Leopard Society
The Leopard Society, leopard men, or Anyoto was a secret society that operated in West Africa approximately between 1890 and 1935. It was believed that members of the society could transform into leopards through the use of witchcraft. 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). In western culture, depictions of the society have been widely used to portray Africans as barbaric and uncivilized. 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.Encounters with suspected remnants of the Leopard Society in the post-colonial era have been 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. An alternate, more egalitarian version of the Leopard Society appears in the "Nsibidi Script" series by Nnedi Okorafor. Robert E. Howard also mentions them in his horror/detective short story "Black Talons". A different take of the Leopard Men appears in The Legend of Tarzan. This version of the group are actually leopards that were magically uplifted by La. A fictional incarnation of the society also appears in the 2016 film The Legend of Tarzan. In art

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. The scene in the sculpture was appropriated by Hergé in Tintin au Congo. 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. See also
 Crocodile Society
 Poro society
 Secret society
 Colonization of the Congo Basin
 Belgian colonial empire

References

Sources
The International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies & Fraternal Orders, Alan Axelrod, 1997, Checkmark Books

External links
 The Leopard Society in the Nimba Range and at the Kru coast 
 1900-1950: The Leopard Society in 'Vai country' in Bassaland 
 Human Leopards: An account of the trials of human leopards before the special commission court: With a note on Sierra Leone, Past and present

African secret societies
Cannibalism in Africa
Social history of Liberia
History of Sierra Leone
History of Ivory Coast