Ota Benga, or Otabenga, pictured above, was an African Forest Person, said to be of the Bachichiri, a family of "Bushmen" originally living in the forests along the Kasai River in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was captured in a raid by the Baschilele, who were said to have killed his family and burned his house, then turned him over to the Zappo-Zap, a tribe of African natives loyal to King Leopold II, of Belgium, absentee owner of the Congo Free State. He was held captive until acquired by Samuel Phillips Verner, a Missionary-Explorer from South Carolina who was looking for "Pygmies" who would come to be exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904.
Ota helped Verner convince other Africans, who lived in and around the village of Chief Ndombe to come to St. Louis and build a representative and "authentic" native African village for the World's Fair visitors to see, alongside thousands of other native tribesmen from all over the World.
After they returned to Africa, Verner and Ota spent 18 months exploring and collecting artifacts in Central Africa. Once Verner was ready to return to America, Ota asked to join him on his trip to New York in the summer of 1906. Once in New York City, Verner was bankrupt and the Guardian Trust Company seized his collections, which Verner had hoped could be sold to the American Museum of Natural History. Verner left Ota in the care of the Museum while he went back to South Carolina seeking family support. Motivated by good intentions, Ota's caretakers transferred him to the Bronx Zoo where he was made into a sensation as an exhibit of evolution, residing in the primate house with an Orangutan as a roommate.
Extricated by well-intended ministers of religion, Ota was transferred through several eleemosynary institutions of learning, while Verner was kept busy with new plans for African empire building with backing from New York millionaires.
Ota Benga died in Lynchburg, VA, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the vernal equinox of 1916, apparently despondant that he could not return to Africa.
Source : www.concentric.net
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OTA BENGA, THE MOST FAMOUS PYGMY
In 1906 the crowds thronged the monkey house exhibit at the Bronx Zoo (New York Zoological Park). Here were man's "evolutionary ancestors" - monkeys, chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, an orangutan named Dohung and an African pygmy tribesman named Ota Benga.
Ota Benga was brought from the Belgian Congo in 1904 by noted African explorer Samuel Verner along with other pygmies and displayed in an exhibit in the 1904 St. Louis world's Fair. Ota Benga (or "Bi", which means "friend" in his language) was born in 1881, had a height of 4 ft. 11in. and weighted 103 lbs. Although he was referred to as a boy he had been married twice. His first wife had been captured by a hostile tribe and his second wife died by a snake bite.
After the St. Louis exhibit, Ota found himself at the Bronx Zoo which at that time was under the direction of Dr. William T. Hornaday, who was considered a bit eccentric. Hornaday believed animals had nearly human thoughts and personalities, and he could read the thoughts of zoo animals. He "apparently saw no difference between a wild beast and the little Black man" and insisted he was only offering an "intriguing exhibit". (Jerry Bergman, Creation Ex Nihilo, Vol 16, No 1 Dec 1993-Feb 1994 p. 49, quoting Carl Sifakis, "Benga, Ota: The Zoo Man", in American Eccentrics, Facts on File, New York, 1984, p. 253)
The exhibit was immensely popular and controversial; the black community was outraged and some churchmen feared that it would convince people of Darwin's theory of evolution. Under threat of legal action, Hornaday had Ota Benga leave his cage and circulate around the zoo in a white suit, but he returned to the monkey house to sleep.
In time Ota Benga began to hate being the object of curiosity. "There were 40,000 visitors to the part on Sunday. Nearly every man, woman and child of this crowd made for the monkey house to see the start attraction in the park - the wild man from Africa. They chased him about the grounds add day, howling, jeering, and yelling. Some of them poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him." (Creation Ex Nihilo, quoting Phillip V. Bradford and Harvey Blume, "Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo", St. Martins, 1992, p. 269, from the "New York Times" Sept. 18, 1906) At one point, he got hold of a knife and flourished it around the park, another time he produced a fracas after being denied a soda from the soda fountain. Finally, after fabricating a small bow and arrows and shooting at obnoxious park visitors he had to leave the park for good.
After his park experience, several institutions tried to help him. He was placed in Virginia Theological Seminary and College but quit school to work in a tobacco factory. According to Hornaday (who probably had evolutionary racist views) "he did not possess the power of learning" (Creation Ex Nihilo, Vol 16, No. 1 Dec. 1993-Feb 1994, pp. 48-50).
Growing homesick, hostile, and despondent Ota Benga borrowed a revolver, and shot himself in the heart, ending his life in 1916.
Source : www.emporium.turnpike.net
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OTA BENGA, VICTIM OF 19TH CENTURY SCIENTIFIC RACISM
Ota Benga (c.1881 or 1884 – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at the Bronx Zoo alongside an orangutan. The exhibit was intended to promote the theory that humans evolved from primates, as well as eugenics, and scientific racism.[1]
Biography
Ota Benga was a member of the Batwa people,[2] and lived in equatorial forests near the Kasai River in what was then the Belgian Congo. Benga had survived the slaughter of much of his village by the Force Publique, an army of King Leopold II of Belgium. He lost his wife and two children in the massacre.[3]
American businessman Samuel Phillips Verner was sent to Africa in 1904 under contract from the St. Louis World's Fair to bring back pygmies for exhibition. Verner met Ota Benga in the Belgian Congo that year and negotiated with a tribal slave trader for the pygmies, returning to the United States with Ota Benga and eight others.
After several months of travel in the U.S., Verner took Ota Benga to the Bronx Zoo in New York City in 1906 to find him a place to live, at the suggestion of Hermon Bumpus. Bumpus was the director of the American Museum of Natural History, and had provided a home for Verner's cargo including, briefly, Benga himself. At the zoo, Benga was allowed to roam the zoo grounds and help feed the animals. The events leading to his "exhibition" were gradual:[3] 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. The first day of the "exhibit", September 8, 1906, visitors found Benga in the Monkey House.[3] A sign on the exhibit soon read:
The African Pigmy, "Ota Benga."Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from theKasai River, Congo Free State, South Cen-tral Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-hibited each afternoon during September.[4]
Bronx Zoo director William Hornaday saw the exhibit as a valuable spectacle for his visitors, and was encouraged by Madison Grant, a prominent scientific racist and eugenicist.
In response to immediate protests from African-American Baptist clergymen, Hornaday had Ota Benga removed from the exhibit. Public arguments were that the exhibit was racist—"Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes," said clergyman James H. Gordon; "We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls."[3] Gordon also considered the exhibition hostile to Christianity, for its promoting Darwinism: "The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted."[3] Benga was then allowed to roam the grounds of the zoo as a sort of interactive exhibit. In response to his general situation and to verbal and physical prods from the crowds, his behavior became at first mischievous and then somewhat violent.[5]
A September 10, 1906 New York Times story registers some of the uproar over the incident:
“
"The person responsible for this exhibition degrades himself as much as he does the African," said Rev. Dr. R. MacArthur of Calvary Baptist Church. "Instead of making a beast of this little fellow, he should be put in school for the development of such powers as God gave to him. 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."[4]
”
Toward the end of September 1906, Ota Benga again came under the guardianship of Gordon, who placed him in the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum (of which Gordon was the superintendent), a church-sponsored orphanage. In January 1910, Gordon arranged for Benga's relocation to Lynchburg, Virginia.
While in Virginia, Ota Benga's teeth, which he had filed to points in the Congo,[3] were capped, and he was dressed in American-style clothes. He was tutored by Lynchburg poet Anne Spencer and briefly attended classes at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College. He was much more at home discarding his clothes and roaming the nearby woods with his bow and arrow.
He 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" and he would tell his life story in exchange for sandwiches and root beer.
Ota Benga was caught between two worlds, unable to return to Africa, and viewed mainly as a curiosity in the U.S. On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, performed a final tribal dance, and shot himself in the heart with a stolen pistol. The death certificate listed his name as "Otto Bingo."
He was buried in an unmarked grave, records show, in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, however, both 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 fell into disrepair.
Legacy
Phillips Verner Bradford is the grandson of Samuel Phillips Verner, and authored a 1992 book on Ota Benga entitled Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo.[6] 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. To this day, the display is still labeled "Pygmy", rather than indicating Benga's name, despite objections that began almost a century ago from Verner himself.[7]
Ota Benga became the subject of a short film directed by the Brazilian Alfeu França. França recovered and used original movies recorded by Verner himself in the early 20th century to create the 2002 documentary Ota Benga: A Pygmy in America.[8] In Brazil the film was shown at the festival É Tudo Verdade ("It's All True"). 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. The bridge of the song is a poem from M.E. Buhler that appeared in the New York Times.
References
^ Phillips Verner, Bradford; Blume, Harvey (1992). Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. New York: St. Martins Press.
^ "From the Belgian Congo to the Bronx Zoo", All Things Considered, National Public Radio. September 8, 2006.
^ a b c d e f Keller, Mitch. "The Scandal at the Zoo", New York Times, August 6, 2006.
^ a b "Man and Monkey Show Disapproved by Clergy." New York Times, September 10, 1906, pg. 1.
^ Smith (1998). See chapter on Ota Benga.
^ Phillips Verner, Bradford; Blume, Harvey (1992). Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. New York: St. Martins Press.
^ Laurent, Darrel. "Demeaned in Life, Forgotten in Death", The Lynchburg News & Advance, 2005-05-29. Retrieved on 2006-04-03.
^ Alfeu França. Ota Benga:A Pygmy in America [film].
Smith, Ken (1998). Raw deal : horrible and ironic stories of forgotten Americans. New York: Blast Books, Inc.. ISBN 0-922233-20-9.
Source : www.en.wikipedia.org
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