In many senses the Annang past is a ‘scarce resource’. Annang history is hedged in by the practice of past and present religious injunctions, by concepts of knowledge and by the interplay of ‘hierarchies of credibility’. The past's scarcity is derived very simply from the fact that very few people living in the villages of the ‘leopard area’ today talk freely and directly about ékpê ówó. There is good reason for many older people to be uncomfortable with the past of the leopard murders. They swore oaths that they would have nothing to do with leopard men, oaths ingested and consumed into their bodies for a lifetime in unknown substances of fearful power.

My main contemporary interlocutors, those willing to talk, have been those who were in some way associated with the colonial authorities at the time of the murders as court clerks, interpreters or house-boys for the police. Indeed, official acknowledgement from the regional administration of assistance during the leopard-murder investigations, in the form of a letter of recognition, has become a seal of honesty, trustworthiness and good character in present day claims to chieftaincy titles and in obituaries. Being part of or close to the investigations provides an authority with a degree of immunity from suspicion and a space for social commentary. It also contributes to a circularity in the historical narrative. Since the historical record of the leopard-murders was never published, those Annang closest to the investigating authorities and who acted as intermediaries and auxiliaries for the colonial power have become instrumental in recycling the colonial narrative.