University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications, Department of History History, Department of 9-1-2006 "Gorilla Trails in Paradise": Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link Jeannette Eileen Jones University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub Part of the History Commons Jones, Jeannette Eileen, ""Gorilla Trails in Paradise": Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link" (2006). Faculty Publications, Department of History. 28. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub/28 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in The Journal of American Culture 29:3 (September 2006), pp. 321–336. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.2006.00374.x Copyright © 2006 Jeannette Eileen Jones; published by Blackwell Publishing, Inc. “Gorilla Trails in Paradise”: Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link Jeannette Eileen Jones University of Nebraska–Lincoln n 1881, Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin published “[s]uspicionless of guile” strayed beneath the I the anonymously authored poem “The Miss- trees where the simian court convened. When ing Link.” Referencing decades-long debates over the “monarch spake his love” to her, “the lady the relationship of man to ape, and the spiritual, smiled on him,” at which point the gorilla king intellectual, and moral capacities of apes, chim- stuck “his great prehensile toes” in her hair and panzees, and orangutans (Desmond 45, 141, 289), carried her off into his arboreal kingdom. “Thus the poem recounts the following tale of a simian was the monarch wed, [a]nd thus the race began, king ordered by his council to fi nd a bride. When [w]hence, thro’ various links, somewhat strange pressed by his “lords of state” to “mate,” as the methinks, [c]ame the “Descent of Man!” (Ward’s time arose for him to perform his royal duties, Natural Science Bulletin 8). the simian regent replied with indignation that he The Bulletin, the offi cial journal of Henry would not make a “mesalliance” with a chimpanzee. Ward’s Natural Science Establishment in Roch- Despite assurances that the female of the lesser ester, New York, enjoyed a wide readership in simian species would suffi ce as royal consort, the America and a selective reading audience in Eu- gorilla king declared that he would wait for some- rope. Ward’s, an emporium, cabinet of curios, and one worthy of his royal bloodline. Suddenly, from taxidermy studio, boasted a reputation as one of his treetop viewpoint, the sight of “a vision of the premier American (and Western) purveyors beauty” never seen before—”[a] maiden young of natural history specimens (Kohlstedt, 647–48). and fair, [a]s the charcoal’s ebon tint”—surprised In another poem “To the Gorilla in The Roch- him. Her teeth were white as cowry shells, “[h]er ester University,” which appeared in the Bulletin locks of a crispy curl,” and “[h]er feet of a mam- in 1882, the narrator questions the existence and moth size.” The gorilla king felt so moved by this purpose of the gorilla. At one point in the imagi- “bewitching dream” that he declared: “Now by nary conversation with the stuffed animal on dis- my kingly troth, This maid shall be, I think, My play, the author asks: “Could you not serve upon a royal bride, and supply beside Mr. Darwin’s miss- rice plantation—[r]aise sugar-cane, and cotton, for ing link.” The African woman, “thoughtless” and the masses, [a]nd carry burdens, as do mules and Jeannette Eileen Jones is an assistant professor of history and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She conducts research in the areas of American cultural history and the history of science, with emphasis on race and representation. 321 322 JEANNETTE EILEEN JONES IN THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE 29 (2006) asses?” (“To the Gorilla” 9). Both poems refl ect- particularly as those international links refl ected ed popular and scientifi c discourses concerning and reinforced the politics of empire. Specifi cal- the relationship between man and the animal king- ly, the article recounts and analyzes the Akeley Af- dom in light of the publication of “Mr. Darwin’s” rican Expedition to the Belgian Congo conduct- The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man ed in 1921 under the auspices of the American (1871), and allude to the importance of the goril- Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to create la in those discussions. More specifi cally, the po- an unparalleled gorilla diorama (a museum exhib- ems’ authors speculated that Africans and African it of stuffed animals posed in a simulated habitat). Americans were the key to unlocking the transi- It tracks how the safari morphed into (1) a mis- tion from ape to man, as popular and scientifi c sion to rehabilitate the image of the gorilla and thought confi gured “Negroes” closest to the sim- (2) a campaign for the preservation of the gorilla. ian in form and intellect. In this complex exposi- The article places special emphasis on the relation- tion of race and gender, popular thought imagined ship between the Belgian government and Amer- the female African body as the producer of “the ican scientists in creating the world’s fi rst gorilla missing link”—a half-man, half-beast creature that sanctuary. Lastly, “Gorilla Trails in Paradise” dis- would reveal the key to the descent of man. Anal- cusses how the images of the gorilla as painted in ogies drawn between Africans, African Americans, the travel narratives of naturalist Carl Akeley and apes, and gorillas in “missing link” narratives as- writer (and safari participant) Mary Hastings Brad- sumed that African women submitted to animal ley emerged and indeed became imbedded in cin- couplings due in part to their perceived hyper and ematic culture. bestial sexuality (Collins 99). This discussion of I argue that the AMNH gorilla expedition possible couplings between African woman and and Akeley’s quest to know the gorilla direct- gorilla refl ected a broader American captivation ly engaged America’s search for the missing link. with the missing link. For Akeley, this mission entailed discounting “Gorilla Trails in Paradise” explores the Amer- fantasies of hypersexual and vicious ape behav- ican obsession with primates and evolution, as in- ior, as well as salacious theories of human–ape formed by notions of race and sexuality, as an mating, which both reifi ed and contested partic- important current in American cultural and intel- ular concepts of race, gender, and sexuality as lectual history during the late nineteenth and ear- understood by Americans. In his revisioning of ly twentieth centuries. This preoccupation began the gorilla, Akeley upheld the image of the mas- with queries regarding the relationship between culine ape—the ape as male progenitor of hu- man and ape in light of evolutionary theories that manity, patriarchal ruler of the jungle, and mas- predated the publication of Darwin’s seminal trea- culine protector of his family. Yet, Akeley shied tises. However, Darwinian evolution brought the away from sensational sexualized descriptions of question of that relationship into mainstream dis- the masculine gorilla in his travel narratives. He course. No longer confi ned to the musings of achieved this by anthropomorphizing the male learned white men, the ape–human puzzle in- gorilla as father to a nuclear family, thereby deny- formed American popular thought and popular ing his existence as part of roving bands, whose culture by the late nineteenth century. mating rituals seemed to suggest something oth- This article explores how a group of middle- er than monogamy. In contrast, his travel com- class Americans took up the search for the miss- panion Mary Bradley exploited the popular im- ing link by conducting a safari in Africa, and how age of the hypersexual ape in her travel narrative. their quest transformed and infl uenced American Recognizing the gorilla as masculine father (and ruminations on the ape–human relationship. In sometimes uncle), Bradley literarily fantasized this examination, the article discloses the transat- about copulating with the progenitor—pledg- lantic connections involving this pursuit of goril- ing to offer no resistance should the ape carry las in the misty mountains of the Belgian Congo, her away into the treetops. Here she complicat- “GORILLA TRAILS IN PARADISE”: THE AMERICAN SEARCH FOR THE MISSING LINK 323 ed views of white female sexuality. By offering to and lover—they refl ect what Stoler calls “a palpa- switch places with the Western constructed Afri- ble obsession” with “whiteness” (Carnal Knowledge can woman, Bradley antagonized acknowledged 13)—in this case, the need to reaffi rm constantly “truths” about race, gender, and sexuality. their whiteness against the “blackness” of the pri- This article engages Donna Haraway’s seminal mate and the African. work “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the This article also engages Haraway’s contention Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936” in that the simian primate existed in the borderlands Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World between culture and nature. I argue that this view of Modern Science (1989). Haraway’s analysis of can be extended to perceptions of Africans, whom Akeley’s quest to capture the gorilla as a perfor- Western thought also constructed as between cul- mance of patriarchy, reminiscent of Victor Fran- ture (civilization) and nature—if not as exemplars kenstein’s elusive pursuit of his monster, is only of man in his natural state.