Elephant and Leopard Symbols in the Cross River Region and Its Caribbean Diaspora

Throughout West Africa’s Cross River basin, regional identities developed in recent centuries through trade exchanges among small forest-dwelling communities, from the foothills of the Bamenda Highlands to the port of Calabar (Fig. 1). In the process, the Ékpè “leopard” society was established as the community police of the region, each “principality” having its own lodge (Miller 2009; Miller and Ojong 2012).2 At the top of the food chain, the leopard served as metaphor for the ideal consciousness of a council of titleholders, whose collective decisions were the final say in community matters. Like the solitary leopard, Ékpè titleholders were expected to be cautious and observant to detect antisocial behavior, and to pounce rapidly in resolving problems through council decisions.Elephants also served as metaphors for leadership; described as “monsters of the land,” they represented an awesome power within the forest.3 Since elephants move in herds, lineage heads displayed their tusks as a symbol of their ability to unify their people. Carved elephant tusk horns signaled paternal authority; elephant tail hairs inserted into caps identified lineage leadership, and elephant images performed in communal rites emphasized the immensity of a ritual investiture. In all cases, these symbols used in ceremony informed local deities and ancestors that a consecrated lineage head was requesting their support on behalf of the community.The leopard, elephant, and other animals are believed to have a spiritual avatar. These “mystic” animals participate in royal investitures and proclamations: Ékpè initiations are authorized through the resounding “voice of the leopard,” while important events are proclaimed when a tusk trumpet is blown to produce “the voice of the elephant.”4 These reverberations alert the entire community, which includes the living, the deities of the territory under their jurisdiction, and the ancestors buried there, as in the example from Úrúán in Figure 2.5Available evidence suggests that in the distant past these symbols emerged as totems for migrating kin-groups or lineages. Lévi-Strauss linked totemism to regimes of hunting/gathering or “shifting cultivation,” where foraging terrain and/or gardening plots rotate every few years and the residence adapts accordingly.6 In the Upper Cross River, Idoma prehistory of the sixteenth-nineteenth centuries fits this template: “The examination of totems has emerged as one of the new methodological devices for the historian of pre-colonial Africa” (Erim 1978: 56, following Webster 1975). Kindreds were differentiated from each other by observing “an iho (an animal forbiddance)”; for example: “all the kindred groups which observe the ogonopo fish totem are descended from a common ancestor, Ode,” even if they became geographically scattered (Erim 1978: 61).Early twentieth century reports by British colonists in the Calabar region contain garbled hints of totemic organization, which Amaury Talbot perceived as the historical origin of a regional club7:When settlements became permanent and fostered heritable land claims, totems were repurposed as political symbols as in regional multiethnic institutions like Ékpè and the Njoku Malé “elephant medicine” society, described below.8As Old Calabar became a major Atlantic port through contact with European traders, captive humans, elephant tusks, and other forest products were dispersed across the Atlantic world. Carved elephant tusks that entered Europe from the 1500s onwards are maintained in museum collections. In the Calabar region elephant tusks are inherited as royal property within lineages, while in the Caribbean the Cuban descendants of Africans maintain elephant and leopard symbols within initiation lineages as emblematic of their African heritage, specifically the Ocha and Ifá systems of the Lukumí (Yorùbá) and Arará (Fon) as well as the Abakuá mutual aid society derived from the Ékpè institution of the Cross River region, as discussed below.9Both the African Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) and Leopard (Panthera pardus) are native to the entire forest belt of Atlantic Africa (from Senegal to Angola).10 The earliest evidence of elephants and leopards as royal symbols in southeastern Nigeria was dated to the ninth century; southeast of Onitcha, the Ìgbò Úkwú royal burial site included three ivory tusks, as well as bronze pendants of an elephant head, a leopard’s head, and a shell surmounted by a leopard (Shaw 1973: 18; 1970: 68, fig. 14).Portuguese merchant navigators visiting the Gulf of Guinea brought elephant tusks into Europe in the 1500s, and cartographers began to identify Africa with elephants.11 A map produced in 1636 in Amsterdam shows elephants in “Biafara” (later called “Biafra”), which includes the Cross River region (Fig. 3).Early traffickers referred to captive Africans as “black ivories,” while trading firearms, gunpowder, alcohol, and textiles for ivory tusks and humans (Ardener 2001: 128, 130.) An elephant with a howdah is central to the coat of arms of the Royal African Company, established in 1660 by London merchants.12 Both ivories and humans were documented in trade reports from the Calabar region by D.P. Pereira (Portuguese, 1506), O. Dapper (Dutch, 1668), and J. Barbot (French, 1678 onwards):As African ivories and captive Africans entered Lisbon, by 1550, 10% of the population of Lisbon and other towns were West and Central Africans (Saunders 1982: xi, 7, 13, 15-16, 20-21, 54-55).13 Shipping records document trade in ivories and humans over the centuries: for example, the French ship La Pourvoyance, laden with a cargo of slaves and 500 pounds of ivory, was captured in 1793 by John Tobin of Liverpool, master of the privateer Gipsy (Latham (1974: 863). The exchange of enslaved people for “36 Elephants Teeth” was documented in the 1784 voyage of the Golden Age from Badagry to Jamaica (Lovejoy 2018: 47).14 Some ivory entered the Caribbean, as an 1835 Havana court case documented an African cabildo “nation group” in possession of “a piece of elephant tusk with two faces engraved in it [that] serves as a small bell to call to God” (Lovejoy 2018: 91). Elephant and even leopard ivory has ever remained an important heritage symbol for Afro-Caribbean people, as we will see.Carved elephant ivory horns in European collections were identified by Ezio Bassani as arriving from “1551-1600.” He concluded they were from the Calabar region, and “carved in one workshop … between the end of the sixteenth and the middle of the seventeenth centuries” (Bassani 2000: 266).15 Bassani based his analysis on carving styles and symbols, mainly crocodile or tortoise forms used today on the coded ùkárá cloth used in the Ékpè “leopard” society (see Fig. 13).16 These symbols were also carved into elephant tusks in the Grassfields region of Cameroon, as Chris Geary observed: “In design, these tusks [display] … icons common in the Grassfields repertoire… . the outer bands of rainbow lizard and elephant allude to royal power …” (Geary 1992: 235). Locals view the animals displayed on the royal cloth and tusks of this region as messengers of the deities that support the investiture of lineage heads.Having summarized the known history of elephant tusk and leopard symbols in Calabar and its hinterlands, the following presents the author’s research findings in several communities that display them in rites and royal dress.From Benin City to the west and the Cross River region to the east, both elephant and leopard symbols are displayed in contemporary royal procedures (Fig. 4). The ubiquity of ivory sumptuary goods across the West African forest zone, including bracelets, anklets, and trumpets as well as tusks on ancestral shrines, bespeaks their central role as signs of wealth, privilege, and political authority. Some of these uses were also tied to ritualized hunting, symbolizing the prestige of preagricultural social organization and its importance in many local institutions of chieftaincy. The nearly total recent disappearance of elephant and leopard populations across the region renders this powerful ecological-political prehistory less visible to outside visitors, but it remains vivid in folk memory and visible in sumptuary regalia as in these examples.The Bangwa of Fontem, Cameroon, were a trade link between the Cross River region and the Grasslands. Robert Brain learned in the 1960s that Bangwa “patrilineal as well as matrilineal ancestors are worshipped through their successors who are the custodians of the ancestral skulls” (Brain 1972: 107).In Fontem in the early twenty-first century, elephant and leopard symbols were paramount during the investiture of a village head as an Ékpè titleholder. After his training and consecration by elders in the nearby sacred forest grove, the village head led several processions from the grove to his compound; the third featured a mobile “house” representing a “spiritual elephant” draped in the ndop cloth of the Grassfields region (Fig. 5).17This village head, Mr. Philip Tazi (a.k.a. Sisiku Mbe Tazi Ate’awung IX) describes the third procession:Elephant hair caps are a corresponding royal symbol used by lineage heads. Their use extends to Bangwa and Manyu in Cameroon and to Éjághám-speaking communities in eastern Nigeria (“Ekoi” on colonial maps; for details see Geary 1992: 230 figs. 11–13, and Notué and Triaca 2005: 178). In Íkóm, a Clan Head wears an inherited elephant hair cap (Fig. 6). In the same community, the façade of an Ékpè hall displays a painted elephant (Fig. 7).Among Ngóló-speaking people in South West Cameroon, a village council consulted the oracle before commencing an Ékpè event, which responded positively. In response, the overall head of local traditional societies blew an inherited elephant tusk horn—which he claimed to be centuries old—to herald the blessing of the ancestors and deities of the land. (Fig. 8).21After this affirmation, an Njoku Malé “elephant medicine” mask emerged from the forest through a spiritually protective gateway (Fig. 9), then moved throughout the village to purify the space (Fig. 10), and finally entered the Ékpè hall (Fig. 11). Njoku Malé is a royal initiation club represented by body-masks. Edwin Ardener reported:Indigo-dyed ùkárá cloth is used exclusively by Ékpè society members. Eli Bentor documented ùkárá cloths made by contractors from Arochukwu communities, while Ábíríbá (phonetic spelling “Ébíríbá”) locals also claim that workshops operated in their communities (Fig. 12) (Bentor 2015).23 Produced in Ábíríbá decades ago, a rare cloth portrays an elephant, leopard, frog, turtle, crayfish, and crab as messengers of the deities of the land and water evoked by Ékpè initiates (Fig. 13).24 Another rare example featuring an elephant form was used as the backdrop for a Clan Head’s throne in Calabar (Fig. 14).Among the Yakurr people of Ugep, each head of a paternal family possesses an elephant tusk horn. During important events, a family head will appear holding a staff while his assistant blows an elephant tusk horn (Fig. 15).25 From this community, Dr. Otu Abam Ubi explains:In the port city of Calabar, Èfịk-speaking clans are organized into a dozen houses, derived from the trading “canoe-houses” of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries (Dike 1956: 34; Miller 2009: 76). During annual celebrations, Cobham House is represented by banner featuring a portrait of founding ancestor Éyọ Émà on a throne, wearing a leopard-skin headband with an ivory tusk under each foot (Fig. 16). Èfịk Houses are proud of their centuries of contact with British merchants, reflected in the name Cobham, an anglicized variant of Akabom.27In the same annual celebration, each Èfịk house displayed a representative mask. A crowd-pleaser was the raffia-fiber Íbóm mask with a long “elephant trunk” and two short tusks (Fig. 17). Although Íbóm is not part of the Ékpè society, only Ékpè initiates may act as Íbóm participants, who perform songs and rhythms of the yàkpè Ékpè grade.28 Íbóm performance once again emphasizes interplay between leopard and elephant symbols.Calabar author Bassey Efiong Bassey reported that “an elephant represents Oku Akama,” alluding to the early functions of this Ékpè grade to knock down the thatched dwellings of those who resisted decisions of the council of elders.29 He describes this Ékpè grade as “well equipped for demolition …. Oku Akama is animalistic in form. The Elephant and her baby represent it. This is aptly demonstrated in its dance form” (Fig. 18) (Bassey 2001: 67, 119).30Among the Èfịks of Calabar, Èfé Àsàsbọ (hall of the python), is an Ńdèm shrine where the Èdídèm (sovereign) is invested (Goldie [1862] 1964: 601).31 A selected Ètúbòm “head of House” is first invested here as Èdídèm before receiving a government certificate making him the Obong of Calabar, “the single being who more than any other man united in himself the quintessence and grandeur and, perhaps, sanctity of the Efik tradition” (Hart 1964: 5).32 An enthroned Èdídèm was photographed in 1973 outside the Èfé Àsàsbò with each foot placed upon a nuk-enen “elephant tusk” (Fig. 19).33Calabar indigenes are organized into three historically distinct communities, Èfịk, Efût, and Qua. The secretary of Big Qua Clan, “Èsínjò Ótóè” Èdím Íká Èdím Ìtákpô, spoke about elephant symbols in royal processions of his community (Fig. 20)34:The recent Ndidem (Paramount Ruler and Éjághám Patriarch) of the Quas of Calabar, Patrick I. Oquagbor V, reflected about the leopard skin cap and elephant tusk symbols of his throne:Contemporary royal displays of elephant and leopard symbols derive from a precolonial context irrevocably altered through early trade with Europeans who brought firearms, subsequent colonial administrations that transformed the societies, leading to the widespread loss of local languages, along with destruction of the forest environment. These tragedies are reflected in the transformation of leopard symbols, for example in urban Calabar, where some Ékpè titleholders now claim that ékpè/mgbè means “lion,” and not “leopard,” as established in the historical literature.36 This transformation was visualized in a painting on the Ékpè hall of Ekondo Titi community in Cameroon, known locally as Etana or Mátámò (Fig. 21).37 Here, the painted seal of an Ékpè hall features the symbol of a lion, thus erasing a centuries long tradition of identification with the native Panthera pardus.The contemporary symbol of a lion vs. a leopard indicates several factors: a West African population disconnected from the critically endangered wildlife of their region, the inconsistent translation of local terms into Nigerian Pidgin, the loss of literacy in local languages, and perhaps the persistent prominence of the lion as symbol of British monarchy, as presented on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom from 1837 onwards.38In Cuba, the Abakuá mutual aid society—established in Havana in the early 1800s as a variant of Cross River’s Ékpè institution—ritually reproduces “the Voice of the leopard,” while an Abakuá visual arts tradition frequently reproduces leopard images.39 Elephant images and even carved ivory arrived to Cuba in tandem with human trafficking. One Abakuá manuscript reports about West African ivory merchants: “Batanga: Dealer (of petty merchandise and ivory)”—which is corroborated by the diary of Thomas Hutchinson, a British visitor to Batanga (present Kribi, Cameroon) in the late 1850s (Cabrera 2020: 76, 409n71).40 Several Abakuá references to elephants in regards to founding rites in West Africa were documented by folklorist Lydia Cabrera.41 Initiated elders taught her that “in the beginning,” ritual offerings included ivory: “Some spells are done with animal teeth, from mokueriré ndó (elephant), from ngrí (tiger), and also with the teeth of deceased humans” (Cabrera 1988a: 246).42In the 1800s in Havana, an ivory horn was sounded by an Arará (Fon) cabildo “nation group” during funerals and annual processions “celebrated on the day of Easter Pentecost,” exemplifying how Africans adapted their heritage practices to the Cuban context, as reported by Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz (1955: 334-35).Another West African system recreated in colonial Cuba was Ifá divination. The Ifá oracle sign “Obe Kana” contains a parable of how Orula (deity of divination) used the elephant tusk.43 Lydia Cabrera published a literary version of this legend44:In both West Africa and Cuba, the irọfa or irọke “oracle tapper” is made in the shape of an elephant tusk, while the myth of Ifá’s foundation in West Africa narrates that all parts of the elephant were used.45 Some contemporary Cuban babaláwos possess ivory “oracle tappers” produced in West Africa and gifted from colleagues there (Fig. 22). Elephants are symbols of both Ifá divination and “Òrìṣà funfun” (white deities), specifically Ọbàtálá (Bascom (1969/1991: 185n3).46 In Havana in the decade of 1950, Ortiz reported trumpet made of … among the of the in the of a of the used in ceremony are with that the An elephant in the context of other Ifá oracle symbols was featured on one (Fig. in Havana for and Abakuá this presents the Ifá oracle as an of West African royal the Cross River during the precolonial and other animals appear to have totems for early migrating From the once permanent settlements were established for of the region, the lineage totems their functions to symbols for regional initiation led by royal members. The of West African elephant and leopard symbols is in the Carved tusks Europe as prestige trade goods in the sixteenth and seventeenth some from the Calabar the subsequent of European firearms, elephants and leopards have nearly from Nigeria and their as deities and icons of in heads display inherited elephant tusks and leopard to their tusk trumpets are blown on important by to family are performed under the of the Ékpè “leopard” the captive Africans in the Caribbean taught their descendants and about elephants and leopards central to Cuban initiation known as Ifá and derived from the Ifá oracle system of and the Ékpè society of the Calabar Here, functions as historical memory to identify with a African heritage that into From West the but the the to where both is in the of