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The Leopard Society, leopard men, or Anyoto was a secret society that operated in West 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 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]
Members 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 allegations 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]
Encounters with suspected remnants of the Leopard Society in the post-colonial era have been described by Donald MacIntosh[4] and Beryl Bellman.[5]
^ abcCite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"The Leopard Society - Africa in the mid 1900s". Archived from the original on 23 November 2010. Retrieved 3 April 2008.
^ abBeatty, p.3
^Travels in the White Man's Grave: Memoirs from West and Central Africa, by Donald MacIntosh, 1998
^Beryl L. Bellman (1986). The Language of Secrecy: Symbols and Metaphors in Poro Ritual. Rutgers University Press, p. 47
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