Does the title of the headline sound cruel and unpardonable to you? Yet, that is exactly what happened when a human was put on display with animals at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, United States. This was how it all happened.
The Beginning
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Ota Benga was a member of the Mbuti people, a race of Pygmies who lived in rainforests near the Kasai River in Congo, and was born between the years 1881 and 1883.
One day, upon his return from elephant hunting, he found that his entire village – his wife and two children included – had been massacred by the Force Publique, a group of thugs working for the Belgian government, who at that time controlled this part of Africa, and sought to exploit the natives for labour and the lucrative rubber trade.
He was later captured and sold into slavery. It was while he was at the camp of enemy tribes, whose plan was to eat him alongside others, that explorer and businessman, Samuel Phillips Verner, who was hunting for Africans claimed to have seen him, and found him suitable for an anthropological display at the St Louis Exposition of 1904.
The St Louis Exposition
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In 1904, the showman anthropologist, William McGee conceived the idea of a human zoo, to be held in the city of St Louis, Missouri, United States. It was designed to be one of the largest scientific experiments ever undertaken and was expected to be a spectacular public entertainment.
He wanted the tallest people in the world – giants from Patagonia in Argentina, the Ainu who lived on an island north of Japan and were supposedly the hairiest humans. He placed an order for 300 Filipinos, for reasons best known to him, and as many as 18 Africans as well as people of other races.
Such displays, common in Europe, promoted the theory of Racial Darwinism, which held that blacks evolved from the strong but less intelligent gorillas, Asians from Orang-utans, and whites from the most intelligent of all primates, the chimpanzees. This theory preached that non-white races were intellectually inferior and sub-human, and was responsible for the rise of Nazism and other white supremacist ideas.
Samuel Verner purchased Ota, whose teeth was filed to sharp points (a form of cosmetic dentistry still practiced by some pygmies today), for a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth; who in turn helped him recruit four other pygmies from the Batwa tribe to go back with him to the United States for the Exposition.
Ota quickly became popular at the Exposition because of his filed teeth, and the popular belief that Pygmies were an example of a primitive race, and was even named in a newspaper article as “the only genuine African cannibal in America”.
In 1905, after the exposition, Verner returned the pygmies to Africa, and Ota Benga tried to adjust to life with the Batwa (since his tribe had been completely wiped out), even marrying a Batwa woman. He travelled round Africa with Verner, and after Ota Benga’s second wife died due to a poisonous snake bite, he asked to return with Verner to America because of the Batwa’s tribe distrust of him for keeping close company with a muzungu, that is, white man.
Life in New York City
Soon after arriving in New York City, Samuel Verner began having money troubles and had to arrange for Ota Benga to live at the American Museum of Natural History. People aren’t meant to live in museums, particularly pygmies who are more used to the forest.
Hence, at a gathering of wealthy donors, legend has it that Ota Benga flung a chair at the head of Florence Guggenheim, ultimately ending his residence at the museum, and his eventual move to the zoo.
The Infamous Bronx Zoo Stay
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In 1906, at twenty-three years old, four feet eleven inches tall and weighing a mere 47kg, Ota was brought to the Bronx Zoo. Often referred to as a boy, even though he was a twice-married father.
Ota Benga was allowed to roam the zoo grounds freely, helped with the animals, and befriended an orang-utan named Dohong. The zoo officials hung up a hammock in an empty cage in the monkey house and encouraged him to spend more time there, gave him a bow and arrow and encouraged him to shoot it as part of an exhibit for visitors!
Ota was soon locked in his enclosure—and when he was let out of the monkey house, crowds of zoo visitors stayed glued to him, and a keeper stayed close by until one Sunday afternoon when Ota decided he had had enough.
The New York Times reported the incidence thus:
There were 40,000 visitors to the park on Sunday. Nearly every man, woman and child of this crowd made for the monkey house to see the star attraction in the park – the wild man from Africa.
They chased him about the grounds all day, howling, jeering, and yelling. Some of them poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him.
Suddenly, the boy turned. Taking the bow and arrow given to him as an ethnic accessory, he shot at the gawpers. His arrow did no harm, but he did scare the life out of the onlookers.
Ota Leaves the Zoo
An incident with zookeepers in which he apparently threatened them with a knife led to his removal, first to the Howard Coloured Orphan Asylum for black children in New York, and later to a Baptist seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. He had his pointed teeth capped, was dressed in Western clothes and started to learn English.
He would later work in a tobacco factory, where he was known as Otto Bingo. He began to save money for a return to the Congo, but with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, this became impossible and Ota sank into depression.
On the evening of March 22, 1916, he went into a barn behind the village general store. He chipped off the caps hiding his teeth, restoring them to their filed-down glory of before, lit a small ceremonial campfire, and shot himself in the head (some say heart) with a stolen revolver, dying ten years after being put on display at the Bronx zoo.
He was only 32 years old, and was buried in an unmarked grave. But he undoubtedly left his mark on the world, exposing as moral pygmies, the lesser men who caged another human just because he was different from them.
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