Ota Benga

Ota Benga in 1904

Ota Benga (circa 1883 – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese Mbuti pygmy known for being featured with other Africans in an anthropology exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904, and later in a controversial human zoo exhibit at New York City's Bronx Zoo in 1906. Benga had been freed from slave traders in the Congo by the missionary Samuel Phillips Verner, who had taken him to Missouri. At the Bronx Zoo, Benga had free run of the grounds before and after he was "exhibited" in the zoo's Monkey House. The display was intended to promote the contemporary concepts of human evolution and scientific racism.

African-American newspapers around the nation carried editorials strongly opposing Benga's treatment. Dr. R.S. MacArthur, the spokesperson for a delegation of black churches, petitioned the New York City mayor for his release. The mayor released Benga to the custody of Reverend James M. Gordon, who supervised the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn and made him a ward. That same year Gordon arranged for Benga to be cared for in Virginia, where he paid for him to acquire American clothes and to have his teeth capped, so the young man could be part of society. Benga was tutored in English and began to work. When, several years later, the outbreak of World War I stopped passenger travel on the oceans and prevented his returning to Africa, he became depressed. He committed suicide in 1916 at the age of 32.

Early life

A member of the Mbuti people, Ota Benga lived in equatorial forests near the Kasai River in what was then the Belgian Congo. His people were killed by the Force Publique, established by King Leopold II of Belgium as a militia to control the natives and to exploit the large supply of rubber in the Congo. Benga lost his wife and two children, surviving only because he was away on a hunting expedition when the Force Publique attacked his village. He was later captured by slavers.

The American businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner was sent to Africa in 1904 under contract from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis World Fair) to bring back an assortment of pygmies to be part of an exhibition. To demonstrate the fledgling discipline of anthropology, the noted scientist W. J. McGee, intended to display "representatives of all the world's peoples, ranging from smallest pygmies to the most gigantic peoples, from the darkest blacks to the dominant whites" to show a sort of cultural evolution. Verner discovered Ota Benga while en route to a Batwa village visited previously; he negotiated Benga's release for a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth. The two spent several weeks together before reaching the village, where the abuses of King Leopold's forces had instilled mistrust for the muzungu (white man). Verner was unable to persuade any villagers to join him until Benga spoke of how the muzungu had saved his life, the bond that had grown between them, and his own curiosity about the world Verner came from. Four Batwa, all male, ultimately accompanied them; five non-pygmies from the Bakuba (including the son of King Ndombe, ruler of the Bakuba) and related peoples – "Red Africans" as they were collectively labeled by contemporary anthropologists – came as well.

The World's Fair

Benga (second from left) and the Batwa in St. Louis

The group arrived in St. Louis, Missouri without Verner, who had been taken ill with malaria, in late June when the Louisiana Purchase Exposition had already begun. They immediately became the center of attention; referred to variously by the press as Artiba, Autobank, Ota Bang, and Otabenga, Ota Benga was particularly popular. He had an amiable personality, visitors were eager to see his teeth, which had been filed to sharp points in his early youth as ritual decoration. The Africans had learned to charge for photographs and performances, and one newspaper account, promoting him as "the only genuine African cannibal in America", claimed "[his teeth were] worth the five cents he charges for showing them to visitors".

When Verner arrived a month later, he realized the pygmies were more prisoners than performers. Their attempts to congregate peacefully in the forest on Sundays were thwarted by the crowds' fascination with them, as were McGee's attempts to present a "serious" scientific exhibit. On a July 28, their performing to the crowd's preconceived notion that they were "savages" resulted in the First Illinois Regiment being called in to control the mob. Benga and the other Africans eventually performed in a military-style fashion, imitating that of the Indians at the Exhibition. The Indian chief Geronimo (featured as "The Human Tyger" – with special dispensation from the Department of War) came to admire Benga, and gave him one of his arrowheads. For his efforts, Verner was awarded the gold medal in anthropology at the Exposition's close.

Museum of Natural History

Benga accompanied Verner when he returned the other Africans to the Congo, and briefly lived amongst the Batwa while continuing to accompany Verner on his African adventures. He married a Batwa woman who later died of snakebite, and little is known of his second marriage. Not feeling that he belonged with the Batwa, Benga chose to return with Verner to the United States.

Verner eventually arranged for Benga to stay in a spare room at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City while he was tending to other business. Verner negotiated with the curator Henry Bumpus over the presentation of his acquisitions from Africa and potential employment. While Bumpus was put off by Verner's request of the prohibitively high salary of $175 a month and was not impressed with the man's credentials, he was interested in Benga. Wearing a Southern-style linen suit to entertain visitors, Benga initially enjoyed his time at the museum. He became homesick, however.

The writers Bradford and Blume imagined his feelings:

What at first held his attention now made him want to flee. It was maddening to be inside – to be swallowed whole – so long. He had an image of himself, stuffed, behind glass, but somehow still alive, crouching over a fake campfire, feeding meat to a lifeless child. Museum silence became a source of torment, a kind of noise; he needed birdsong, breezes, trees.

The disaffected Benga attempted to find relief by exploiting his employers' presentation of him as a 'savage'. He tried to slip past the guards as a large crowd was leaving the premises; when asked on one occasion to seat a wealthy donor's wife, he pretended to misunderstand, instead hurling the chair across the room, just missing the woman's head. Meanwhile, Verner was struggling financially and had made little progress in his negotiations with the museum. He soon found another home for the pygmy.

Bronx Zoo

At the suggestion of Bumpus, Verner took Benga to the Bronx Zoo in 1906. He was allowed to roam the grounds freely, and he became fond of an orangutan named Dohong, "the presiding genius of the Monkey House", who had been taught to perform tricks and imitate human behavior. The events leading to his "exhibition" alongside Dohong were gradual: Benga spent some of his time in the Monkey House exhibit, and the zoo encouraged him to hang his hammock there, and to shoot his bow and arrow at a target. On the first day of the exhibit, September 8, 1906, visitors found Benga in the Monkey House. Soon, a sign on the exhibit read:

Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo in 1906. Only five promotional photos exist of Benga's time here, none of them in the "Monkey House"; cameras were not allowed.

The African Pigmy, "Ota Benga."
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.
Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the
Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Cen-
tral Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-
hibited each afternoon during September.

William Hornaday, the Bronx Zoo director, considered the exhibit as a valuable spectacle for his visitors, and was encouraged by Madison Grant. A decade later, Grant became prominent as a racial anthropologist and eugenicist.

African-American clergymen immediately protested to zoo officials about the exhibit. Said James H. Gordon, "Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes ... We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls." Gordon thought the exhibit was hostile to Christianity for its promotion of Darwinism: "The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted." A number of clergymen backed Gordon. In defense of the depiction of Benga as a lesser human, an editorial in The New York Times suggested:

We do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter ... It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies ... are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place ... from which he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.

After the controversy, Benga was allowed to roam the grounds of the zoo. In response to the situation, as well as verbal and physical prods from the crowds, he became more mischievous and somewhat violent. Around this time, an article in The New York Times stated, "It is too bad that there is not some society like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. We send our missionaries to Africa to Christianize the people, and then we bring one here to brutalize him."

The zoo finally removed Benga from the grounds. Verner was unsuccessful in his continued search for employment, but he occasionally spoke to Benga. The two had agreed that it was in Benga's best interests to remain in the United States despite the unwelcome spotlight at the zoo. Toward the end of 1906, Benga was released into Reverend Gordon's custody.

Later life

Gordon placed Benga in the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum, a church-sponsored orphanage which he supervised. As the unwelcome press attention continued, in January 1910, Gordon arranged for Benga's relocation to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived with the McCray family. He arranged for Benga's teeth to be capped and for him to dress in American-style clothes so that he could be part of local society. Tutored by Lynchburg poet Anne Spencer, Benga could improve his English, and he began to attend elementary school at the Baptist Seminary in Lynchburg.

Once he felt his English had improved sufficiently, Benga discontinued his formal education and began working at a Lynchburg tobacco factory. Despite his small size, he proved a valuable employee because he could climb up the poles to get the tobacco leaves without having to use a ladder. His fellow workers called him "Bingo." He often told his life story in exchange for sandwiches and root beer. He began to plan a return to Africa.

When the World War I broke out, a return to the Congo became impossible, and Benga became depressed as his hopes for a return to the Congo faded. On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth and shot himself in the heart with a stolen pistol.

He was buried in an unmarked grave in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, the remains of both men went missing. Local oral history indicates that Hayes and Ota Benga were eventually moved from the Old Cemetery to White Rock Cemetery, a burial ground that later fell into disrepair.

Legacy

Phillips Verner Bradford, the grandson of Samuel Phillips Verner, wrote a book on the Congolese entitled Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (1992). During his research for the book, he visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which holds a life mask and body cast of Ota Benga. The display is still labeled "Pygmy", rather than indicating Benga's name, despite objections beginning a century ago from Verner and repeated by others.

Like Ota Benga, Ishi was the last of his tribe.

The similarities between Ota Benga and Ishi, the sole remaining member of a Native American tribe, who was displayed in California around the same period – including the subsequent publication of a book on the subject by the descendants of the scientist involved – have been observed. Adams (2001) argues that, rather than "mak[ing] racial, national, and species differences culturally intelligible" as the exhibits' creators intended, "the spectators came to question their own place within the hierarchy of human races and the narratives of progress on which that hierarchy relied". Rather than simply exposing the racism of the American public (as members of Ota and Ishi's respective races perceived them), the incidents served to humanize the cultures being displayed. Coincidentally, Ishi died on March 25, 1916, five days after Ota.

Representation in popular culture

• 1994, John Strand had his play, Ota Benga, produced by the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia.
• 1997, the play Ota Benga, Elegy for the Elephant was written by Dr. Ben B. Halm and staged at Fairfield University.
• 2002, Ota Benga was the subject of the short documentary Ota Benga: A Pygmy in America directed by the Brazilian Alfeu França, who incorporated original movies recorded by Verner in the early 20th century.
• The Brooklyn-based band Pinataland have a song titled "Ota Benga's Name" on their album Songs from the Forgotten Future Volume 1, which tells the story of Ota Benga.
• A highly fictionalized version of Ota Benga appeared as a character in the 2006 fantasy film The Fall.
• Benga inspired the character of Ngunda Oti in the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
• Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof (2012), a collection of poems by the writer Carrie Allen McCray, whose family had taken care of Benga, and edited by Kevin Simmonds, was published by the University of South Carolina Press.
• A theatrical adaptation of McCray's first poems about Ota Benga debuted at the Columbia Museum of Art in 2006 (with McCray as narrator and original music by Kevin Simmonds).

See also

• Human zoo
• Saartjie Baartman, called the "Hottentot Venus"

Bibliography

• Adams, Rachel (2001). Sideshow U.S.A: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226005399. 
• Bradford, Phillips Verner; Harvey Blume (1992). Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. New York: St. Martins Press. ISBN 0312082762. 
• Parezo, Nancy J.; Don D. Fowler (2007). Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803237596. 
• Smith, Ken (1998). Raw Deal: Horrible and Ironic Stories of Forgotten Americans. New York: Blast Books, Inc.. ISBN 0922233209. 
• Spiro, Jonathan Peter (2008). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Press. pp. 43–51. ISBN 9781584657156. 
• Weaver, Jace (2003). "When the Demons Came: (Retro)Spectacle among the Savages". In Karl Kroeber; Clifton B. Kroeber. Ishi in Three Centuries. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 35–47. ISBN 0803227574. 

External links

• "From the Belgian Congo to the Bronx Zoo", 8 September 2006, National Public Radio
• Ota Benga Folk Opera, 2010 recording of a suite of songs based on the life of Ota Benga and the history of Congo
• Cecil Adams answer to "Are Pygmies really human?", The Straight Dope, 20 February 2004, discusses history of Ota Benga
• Ota Benga Alliance for Peac, Healing and Dignity, Official Website
• Ota Benga (1881-1916) at Find a Grave