Ota Benga: the Pygmy Put on Dis- Play in A

Papers extinct, is a major chapter in Darwinian history. The ne- Ota Benga: the farious fruits of evolutionism, from the Nazis’ conception of racial superiority to its utilisation in developing their governmental policy, are all well documented.3,4 pygmy put on dis- Some scientists felt that the solution to the problem of racism in early twentieth century America was to allow play in a zoo Darwinian natural selection to operate without interference. Bradford and Blume noted that Darwin taught that: Jerry Bergman ‘ …when left to itself, natural selection would ac- complish extinction. Without slavery to embrace and One of the most fascinating historical ac- protect them, or so it was thought, blacks would have counts about the social effects of Darwin- to compete with caucasians for survival. Whites’ ism is the story of Ota Benga, a pygmy who greater fitness for this contest was [they believed] was put on display in an American zoo as beyond dispute. The disappearance of blacks as a 5 an example of an evolutionarily inferior race, then, would only be a matter of time.’ race. The incident clearly reveals the rac- Each new American census showed that this pre- ism of Darwinism and the extent to which diction of Darwin was wrong because ‘the black population the theory gripped the hearts and minds showed no signs of failing, and might even be on the rise.’ of scientists and journalists in the early Not content ‘to wait for natural selection to grind out the 1900s. As humans move away from this answer,’ one senator even tried to establish programs to time in history, we can more objectively convince — or even force — Afro-Americans to return 6 look back at the horrors that Darwinism back to Africa. has brought to society, of which this story One of the more poignant incidents in the history of is one poignant example. Darwinism and racism is the story of the man put on display in a zoo.7 Brought from the Belgian Congo in 1904 by noted African explorer Samuel Verner, he was eventually ‘presented by Verner to the Bronx Zoo director, William Hornaday’.8 The man, a pygmy named Ota Benga (or ‘Bi’ Genetic differences are crucial to the theory of Darwin- which means ‘friend’ in Benga’s language), was born in ism because they are the only ultimate source of the innova- 1881 in central Africa. When placed in the zoo, although tion required for evolution. History and tradition has, often about twenty-three years old, he was only four feet eleven with tragic consequences, grouped human phenotypes that inches tall and weighed a mere 103 pounds. Often referred result from genotypic variations together into categories to as a boy, he was actually a twice-married father — his now called races. Races function as evolutionary selection first wife and two children were murdered by the white units of such importance that the subtitle of Darwin’s classic colonists, and his second spouse died from a poisonous 1859 book, The Origin of Species, was ‘The preservation snake bite.9 of favoured races in the struggle for life.’ This work was Ota was first displayed as an ‘emblematic savage’ in critical in establishing the importance of the race fitness the anthropology wing at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair idea, and especially the ‘survival of the fittest’ concept. The with other pygmies. The exhibit was under the direction question being asked in the early 1900s was: of W.J. McGee of the St Louis World’s Fair Anthropology ‘Who was, [and] who wasn’t human? It was Department. McGee’s ambition for the exhibit was to ‘be a big question in turn-of-the-century Europe and exhaustively scientific’in his demonstration of the stages of America…. The Europeans … were asking and human evolution. Therefore he required ‘darkest blacks’ to answering it about Pygmies … often influenced set off against ‘dominant whites’ and members of the ‘lowest by the current interpretations of Darwinism, so it known culture’ to contrast with ‘its highest culmination’.10 was not simply who was human, but who was more Ironically, Professor Franz Boas of Columbia University human, and finally, who was the most human, that ‘lent his name’ to the anthropological exhibit. This was concerned them.’ 1 ironic because Boas, a Jew who was one of the first anthro- Darwinism spawned the belief that some races pologists who opposed the racism of Darwinism, spent his were physically closer to the lower primates and were also life fighting the now infamous eugenics movement.11 inferior. The polyphyletic view was that blacks evolved The extremely popular exhibit attracted ‘considerable from the strong but less intelligent gorillas, the Orientals attention’.12 Pygmies were selected because they had at- from the Orang-utans, and whites from the most intelligent tracted much attention as an example of a primitive race. of all primates, the chimpanzees.2 The belief that blacks One Scientific American article said: were less evolved than whites, and (as many early evo- ‘The personal appearance, characteristics, lutionists concluded) that they would eventually become and traits of the Congo pygmies …[they are] small, ape-like, elfish creatures, furtive and mischievous … CEN Technical Journal 14(1) 2000 81 Papers Ota Benga: the pygmy put on display in a zoo — Bergman [who] live in the dense tangled forests in absolute A Scientific American editor concluded: savagery, and while they exhibit many ape-like fea- ‘ … of the native tribes to be seen in the exposi- tures in their bodies, they possess a certain alertness, tion, the most primitive are the Negritos … nothing which appears to make them more intelligent than makes them so happy as to show their skill, by other negroes…. knocking a five-cent piece out of a twig of a tree at The existence of the pygmies is of the rudest; they a distance of fifteen paces. Then there is the village do not practice agriculture, and keep no domestic of the Head-Hunting Igorotes, a race that is … a fine animals. They live by means of hunting and snar- type of agricultural barbarians.’19 ing, eking this out by means of thieving from the big The same source referred to pygmies as ‘ape- negroes, on the outskirts like little black people’ and of whose tribes they usu- theorised that the evolution ally establish their little of the anthropoid apes was colonies, though they soon followed by: are as unstable as water, ‘ … the earliest type and range far and wide of humanity which en- through the forests. They tered the Dark Con- have seemingly become tinent, and these too, acquainted with metal urged on by the pressure only through contact with of superior tribes, were superior beings….’ 13 gradually forced into During the pyg- the great forests. The mies’ stay in America, they human type, in all prob- were studied by scientists ability, first emerged to learn how the ‘barbaric from the ape in south- races’ compared with intel- eastern Asia, possibly in lectually defective Cauca- India. The higher types sians on intelligence tests, forced the negro from and how they responded the continent in an east- to such things as pain.14 ward direction, across The anthropometricists and the intervening islands, psychometricists concluded as far as Australia, and that intelligence tests proved westward into Africa. that pygmies were similar to Even today, ape-like ‘mentally deficient persons, negroes are found in making many stupid errors the gloomy forests, who and taking an enormous are doubtless direct de- amount of time’.15 Many scendants of these early Darwinists put the pygmies’ types of man, who prob- level of evolution ‘squarely ably closely resembled in the Paleolithic period’ their simian ancestors and Gatti concluded they had …. the ‘cruelty of the primitive They are often dirty- man’.16 Nor did they do very yellowish brown in col- well in sports. In Bradford our and covered with a and Blume’s words, ‘The fine down. Their faces disgraceful record set by are fairly hairy, with the ignoble savages’ was so great prognathism, and poor that ‘never before in Ota Benga and Polly, the chimpanzee Verner brought from the retreating chins, while in the history of sport … were Congo. general they are unintel- such poor performances ligent and timid, having recorded’.17 little tribal cohesion and usually living upon the The anthropologists then measured not only the live fringes of higher tribes. Among the latter, individual humans, but in one case a ‘primitive’s’ head was ‘severed types of the lower order crop out now and then, indi- from the body and boiled down to the skull.’ Believing skull cating that the two were, to a certain extent merged size was an ‘index of intelligence, scientists were amazed’ to in past ages.’ 20 discover the ‘primitive’s’ skull was ‘larger than that which While on display, the pygmies were treated in had belonged to the statesman Daniel Webster’.18 marked contrast to how they first treated the whites who 82 CEN Technical Journal 14(1) 2000 Ota Benga: the pygmy put on display in a zoo — Bergman Papers came to Africa to see them. When Verner visited the African The white men were simultaneously admired and feared, king, ‘he was met with songs and presents, food and palm and were regarded with both awe and concern: they could wine, drums. He was carried in a hammock.’ In contrast, do things like record human voices on Edison cylinder when the Batwa were in St Louis they were treated: phonographs which the pygmies saw as something that ‘With laughter. Stares. People came to take their stole the ‘soul’ from the body, allowing the body to sit and picture and run away … [and] came to fight with listen to its soul talking.25 them ….

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