The Leopard Society, also known as Ekpe or Mgbe, was the oldest of the Cross Riversecret societies in West Africa. It was all-male, most likely originating as a warrior society, and assumed importance during the Atlantic slave trade, which was centered in Calabar and dominated by the Efik people by the late 1700s. The trade brought wealth and a range of imported products into Calabar. The Efik, seeking to augment this wealth, also sold memberships in the society to other groups, enabling it to spread widely through the area.
History
The Leopard Society was a West Africansecret society active in the early- to mid-20th century that practiced cannibalism. They were centred in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria. Members would dress in leopard skins, waylaying travelers with sharp claw-like weapons in the form of leopards' claws and teeth. The victims' flesh would be cut from their bodies and distributed to members of the secret society. According to their beliefs, the ritual cannibalism would strengthen both members of the secret society as well as their entire tribe. According to scholar Stephen Ellis:
These were exclusive groups of people who were believed to be liable to possession by the spirits of carnivorous animals such as leopards and crocodiles, and who carried out ritual killings while in a state of possession. During the course of the twentieth century, the Liberian government outlawed these societies, but some of them nevertheless continued to function clandestinely...
Encounters with what is believed to be a survival of the Leopard Society into the post-colonial era are described by Donald MacIntosh and Beryl Bellman.
In fiction
Fictionalized versions of the Leopard Society feature in the Tarzan novel Tarzan and the Leopard Men, in Willard Price's African Adventure, in Hergé's Tintin au Congo and in Hugo Pratt's Le etiopiche. Also, the Leopard Society was referred to in the "Akata Warrior" series by Nnedi Okorafor. Robert E. Howard also mentions them in his short horror/detective story . A fictional incarnation also appears in the 2016 filmThe Legend of Tarzan. It is led by a chieftain portrayed by the Beninois actor Djimon Honsou.
In art
A representation of leopard-men–the inspiration for Hergé's Tintin au Congo–is the sculpture group in one of the large exhibition halls of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, commissioned by the Belgium Ministry of Colonies from artist Paul Wissaert and acquired by the museum in 1913.
