The Meaning of the Lancaster Family Crest

LANCASTER

FAMILY

CREST

 Designed by Stephan M. Lancaster and Meghan J. Herlehy

Flag of Bamileke Movement

Flag of Cameroon

Cameroon elephant maskers in the Bamenda highlands

Flag of Cameroon

The national flag of Cameroon was adopted in its present form on 20 May 1975 after Cameroon became a unitary state. It is a vertical tricolor of green, red and yellow, defaced with a five-pointed star in its center. There is a wide variation in the size of the central star, although it is always contained within the inside stripe.

The colour scheme uses the traditional Pan-African colours (Cameroon becoming the second state to do so), and the tricolor design is adapted from the flag of France. The centre stripe is thought to stand for unity: red is the colour of unity, and the star is referred to as "the star of unity". The yellow stands for the sun, and also the savannas in the northern part of the country, while the green is for the forests in the southern part of Cameroon.

Flag of Bamileke Movement

Based on the book "Nations Without States" the Bamileke inhabit an area stretching from the Nigeria/Cameroon border east to the Sananga River delta. From the map in the book it appears Bamilekeland includes portions of both the former British and French mandates. The flag of the Bamileke national movement is described as four equal horizontal stripes of green, yellow, red and black.

Ned Smith, 17 February 2001

Bamileke Elephant Masks

Elephants are the world's most commanding land creatures, unsurpassed in grandeur and power. Thus elephant masks, while rare in Africa, are fully appropriate symbols of important leaders or, at least, their respected deputies or messengers. The societies that use these masks in fact act as agents of chiefs' control and as formal royal emissaries. Elephant societies that originated in Bamileke and spread elsewhere in the Grasslands consist of three graded ranks attained by wealth. These elephant masks, signifying kingship and wealth, were worn by the powerful members of the Kuosi regulatory society, which included members of royalty, wealthy title holders, and ranking warriors of the Bandjoun kingdom of western Cameroon.