In
1904 a 23 year old man named Ota Benga was captured in the Belgian
Congo with the intent to put him on display as a missing link. Ota Benga
was a black man, a Pygmy.
After being on display at the World’s Fair for a while, Ota was taken to
the zoo in Brooklyn, New York and displayed with monkeys in a cage.
Ota was mistreated and captured and put in a zoo only because of the
belief in evolution. This happened over one hundred years ago. At the
time the reasoning was that if man has evolved from ape like creatures
then it is only natural to assume that some races are more evolved
others. Since apes have dark skin, it was assumed at the time that the
darker the skin the less evolved.
You can read the true story of Ota Benga, and what he went through, in this brief article:
“One of the most fascinating stories about the effects of evolution on
human relations is the story of Ota Benga, a pygmy who was put on
display in a zoo as an example of an evolutionarily inferior race. The
incident clearly reveals the racism of evolutionary theory and the
extent to which the theory gripped the hearts and minds of scientists.” ~
Jerry Bergman
The man who was put on display in a zoo was
brought from the Belgian Congo in 1904 by noted African explorer Samuel
Verner. The man, a pygmy named Ota Benga, was soon ‘presented by Verner
to the Bronx Zoo director, William Hornaday.
The pygmy was born
in 1881 in Africa. When put in the zoo, he was 150 centimetres (4 feet
11 inches) tall, about 23 years old, and weighed a mere 47 kilos (103
pounds). Often referred to as a boy, he had been actually married
twice—his first wife had been kidnapped by a hostile tribe, and his
second had died from a poisonous snake bite.
He was first
displayed at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, and was exhibited with
other pygmies as ‘emblematic savages’ along with other ‘strange people’
in the anthropology wing. This first stop in America was influenced by
what some have called ‘Darwinism, Barnumism, and racism.’
Ota
Benga later ended up at the Bronx Zoo, where he was put on display in
the monkey house. Although zoo director Hornaday insisted he was merely
offering an ‘intriguing exhibit’ for the public’s edification, he
‘apparently saw no difference between a wild beast and the little Black
man; for the first time in any American zoo, a human being was displayed
in a cage. Benga was given cage-mates to keep him company in his
captivity—a parrot and an Orangutan named Dohong’.
Persuaded by Darwin’s Theory:
The factors motivating Verner to bring Ota Benga to the United States
were complex, but he was evidently much influenced by the theory of
Charles Darwin—which led to the division of humankind into contrived
races.
A contemporary account stated that Benga was ‘not much
taller than the orangoutan [sic] … their heads are much alike, and both
grin in the same way when pleased’.
Benga had come over from
Africa with a ‘fine young chimpanzee’, which Mr Verner also deposited
‘in the ape collection at the Primates House’. Hornaday’s enthusiasm for
his new exhibit was reflected in an article he wrote for the zoological
society’s bulletin, which began as follows:
‘On September 9, a
genuine African Pygmy, belonging to the sub-race commonly miscalled
“the dwarfs,”. . . Ota Benga is a well-developed little man, with a good
head, bright eyes and a pleasing countenance. He is not hairy, and is
not covered by the “downy fell” described by some explorers…. He is
happiest when at work, making something with his hands.’
He
then tells about how he obtained him from Verner, who ‘was specially
interested in the Pygmies, having recently returned to their homes on
the Kasai River the half dozen men and women of that race who were
brought to this country by him for exhibition in the Department of
Anthropology at the St Louis [World’s Fair] Exposition.’
It was
widely believed at this time, even by eminent scientists, that blacks
were evolutionarily inferior to Caucasians, but caging one in a zoo
produced much publicity. In Bridges’ words:
‘The Pygmy
worked—or played—with the animals in a cage, naturally, and the
spectacle of a black man in a cage gave a Times reporter the springboard
for a story that worked up a storm of protest among Negro ministers in
the city. Their indignation was made known to Mayor George B. McClellan,
but he refused to take action.
Some whites also became
concerned about the ‘caged Negro’. According to one author, part of the
concern was because the ‘men of the cloth feared…that the Benga
exhibition might be used to prove the Darwinian theory of evolution’.
The objections were often vague, as in the words of The New York Times
of September 9, 1906:
Pygmies Rated Low on ‘Human Scale’
‘The exhibition was that of a human being in a monkey cage. The human
being happened to be a Bushman, one of a race that scientists do not
rate high in the human scale, but to the average nonscientific person in
the crowd of sightseers there was something about the display that was
unpleasant…. It is probably a good thing that Benga doesn’t think very
deeply. If he did it isn’t likely that he was very proud of himself when
he woke in the morning and found himself under the same roof with the
orangoutangs [sic] and monkeys, for that is where he really is.’
Although a variety of opinions, existed about the incident, it created
many protests and the threat of legal action. So the zoo director
finally acquiesced, and ‘allowed the pygmy out of his cage’. Once let
out, Ota Benga spent most of his days walking around the zoo grounds in a
white suit, often with huge crowds following him, and returned to the
monkey house only to sleep at night.
Being treated as a
curiosity, mocked and made fun of by the visitors, eventually caused
Benga to ‘hate being mobbed by curious tourists and mean children’. Zoo
director Hornaday, in a letter to Verrier, revealed the problems that
the situation had caused:
‘Of course we have not exhibited him
(Benga) in the cage since the trouble began. Since dictating the above,
we have had a great time with Ota Benga. He procured a carving knife
from the feeding room of the Monkey House, and went around the Park
flourishing it in a most alarming manner, and for a longtime refused to
give it up. Eventually it was taken away from him.
‘Shortly
after that he went to the soda fountain near the Bird House, to get some
soda, and because he was refused the soda he got into a great rage….
This led to a great fracas. He fought like a tiger, and it took three
men to get him back to the monkey house. He has struck a number of
visitors, and has “raised Cain” generally.’
Fired Arrows at Obnoxious Gawkers:
The pygmy later made a little bow and some arrows and began shooting at
zoo visitors whom he found particularly obnoxious. ‘After he wounded a
few gawkers, he had to leave the Zoological Park for good.’ The New York
Times of September 18, 1906, described the problem:
‘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.’
Although Hornaday claimed he was ‘merely offering an interesting exhibit
and that Benga was happy…’, The Encyclopedia of Evolution notes that
this statement ‘could not be confirmed’ as there was no record of
Benga’s feelings.
Ota Benga unfortunately left no written
record of his thoughts about the affair. Thus the only side of the story
we have is in Verner’s voluminous records, the newspaper accounts, and
the writings of Hornaday.
We are not lacking information about
the incident—many articles survive on the case, and a 281-page book
entitled The Pygmy in the Zoo was recently published about Ota’s zoo
experience by Phillip Verner Bradford, Verner’s grandson.
‘Freak’ Label Leads to Suicide:
After Ota Benga left the zoo, he was able to find sympathetic care at a
succession of institutions and with several sympathetic individuals.
But he was never able to shed his ‘freak’ label. Employed in a tobacco
factory in Lynchburg, Virginia, Ota Benga grew increasingly depressed,
hostile, irrational, and forlorn. Concluding that he would never be able
to return to his native land, in 1916 Benga committed suicide by
shooting himself with a borrowed pistol.
The story of his
suicide was published by Hornaday in a 1916 Zoological Bulletin. Even at
this late date, Hornaday’s evolution-inspired racist feelings clearly
showed through. He even stated that ‘the young negro was brought to
Lynchburg about six years ago, by some kindly disposed person, and was
placed in the Virginia Theological Seminary and College here, where for
several years he labored to demonstrate to his benefactors that he did
not possess the power of learning; and some two or three years ago he
quit the school and went to work as a laborer’ (emphasis mine).
Hornaday then recounts that, after leaving college, Ota lived at a
‘colored home’ near the school, earning his livelihood by working as a
laborer in a tobacco factory. In Hornaday’s words, the suicide was
committed because ‘the burden became so heavy that the young Negro
secured a revolver belonging to the woman with whom he lived, went to
the cow stable and there sent a bullet through his heart, ending his
life.’
The story of Ota Benga is one of the many tragic fruits
of evolutionism. But it is one which contains a lesson in helping us to
realize the importance of the Islamic/Jewish/Christian teaching that all
men are brothers, all descendants of Adam and Eve. If all people had
stood up for creation at the outset of the Ota Benga incident, this
horror story of evolutionary racism might have been averted.
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