all their activities together. [4]

West Africa

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. [8] 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 dependants 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. [9] The cannibal feasts, on the other hand, were real, according to several old members of the society interviewed by Riddell. [10]

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". [11] 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. [12]

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. [13]

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. [14] Due to this testimony and other evidence, the girl's uncle was found guilty of murder and later executed. [15] Other trials showed similar patterns of men volunteering dependents, often relatives, for sacrifice and consumption. [16] While all members of the society seem to have been adult men, the eaten victims were usually "young boys and girls". [17]

Encounters with suspected remnants of the Leopard Society in the post-colonial era have been described by Donald MacIntosh [18] and Beryl Bellman. [19]

Congo

In the eastern Congo Basin, the Anyoto or Anioto society was active between c. 1890 and the 1930s, attacking and murdering people and deliberately leaving traces meant to give the impression of leopard attacks. [3] [20] Because of this, its members were often called "leopard men" in sources written in European languages. The society consisted of several chapters, which were often controlled by village chiefs and acted largely independently from each other, sometimes as rivals. Its members were widely suspected of eating body parts of their victims, but there is little conclusive evidence that this was indeed the case. [21]

The Anyoto society seems to have emerged as a resistance movement against Swahili-speaking slave-trading chiefs who dominated the region in the 1890s. Later it turned against the colonial government. Many of its victims were people employed by the government, but there is also evidence that its members were hired to intervene in "private animosities", such as cases of men competing for the same woman or situations where someone wanted revenge. Attacks often focused on relatives of the target, frequently children. [22]

Anyoto membership was often passed on within families from father to son or from maternal uncle to nephew. Those who wanted to be newly accepted into the society without having family members in it sometimes had to give a family member – often a wife or child – to the society as human sacrifice to prove their loyalty and discretion. [23] Usually simple knives were used to kill the victims. While one key informant claimed that artificial leopard claws were used to mimic leopard attack, most other convicted Anyoto members denied this. [24]

The Vihokohoko was another group of "leopard men" who killed various people between c. 1880 and the early 1940s. They were active in the region around Beni on the edge of the Ituri Rainforest. [25] Local oral traditions indicate that it was established in response to the occupations by first Zanzibari slave and ivory raiders and later the Belgian colonizers. [26] Before they were accepted into the society, young men underwent a harsh training period lasting up to three months, during which they learned how to carry out and defend against attacks and how to imitate the calls of animals. As final test they had to commit a murder. The victim, chosen by the society, often was a close relative of the initiate. [27]

Contrary to what some accounts claim, the Anyoto and Vihokohoko members never seem to have believed that they became actual leopards during their killings. [28]

Colonial officials long remained sceptical, dismissing rumours about leopard men as unsubstantiated and attributing their acts to actual leopards or other reasons. Only in the 1920s, this attitude changed, with the government beginning to take leopard men attacks serious and trying to prosecute the perpetrators. [29] One series of murders was discovered accidentally by a colonial administrator overhearing members of the society. The supposed gang leader admitted his guilt during interrogation. Ten persons were found guilty of more than 30 murders and cannibalism and hung in 1920. Two local chiefs suspected of involvement were not punished since their guilt could not be proven. [30]

Official sources registered 32 murders attributed to leopard men within a 10-month period in late 1933 to 1934 in the Beni region alone, as well as six failed attempts. [31] In a trial in Wamba in 1933, nine persons, including a chief named Mbako, were found guilty of leopard murders; they were subsequently hung. Mbako and his wives also admitted that cannibalism has been a part of the process – human "flesh obtained in the attacks had been sent to Mbako and ... was cooked by the women in his company and eaten by all". [32]

In art

Reorganisation (2002) by Congolese painter Cheri Samba depicts the struggle about whether the Wissaert sculpture (see image at top) should remain on display in the Royal Museum for Central Africa Reorganisation by Cheri Samba, 2002.jpg
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. [34] The scene in the sculpture was appropriated by Hergé in Tintin au Congo. [35] 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. [35] [33]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2009, p. 81.
  2. ↑ "The Leopard Society – Africa in the mid 1900s". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 3 April 2008.
  3. 1 2 Van Bockhaven 2009, p. 79.
  4. 1 2 Van Bockhaven 2013, p. 22.
  5. ↑ Beatty 1915, p. 3.
  6. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2009, pp. 79–80, 89.
  7. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, pp. 21, 35.
  8. ↑ Riddell 1979, pp. 121, 129–130, 140.
  9. ↑ Riddell 1979, p. 130.
  10. ↑ Riddell 1979, p. 140.
  11. ↑ Mills, Lady Dorothy (1926). Through Liberia. London: Duckworth. p. 119.
  12. ↑ Mills 1926, pp. 118–119.
  13. ↑ Kalous, Milan (1974). Cannibals and Tongo Players of Sierra Leone. Auckland: Wright & Carman. pp. 104–105.
  14. ↑ Beatty 1915, pp. 45–48.
  15. ↑ Beatty 1915, pp. 58–60.
  16. ↑ Beatty 1915, pp. 31–32.
  17. ↑ Beatty 1915, p. 120.
  18. ↑ Travels in the White Man's Grave: Memoirs from West and Central Africa, by Donald MacIntosh, 1998
  19. ↑ Beryl L. Bellman (1986). The Language of Secrecy: Symbols and Metaphors in Poro Ritual. Rutgers University Press, p. 47
  20. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, p. 34.
  21. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2009, pp. 79–80, 86–87.
  22. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2009, pp. 90–91.
  23. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, pp. 81–82, 181.
  24. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2009, p. 92.
  25. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, pp. 34, 55.
  26. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, p. 73.
  27. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, pp. 99–100.
  28. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, p. 45.
  29. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, pp. 105, 131.
  30. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, p. 155.
  31. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, p. 141.
  32. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2013, pp. 170, 177.
  33. 1 2 "The Africa Museum in Brussels". Apollo Magazine. 2019-03-02. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  34. ↑ Van Bockhaven 2009, pp. 80–81.
  35. 1 2 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.

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