Ota Benga

Ota Benga 1883-1916, an African Congolese pygmy

There's been some buzz lately about a book called, Ota Benga: The Pygmy at the Zoo by Harvey Blume and Philips Verner Bradford. It's a fascinating story, one that I've never heard of, about an African pygmy tribesman who was captured in 1904 by a North Carolina adventurer, Samuel Verner Bradford (grandfather of one of the authors) and purchased for some salt and yards of cloth.  His hunting group had been butchered along with his wife and children. Ota was displayed in the Bronx NY Zoo as an exhibit.  The plaque on the cage read: The African Pygmy, 'Ota Benga.' Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches. Weight 103 pounds. Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Exhibited each afternoon during September." The cage was strewn with bones and grasses and Ota was expected to squat and weave things and occasionally pick up a bow and arrow and shoot it. Eventually, an orangutan was put in the cage with him and he carried it around like a child to the delight of zoo visitors. The zoo director saw nothing ethically wrong with displaying a human being in a zoo with animals and at the St. Louis fair, Ota was a popular attraction along with other human "oddities of nature" from the Philippines, Japan and South America. The one dissenting voice came from the Reverend James H. Gordon, of the Colored Baptists Ministers' Conference whose objection was to the blatant racism but also more theological in nature. He was afraid that showing a black human with apes would give people ideas of Darwinism and detract from his Christian message. The Bronx Zoo director, clueless as to the negative attention, insisted that "(Benga)...has one of the best rooms in the primate house." Ota was allowed more freedom but eventually, because of some violent episodes, he was released to Rev. Gordon's Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.  Here, he learned to write a little, along with children a third his age.  He was able to work a few jobs and often paid bus fare with a wild bird egg or a rabbit. On March 20, 1916, Ota Benga, once a proud pygmy warrior, went behind his small house and shot himself through the heart. It's no wonder that this is not a well known story. It's certainly one that is easily shoved under the carpet or stored in the dusty closet of human nature. Still, while I really don't need any more affirmation regarding what some humans are capable of doing to each other and other living creatures, I'm anxious to read this book. Bitter, much? Sometimes it seems so.