112 hierarchies divided into a tripartite system constituted of a fon, or king; a regulatory society with ranks and a judiciary; and major cult societies. These existed against a tapestry of trade routes and middlemen, bride prices to pay and other customs to observe, and the habits of generations that played out every day to the sounds of bargaining amidst the rain and swirling dust of the Grasslands. It is a fascinating topic. In order to grasp its true significance, the contours of the beaded leopard skin’s social biography first must be determined, though unfortunately only a portion of its history can be unlocked. The earliest documentation of beaded leopard skins in the Grasslands dates from the early years of the twentieth century. The German researcher Bernhard Ankermann was the first anthropologist who traveled through the “Grasland” of Cameroon15 and he mentioned two that he saw in 1907 in Bali, where they decorated a wall of royal cloth behind the chief’s throne during a four-day festival. He was not able to determine whether these were real or made from beaded cloth.16 A photo taken soon after in Bali by Jonathan Striebel of the Basel Mission in either 1908 or 1909 shows two strikingly similar—quite possibly the same—beaded “pelts” displayed with other royal prestige items (fig. 10). A similar scene with two different beaded leopard objects was photographed in Bandjoun in 1925.17 A beadwork object resembling the FAMSF beaded
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