Page 112

untitled

FEATURE 110 FIG. 4 (left): Hapi IV, king of Bana, Cameroon. Photo: Daniel Lainé. C. 1990. © Daniel Lainé/Corbis. FIG. 5 (below): Chief Kana I of Bafu-Fondong on his throne. Photo: Joseph Eberhard, 1909. From Albert F. Calvert, The Cameroons, 1917, pl. 144. Original in the collection of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne, Germany, glass slide no. 3995. Courtesy of the Ross Archive of African Images, Yale University. sculpted representation—as well as of beadwork as leadership insignia. An early photograph with the stated location of Dschang, then an administrative center, which lies in the Bamileke region about thirty miles as the crow flies west of Bafoussam, depicts a young chief and his entourage. In it, the chief is given prominence by four leopard skins, two displayed on a wall behind him and two spread on the ground, on which he rests his feet (fig. 3).9 Bana also lies in the Bamileke region, about the same distance from Bafoussam but to the south. In a photo taken by Daniel Lainé around 1990, Hapi IV, king of Bana, is surrounded by royal regalia and ritual symbols just as his ancestors would have been (fig. 4). He bears ivory armlets and strings of beads, and he wears a garment of royal cloth. Like the earlier image of the chief of Dschang, there is a leopard skin prominently displayed behind his throne and on the ground before it. These images and others like them show that historically, and even today, the leopard as represented by its skin (and often its teeth and claws) is closely associated with leadership in Bantu-related cultures. The leopard as a symbol appears in more abstracted forms as well. A historic 1909 picture shows Chief Kana I of Bafu-Fondong seated on his throne (fig. 5). While


untitled
To see the actual publication please follow the link above